Chapter Text
Eridians don’t wake up with a lurch as I’ve seen Grace do many times before. I simply wake, becoming aware of my surroundings again all at once.
The jolt comes afterwards.
My whole body jerks backward with the inertia of desperately trying to do so for so long in my dreamland, and I impact hard into the wall behind me, letting out a pained yelp. Grace’s head snaps toward me (for he’s sitting on the ground in the lab a few feet away from me, tinkering with something), and my whole body flinches at the sudden motion, a whimper worthy of a small child escaping me.
“Rocky!” He yelps, eyebrows drawing instantly together as he surges forward with an outstretched hand.
I let out a scream, desperately scrabbling to push myself into the atoms of the wall. I shake and shiver and curl to make myself as small as I can, leaving as little surface area as I can for him to touch, but Grace instantly retracts his hand as if burned. And, oh, that makes my gut squeeze terribly because I know, I know now that it wasn’t real, none of it was, but—
“Whoah, Rock, you okay?” He whispers, and that expression— he looks so worried, almost hurt. “Are you— what happened? Are you okay?”
I can’t speak. I try, but everything is too fast, and every time I try to gasp onto a thought it burns my fingers like rope. All that finally escapes me is a high, soft, shaking whistle of a plea.
To be left alone?
To be held?
To not be hurt?
Grace’s face falls so completely that another whimper escapes me.
He doesn’t deserve this.
He doesn’t deserve my brokenness, doesn’t deserve my fear. I’m afraid of the air. Of the atmosphere. Of the heat. I even like the chilling sensation being pressed against Grace’s body provides— my stupid broken brain was just being stupid and broken!!
If only my idiotic, worthless body knew that, too.
But it doesn’t, so I cower and I shiver and I flinch again as Grace stands. “It’s okay,” he whispers, and I think the soft tone is less emotional and more calculated to be easier on my auditory nervous system. (Guilt laughs pitilessly as it tears at my delicate insides.) “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m just gonna sit over here, buddy, alright? All the way over here.” He walks slowly, cautiously to the opposite wall and slides down to sit against it. “And I can go farther if you want, just let me know,” he gently adds, because of course he does, because he’s kinder and gentler and softer than I could ever hope to be to him. One of my arm spasms awfully with the thought.
We sit in silence for a while after that, me feeling terrible in many more ways than one and Grace sitting patiently, kindly, carefully far away enough not to scare, but close enough to comfort.
And still I shake, still I curl, waiting painfully for myself to get a goddam grip.
Stars, I’m an awful friend, aren’t I?
How many times have I made a rude joke, or a mean jab, or legitimately blown up at this creature for mostly trivial mistakes? Not to mention my biology is so incompatible with his that for the first several years of our being together he could do nothing but hug a ball. And even now with the suit— No. Even if, somehow, he could put his hand authentically to mine— it would only be to hard, impersonal, coarse, painful rock.
Even the name he had to give me is apathetic.
And then, of course, as if he knows the thoughts beating my brain into a bruised, broken, sniveling heap, as if gently uncurling the bat from my fingers, Grace begins making sound.
No, he begins singing.
In Eridian.
He’s intentionally keeping the melody soft and slow, the sound lilting in a new way only a human’s throat could produce. The chords are nonexistent, of course, and most of the words are half-formed or just pure wrong, but he’s repeating, the best he can, my favorite song.
The jolt is enough to make me still.
I sing this song often when he has trouble sleeping, but he’s often tried to sing it before with much less success.
He’s been practicing, because of course he has.
The song about the myth of the creation of Erid, about a celestial being full of love and joy swirling and breathing and intricately carving my planet into being. I don’t believe it of course, but I find the idea guiltily comforting, even if it can’t in any sense of the word be real. A being so kind and loving it would choose every move it made, every note it sang, with intention and mercy and—
But he was real.
He was sitting across from me, badly warbling a song.
I finally break.
A guttural wail of joy and love and apology and pleading bursts wetly from my being, and Grace’s song halts as he turns his head to see me scampering shakily, wildly, desperately toward him. A smile of pure happiness and relief breaks his face and pulls wrinkles to his eyes as he throws his arms wide. I fling myself into them, and somehow my body still has the audacity to flinch as his hands settle upon my carapace, but I warblingly trill a note that says to please keep them there, and somehow Grace understands and complies.
We stay like that for a long time, apology upon apology spilling from me, my frame still shuddering, but for a different reason now. Grace just laughs wetly and tells me to stop, that I have no reason to apologize, that this kind of stuff happens to everyone, that it’ll all be alright. And, maybe I’ll call myself naive and audacious and stupid later because how could a being like me deserve to be comforted by someone like him but— maybe, with his soft hands circled comfortably around my carapace and his fragile cheek pressed as close to my skin as the universe will allow, I’ll let myself believe him, just for now. Just for this.