Chapter Text
The worst-kept secret to do with Project Hail Mary was the sexual relationship between director Eva Stratt and first officer Ryland Grace. Everyone knew that it was happening. Nobody had proof. Today, Olesya Ilyukhina was finally going to change that.
It started when she walked past one of the smaller relaxation areas at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. She was just on time to see Grace almost pulling Stratt into the room. They were definitely touching. Upon witnessing this, she’d ducked behind the corner in the hallway, crept up, and was now sitting with an ear to the door.
Given that she was on her own break fro the next thirty minutes, and thus had nowhere else to be, and that neither of them had seen her (she thought), she’d hopefully be able to catch them in the act of… well… sex.
She wondered which one of them topped, then discarded the question. It was obviously Stratt. Olesya had met the woman, after all.
She’d finally get proof. Finally. A quick text to the ship crew group chat had everyone else available in the primary and secondary crews hurrying to meet her. They all wanted to see it, too.
Kinda weird, but okay.
They all got there within a few minutes. With her ear still pressed to the door, Olesya could just about hear the two of them discussing something. She wasn’t sure what, though. The door was too thick for her to make out any more than who was talking. Grace had been doing most of it.
‘Grace is doing a lot of talking – and he’s just stopped,’ she narrated.
The crowd of astronauts around her looked more like a group of excited schoolchildren than professionals willing to go on a suicide mission, but they all deserved a break, in her opinion. Then, from within the room, there was a hum. A very familiar, low-pitched hum.
Olesya gasped. She almost missed Stratt doing the same. Holy shit, this was going to excite everyone.
‘Vibrator,’ she hissed. Shapiro brought a hand to her mouth. Someone snorted. ‘Stratt gasped as if reacting.’ They digested this for a second or two. Shapiro seemed to be almost bouncing in place.
‘Do you think they’ll notice if we open the door a bit?’
She considered. ‘Not likely. I’ll be careful, though. Don’t want them to realise we’re here before it gets really heated. Stratt probably needs it, after all.’
Dimitri (when had he gotten here? How had he known? She hadn’t texted him, he wasn’t on either mission crew.) chuckled. She managed to get the door open just a crack without it squeaking, deciding to not push her luck. The vibration just got louder. She could hear footsteps from the attached micro-kitchen. Odd.
‘Wow,’ murmured Stratt after thirty-or-so seconds.
‘I know, right?’
Olesya frowned for a second at Grace’s comment. Maybe he was awkward even now. Maybe the director liked that. Hmm, too weird. She refused to contemplate it further. Something was put down on a hard surface. The vibrator (please let it be that, she needed this to be real) just kept going. Another short period with no speech followed. A smell she vaguely recognised wafted through the tiny crack in the door, but it was too weak for her to name it. She looked back at the others.
‘Time to break in?’ She spoke as quietly as possible, hoping that the others could lip read. Everybody shook their heads at her. Okay then, more waiting. She could hardly contain her excitement.
‘Go on,’ Grace said. Prompted, almost.
‘Are you sure?’ Stratt sounded hesitant. Like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed.
‘Yeah. Just because I –’ Olesya almost gasped again as Grace’s reassurance was cut short by a moan. From Stratt.
The unflappable Eva Stratt had moaned.
Aloud. While in a room with Doctor Grace.
‘That good, huh?’
‘You try it.’
Certainty (and a hint of command) were the main things that Olesya could identify in Stratt’s tone, but there were other things that she knew that she’d missed. Her mental freak-out over the whole situation was only just under control when Grace moaned. It was almost immediately followed by a gasp and then panting.
Okay, that was it. There was no possible platonic explanation for this now. Not in a million years. She threw open the door the rest of the way, phone in hand, camera app open.
‘Ha!’
Grace and Stratt’s heads swivelled to look at her. Both were seated on a couch against the right wall of the room. Between them sat a thick wooden chopping board with a metal dish on top of it, which contained a pizza with two missing pieces.
A quick search revealed that one of these pieces was halfway to Stratt’s mouth, with several bites taken out of it. The other was in Grace’s hand, and he was panting, tongue out, fanning it (and his tongue) aggressively. The tiniest bit on the end was missing.
‘Hot,’ he complained. ‘Hot, hot, hot!’
‘Idiot,’ Stratt said to him. ‘Can I help you all?’
Olesya looked around in dismay. There was no vibrator to be seen. So what was making the sound? It was still coming from somewhere. A second later, she saw what it was. The coffee table in front of them had some sort of setup on it that was… vibrating grains of salt? They were all bouncing in weird patterns on top of a square of taut plastic wrap, on top of a (round) speaker.
What the fuck?
‘What the fuck is happening here?’ Her question was almost a demand.
‘Language,’ Grace chided. ‘It’s a demonstration of tone testing for Stratt. Can you believe, she’s never seen it done before? I used to love doing this prac with my kids.’
Neither had Olesya, though she wasn’t about to admit that. Wait, kids? Oh, right, he’d been a teacher before coming here.
‘So you two aren’t engaged in a sexual relationship? We believed that the two of you were in fact having sex right at this moment,’ DuBois added from behind her.
‘Obviously,’ Commander Yáo sighed, ‘they are not. What type of pizza is that?’
‘Garlic,’ Stratt said, ‘and mine. You can’t have any.’ Of course! That was what she could smell! And it was the thing that Grace had put down, and the reason that he’d been in the kitchen!
‘Be nice, Stratt. And I made it,’ Grace added, confirming her theory. Shapiro stepped past her, probably to try to take a bit. ‘But she’s right, this is Stratt’s and my lunch.’
Shapiro deflated. Grace switched off the tone tester. The salt(?) fell to the plastic wrap, and the vibration stopped. The silence was rather awkward for a few seconds.
‘Now, unless you have any actual reason to be here, go away.’
It was very clearly a direct order with the way that Stratt phrased it. Olesya turned and walked dejectedly out of the room. Once they were out of earshot, Shapiro turned to her.
‘They didn’t deny being in a sexual relationship.’ She turned the statement over in her mind.
‘Didn’t confirm it, either. Although I didn’t think Stratt would ever take time out of her day to be shown a high school science experiment, so there’s definitely something going on there.’
‘You have a point. Although it was her lunch break, no?’
‘Did I not mention that I saw Grace literally dragging her into the room?’
‘You WHAT? Ilyukhina, that’s really important information! Stratt let him touch her?’
‘When you phrase it like that…’
‘One day we’ll get that proof. Hang in there.’
She ran off ahead of Olesya, who watched her go with a sigh. She was no longer so sure that the two of them were in a sexual relationship, or a romantic one, for that matter. Both of their reactions had been exactly like her ace friend’s had been whenever sex was mentioned. Perhaps they were in a QPR?
One day she’d know. Maybe she’d ask Grace directly as a last request just before she left. Surely he wouldn’t evade her then.