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“Dr. Grace.”
“Yeah,” he grunts back. He’s reaching as high as he can while already being on his tip toes—still, it’s still not high enough for his fingers to reach. Maybe he’ll ask Olesya to climb onto his shoulders and help him.
“You’re not supposed to hang anything on the walls.”
“Or what, you won’t get your security deposit back?” He laughs at his own joke. Giving up, he comes down from his tip toes and turns around from his masterpiece to look at Stratt.
“Yes,” she deadpans. She’s standing in the doorway of one of the lesser used conference rooms Grace could find this early in the morning.
“Wait, really? You had to put down a deposit? You, World Emperor Queen?”
“Yes,” she says again. Uh oh, Grace thinks belatedly. Stratt’s eye bags are so dark that she’s gone past exhausted to robotic. Not a good sign if she’s going to approve his Mexican Mixer tonight. He looks guiltily behind him to where he’s hung up dozens of decorations and colorful garlands.
“But the walls are metal,” he says and twists his hands together. “And I used tape.”
She blinks at him for a solid minute until she tilts her head to her side. He hates it when she gets like this because she is so darn creepy.
“I wasn’t aware that you have Mexican ancestry.”
“Oh,” he chuckles nervously. “I don’t. But in spirit!”
Again, she stays quiet. He decides that the best course of action is to pretend that he’s already gained her permission and that they’ve reconciled from the fight they’re supposed to have about it. Grace walks to the nearest table where his prized piñata sits. It’s one of the classic five point star piñatas because he didn’t think Stratt would appreciate it if an ICE agent-shaped piñata got stomped on by the saviors of the world and somehow word got out about it.
He happily starts to stuff the piñata with the candy that arrived that morning. It was a close thing, Grace only remembered about the 16th of September three nights ago. He may have fudged the urgency for his order in the request form a little, but it’s all necessary expenses for the end of the world, right?
Team bonding is important to keep the sun from dimming.
Also, Olesya found out that sombreros and margaritas are acceptable accessories on this night only, so she kind of twisted his arm until he relented and promised to throw a party. A Mexican Mixer. He’s really proud of that one.
Is he doing this because he misses the old Mexican ladies that used to feed him back in San Francisco and who always tried to set him up with their way-out-of-his-league daughters? Maybe, but nobody has to know that.
“Today’s the fifteenth, not the sixteenth. You’re planning to keep this here for the rest of the day?”
“Well, we have late meetings tomorrow night, so I thought we could celebrate today.” Grace takes a deep breath and decides to bite the bullet. It’s not like Stratt is going to be able to stay awake past nine p.m. tonight, she doesn’t really have to know every little detail. But Grace has learned his lesson from keeping things from her—she has ears and eyes everywhere. (It has never occurred to him that it’s actually Carl who watches the security cameras and passes on the information. The betrayal would be too heartbreaking.)
He puts on his teacher voice and hopes this helps her think this is an educational event and not a full-blown party.
“The Grito, you know, the call Miguel Hidalgo made to rise up in arms against the Spanish? That’s usually celebrated the night of the fifteenth and then the Mexican President recites his own speech at midnight while ringing the town square’s bells.”
Stratt stays quiet.
“So, we’re celebrating at midnight tonight to hear the President’s speech on the TV…” His voice gets smaller and smaller as he finishes speaking and he stops himself from giving her a full history lesson because he knows that she’s only about thirty percent present at the moment.
He doesn’t get a response from her, just her creepy blinking.
“It’s also the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer?” Grace’s voice rises in decibel as he uses his last good argument. “We should probably keep the focus away from the fact that we’re actively destroying the layer, you know, with all the nuking.”
Stratt nods stiffly and her blinks begin to come even slower. He’s starting to get a little worried, when was the last time she slept? Hopefully she sleeps through the entire celebration because he’s pretty sure Annie and DuBois got a crate full of tequila and another crate of those clay cantarito cups. He doesn’t know from where and he isn’t going to ask, but he knows that Stratt is not happy when people smuggle things onto her aircraft carrier.
“Yes, maybe getting Leclerc drunk will make him stop crying all the time,” she continues to nod absentmindedly. Then her gaze sharpens unexpectedly. “Why are there sombreros hanging on the wall? I didn’t take you for a performative racist, Dr. Grace.”
His mouth falls open. He’s not! He would never—!
“I’m not! How dare you!” He wraps his lab coat around himself defensively. “It’s not racist, I got permission!”
“From?”
Grace looks at Stratt as if she’s dumb, which is never a good thing to do when he’s trying to win an argument against her.
“From the Mexicans.” He only barely stops himself from tacking on an ill-advised duh at the end of that sentence.
Still, her only response is to stay quiet, but he can tell she’s judging him harshly.
“The scientists! The Mexican scientists told me what to buy and I’m just setting it up ’cause I have time and also I’m not scared of you.”
Oops. Wrong thing to say. Her lips twist to the side in annoyance and Grace raises his hands in supplication.
“Okay, wait! Wrong thing to say. But look: there’s no meetings scheduled for tomorrow morning. Everybody will finish their work before the mixer starts and I’ll stop things from getting too wild.” He’s practically begging at this point. But one of his favorite engineers promised to make a tres leches cake and he’s willing to go to war for her now.
He watches closely as Stratt considers the problem and he sees the moment she physically gives up on the situation, the day and her entire life, probably. Her shoulders slump and she pinches the bridge of her nose tightly.
“Fine. Make sure everybody stops drinking by two a.m. And save me some food.”
She turns on her heel and makes her way out to the hallway very slowly. Maybe he should make sure she gets to her cabin alright. Then again…he could say something stupid and then she’ll change her mind about approving his Mexican Mixer.
She’ll be fine…besides, the piñata did not arrive with a stick so he has to find Jessica from the kitchens before breakfast starts and beg her to lend him one of the heavy-duty kitchen mops she covets like a first-born son. The health department already told him to stop asking them.
If she says no, he’ll have to go to Sandra from astrophysics and ask to borrow her walking cane to use as a stick to obliterate the piñata. At one of his student’s graduation parties, he witnessed a gaggle of kids using a walking cane as a stick to hit the piñata. When the grandfather realized that his grown children had conspired behind his back to steal it and secretly give it to the children to use, the explosion of rage and cake that followed was frankly terrifying.
He’d rather not ask Sandra from astrophysics.
__
The party did not end at two a.m..
It did not end at four a.m..
If you ask, Stratt—which nobody will because the aircraft carrier is on official lockdown and everyone is taking meetings from within their own cabins while they think hard about their mistakes—the party never actually ended, it just moved from room to room until people were precariously gathering on the dock as the sun rose.
Luckily for everyone involved, no one fell overboard. Unfortunately for everyone involved, no one fell overboard and got to miss out on Stratt’s furious tongue lashing. Because half the people were still drunk and were prone to get distracted and the other half were on the verge of passing out every ten minutes, Stratt had Carl walk around with a spray bottle and squirt water directly into people’s eyes until they paid attention.
The timeline gets a little blurry for Grace sometime after midnight, but to his knowledge, everything before that was pretty tame. He ate some tres leches cake, hung up the piñata in the center of the room and passed out napkins as people got rowdier and messier. One of the Mexican engineers brought a hand drawn poster of a donkey to play Pin the Tail with. As long as the others were fine with the game, Grace didn’t say a thing.
He’s not quite sure how things got so out of hand. Sure, he remembers someone offering him a weed gummy, but he knows he absolutely said no. Right? And why are there at least three people in the medical wing with broken noses?
__
Yao doesn’t regret sending three stupidly drunk engineers to the medical wing—he just regrets not being as informed as he could have been because if he had known that Director Stratt needed two of the three engineers impaired to travel with her to a conference just two days after the party, well—he would have chosen other more stupidly drunk engineers to trick into head butting themselves against the wall while playing Pin the Tail.
He couldn’t help himself. It was just too easy.
At least he wasn’t the idiot who thought it would be a good idea to get Dr. Grace drunk and stoned. He was found the next morning slumped outside of Stratt’s closed office door with a sombrero covering his drawn-on mustache. He still had a bottle of tequila gripped in his hand because he had last been seen pouring shots into people’s mouth straight from the bottle.
Yao has to admit that he was charmed by the rosiness of the good doctor’s cheeks and the emptiness behind those baby blue eyes—he was just like a puppy full of energy and endless love. Yao tried to get Dr. Grace to drink water and only managed it once when he said Stratt sent it to him personally. Unfortunately, he dropped the cup after the first sip and giggled uncontrollably and gasped out something about already having a mop to clean that up with.
He also allowed Dr. Grace to pour tequila all over the front of his uniform and wasn’t even the least bit disturbed by it. Perhaps it was that shot that made Yao’s memory a little fuzzy, because even though Yao can hold his liquor very well, Dr. Grace was very heavy handed with his shots. Either way, he doesn’t understand how the night shift security guards joined their party and how the dock was left unsupervised long enough for someone to actually fall overboard and land on the net surrounding the aircraft carrier. And yes, according to Dr. Grace, that is different than falling overboard.
__
Getting caught in the closet with DuBois is one of Annie’s favorite past times. It’s like the closer they get to the launch date, the hornier she becomes. It’s not like she’s desperate for it, really. Well, maybe a little bit. But she’s only desperate because she realized last month that she’s gone and fallen in love with the stupid man. What is she supposed to do, just watch as the man she loves boards a spaceship only to die and never ever return?
Yeah, right.
So she spends a lot of time in closets with her man. Stratt has banned them from initiating anything on the three main floors where there’s always one meeting or tour going on, but the rest of the aircraft is theirs for the taking.
There’s no meetings or tours going on right now, though. So, maybe they sneak out of the party a little early, especially after witnessing the second engineer break his nose after following Yao’s advice during a game. They can’t claim plausible deniability if they are present for any more incidents like that, and they’re the ones that are the most sober. Annie doesn’t know what happened between Olesya and Dimitri’s engineering team but Yao has been uncharacteristically ruthless with the team ever since Olesya and Dimitri had their little spat. And no one will tell her anything! That’s how she knows it’s very serious.
But she’s not supposed to be thinking of that right now. She’s supposed to be enjoying a new closet with her DuBois. They really are much bigger on the main floors! No wonder Stratt doesn’t want them around here, the acoustics are much, much better. It’s probably why she doesn’t hear the door to the closet open until DuBois’ grip on her hair slackens and his body tenses.
“There’s something wrong with you guys,” she hears a soldier on his night shift murmur. “Come on, you’re not supposed to be here.”
Annie huffs in annoyance. Things were just getting good. It’s not always that she can get her partner to be a little rougher than usual and he was just starting to lean into it. No matter, there’s so many more closets to uncover before launch day.
“There’s no one on this floor, we checked!” Annie complains as DuBois hands her a bra. “You couldn’t even let us finish?” The poor soldier’s cheeks grow red. Aw, poor baby—he can’t be more than 21.
“Miss Stratt’s orders,” the boy stammers. Ah, well. She can’t blame him for being upset about someone disobeying Stratt. The consequences are pretty severe, even for the astronauts who volunteered to give up their lives.
Annie doesn’t want to think about that right now. When a second soldier appears behind the one that caught them, she gets an idea.
“Well, you can come and complain to her at the party on level 6. She’s there right now.”
“No, thank you, ma’am.” The boy answers, avoiding her eyes. Seriously, he’s never seen a naked woman? “I’ll speak with her myself tomorrow.”
“Oh, after I tell her my side of the story?” Annie smirks. “Sure, good luck, kid.”
She exits the closet with DuBois mumbling confusedly behind her.
“My star,” he leans in close to her ear. “Do you want that young soldier to join our sexual escapades? He looks very fit.”
“No, darling, not at all. Just watch.”
And sure enough, before they can get to the end of the hallway, the two soldiers come to a decision.
“Wait! We’ll escort you there,” the second soldier says. Oh, he wants to see the party, Annie can tell he’s bored out of his mind.
“But what about your patrol?” She asks as innocently as she can manage.
“Like you said,” the first soldier says seriously. “There’s no one else on this floor.”
They probably should have checked the stairs that lead to the dock before they went back to the party. She doesn’t know how he does it, but DuBois actually manages to get the soldiers to wait until the piñata is good and dead on the floor before they consider going back to their patrol.
Annie doesn’t know why Stratt makes such a big deal out of the whole ordeal the next morning. The two soldiers—if she could only remembers their names—got there just in time before Hatch and his lady friend drowned in the Pacific Ocean. The water wasn’t even that cold! Actually, she’s not sure they even reached the water before being rescued.
People are acting like they’re both suffering from hypothermia or something, when they should actually be much more worried about the fact that they lost Olesya after they all had turns hitting the piñata. It was just past two a.m. when Dr. Grace noticed she was gone.
___
“I did not say I did not believe you, Olesya, for God’s sake! All I said was that as head of the department, I need to conduct an official investigation before I can throw him off the boat.”
Olesya almost stomps her feet at Dimitri’s words. She likes Dimitri a lot, he’s a good friend and always has her back when things get rough. Or at least, she thought he did, until one of his dumb faced engineers tried to put his hands where they do not belong one too many times for her liking. Nothing happened, of course—she was too quick for the man!—but she wants to keep him away from the rest of Dimitri’s team. He has a lot of young interns that Olesya doesn’t want him hanging around.
But Dimitri said he would have to ‘look into it,’ as if Olesya was lying. She doesn’t think Dimitri is protecting the engineer specifically, but he is definitely making a point by investigating the issue instead of kicking the man off the boat.
It’s not even that hard! Hatch fell all on his own and then managed to drag Brenda down with him when he tried to hold on to his drunk girlfriend as he fell overboard. Idiots.
And what does investigating even mean?! She was going to die soon anyway, he can just blame her if someone complains about the lack of proper bureaucratic procedure.
“Investigating means there is a paper trail. And they are not going to come complaining to me, they are going to come accusing Miss Stratt of favoritism or something along those lines.”
Well.
That makes Olesya pause. So, he’s protecting Stratt by creating a paper trail?
“Yes!” Dimitri throws his hands up in the air. “I put him on another assignment away from the group. Told him it was his first solo project. You just have to give me some time, Olesya.”
She scuffs her shoes against the floor. Damn, now she has to apologize.
“You do not have to apologize, just tell Yao to stop bullying my engineers, yes? They do not know anything about it.”
She’s been speaking her thoughts out loud this whole times, it seems like. Maybe she’s a little more drunk than she thought.
“Alright. I will give you more time, Dimitri.” She raises her chin haughtily and then drops the act. “Thank you.”
“No thanks necessary. Now, let us go drink!”
“Bah,” she makes a face. “I am tired of tequila. I left a bottle of vodka in my work station the other day, come on!”
When they get to the engineering wing, she sees Dr. Grace with his shirt half open and a sombrero on. Oh, this she has to get a picture of. Who knew the Director’s scientist could get shit-faced so quickly? It was only—oh, oops. It’s well past three a.m. now.
“Olesya!” Dr. Grace comes running to her and grips both her hands in his. “I have been looking for you for ever and ever! You have to sleep! Now!”
Oh, yes, she thinks fondly. Director Stratt made Dr. Grace promise that the party would end an hour ago. He gets all twitchy and sweaty when he defies one of her orders and he’s drunk so he must be falling into a panicked spiral of previously unknown proportions.
“It is okay, Grace! Look,” Olesya fixes the watch on her wrist and shows it to a drunk Dr. Grace. He tries focusing on it, closing one eye and peering into the watch and then shaking his head when he can’t read the numbers. “It is only one a.m.! We are fine to keep drinking!”
The rest of the group—apparently, a large group had left the party to come look for her—cheers and dives into the bottle that Dimitri is already passing around. It takes her a little while, but she manages to get Dr. Grace properly back into his shirt before anybody else can take a picture of the poor man.
She’s not sure Director Stratt would forgive her if other people got away with objectifying her scientist. The excitement of finding Olesya starts to wind down, so she suggests they get back to the party where there’s food and drinks.
On the way there, though, they run into the astrophysics department still working! It is well past three a.m. now, what on Earth could they be doing working on!
“Sandra!” Dimitri yells through the glass. He shakes the almost empty bottle of vodka with an enticing smile and waves her over. And it works! Sandra rolls her eyes and closes her notebook, but she exits her workspace with a little smile adorning her lips.
“You’re still at it, then?”
“The night is young, Sandra! Come and join us!”
“Yes, we need your cane, please!” Dr. Grace yells rather loudly. Before Olesya can ask what that’s about, Sandra hits him upside the head and shushes him.
“I already said no,” she then kindly reminds Dr. Grace. Of what, Olesya doesn’t know. She’s quickly losing track of the present.
“Oh, right,” Dr. Grace nods solemnly. Then he perks up right away. “You want cake?”
As the group of fifteen make their way back to level 6, they come across more and more scientists and engineers and artists still at their workstations. This is unacceptable in Dimitri and Olesya’s eyes. Dr. Grace is having trouble walking and he’s mostly preoccupied with talking to his feet as if he can talk them into behaving.
By the time they get back to level 6, Olesya can’t remember if they actually made it back inside the conference room where everyone else was celebrating. She does remember stealing Dr. Grace’s sombrero and liking it a lot because it protected her eyes very well. She wonders if it would be useful to bring one to Tau Ceti.
She’ll have to ask Stratt. And that’s the last thing she remembers.
___
Stratt sighs as she inspects the damage in front of her. This is the fourth group of sprawled out scientists she’s encountered as she tries to make her way to her office. They’re all in various states of undress but they all have the peaky hue of a person who is about to throw up. She gingerly steps over crooked limbs and drooling heads, and if she accidentally steps on people’s hairs, well, it doesn’t really matter because they can’t even wake up for long enough to notice. She’s pretty sure she sees one of Dr. Grace’s shoes abandoned in front of the restroom doors.
Shaking her head, she continues on her way. Stratt did not appreciate being woken up at five a.m. by an alarmed Carl yelling something about a little engineer testing out the nets surrounding the docks. They’re meant for safety, of course, but in these high pressure environments, she can never be too careful and had asked for more reinforcements in case someone voluntarily walked off the carrier. At first, they thought they had a suicidal scientist or engineer on their hands. When she found out that the two people who fell—not jumped—were actually just drunk off their assess on tequila, Stratt had nearly jumped off the carrier herself.
Instead, she asked her head of security to round up all the scientists that were stumbling around outside and guide them back in, none too gently. Then she went back to bed, knowing her trusted head of security would have a handle on things for a couple of hours.
Now that it’s time for her to start her day, she decides that she’s going to kill Dr. Grace and his little ‘Mexican Mixer.’ She should have known that nothing about this celebration could be considered tame or ‘controlled.’ Stratt doesn’t have to wonder where her scientist is for long because as soon as she turns the corner to the hallway where her office is located, she can smell the tequila on him. It’s the same scent that followed most of the scientists she’s encountered, even the ones that have showered and changed clothes.
His shirt is halfway unbuttoned and she sees a drawn on mustache adorning his upper lip. Well. It seems she won’t have to yell at him for too long, he’s likely to feel plenty embarrassed without her interference. She gingerly takes the bottle of tequila from his tight grip and nudges his foot. When he barely stirs, she sighs and looks to the heavens for some sort of sign.
Finding nothing, not even a smidgen of patience, she rears back and kicks his shoeless foot with a mighty kick.
“Whu—!” Grace scrambles to sit up but all he manages to do is fall backwards on his elbows, allowing the sombrero to tip over and fall over his face.
“Good morning, Dr. Grace.” She says loudly. The man curls up on the floor and groans pathetically.
“Morning.” He yawns loudly, batting the sombrero off his head. “Please don’t kill me.”
“What happened to not being afraid of me?” She feels the tiniest bit sorry for the man, but not enough to refrain from nudging his foot again when it looks like he’s not going to respond.
“That was sober Grace. This is drunk Grace. Come back when sober Grace makes an appearance, ’kay?” If possible, he curls into himself even more.
“Can’t do that, Dr. Grace.”
“Why noooot?” His whine is long and high. She kicks him again.
“You’re blocking my office door.”
He immediately scrambles to a sitting position and looks up at her with wide and terrified eyes. When the light hits his eyes though, he cringes hard and looks around for his sombrero to block out the light. She’s not surprised that he has a headache, not with the way he reeks of alcohol. His clothing is rumpled and he keeps alternating between looking green and too pale. She decides she’s had her fun and extends a hand down to him.
“Come on, up you get.”
With a pathetic whimper, he clutches her hand too tightly and leans on her far too much for being a grown man in his prime. She unlocks her office door and guides the whimpering mess of a scientist to her couch, where he slumps over and promptly closes his eyes, panting hard.
“It was crazy, Stratt.” He mumbles tiredly after he catches his breath. “Absolutely bananas. I’m pretty sure someone fell off the carrier.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” she drolls and sits on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Hatch is doing just fine, in case you were worried about you friend.” He seems to miss the sarcasm in her voice.
“I think I knew that…somehow.” Grace looks up at her with narrowed and blood shot eyes. “You’re gonna yell at us, aren’t you?”
She hums and swipes his hair away from his sweaty forehead. “Perhaps. Just a little,” she says and smirks when he sighs heavily.
“What do I have to do for you to not ban alcohol for the remainder of the Project?”
“You’re too much of a people pleaser, Dr. Grace. Let the others suffer their own consequences.”
“They’re my friends,” he mumbles into the couch cushions. “Also, it was my idea to have a Mexican Mixer.”
“I think your fake mustache proves that last night went far past what is considered a ‘mixer.’”
Grace’s hand quickly jumps to pat his upper lip as if he could feel the ink drawn on him. “Dimitri,” he hisses ominously. Stratt just barely keeps herself from laughing out loud.
His hair falls over his eyes again and he blinks uncomfortably against the hair poking at him. She moves the hair out of the way again but before she can retreat, he snatches her hand and holds it under his cheek.
“Do you have to yell and punish us?” His pitiful voice does something to her, damn it.
“Yes,” she states simply.
He whines again and she rolls her eyes. “But do you have to?”
“Yes, I do,” she repeats.
“But do you?” He’s starting to smile, the bastard.
“Yes, I do.”
He’s grinning at her, now! The gall.
“Okay,” he sighs, lips still twitching. “But…don’t? Please?” The smile he gives her is more of a grimace than anything else. He looks pathetic with his red eyes and cracked lips but the whole sorry picture is not complete without the smell of distillery coming off him. It shouldn’t affect her so much. It shouldn’t!
“Grace…”
“Please?”
Well, if he wanted to sound as pitiful as he looked in order to to sway her, he definitely succeeded.
Stratt sighs and looks to the heavens again. The things she does for those stupid puppy blue eyes. She looks back down and says, “I’ll have to yell twice as hard now, you know that?”
“Good,” Grace agrees, closing his eyes once more. “Someone gave me a weed gummy. I thought it was candy. Kinda mean, right?”
“Oh, yes.” She hisses and narrows her eyes in anger. “Don’t you worry, Dr. Grace. I know just who would do such a thing.”
She doesn’t receive an answer. Instead, all she hears is gentle snoring and when she looks back down at him, she finds him fast asleep with his mouth wide open. Her hand is still under his cheek and she tries to gently extricate herself from his grip, but he immediately tightens his hold on her hand, trapping her under him.
She decides she has a couple of minutes to spare before she gathers all of last night’s participants and gives them a few choice words. Smiling slightly, she admires his sleeping face as she comes up with some rather creative insults.