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“Grace?”
Stratt knocks at his door, and Grace jumps about a foot in the air. He still hasn’t quite gotten used to the lack of privacy with this whole thing. With staying aboard ‘Stratt’s Vat,’ with its tiny rooms and even tinier bathrooms and everyone always wanting his opinion about something.
He’s cursing that right now, as he tries to shimmy on his binder over his still-wet chest. Showers were practically a military affair here, no more than three or so minutes before the water turned ice-cold, and the stalls were so small that getting on any garment would be a struggle, much less trying to wrestle on something meant to crush you while it sticks to your skin the whole way because of the residual moisture. Right now he’s about halfway through tugging it over his head and decidedly in absolutely no state to see Stratt, but he knows she won’t take no for an answer without a reason, and privacy is already dead, so might as well–
“One sec!” He half-yells, then quiets his voice. “Let me put my binder on, and I’ll be right out.”
She already knows he’s trans. Hell, practically everyone on the Vat probably knows, with the way that news spreads around here. But nobody’s in a position to be bigoted in times like these. Beggars can’t be choosers with their scientists’ gender identities. Still, though, the thought makes his skin crawl somehow, like he’s a bug under a microscope.
Stratt hums. “The meeting starts in five minutes, Grace.” Her voice is tinny through the door. At least this place has doors. Stratt had managed to get Grace a room with a more private shower, not a big communal affair with just rows of showerheads and a few curtains for privacy, and he’s grateful. For most of the time, he’s too busy with the whole trying-to-save-the-world thing to be dysphoric, but it just makes it all the worse when he gets a moment to breathe and it all hits him at once. Like in the shower, or when he has to put his binder on and deal with the reminder of the fact that he hadn’t been able to afford top surgery on a teacher’s salary and doesn’t have the time for it now, when the entire Earth is depending on him.
The binder finally settles and he throws on his shirt, rams his glasses onto his face, and opens the door. His hair is still wet and his glasses are askew but nobody seems to care about appearances anymore except for a few of the generals and some of the older consulting astronauts. Stratt, as per usual, is in a giant sweater, holding two cups of coffee that Grace knows not to ask for.
“Okay, I’m ready.” He doesn’t even remember what the meeting is for, or whether he actually has to do anything in it. Half of the time it seems like Stratt has him there just for her own moral support.
Stratt tilts her head, seeming to consider him, like the look she had when they’d started inspecting the rocket or when she’d approved the final mission patch. Analyzing. Like taking everything apart and putting it back together again just in her head. “Is my hair sticking up?” Grace asks, to break the silence, to say something, anything, and finally Stratt does her halfway-smile and shakes her head. “You look fine. Come.”
The walk to the meeting is uneventful, the usual maze of ship hallways and painted metal and signs in at least six different languages plastering the halls reminding everyone of their duty to the people of Earth, but Grace can’t shake the feeling that something is different. That something’s about to change.
Later that night, finishing up his dinner in the cafeteria while Stratt watches, he asks.
“Is there something wrong?” It comes out sharper than he means it to. He forces himself to lessen his grip on his chopsticks as he picks at his noodles. Stratt’s perched on the table, forcing him to look up at her, craning his neck while the lights shine down like a halo.
The cafeteria is practically empty. It’s late, later than usual even for the two of them, and Grace had to crack into his supply of instant ramen rather than eating the usual provided dinner. The lights are dim and the sea of empty tables just makes the anxiety in the back of his throat worse.
Stratt tilts her head in that same way again. The shadows across her face makes it impossible to tell her expression. Bemused? Concerned? Grace has never been good at faces. Good at people.
“Well, the sun is dying,” she says, and they both know it’s not what he asked. Grace’s noodles are overcooked and keep falling apart when he tries to fish them out with his chopsticks and eat.
“I know that. I mean–” he has to swallow, unexpected emotions welling up, that familiar old feeling from his teenage years, his twenties, every time someone called him the wrong thing or looked at him out of the corners of their eyes with that fear, or disgust, or worse, pity. “Is there something wrong with me.”
Stratt seems to soften around the edges. Grace looks down at his chopsticks left abandoned sticking out of the instant ramen cup. Little bits of freeze-dried peas and corn and carrots swimming in chicken-flavored broth. He feels like a child again. Like he’s offering up some vulnerable part of himself that even he doesn’t understand.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” Normally he would appreciate the straightforwardness, but today everything is grating on his nerves, rubbing him the wrong way like petting a shark tail-to-head.
“You’ve been looking at me weird all day.” He stabs at the noodles again with his chopsticks. No luck.
“Grace, do you want surgery?”
Oh.
He knows, according to normal conversation rules, he should look up at her. Meet her gaze. But he can’t.
The lights buzz. The ship groans in the night, cresting a distant wave. His ramen slides across the table and he barely manages to react fast enough to catch it. His ribs ache. Everything aches. It’s been a long day and his binder is too-tight but he can’t exist without it, not here, with everyone looking to him for help. Not with Stratt looking to him for help.
It feels like the wind’s been punched out of him. A thousand words die on the tip of his tongue. Did he want surgery? He had thought about it, for sure. Dreamed about it. Looked up surgeons and sat with his phone in his hand, waiting to dial the number, before he realized that his insurance wouldn’t cover it or his schedule wouldn’t work with teaching or that he had nobody to even drive him home from the hospital. Cried about it, in the shower, on the very worst days. But did he want it? Could he want it, at a time like this, when all of humanity was at stake, when the world had problems so much bigger than his own, when he was being selfish enough already?
“I’ve been doing some research,” Stratt continues. Her voice is softer than it is when she directs meetings but no less authoritative. “If you wanted it, we could do it.”
“But the project–” finally, he speaks, because if he doesn’t he thinks he might start crying. His breaths are too shallow. Is he dreaming? No. This makes too much sense. Follows the rules of logic too closely, even though it feels impossible.
“If you wanted surgery, it would be no hindrance to the project for you to get it.” Stratt is tilting her head again, looking at him like one would at a lost dog. Gentle, patient. Waiting.
“I’d need recovery time,” he says. He wants to discount it. To say it’s not true. That it can’t be true, because if it were true it would mean it could actually happen, that he could actually get something that he wanted for so long and have it be real.
“It’s not ideal, yes, but we could make it work. You could conduct meetings from your room until you are well enough to return.”
If this place had chairs, Grace would push his back and stand. Leave. Walk right out and to his room to try and collect himself from the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and the dream that feels too good to be true. But, as is, there are benches bolted into the floor and so he has to stand awkwardly and swing his legs over and spare just the few moments for Stratt to speak again.
“The world is ending, Grace. You deserve to be happy when it does.”
She puts his hand over his, still on the table, bracing himself when he stood. You deserve to be happy. He swallows hard but the world blurs no matter how much he blinks and if he thinks he opens his mouth to say a single word he’ll break down entirely. There’s a lump in his throat and his heart is racing and he doesn’t think anything he could say would ever be enough. He doesn’t even know what it would be enough for. Enough to thank her? To convince her that no, he doesn’t deserve something like this? Enough to explain that he’s a coward and afraid to want something this much, this badly?
“Think about it,” Stratt says. “I have seven surgeons on-call. Just say the word.”
He opens his mouth, closes it again.
“All of this, just for me, I can’t– It’s a waste. We don’t have time.” He needs to say something. Explain to her why she can’t do this. Explain to himself why he shouldn’t take it. Why he shouldn’t get his hopes up.
“You’ve done so much for this project, Grace. Let us do this for you, if you want it.”
Stratt smiles at him, something sad in her eyes, exhaustion in every line in her face. She stands, pats him on the back, and then it’s just him and his thoughts and the empty cafeteria at god-knows-when at night.
You deserve to be happy.
He stays there for a long time. Eventually, he stops trying to hold back the tears, and his shoulders shake and he sinks to the floor and he cries right there in the cafeteria, like his own private revelation aboard an aircraft carrier hundreds of miles from any coastline.
The next morning, he calls Stratt. His eyes are puffy and every single part of him feels as sore as if he’s been in one of those what-ifs that his students were always telling him about, fighting off ten goose-sized horses or one horse-sized goose. “How long do I have to think about it?” He says, and tries to keep his voice steady.
“As long as you want,” she replies. “There’s no rush. However long you need.”
“Thank you,” and he thinks he can hear Stratt’s smile over the phone. “It’s the least I can do. Really.”
–
“What are marks on Grace’s chest, question?”
Grace freezes. He’s in the middle of pulling on a new shirt, and Rocky’s pointing his little seeing stick at him from inside his ball.
“Which marks? You’re going to have to be a little more specific, buddy.” Grace chuckles, but takes off his shirt so Rocky can have a clearer view. They’re two months into the trip to Erid, and they’re both getting a bit of cabin fever, asking questions to pass the time.
“The lines. Like old injury. Grace was hurt, question?” Rocky rolls closer, and Grace chews on his lip as he tries to think of a satisfactory answer. He hadn’t told Rocky about being trans. He hadn’t really seen the point. Aliens probably didn’t have anything close to the human concept of gender, anyway, and he didn’t want to go through the whole process of explaining it when they were busy trying to collect the taumoeba. But now, he supposes, they have all the time in the world.
“Sort of.” Would Rocky understand elective surgery? He has what look like tattoos, Grace guesses, so maybe. Eridians do seem to like decoration. “I got a procedure to look more like myself before I left Earth. It was a gift from a friend.”
“Gift, question? Grace not choose himself, question?” Rocky taps his feet on the xenonite floor.
“No, I did. She just wanted to do something nice for me, I think. She felt bad that I had to go on the mission.” Grace looks up at the ceiling, at all the little pipes and details running through the entire Hail Mary. Thinks about all the late nights Stratt must’ve put in to get the whole thing up and running.
He doesn’t think he forgives her. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But at least he can appreciate this one thing.
“As long as Grace is happy.” Rocky rolls closer, and Grace places a hand on the top of his ball, like petting his head. “I’m very happy, Rock. And I’m excited for all the shirtless beach days we’re going to have on Erid, yeah?”
“Yes yes! Beach on Erid will be amaze amaze amaze. Just like in the screen room.” Rocky does his little happy dance. “Rocky and Grace saved stars, time to relax.”
“Yeah, we will. We’ll have plenty of time.”
“As long as Grace wants, statement.”
The echo of Stratt’s voice over the line, her voice through the phone.
“As long as we want, buddy. Just you wait.”