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A/N: DAY 4!!! The prompt today was fireworks, and I changed my mind several times about this plot before settling here!
Title from drop dead by Olivia Rodrigo. I'm on tumblr and twitter @ heavensbeehalls, so come connect! If you enjoy, leave kudos or a comment or a funny quote tweet, I treasure them all.
On with some fluff to make up for how mean yesterday was. Let's tomorrow too!
He looks out across the fog in the bay, steam rising from the rim of his coffee cup. Closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of rain on the rocks, the salt of the spray, the distant sound of the birds.
There’s the crunch of a wobbly footstep behind him, and he turns around to Eva. Silver hair flying out of her beanie, her hands deep in the pockets of an old familiar trench coat, watching him. “Morning,” he says quietly. Stilted.
She stares at him, and her eyes are the same colour as the water.
“You made me a coffee,” she says softly, and he shifts on the stones.
“Yeah,” he says, and shrugs. “I wanted to.”
“Thank you,” she breathes, and he instinctively holds out a hand to help her across the stones, his arm wrapping tighter around her when she slips.
He pulls away like he’s been burned, like she could leave new scars on his hands, swallowing thickly. Taking a sip of coffee to distract himself, pretending not to remember the last time they stood like this in the morning light, under a grey sky, coffee in hand.
Her breath spirals silver into the fog, and she looks over at him. “Are you ready for tonight?”
He groans, and a slight smile presses against her lips. “I don’t want to do this whole welcome home song and dance,” he says.
“Unfortunately, you saved the world, Doctor Grace,” she says. “It comes with the territory.”
“How come they could afford a light show for me but couldn’t put you up in a hotel?” he asks, and she shrugs.
“I am not their priority,” she says. “I am not the pretty boy saviour of the universe.”
He chokes on his coffee, and sees her gentle smirk in his periphery. Clears his throat and says, “You set this all in motion. They should be setting off fireworks for you too.”
“I do not need fireworks,” she says, and pats his shoulder. Just like she used to on the Vat, a lifetime and two different people ago. “I am going to take a shower. Erin emailed you. Glam team for you is scheduled for noon.”
“Glam team-”
“That is the language she uses,” she says, and he can’t help a dumb little grin. “Enjoy the fog, Doctor Grace.”
“Is that an order?” he asks, eyebrow arched.
“I’m not your director anymore, Doctor Grace-”
“You know I need to be told what to do,” he says, and she tilts her head up to him.
“Not anymore, saviour,” she says, and he smiles.
Feeling bold, he leans down and kisses her cheek. They’ve started doing that now. Soft little touches, unabashed long looks. Cheek kisses.
Lying side by side in his bed after hours of pretending either of them had any intention of sleeping on the couch. Hearing her stuttering breath when she couldn’t sleep, putting his arm across her and pulling her close. Waking up with a silver hair caught on his shirt, plucking it gently off in the dawn light.
Staring into the lap of the waves, he sees her eyes when he stepped out at his first public engagement after bringing Mary home. The way she gazed at him so steadily, never looking away, until he reached her in the line of people who wanted to shake his head and scooped her into a hug.
He wasn’t quite brave enough to kiss her. Not with everyone looking at them, not with feeling how thin she’d gotten, seeing the tattoo on her neck. He’s gotten used to it now, and she’s filled out a little since he came home.
When he walks back up to the house, he hears the shower running, rests his hand wistfully against the door. If he was braver, if he was more sure about what she wants, he might open the door and step into the steam with her.
Instead he waits to hear her pad to the spare room. The box room, barely big enough for the blow-up mattress he has in it. That’s why she didn’t sleep there.
The doorbell rings when he’s still scrubbing shampoo out of his hair, and he hears Eva answer, hears the high-pitched squeals of the glam team. Tries not to be too resentful of this circus.
Eva knocks gently at the bathroom door, calls out, “Ryland, they’re here. ETA?”
“Almost done!” he calls through the door. Domestic. Soft. Not imagining her lowering that door handle, stepping into the room and coming to him behind the tiles.
The glam team yank him in every direction, polishing his glasses, designer-ing his stubble, tutting at the impossible task of taming his hair. Put him in an olive green suit and a bright, flight-suit yellow tie, fussing with the collar of his shirt, starched corners pressing into his chin.
He’s left waiting for Eva to finish getting ready, sitting and tapping his foot in one shiny brown shoe.
Breathless when she does come downstairs, the heels of her shiny boots clicking against the stairs. She’s wearing the simplest dress, plain black and neatly fitted to her body, the silver and auburn blend of her hair pulled back in a simple gold pin.
She’s beautiful. Comparable to anything he saw out in space, giving him the same silence, the same swell in his chest.
“You look nice,” he says, and then kicks himself for the lacklustre statement.
“So do you,” she says, and he’s glad she turns away to spray her perfume, so he can inhale deeply enough to smell jasmine from the other side of the room without looking crazy.
The car arrives to pick them up, drive them into the city where the homecoming parade is taking place. He gets separated from Eva, immediately feels naked without her at his side. He’s ridiculous. She’s only been staying with him for a week thus far, and before that he was being paraded around the world by the leaders who all wanted to show off. He’s hardly seen her.
He supposes that’s why he wants to be around her so badly. Why being propped up onto stage to make a speech is killing him, cue cards in his hands, searching for her in the crowd.
She’s too far away. Nowhere near the world leaders flown in to see this, tangling a long strand of silver around her finger, but he smiles where she can see him and adds, “I owe my greatest thanks to Director Eva Stratt. For believing in me. To quote myself, you were right.”
Someone is probably going to be mad at him for going off-script. Let them be. People seem to be mad at him a lot for not hating her more. On his publicist’s advice, he doesn’t look at discussions of himself or of Eva online, stays far away from discourse and his own replies.
But he knows. He sees in the way people’s mouths thin when he talks about her. Sees it in how the esteemed guests are giving her a wide berth, no one really talking to her. And she stands there, her head held high, taking it on the chin.
Holding the weight of the world the way she always did.
He collects two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, crosses straight to Eva. Presses one into her hand, and clinks his against hers. “To us?” he asks, and she smiles.
“To you, Doctor Captain Grace,” she says, and takes a sip of champagne. “Why Doctor before Captain?”
Because it’s what you said the first time we met. “Because I was a Doctor before I was a Captain,” he says. “Thinking of changing it to Saviour Grace.”
“That’s what the Eridians called you, isn’t it?” she asks, and he nods. “Hmm. Saviour Grace.”
He suppresses a shiver, and says, “Well, everything sounds good when you say it.”
Her eyes shine up at him. And he’s about to lean down.
Then there’s a pop and a whistle behind them, and the red light of a firework splashes across her face.
He sees her eyes go wide, the white of her lower lip beneath her teeth, the short rise and fall of her chest. As more fireworks crash up into the night sky, lighting her face up Petrova Line red, Adrian green, sunlight gold, he sees her breathing get rapid, and breathes, “Eva-”
She opens her mouth to speak, but a high-pitched noise something like a sob comes out, and he pulls her closer. Away from the crowds, holding her waist in his hands, leaning down to her eye level. “Breathe, Eva,” he says, and she gasps in sharply. “Slowly. Baby,” it slips out, a soft pet name he’s always wanted to use on her, her eyes going wide, “with me. Breathe with me, baby.”
He exaggerates his breaths, in and out, until she’s a little calmer, until she can speak. Her voice faint when she says, “I saw it on your face. The light.”
“What?”
“Just like that morning,” she says, and it comes back in a rush. The boom of the research centre going up in smoke and flame, the red light of it curved around her cheek in the foggy morning light.
“Eva, it’s not that morning,” he promises. Takes her hand, and she lets him, her lip quivering. “It’s just fireworks. It’s not happening again.”
Tears gleam silver in her eyes under the light of another firework, and she finally whispers, “Why did you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he says. Promises, lacing his fingers tighter through hers.
“Ryland-”
“Eva...” He stares at her, his eyes flickering between her damp eyes and her soft mouth, faintly stained with lipstick. “Oh, fuck it.”
He leans down and kisses her, burying his mouth in hers. And her arms fling upwards around his neck, like she’s wanted this for years, like she’s been waiting for him to make the first move.
His hands find her waist, so perfectly shaped for his palms to match her curves. Pulling her closer, right against him, her perfume spiralling into his senses, her nails digging into the back of his neck.
When he breaks the kiss, he presses his forehead to hers, and promises, “I’m right here, baby. I’m not going anywhere. Not ever again.”
“I lied to you,” she says, and he blinks. “They offered to put me up in a hotel. I said I’d find...alternative arrangements.”
“Devious woman,” he says, and she grins up at him, eyes dancing wickedly. “I won’t bother to pretend I’m going to sleep on the couch tonight, then.”
Her finger trails down his tie, tangles in the silk, and she breathes, “I hope so. We’ve been waiting...oh, thirty years?”
“I like holding you,” he says, sliding his nose softly against hers.
“You know that’s not what I mean, Ryland,” she sighs, and he smiles, taking her hands and pulling them to his mouth, scattering kisses over her knuckles.
“Be more specific, Director Stratt,” he says, looking at her through his lashes.
“Call a car, take me home, and fuck me stupid,” she says.
He grins, already looking around for someone who can summon a car for them.
“Yes Director.”
They make out all the way back to his house, his hand sliding slowly up beneath the hem of her dress and finding her soaked, her thighs clamping closed around his gently exploring fingers. He carries her over the threshold, slamming the door behind them, yanking her dress up around her hips and dropping to his knees, ready to worship at the altar he’s waited thirty years for.
Makes her come all over his face, her whimpering above him while she grinds eagerly against his nose. Holding her up when her knees go weak, her chest heaving, and she looks down at him and says, “I told you to fuck me stupid.”
Grinning, he pulls her into his arms and into his bed, throwing off his blazer and his tie, leaning down over her with her dress rucked around her hips and her boots still on, her slender fingers yanking at the buttons of his shirt.
He sinks slowly inside her, her keening filling the air between them, and sees the stars they saved as she pulls him down into a kiss.
Spilling deep inside her, groaning her name into her hair, he kisses along her jawline and breathes, “I love you. I always have. The whole time.”
She wraps an arm around him, kisses him, and breathes, “I love you too.”
They’re woken up, tangled in each other and still sheened with sex sweat, by a frantic phone call from the publicist. Someone caught a photo of them kissing, is threatening to release it to every major media outlet the world over.
“And why’s that a problem?” Ryland asks, pulling Eva closer into his chest, dropping a kiss on her lips and feeling his cock stir. “She’s my partner. Let them know.”
“But...Doctor Grace, the scandal-”
“Oh no, two consenting adults were kissing at a party, that’s terrible,” he says, and Eva giggles into his chest, her fingers idly trailing along his bicep. “Look, I had a late night. Just...I have no issue with that getting out. So, whatever you think is best.”
He hangs up on the buzz of panic from the other end of the line, and Eva shakes her head. “That’s rude,” she says, and he smiles.
“I have better things to do with my morning,” he says, and her laughter fills him with light as he rolls on top of her, kissing her back into the pillows.