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“I still don’t see why I have to ask,” Grace protested as he was practically shoved down the hallway.
“Because Stratt likes you,” Ilyukhina said matter-of-factly, “she is more likely to tell you yes.”
Grace snorted. “She doesn’t like me; she just likes having someone to boss around. And she’d say yes to you, given that you’re kinda one of the most important people in the world right now.”
“Not as important as you,” Shapiro said from beside him.
“What? No?”
“Yes,” Ilyukhina said, “Stratt is the most important person in the world, you are the most important person to Stratt. Therefore, you are the second most important person in the world.”
Shapiro nodded.
“You guys are imagining things,” Grace said. “I’m not important to Stratt. Nobody is important to Stratt. Not personally, at least.”
“Lie to us all you want, pretty boy,” Shapiro said; “we’re still going to make you ask.”
“I’m not lying!” Grace protested. He was ignored, of course.
“Alright,” Ilyukhina said when they finally reached Stratt’s office, “time for you to shine!”
“I seriously don’t think this is going to—” Before he could finish his sentence, the door was yanked open and he was shoved inside.
Stratt had almost been having a nice day. It was hard for her to have nice days, but she’d been having one that wasn’t entirely terrible. It bordered on decent, actually.
So, naturally, her relative peace had to immediately be destroyed. By Ryland Grace, of all people, barging into her office.
Stratt took a deep breath.
“Hey!” Grace said, entirely too brightly, “Stratt!”
“Hello. What do you want?”
“What? Can’t a guy just visit his terrifying and incredibly powerful boss because he wants to?”
“He can, in theory, but he never does.”
Grace winced. “Yeah, okay, fair.”
“Can we hurry this up?” Stratt asked, finally looking up from her computer. “I have actual important things to do today, if you don’t mind.”
“Right! Of course!” What the hell did he sound so nervous about? “Uhm. You see. I was– I mean, the crew was wondering…”
Aah. That was why. He was going to ask for something and she was going to have to say no to it.
“We were just wondering if we could get a day off. Like, to go somewhere.”
“Where is ‘somewhere’?” Stratt asked.
“Does it matter?” Not really. She was probably going to say no regardless. But she was curious.
“It might.”
“Well, we, or they, were thinking we might go somewhere warm? Like, to go to the beach, or something?”
Oh. Well. That wasn’t that weird. Why the hell was Grace acting like he was asking her to sneak them into a bioweapons facility? (Well, that was more the type of thing she would make them do.)
“What makes you think we have the time for you all to take a day off?” She did feel a little bad, saying no. She was asking a lot of these people and she knew it, but she needed to be able to count on them. The world needed to be able to count on them.
Grace winced again. “I know, I know. But there’s a lot of pressure right now and I think having a day off might help them.”
He wasn’t wrong. That was the really annoying thing. A day off would probably help. Hell, Stratt probably needed a day off herself. It was just impossible to actually take one. The entire world was depending on her and goddamnit that can weigh on a woman.
“I know how important this project is,” Grace said, his voice softening, “but even you have to admit we all need a break.”
“I’ll think about it,” Stratt said finally, “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll think about it.”
“Alright,” Grace said, his face falling.
What the hell? Stratt thought as she watched him trudge out of her office. Why does he look so disappointed? It wasn’t like she had said no. She’d said she would think about it. That was more than she would’ve done for anyone else.
No, she wasn’t going to unpack that, thank you very much.
“What did she say?” Ilyukhina asked as Grace entered the room.
“She said she’d ‘think about it’” Grace sighed, “which essentially means ‘absolutely not.’”
There was a collection of groans from both crews and all other scientists present.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said, “I really did try. But at the end of the day, it’s Stratt. What were we really expecting?”
This was met with shrugs and a few grudging nods. Grace almost felt bad for talking about Stratt like that, but it wasn’t like he was wrong. Besides, she’d never know.
Stratt was supposed to be actually getting some goddamned sleep. She had finally gotten enough done to go to bed before two in the morning. And instead of doing that, she was pressed up against a door, listening in while some of the most qualified people on the planet talked shit about her.
“Look,” Grace was saying, his words slurred, “I’m not saying I don’t appreciate everything she’s doing, but she could learn to loosen up once in a while.”
“That’s putting it rather mildly,” Shapiro snorted, “that woman has a stick so far up her ass I’m surprised she can sit down.”
“Okay, that’s mean,” Grace said, but he was laughing.
“Yes, but it is also true,” Ilyukhina said.
Why was Stratt still standing there? She could leave. She shouldn’t have stopped in the first place. But for some reason she just couldn’t pull herself away.
It was ridiculous. She didn’t care what they thought of her. She didn’t care what anybody thought of her. That was kind of her whole thing. And yet.
“Honestly, though,” Grace said, “I don’t get why she won’t give us a day off. I think it would help more than it would hurt.”
“It’s because she thinks she’s not worth anything if she’s not working,” Shapiro said, “so she measures other people on their work too.”
There was silence for a moment. An odd pressure had begun to build in Stratt’s chest.
“I mean, are we really surprised?” said a new voice, one Stratt couldn’t quite recognize, “she doesn’t care about us beyond our usefulness.”
“Probably because nobody cares about her outside of her usefulness,” Grace added.
There were a few chuckles from the room, but by that point Stratt had stopped processing anything she was hearing. Her jaw hurt from clenching it. There were grooves in her palms from where her fingernails had been digging into them.
Why the fuck did she care so much? Why did she care at all? It wasn’t her problem what they thought of her.
It hurt because they were right, she realized as she stormed back to her office. They didn’t need to invent anything to hate her for: they could just hate her for who she was. Which should have been fine by her. Stratt wasn’t trying to be likeable — she was trying to save the damned world. So what if her crew thought she was a hard-ass who didn’t know how to take a break! She was a hard-ass who didn’t know how to take a break! That was why she’d been given her position.
But there was still something nagging at her. The lack of discomfort. The setup. Did Grace and the others regularly gather around to get drunk and complain about her?
What made the whole thing worse was that there was nothing she could do about it. If they hated her, they hated her. She couldn’t change what they thought.
Unless, of course, she proved them wrong somehow…
Fuck it. Fine.
They wanted a beach day?
They would get a fucking beach day.
“So, I’m sure you’re all wondering what this meeting is about,” Stratt said, “and I’m happy to report that I have good news.”
She tried not to be offended by Ilyukhina and Shapiro’s shared eye-roll.
“What is it?” Grace asked, finally, when it became clear nobody else was going to speak.
“Remember that trip you wanted to go on so badly? It’s happening!” Stratt announced, flinging her arms out. “Congratulations!”
The crew looked at each other.
“What?” Stratt demanded.
“Are you…Are you sure?” Grace, apparently the designated speaker for the group, asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Stratt asked, “I said I would think about it, didn’t I? I decided you had a point. We could all use a day off.”
“Well, yeah, but…” Grace trailed off uncertainly.
“You didn’t think I’d actually say yes?”
“Yeah.”
“If I wasn’t going to say yes, I would’ve said no.” It was petty, yes, but Stratt enjoyed the brief flash of guilt in Grace’s expression. He hadn’t exactly been wrong to doubt her, but she wanted him to regret it. “Any other questions?”
Silence.
“Well then. Pack your swimsuits everyone.”
They didn’t actually make it to the beach until a couple hours after they landed, but the drive was more than worth it. Grace couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in direct sunlight for so long.
Naturally, Ilyukhina and Shapiro were splashing around in the water already. DuBois seemed content to watch them from the sand, while Yao just seemed to not really know what to do with himself. Dimitri was drinking something out of a pineapple (Grace had no idea where he’d gotten it from.) Lokken was still applying sunscreen, somehow. The rest of the backup crew were somewhere he couldn’t see, but he’d heard them talking about some kind of game beforehand. And Stratt…
Stratt was standing under an umbrella a few yards away from everyone else, typing something on her phone. Because of course she was. Because the concept of “relaxation” seemed to be entirely foreign to her.
That was fine. Stratt’s mental and physical state wasn’t Grace’s responsibility. He didn’t need to care about whether or not she was getting enough rest.
…Except that he did care. For some reason that he wasn’t entirely willing to unpack, he really, really cared.
“It doesn’t count as a day off if you don’t, you know…” He gestured vaguely, trying to get his point across — “Actually stop working.”
Stratt looked up from her phone to find Grace standing in front of her, his face already pink from the sun. “I can live with this being an unofficial day off for me.”
“Well I can’t.” Grace said, much too confident for a man of his disposition, reaching out to pull her from underneath the umbrella. “You need to relax, Stratt! You won’t be of use to anyone if you’re constantly about to collapse.”
Stratt grumbled something, trying to tug free of his grip.
“I’m serious.” He turned to face her, and suddenly the two of them were far too close to one another. “You need a break. It’s hard, I get it. The stakes are pretty high. But you can’t save anybody if you’re actively destroying yourself.”
Stratt stared at him. Some dangerous emotion was welling up behind her eyes. She’d been convinced, after what she’d overheard that night, that he didn’t think of her as anything more than his overbearing boss. But now…
Grace coughed. “Besides, you’ve been acting weird lately. You need to not stare at a screen for a few minutes. And maybe eat something that isn’t room temperature.”
Stratt continued muttering complaints, but she allowed Grace to drag her closer to everyone else. She supposed it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she took a little break. Just for an hour or two, nothing crazy.
It had been almost four hours since Stratt had started her “short” break. She really had meant to go back to work after an hour, but Grace had looked at her with those stupidly sad puppy eyes of his and she’d agreed to wait a little longer. Then, after two hours, she’d tried again. That time she’d succeeded for nearly five whole minutes before Ilyukhina showed up and threatened to throw her phone into the ocean if she didn’t stop again. So there she was, sitting in a folding chair in between Grace and Dimitri and watching the world’s leading scientific minds splash each other in the face. To be totally honest, it was rather enjoyable. Stratt almost regretted not doing something like this sooner. Almost.
“Thanks for this,” Grace said as the sun began to set over the ocean.
“You were right,” Stratt admitted with a shrug, “you all deserved a day off.”
“So did you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m serious.” Grace sat up. “You can’t just keep working forever.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Stratt.”
“Fine—” Stratt rolled her eyes “—I will try and take more breaks. Happy?”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
But as he smiled at her, the setting sun casting a golden light over his face, Stratt found herself thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to take a day off once in a while.