Ryland Graceful

the thing with aroace grace headcanons is like. i can totally see it. it’s not what i’m most interested in because my hobby happens to be writing romantic drama and pornography, but i can see it. it’s my runner-up headcanon for sure. but. he doesn’t identify that way. he instinctively flinches away from anything that even implies hes anything other than a perfectly normal heterosexual man who has all his shit completely figured out. he doesn’t identify using that phrase, and if someone explained it to him, i don’t think he’d identify with the concept, either. he’d be like “that sounds awesome! that’s not me though, i fulfilled the Normal Girlfriend Experience shortly after college. didn’t work out but i’ll probably find someone i mean a woman specifically who i click with one of these days, and then we’ll have sex and get married or whatever it is you’re supposed to do.” and then he’d just blithely go on not thinking about it. he’s a school teacher in san francisco in the 2020s, he’s on the front lines of the culture wars whether he likes it or not, he knows what pronouns are, he may very plausibly know the words “aromantic” and “asexual” but it has never in his life occurred to him to apply those to himself. and it quite possibly never will. he’s not particularly introspective and he absolutely does not have the level of self-insight required to understand why he’s only had one long-term relationship in his life, and why it ended so fucking badly. not solely due to his orientation you understand, but also due to his various flaws as a person. where was i going with this. oh yeah. i need everyone to make this guy more repressed right now immediately.

Something about Rocky's enthusiasm to move in with Grace and be around Grace and his "I see Grace!! :D" makes me wanna bawl my eyes out a little

she's platonic about it but in my opinion, stratt 100% treats grace as her dead wife. she keeps a tacky fox trinket in her coat pocket. there's a framed photo of him in her study . he's grinning goofily in it (bc he's a dork). new guy like: is that her husband? / no, dumbass, it's dr. ryland grace, 1/3 of the hail mary mission. / oh, fuck. were they... ? / yeah, it's unclear. black-and-white montages of grace messing around in high-level meetings play every time stratt contemplates committing more environmental crimes. she looks up at the night sky and vaguely wonders if he's enjoying his space ramen. that's her dead wife. she killed him.

Say what you want, but Grace adding, "people are hooking up" to the list of 'odd things to do at an already weird party' is the most Ace thing he could've said-