#space fic

rated g | 1k words | Project Hail Mary | Ryland Grace x Reader

Just a few months away from arriving at Erid, Rocky discovers an archive containing more media from Earth. While Grace happily loses himself in research papers, documentaries, and increasingly questionable internet videos, Y/N finds herself overwhelmed by memories of the life she left behind. For the first time in years, Earth doesn't feel millions of kilometers away.

✧ MASTERLIST / ✧AO3

TAGS: project hail mary, ryland grace, sci-fi fanfic, angst, flirting, ryland grace x femme y/n, ryland grace x y/n, fluff

NOTE: Sorry I disappeared for a bit! College has been keeping me busy lately, but I'm finally back and writing silly little project hail mary fics again. Thank you for all the love on my previous stories—it genuinely means a lot. 💖 Now, back to our regularly scheduled Ryland Grace brainrot. Enjoy!

“Question.” Grace immediately regretted looking up.

Whenever Rocky started a sentence with that tone, it usually meant one of three things: one, Rocky had made a scientific discovery. Two, Rocky had accidentally broken something. Three, Rocky had found something deeply concerning about human behavior.

“What’s up?” Grace asked, not looking away from his laptop.

“Why does Hail Mary contain seventy-eight thousand videos of creature with hair?”

Grace froze. Slowly, he turned around in his chair.

“…What?”

Across the lab, Rocky sat in front of a monitor displaying what looked like an old Earth media archive. Rows upon rows of files filled the screen.

Movies. Songs. Television shows. Images. Videos. And apparently… cats.

“Rocky, where did you find that?”

“Archive directory,” Rocky clicked his claws against the keyboard. “Rocky searched for educational materials. Rocky found creature with hair.”

Y/N glanced up from the maintenance panel she was working on. “You found the entertainment archive?” she asked.

Grace immediately abandoned his work. “Oh my God.”

He stared at the laptop he had originally given Rocky for basic system monitoring, now apparently repurposed into a gateway to human history.

Scrolling.

There were so many files.

Far more than he remembered authorizing for personal storage.

“Rocky,” he said slowly, “why are there… this many categories?”

“Organization attempt,” Rocky replied proudly. “Rocky sorted by ‘funny’, ‘confusing’, and ‘emotionally distressing’.”

Grace blinked. “…Emotionally distressing?”

“Yes.”

“That feels like a bad sign.”

Y/N walked over now, wiping her hands on a cloth.

“What did you click on first?” she asked.

“Random selection,” Rocky answered immediately. Grace winced. “That’s worse.”

Y/N leaned over the screen. At first, she was smiling.

Then she wasn’t.

Because the archive wasn’t just cats.

It was everything.

Old Earth lectures.

Street footage.

Music videos.

News clips.

People laughing in places she had never been but somehow remembered anyway.

Grace noticed it first.

The way her hands stopped moving. The way her expression softened without her meaning to let it.

“Hey,” Grace said a little more carefully, “you okay?”

Y/N didn’t answer right away. She was watching something now.

A simple clip.

Rain hitting a window. A city street at night, headlights reflecting on wet pavement. People walking past without looking at the camera.

Ordinary. Completely unimportant, and somehow unbearable.

“Oh,” she said quietly.

Silence settled over the lab. Even Rocky stopped clicking.

Grace shifted slightly in his chair. “…You recognize it?”

Y/N nodded slowly. “I think so.” Her voice was softer now.

“Not this exact place. But… places like it.”

Rocky tilted slightly. “Explain emotional reaction.”

“I don’t know how,” she admitted—and that might have been the most honest thing she had said all week.

Grace looked back at the screen.

Rain. That was it.

Just rain.

And yet his chest felt oddly tight.

“…Huh,” he murmured.

And for once, he didn’t try to fix it. They spent the next few hours going through files.

At first, it was funny.

Rocky discovered memes.

Grace nearly had a breakdown trying to explain vines.

Y/N laughed at a cooking video from decades ago, shaking her head like she couldn’t believe people used to function like that.

For a while, it was just chaos.

Light.

Normal in a way nothing on the Hail Mary had been for years.

Then Rocky opened a folder labeled “everyday life.”

And the tone shifted.

A street corner. A bus arriving. A family arguing in a kitchen. Someone tying their shoes. A dog barking at nothing.

Grace stopped talking.

Y/N leaned closer to the screen.

Rocky went unusually quiet.

It wasn’t impressive; that was the problem. It was too normal.

Like Earth hadn’t been a mission objective or a problem to solve or a place they were trying to save—

Just a place where things happened.

“I forgot what silence like that sounded like,” she said quietly.

Grace didn’t respond immediately because he had too many thoughts and none of them had a proper scientific structure.

Finally, he said, “It’s just ambient noise.”

Y/N glanced at him. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

“I miss it.” she added, softer.

She didn’t specify what “it” was. She didn’t need to.

“…Yeah,” Grace said.

A beat.

“I get that.”

And something about that felt heavier than anything they had fixed on the ship so far.

Hours passed.

The archive kept going.

But Y/N got quieter. Less laughing, less commenting, more just… watching.

Grace noticed. He noticed everything now, apparently.

Rocky kept browsing like nothing had changed, occasionally making comments that were either insightful or deeply unhelpful.

But Grace was watching her more than the screen.

The way her shoulders slowly tensed. The way she blinked a little slower. The way she stayed on one file longer than necessary. Eventually, she stopped clicking entirely. She just sat there.

Watching a looping clip of a crowded street.

And Grace realized something uncomfortable. She wasn’t just nostalgic—she was homesick.

He cleared his throat.

“You want to stop?” he asked gently.

Y/N didn’t answer right away. Then, quietly: “No.”

But she didn’t sound sure.

Later, when Rocky had moved on to another folder and Grace pretended to be distracted by system diagnostics, Y/N stayed behind at the screen.

Just her.

Just Earth.

Grace didn’t move at first, then walked over slowly. Sat down beside her without saying anything.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Y/N said, barely above a whisper: “Do you think we’ll remember it right?”

“Earth?”

She nodded.

“Probably not,” he admitted.

Then, quieter: “But we’ll remember it together.”

Y/N exhaled—not a laugh, not quite a sigh, but something in between. And for a long time after that, they just watched the archive. Not because it was interesting anymore, but because it felt like proof that something like that had existed at all.

The stars outside kept moving. The ship kept flying. And for the first time in a long time, Earth didn’t feel like something behind them.

A bit of a take on the caretaker aus and soft aus, just let them employ themselves. Still just as clueless but not as out of the loop :].

Who would've thought that humans were some of the few species that planned for when a break was needed and supplies needed to be replenished. "Why not just pack everything you need to go from point A to point B?" Things happen. For so many traveling groups in the universe, that just meant you were either stupid or unfortunate and you had to suck it up till you reached your destination. When humans reached space, after almost dying too many times to count and learning from it, they saw that design flaw. Yeah, there were plenty species that did have a concept of stopping in the middle of a trip but normally there wasn't a place made with that in mind and made for that reason. Learning this, humans did what humans do best: adapted and capitalized on the cards delt. And this was clearly an fault they could make a good buck on. Once they learned the conversions to their currencies or until they converted to a more universal currency. Get it? Universal? Ha, I'm hilarious. . . ANYWAYS! The first site was a good learning experience. Many renovation were needed after the first dozen ships docked. 1) It needed to take into consideration bigger or smaller species. 2) Species with different textures and consistencies. 3) Having ready the fuels most used and most common in the neighboring galaxies. 4) They NEEDED to start a list of things visiting species could and could not eat or touch (condolences to the families of the ones that died to make this a rule, that was a tragic Wednesday).

I can't find this specific "humans are space orcs/humans are space fae" fic on ao3 and I'm starting to believe that it got deleted 😭

This is what I remember from it:

Ranboo & tubbo are aliens

Tommy's human

Benchtrio are all in space jail or some shit

Povs switch between them but I'm pretty sure that it's ranboo's pov first

Ranboo and tubbo are respectfully afraid of tommy(so is everyone else lmao but not the point)

Tommy drops his puzzle pieces and tubbo & ranboo help pick it up for him

Bc of that Tommy saves them from being beat to a pulp by a bigger alien prisoner after they(ranboo & tubbo) were forced into this makeshift boxing ring(they were getting picked on by the bigger stronger aliens bc they were small and weaker like typical bullies do)

They become best friends and escape or something

The desc was like "the biggest strongest species used to rule the park until the new kids came in and body slammed them" or something similar

tagged by @hippolotamus @pairofraggedclaws

Hello hello! I am finally back to having time to write at work (thank god)! Here's a little snippet of more of my space fic I was able to get down today!

The drive through LA to Eddie’s house is a blur. He runs on force of habit more than actually paying attention to his surroundings. Thank god it’s the early hours of the morning with few other people on the road. When he parks, he feels like he’s just blinked and gotten there.  Fuck, what the fuck is he doing? It’s 1am now. This isn’t the time to be doing this. But he can’t afford to waste anymore time. He’s not going to get it back.  He feels like he just chugged two redbulls. He’s shaking and the backs of his knees and his palms are sweating. His blood pressure is definitely high enough that he can feel it under his skin. He really should wait. He can’t wait.  Maybe he’ll just lay down on Eddie’s doorstep like a long forgotten puppy and wait for Eddie to open his door in the morning. Maybe Eddie will let him in then.

tagging from friends under the cut!

Some poor insect-based creatures, without a concept of a sleep cycle bombard and ram a human vessel before boarding. Scanning and sweeping the area, no moving life forms. Sure they know the humans are there, but their muscles are relaxed and they’re not moving at all. They’re probably just in the process of dying.

Then a few minutes later, the humans start to GET UP. Dazed confused and depending on the level of concussion, maybe lack of pain response.

YES i LOVE talking space fic omg yes!! 

I do believe they got triple married HOWEVER i think theres a very good chance that nico keeps it to himself for a bit. like the knowledge he and will have won is good enough for himself that they dont tell anyone for a good while. im talking YEARS.

this is completely for the fact that nico can then:

dramatically reveal it at a future point in time of nico’s choosing (specifically: a point when leo is being very, very, very annoying)

emphasize that theyve been triple married THE WHOLE TIME (basically)

hopefully side-step a ‘getting married’ competition. if leo knows he lost by 7+ years, it becomes a joke. if nico and will got triple married last week, leo throwing jason over his shoulder (honestly i SO miss writing the robot arm) and sprinting to the nearest ordained official (and something tells me this ends up being thalia ????)

Will does not care about the secrecy in the slightest and is happy to keep his mouth shut. as we’ve established, the concept of being double + triple married is useless to other people. but he gets his cake, and he’s happy too :)

as for conchell: that would require braincells, as in multiple. and as we all know, mitchell has permanent custody of their single shared brain cell, so it takes A LONG TIME. im half convinced mitchells siblings legally marry them by shoving the marriage license paperwork in with their field trip forms when mitchell is half-asleep but also i would LOVE to see some ravagers meddling.

i can see it being alice and julia’s plan and it taking an entire month to set up. katie and travis are very, very, very supportive and bankroll the entire thing. the girls drag juniper into helping with planning, and while drew refuses to help at all, she shows up to their wedding in the best outfit there (outdressing mitchell on his wedding day was, frankly, her only goal) and she doesn’t frown the entire time. She doesn’t cry in the least, but she drinks enough that she hugs mitchell at the end of the night and it means soooo much to both of them lowkey