Work Text:
A/N: HAPPY SMUT SUNDAY! I wrote this little drabble into the strattlandia server forever ago, and finally decided to expand for this week! Come get y'all Doctor 'Muscles' Grace and Eva being way, way too into it.
Title from Tears by Sabrina Carpenter. 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 the show! Who knows what's coming next - certainly not me! Enjoy!
There’s always another gala to go to. In the world of Project Hail Mary, he’s learned that there’s enough rich people in the world for a party every night, claiming to support some selfless cause - and right now, the hot selfless cause is funding the last ditch attempt to save the sun and keep the world habitable.
That doesn’t mean he has to like them. Especially not being the centre of attention with the rest of the crew, forced out of the quiet calm of his lab and into a car to some fancy mainland hotel, all gilded elevators and plush carpets.
Admittedly, he likes room service. But not when he’s interrupted halfway through stuffing a bowl of fries loaded with cheese and chillis and bacon into his mouth by the loathsome glam team, tutting at his messy hair and trying, yet again, to convince him to wear contacts.
“No,” he says the second the young, blonde girl pulls out the case. “They make my eyes itch. I’ll look like I’ve been crying. Or I’m high.”
“Big sad wet eyes might be beneficial,” she chirps, but puts them away anyway at the clear look on his face.
Once they leave, he sneaks his hand into his hair and ruffles it up, not liking the feel of the gel smoothing it back. Adjust his cornflower blue tie, the one that apparently matches his eyes, and opens the top button of his shirt. When he spends so much time on the Vat in T-shirts and cardigans, it’s hard to accept the restriction of a shirt and blazer again.
They wouldn’t let him keep his watch on. Said the strap clashed, replaced it with something subtle and gold, and he fidgets with it grumpily when he finally has to leave the hotel room, shiny shoes squeaking on the slick floor of the elevator.
The prime crew are waiting in the lobby for their car, and he joins them, adjusting his blazer. Pretending not to be looking at Eva, a black blazer tossed over her simple silky dress, long sleeves and a blue-grey shade that reminds him of the sky right before the sun peers over the horizon. Looking at her phone, scrolling through emails, chewing the inside of her cheek, her lipstick smudged slightly at the corner already.
He holds out a hand instinctively to help her into the car, granted with her soft smile and her slim fingers curled over his. The seat next to her, head spinning with her jasmine perfume, her hair bouncing over her shoulders and brushing his side, and he asks, “Why are you still working?”
“These galas are work, Doctor Grace,” she says, glances up at him beneath her darkened, lengthened lashes. He almost gulps.
“Can I steal one dance?” he asks, and sees her repress a soft smile.
“Do you promise to go gentle on me?”
“I didn’t mean to step on your foot-”
“I know,” she says, crosses one leg over the other. Draws his eyes down to her bared knees, the shape of her calves, her neat feet in the simple black shoes.
He looks away from her, watching the city flash by, pretending not to feel every time she shifts, not to be lost in feeling her next to him.
Olesya leads the charge into the venue, bouncing on her heels in her red dress, spinning Mateo onto the dance floor. Ryland moves past her, straight for the bar and a stool, propping himself up and watching everything happen.
Annie asks him for a dance while Martin is taking a break to talk about the science, and he steers her around the space, head on a swivel looking for Eva. He usually spends these things with her, but she slipped away when they walked in, and he wonders which donor she has her sights set on tonight.
He blanches thinking that she might be somewhere secret. With someone secret. Pictures her smiling up at someone else, in that dress that intensifies the blue of her eyes, and his grip tightens on Annie’s waist.
“Trying to make someone jealous?” she asks lightly, and he flushes. “It works better when she’s looking, Grace.”
“I’m not-”
“When are you going to stop torturing us all by pretending you don’t like her?” she asks, and he feels his face flare red.
“She’s my boss...your boss too, actually-”
“And she doesn’t give me special treatment or ask me to follow her around,” she says, and his mouth snaps shut. “Want some liquid courage?”
“I can’t tell her drunk-”
“Not drunk, just tipsy!” she says, and twirls under his arm towards Olesya, calls, “Lesya, shots?”
Luckily, they choose vodka and not tequila, and though it bites going down he can drown it quickly in water, grabbing an appetizer from a passing waiter. Sitting down, Annie and Olesya giggling next to him, straightening up when he sees Eva.
Finally. In the corner of the room, glass of champagne in hand, engaged in intense conversation with a group of men in dark suits. Holding her own, drawn to her full height, her blazer hung loosely and chicly over her shoulders, the loose sleeves of her dress dancing around her wrists.
She looks beautiful. Warm light glinting against her hair, her face soft but commanding, watching the slow, deliberate way she shapes her words.
Annie nudges him, tugs him to face her and Olesya, and says, “Tell Olesya I’m a better student than Martin.”
“You’re the back-up,” Olesya says sourly, and Ryland rolls his eyes.
“I taught middle-schoolers and you two are still worse,” he says, and they both giggle, and Olesya raps her knuckles on the bar for another round.
He’s just accepting another drink when he glances over at Eva again.
Sees a diplomat wagging a thick finger in her face, spittle at the corners of his mouth.
And he sees red, the glass groaning in his grip. Passes the glass to a grinning Ilyukhina and storms across the room, stepping in between Eva and the diplomat, a furious, “Hey, man, leave her alone.”
“But she-”
“You’re talking to me now, buddy,” he says, squaring his shoulders. He’s taller than this guy anyway. “So pick on someone your own size.”
“This is…highly irregular-”
“Hey, I’m the world’s leading authority on astrophage and the number two on Project Hail Mary, so you can talk to me,” Ryland snaps, startling himself at the venom in his voice. “Don’t get up in the lady’s face like that. Be cool, dude.”
He stares the guy down for a minute, puffs up his chest a little more. Worries for a second at the strain on the button of his shirt.
Then the diplomat huffs and walks away, and he deflates, turning on his shiny shoes to Eva.
She’s staring up at him, a faint stain of pink on her cheeks. He watches her swallow, and she says a sharp, “I do not need chivalry, Doctor Grace.”
“I…I’m sorry-”
“Come with me,” she says, grabs him by the wrist and drags him after her.
He follows her, stumbles on the shiny floor, and she drags him out of the ballroom and into a random conference room, chairs stacked against the wall and flickering emergency lighting.
“Stratt, I- mmph!”
She cuts him off with a kiss, her hands on his shoulders, his chest, feeling him up. Gripping his biceps, her moan humming against his mouth.
He stumbles back, gasps, “What are we doing?”
“You’re going to bend me over this table and fuck me,” she says, dropping her blazer from her shoulders.
“I-”
“That’s an order,” she says, and pulls him into another kiss, squeezing his biceps harder. “God, you’re strong.”
She takes his hands to the buttons at the back of her dress and breathes, “Rip it.”
“What-”
“Rip it.”
A second’s hesitation - she does look so pretty in this dress - and he pulls.
Buttons rattle to the ground, and she moans, and he silently thanks the weight training regime Carl wrote for him before he kisses her again, her hands on his biceps as his arms wind around her. Tracing along his veins, down his chest, tugging at the buttons of his shirt.
“Off,” she breathes, and he drops his blazer to the floor, her white hands tugging at his tie and slipping it from beneath his collar, unbuttoning his shirt. Her eyes drop to drink him in, her cheeks going pink, greedy fingertips following the shapes of his muscles. “Fuck-”
“Eva, are we...is this...what’s happening?” he asks, near enough a whine, and she smirks up at him, fingers sliding through the coarse line of hair trailing beneath his slacks.
“I want you to fuck me,” she whispers, her breath hot and aching on his face. Kicks her heels off, dropping a few inches, her bare feet oddly sweet.
“Here?”
“Yes, here,” she says, pulling him closer by the open halves of his shirt. “I don’t want to wait.”
“But...what prompted this?”
“Many nights of thinking, and seeing you nearly pop the buttons on this shirt,” she says frankly, and he feels his face heat. “Is this not a good location for you?”
“Christ, Eva, it’s you, I would be happy anywhere-”
“Good,” she says sweetly. Fits her palm to his face, thumb brushing tenderly across his cheek, and says, “So bend me over, Doctor Grace.”
He kisses her again, tasting the lust in her mouth, and spins her around to bend her over the table. Watching her wrap her fingers around the edge of the wood, knuckles white, flicks up her skirt and hooks his hands around her hips.
Works a hand across her front, feeling her stomach muscles jumping and quivering beneath his touch. Slips his fingers between her thighs, finding her so wet she’s soaking through her underwear, the soft cotton sticking to the whorls of his fingerprints.
“All this for me?” he breathes into the heady air between them, pressing his hips into her ass as she shuffles her legs further apart. “Just from kissing?”
“From...from watching you stand up for me,” she says. Takes his wrist and presses his hand firmly between her legs, his thumb catching against her clit. Feeling her pulse through her underwear, her soft moan as he presses experimentally.
“I’m sorry, I know you don’t need chivalry-”
“No,” she says, and glances back at him over her shoulder. Her hair falling around her shoulders, face pink, eyes dark and glittering. “But I like a strong man, Ryland.”
“It’s...hot when I almost pop my buttons?”
“Christ, yes,” she breathes, arching her back into him. “Imagine if it was the other way round.”
He does, imagines the buttons of a stark white shirt straining over her breasts, and idly grinds himself against her shapely ass, his fingers pressing gently into the dip of her entrance. “What do you want?” he asks.
“Fuck me.”
Her breath hitches when he unbuckles his belt, drops his slacks and his underwear. Nudging against her thighs, leaving glistening smears of pre-come on her skin, and only as he hooks a thumb into her underwear does he think to ask, “Protection?”
“Handled,” she groans, pressing back into his hand. “Ryland-”
He pulls her underwear aside and sinks into the hot, wet clamp of her. The scent of rosemary flies up into his face when she tosses her head back, hair flying in a glowing copper curtain, pressing herself eagerly back onto him.
“Jesus Christ, Eva,” he hisses, reaching over her to lace his fingers through hers around the desk. “Why haven’t we been doing this the whole time?”
“You tell me, you never made a move,” she rasps, pressing back into him.
“Was I supposed to?”
“It was welcome-”
He nudges himself deeper inside her, rewarded by a broken moan, grinding hard into her again and again, hand cupped around her hip. “I have a history of shooting my shot and missing,” he says, and she laughs.
“You wouldn’t have missed,” she says softly.
And he leans down to pepper kisses along her spine where her dress is ripped open, fucking harder into her. Listening to her moan, pulling her upright to change the angle, arm firmly across her stomach. Her hand scrabbling at his side, tangling in his shirt, and he wraps his fingers around her chin and jerks her back into a clumsy, sloppy kiss.
Bends her down again, harder this time, the slick sounds of his cock driving in and out of her filling the room. She clamps tighter and tighter around him, clutching at the desk, and he slips a hand inside her dress, groping until he finds her breasts, roughly pinching her nipples and listening to the helpless, high-pitched noise that falls out of her.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he breathes, hooks his hands back around her hips and pulls her flush against him. “You take it so well.”
“Tell me.”
“You like it?” he asks quietly, and sees the bob of her nodding. “You look so gorgeous split open around my cock, baby. Taking it so well for me.”
“Fuck-”
“I know it’s gonna look so pretty when you come, baby,” he breathes, and feels her fluttering tighter. “Then I can come. All over you. In you. Whatever you want.”
“In me,” she gasps, the table legs squeaking against the floor in time with their rocking together. “Fuck, Ryland, in me, please.”
“Oh Jesus Christ, Eva, you...you have no idea how much that turns me on-”
She glances back at him over her shoulder, her eyes gleaming, and asks, “What? Please?”
“Yes-”
“Then pin me down with those strong arms and make me beg,” she breathes.
So he does. Presses her down into the desk, gripping her hips harder, panting in her ear while she moans into the wood, her voice pitching higher and higher until she tosses her head back so suddenly she nearly whacks right into his nose, crying out his name.
He comes four or five thrusts later, deep inside her, clutching at the desk to stay upright. Panting, pulling out, and immediately flustered, humming, “Um-”
She straightens up and spins, and it’s his turn to stagger under her strength, tumbling back until he collides with the wall and she kisses her. When she breaks away, she looks debauched, hair in disarray, her face red, her dress slipping off her shoulders. There’s a red welt on one breast, and she shifts from foot to foot and asks, “You wouldn’t happen to have tissues?”
“No,” he says, and she shrugs.
“I saw a bathroom around the corner,” she says, and leans delicately down to pick up her blazer, pulling it over her shoulders. “You should get back to the main room, Doctor Grace.”
“Aren’t we gonna-”
“Get back to the room, and we will go home together,” she says, and he feels an eager grin spread dopily across his face. “But right now, I need to clean up and salvage this dress for the last hour.”
“I’m sorry-”
“Don’t be,” she says, and pats his cheek. “That was incredible, Grace. You are...incredibly talented in many areas.”
If he puffed his chest up any more, his buttons really would fly off.
He goes back to the ballroom, to another drink with the flight crew, looking for that diplomat that was shouting at Eva. Long gone, the room emptying out into chauffeured cars, and he waits in the cold for Eva to finish her cigarette, and smugly closes the car door behind her.
They make it back to the hotel without touching. But he’s so aware of her, buzzing next to her, looking at the slump of her dress and knowing it’s because the buttons are scattered across the floor of a random conference room.
She smiles at him in the hotel lobby, spinning her keycard between her fingers. And he follows her into the elevator, and the second the door hisses closer he lifts her up onto the rail, and she makes a thrilled noise at the back of her throat and yanks him into a kiss, her legs tangled around him, so lost in each other they barely notice when the elevator pings to a halt.
They stumble back into her room, clutching at each other, her hands on his chest again. Pressing into muscles, delight all over her flushed face when he breaks the kiss. “Don’t stop,” she breathes, and he pants against her cheek, pulling her closer.
“I won’t,” he promises, pressing into her. Grinding his cock into her stomach, hands roaming under her blazer for her bare back, her dress torn open. “Oh my God, Eva, I...fuck, let me go down on you.”
“Yes,” she whimpers against his mouth. “Yes please.”
He steps her back into the wall, yanking at the sleeves of her dress. Barely getting it slipping down from her chest, her arms bare, before he decides to screw it, drops to his knees and looks up at her. So gorgeous. Red-faced, hair a mess, lips swollen with kissing. Breasts falling out of her bra, flush spilling across her chest, and the insides of her thighs pink as he pulls first one leg then the other over his shoulders.
She shudders, and he breathes, “I got you.” Clasps his hands to her ass and hoists her up against the wall, and she makes the most glorious, high-pitched, guttural sound he's ever heard.
“Oh my God-” And then he plunges his face between her thighs, and hears the thunk of her head flying back into the wall, her hands falling to twist fingers into his hair and her yelp of, “Fuck!”
He digs his fingers into her ass, licks through her folds. One hand shifts to her hip, squeezing harder, trying to get as much of her skin against his as they can. And she’s making a mess of his blazer, legs squeezing over his shoulders, one slipping away.
“Stay there,” he growls, possessed by her, yanking her thigh back up.
“Ryland,” she squeaks, practically sobs, gripping tighter at his hair. “Fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck-”
He looks up for a second, wiping his sleeve across his drenched chin, and murmurs, “You taste so fucking good.”
It doesn’t take him long to get her off after that, coming all over his face with a cry. And he catches her inspecting her hips, dull red marks darkening to bruises on her pale skin, and he winces and says, “I’m sorry. I got carried away.”
“Do not apologise,” she says, her fingers tracing languidly over her hips. “Maybe someday I’ll let you do that around my throat.”
He goes silently scarlet, and turns to trying to scrub the come stains off the lapels of his blazer with her cleansing oil.