Work Text:
Ryland Grace is looking at the stars from his grandparent’s backyard. He is six years old, and his mother thinks he should be in bed by now.
He probably should be, but he’s too excited about the visit and the holiday to be tired. He's wrapped up in a blanket that was knitted just for him and he’s sitting in his grandfather's lap. It’s cold enough he can see his breath, but the arms around him are warm, and there’s something that feels secret and special about the quiet and dark outside compared to the light and laughter from inside the house.
His grandfather knows that Ryland has recently become very interested in dinosaurs, and lets him talk about his favorites for as long as he wants. When he gets very excited telling him about some of the giant ones that swam in the ancient oceans, his grandfather tells him there’s a story in the stars about a creature like that.
Ryland listens in rapt attention as the myth is recounted. About Poseidon, Andromeda, Perseus, and the sea monster. He looks to where his grandfather points, marking the bounds of the constellation Cetus, tracing along its edges.
He isn’t told that one of those bright twinkles is named Tau Ceti. It’ll be important later, but it doesn’t matter now. His eyes do rest on it, though, a few seconds longer than it did on the others.
He feels something towards the star. A tug, barely, an almost imperceptible pull. Tau Ceti is very far away, and he is very small.
He doesn’t recognize that he is looking yet, and he doesn’t know anyone is out there, right now, waiting to be seen.
======
Ryland Grace is looking at the stars from behind the windshield of a car. He is eighteen years old and he is absolutely blowing this date with Jenny from his Bio class. To be fair, he was not fully aware this was a date until about thirty seconds ago.
They’d been out a couple of times, as friends, he thought. A movie here, a lunch there. Tonight, she asked if he wanted to go for a drive, and listen to her new CD and he said yes. And after a while they stopped in a sort of deserted area because she wanted to “look at the stars”. So then he was looking at the stars, with her, and they were very bright tonight, so he said so. And she said aren’t they so pretty and he said yes. They were. A beat went by and she frowned and he thought maybe he’d done something wrong.
So he tried to think of some interesting fact he could share, so she’d maybe smile at him again. She had a pretty smile and he liked when he could make her look like she was happy to be looking at him.
He said he knew some stories about the constellations, and she seemed excited to hear them, so he shared the first one that popped into his head. Cetus, the sea monster. He only sort of half remembers it, and he doesn’t think he’s doing a very good job telling it since she is definitely not smiling.
It is many years later, a frankly embarrassing number of years later, that he realizes she was probably expecting him to tell her something more romantic.
But she leans in and kisses him, possibly to shut him up and possibly to see if she can salvage anything from this date and it shocks him so much he can’t think. It’s unexpected and therefore not great, but it feels nice. It’s soft, and he can taste a vanilla sweetness on her lips, and he likes how warm her hand feels on his cheek. It takes him a while to register that he’s probably supposed to be doing something with his hands, and maybe his tongue too, but he can’t figure out what.
It clearly takes him too long to decide, because she pulls away. “I’m sorry,” he says, automatically, because he feels like he should be apologizing for being so terrible at kissing. She gives him a half hearted smile which does nothing to mask her clear disappointment. “It’s okay, Ryland,” she says. She turns the car back on and tells him not to worry about it, and she’ll take him home. He still feels the tingle of her lips against his, and he starts to miss the sensation, and he thinks maybe he wouldn’t mind so much if she wanted to try it again, and gave him some time to get better at it. That he likes her, and he wishes he knew how to like her the right way, and he wants to try.
But he doesn’t say anything. He’s silent the whole way home. He rests his head against the window and looks up at the sky until he can find Cetus, and lets his gaze linger on the pinprick along the bottom that marks a corner of the constellation.
He feels something towards the star. A tug, barely, an almost imperceptible pull. Tau Ceti is very far away, and he is very alone.
He doesn’t recognize that he is longing yet, and he doesn’t know anyone is out there, right now, waiting to be friends.
======
Ryland Grace is looking at the stars from the bench he’s lying on in some random street he’s wandered down in Denmark. He is twenty six years old and he’s pretty sure he has just ruined his life.
He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s always thought he was smart, but he can’t be that smart, can he? Not if he blows up at the leading scholar in his field, calls him a staggering waste of carbon for everyone to hear. He was so proud of his original ideas, so smug about the thought that he knew better than everyone else, that he was right when everyone else was wrong. That he didn’t mind pissing other people off.
It was one thing when he wrote his dissertation. That was more cheeky than wholly unprofessional, and he might have been able to find a mentor who appreciated a little smugness, especially if it came with bright new ideas, but no one wants a rogue scientist who can’t keep his temper under control in the middle of an UNESCO conference.
His boss has called him three times. He has not picked up. He doesn’t think he’ll have the courage to, he’s just going to wait until they send him an email firing him. He doesn’t know what to do. He has nowhere to go, no one to talk to outside of the academics he just humiliated himself in front of. He has student loans and no prospects and no friends.
He’s so mad at the whole world and everything in it, and he lies on that bench in the dark being mad at everyone and anyone he can think of until he’s only left with himself.
He rolls over on his back. He needs to get up, figure out how to get back to his hotel, figure out how to put his life back together after blowing it up so spectacularly.
His eyes roam over the night sky until they settle on Cetus. He wishes the sea monster could swim out of the sky and swallow him up whole. At least then he wouldn’t have to think anymore. He lingers on the same bright spot he always does when he’s looking up there, along the bottom edge.
He feels something towards the star. A tug, barely, an almost imperceptible pull. Tau Ceti is very far away, and he is very angry.
He doesn’t recognize that he is lost yet, and he doesn’t know anyone is out there, right now, waiting to be found.
======
Ryland Grace is looking at the stars from the deck of a ship somewhere in the Pacific. He is thirty three years old and he is thinking about the mission.
He is thinking about the sun and how it’s dimming, and the astrophage and how they’re breeding, and he thinks about the whole world and all the people on it. He thinks about the Hail Mary, and whether it will keep her astronauts safe on the long voyage, if it will lead them to a solution, and if there’s anything out there that’ll save Earth.
As he’s thinking, he hears someone approaching from behind him. He doesn’t need to look to know who it is.
“Which one is it?” Stratt says beside him, looking up and out into the clear, cold night. He doesn’t need to ask what she’s referring to.
He gestures up, towards the side, gives her a few reference points until they’re both looking at the same place at the same time. “That’s Tau Ceti,” he says. “It’s in the constellation–”
“Cetus,” she says. He’s not really surprised she knows this, but he is surprised when she starts telling him the whole myth unprompted. He has a distant memory of someone else telling him this, but nothing about it feels quite the same.
“Not where I would have chosen to send a manned interstellar mission, if I had a choice,” she says.
“Why not?”
She quirks her eyebrow. “We are, quite literally, sending them into the belly of the beast.”
They stand in silence together, for a while, looking towards the slim chance of their salvation. He has no words to reassure her. He doesn’t know what’s there to find, or if it’ll even do anything for them. If it’ll be too late. He can’t take his eyes off it, but there’s something a little less lonely in looking together, so at least that's some comfort out here in the dark.
He feels something towards the star. A tug, barely, an almost imperceptible pull. Tau Ceti is very far away, and he is very worried.
He doesn’t recognize that he is hoping yet, and he doesn’t know anyone is out there, right now, waiting to help.
======
Ryland Grace is looking at the stars from the window of a ship’s cockpit, even though he is decidedly not a pilot. He is somewhere in his thirties, he thinks but isn’t sure, and he is having a terrible time in zero gravity.
He’s knocked around everything that wasn’t tied down, spun and shrieked and did his very best not to get sick all over the place. He’s remembered enough by now that he understands where he is, and why, and that the fate of humanity rests on him. And what a terrifying thought that is.
At least he’s pulled himself out of his drunken stupor, cared for his dead friends and their legacy as well as he knew how, got cleaned up and dressed in his uniform, like a proper astronaut. Like someone who knew what he was doing, like someone who isn’t going to fail and doom his entire species. Like someone who’s going to do their best.
Like someone who’s best is actually good enough. Like someone who can be trusted to do this.
He tries to push away the thought of being surrounded by the sea monster. Of being swallowed up and adrift in the belly of the beast.
When he can move without flailing, and think without screaming, he pushes towards the petrovascope, positions himself underneath. Where he can look at that star again, that same star, not so far away anymore.
He feels something towards the star. A tug, stronger than ever, that familiar pull. Tau Ceti is very near, and he is very afraid.
He recognizes the fear, of course, he feels it bubbling in him, an unwavering companion. But he will find out very soon that someone is out here, right now, ready for him to be brave.
=======
Ryland Grace is looking at the stars as he lies down on his beach. He is somewhere in his forties, or maybe fifties, and his best friend thinks he should be in bed by now.
He knows this because he can hear him shouting it from several meters away. He must have gone to the house to check on him and found it empty.
Grace endures the verbal abuse for a few moments and the angry fist shaking before just laughing and telling him that maybe he wants to sleep out here tonight. He brought his quilt, after all, and it is very cozy.
“I built you a house to sleep in! With a very nice bedroom!”
“You built the whole biodome,” Grace points out. “So it’s all my bedroom, technically.”
Rocky does the little shimmy that Grace recognizes as rolling his eyes and sighing with exasperation. It’s an expression he’s well accustomed to.
“I want to look at the stars,” Grace says.
“Grace has not seen enough of the stars?”
Rocky hasn’t brought his optical scanner, so he can’t look along with Grace. Grace isn’t technically looking at the stars, either, he’s looking at the projection of where they’d all be if the atmosphere wasn’t so thick and he could see all the way out. It was fun to map them out from this perspective, the stars as seen from Erid. He can make up his own constellations if he wants.
He always searches for Sol, of course. The star he was born under, lived under for so long, saved, even. With Rocky’s help of course.
But he never fails to seek out Tau Ceti next. He sees the simulation of it on the sky they’ve lit up for him, and somewhere beyond the atmosphere the real thing is twinkling just as bright as it’s always been.
He feels something towards the star. A gratitude, a sense of fate being realized. But not a tug, no pull, not anymore. That persistent calling used to be light years away from him, then briefly a few million kilometers away, but now almost never more than a couple of miles.
And tonight, as Rocky approaches him, the gap narrows even more, from meters, to inches, to practically nothing at all when Grace feels the warm xenonite press against his skin.
Rocky can feign irritation all he wants, and soon he’ll be able to coax Grace back to the house and his bed and he’ll sleep while Rocky watches. But for now, for a few quiet, special moments in the dark, Grace is wrapped in a comfortable quilt, warm arms around him and his vision is filled with starlight.
He recognizes the feeling now, easily, it’s his unwavering companion, as familiar to him as air.
It’s love, and he knows for sure, has known for a long time now, that someone is here, beside him, and wants to share it.