paper_starz
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Bookmarked by paper_starz
31 Aug 2026
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Part 1: read through Ch 24
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Summary
“I see you.”
Something crosses between universes that should never touch. A vessel built for a blood ocean, broken open in deep space. Inside it, barely alive, a man no one was looking for and a tree that should not exist.
Grace and Rocky did not ask for this. But Grace has not seen another human being in years, and the ruined stranger on his medbay table is, impossibly, alive.
Simon has only ever known one law: everything costs something. Kindness is a debt. Care is a trap. He has no idea what to do with a man who keeps giving him things and asking for nothing back, and no framework at all for the one that terrifies him most: being seen, and not made to pay for it.
Slow-burn. Two profoundly isolated people, one alien best friend, and the long work of learning to be safe.
“Agreed.”
Series
- Part 1 of The Third Survivor
- Language:
- English
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- 96,611
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- 42/42
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Bookmarked by paper_starz
31 Aug 2026
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Bookmarker's Notes
Good quotes:
Grace is wrong about this. We argue. Is good.
a good scientist did not build a cathedral on one brick.
“Grace tries again.” He almost smiled, but did not quite have it in him, and that was all right too. “It’s sort of my whole thing.”
The heresy was not a heresy anymore. It was standing up in him, vindicated, enormous, and he could not crush it because it was true. He had seen it. The proof was hanging in the black not fifty paces from where he lay.
[...]
The Father had been wrong.
Not mistaken. Not misled. The Father, who was never wrong, who could not be wrong, whose being-right was the ground the entire world stood on, had been wrong about the largest fact there was.You lay down in front of a dying star.
You did not cross the dark to argue with it.
And here were two of them, a man and a creature that was not a man, who had looked at the same dark coming for their suns and decided, without apparently thinking it strange, that the correct thing to do was not die. -
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Summary
“Don’t hurt him! He’s just scared-”
Simon throws himself at the creature, stabbing at the clear panels with the screwdriver. It dings off uselessly, until it doesn’t: one panel is a fine mesh of glass, and the shaft sinks into it. The creature is screaming, the man is screaming, a fist hits Simon square in the jaw. Suddenly the scientist is atop him, hands around his throat, face red with blood from his nose.
“YOU WILL NOT HURT HIM!” the man shouts, and Simon goes still. The face above him, the soft face, the gentle, stuttering, awkward face has turned into a mask of burning fury and wet crimson. “YOU WILL NOT HURT ROCKY!”
He leans in close. “I don't care if you’re the first human I’ve seen in years, if you hurt Rocky, I swear, I’LL THROW YOU OUT THE AIRLOCK MYSELF!”
~
Simon wakes up on a strangely new ship, in a strange world of stars, with a strangely gentle man and a rock alien who’s just strange in his own right.
The two insist that they simply want to help, but Simon knows that life is not that kind. With him there, food is running out twice as fast. He’ll earn his keep, he has to. He’d rather climb into Grace’s bed than be put on Grace’s plate.
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I'd Take the Bed Warmed by the Body by nothing_bagels
Fandoms: Project Hail Mary (2026), Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir, Iron Lung (2026), Iron Lung (Video Game)
31 Aug 2026
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Summary
“Simon, as far as I’m concerned, you can stay for as long as you want. No question about it. Just get some rest, okay?”
Well. That settled it. This man was either fucking stupid, or he was the most kind hearted person that Simon had ever met. Deep down, he had a feeling he already knew which one.
He looked up at Ryland with heavy, drooping eyelids to see hair sticking out in every direction, glasses askew, and a big cozy sweater swallowing his frame. Cute.
If Simon didn’t watch himself, he was going to be in big fucking trouble. As his eyes fluttered closed, he also got the sense that it was already too late.
Or: Two very clueless men cry and hug each other. They fall in love in the process. Then maybe they kiss and stuff too.
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Summary
Simon has been moved around the country multiple times since entering witness protection. He just wants to have a normal life, but that seems impossible. Until he gets moved to San Francisco, and the pretty science teacher at his new job, Dr. Ryland Grace, asks him if he'd like to split rent.