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Warmth presses in around me. Not the Hail Mary’s carefully rationed, carefully monitored warmth.
It's everywhere at once, sinking into my skin and settling into my chest as if it's always belonged there.
I’m being held.
The realization drifts in slowly, wrapped in the same softness as everything else. Five arms curve around me, solid and sure. One braces my back. One rests across my shoulders. Another anchors my legs. The last two close the space I didn’t even know I’d left open. A five-armed bear hug.
Rocky.
That should be impossible. I know it’s impossible. My brain is fully aware that this violates approximately every law of physics, biology, and common sense that has kept us both alive so far. There’s no barrier. No tunnel. There is no carefully maintained separation that keeps any of us from dying a horrible death. I breathe without effort. The air tastes warm and right. This can’t be real. The thought floats through my mind without urgency, without fear.It's just a slight suspicion, like noticing something a bit unusual in a painting that otherwise seems perfect. Rocky radites warmth, steady and grounding. Familiar in a way that makes my chest ache.
“You sleep, I watch.” he says. His voice isn’t filtered or translated. It resonates through me, low and musical, vibrating somewhere behind my ribs. One of his arms tightens slightly. “When you sleep. This is good,” he continues. “You are safe.”
I let out a quiet breath that turns into a laugh before I can stop it. “We can’t,” I say, weakly, even as I lean closer. “This isn’t how it works. We... this doesn’t... ”
“Yes,” Rocky says, immediately and without hesitation. He adjusts his hold, all five limbs settling like he’s made a decision and reality has politely stepped aside. “We stay like this.”
Something inside me gives way.
I close my eyes, pressing into him, memorizing the feeling, the weight and warmth, because some part of me knows I won’t be allowed to keep it. I’ve been alone for so long that my brain has finally decided to be cruel.
Please, I think, not even sure who I’m begging. Please don’t take this away. I feel my hear race, I start to panic.
“Grace.”
The warmth vanishes.
I jerk awake with a sharp inhale, heart slamming against my ribs. The ceiling snaps into focus above me, metal, utilitarian, utterly unromantic. The air feels cooler and thinner. Just wrong.
For half a second, my body expects arms.
There are none.
“Grace.” Rocky’s voice comes again, real this time. Filtered. Distant. On the correct side of several life-preserving barriers. “You are awake, question?”
I turn my head toward the tunnel.
Rocky is there. Exactly where he should be. His posture angled forward in unmistakable concern.
“You said my name,” he says. “Your sleep was distressed.”
Of course I did. Shit. Of course my subconscious couldn’t even keep its mouth shut.
I scrub a hand over my face and let out a breath that shakes more than I want it to. “Yeah. Sorry. Bad dream.”
That’s a lie. It was one of the best dreams ever. It was bad in a way that it was deeply problematic. Bad in a way that I panicked at the thought of waking up from it.
Rocky shifts closer to the glass. “I was in bad dream, question?”
I hesitate. Damn it.
“…Yeah,” I admit.
His body stills. He tilts slightly, processing. “I cause fear, question?”
No.
You caused the opposite of fear. You caused something I’m not equipped to deal with at the end of the universe.
I force a crooked smile and stare at the ceiling instead of at him. “No! Just... my brain being a jerk.”
“Seems like your brain frequently a jerk.” Rocky says solemnly.
I snort, despite my better judgment. “You have no idea.”
The silence settles in heavily and intimately. My heart hasn’t slowed down yet. My skin still remembers warmth that was never there. The worst part isn't that I dreamed about Rocky.
The worst part is how good it felt. Without danger. No constant awareness of what we can’t do, can’t touch, can’t ever cross. Just being held, cuddled.
“You slept two hours. You need more sleep.” Rocky says gently. “You sleep, I watch.”
The words find their way straight to my chest.
Because in the dream, he said them while holding me.
I swallow hard.“That’s… good,” I manage. “Thanks.”
Inconvenient. Illogical, I tell myself firmly. A side effect of isolation and trauma and the fact that Rocky is basically the best being in the universe.
Nothing to see here.
I close my eyes again, forcing my breathing to steady, painfully aware of the barrier between us. In my dream, there wasn’t any.
A sharp, quiet realization is finally what makes my heart ache: because some part of me suspects that what I want most in the universe isn’t impossible.
It’s just… not survivable.
Great job, Grace. A+ survival instincts. Fall in love with the one being in the universe you literally cannot touch without both of you dying. Really maximizing your remaining time.
I shift onto my side, hugging my pillow like it might apologize for not being Rocky. It doesn’t. Rude. This is just loneliness, I tell myself. Textbook. Human brain deprived of contact invents comfort. Happens all the time. There are probably papers about it. I’d write one if I weren’t busy being the subject.
But the way the dream-version of Rocky held me wasn’t random. It wasn’t vague. It wasn’t some faceless warmth or generic embrace. It was specific, ntentional. Five arms, adjusted just so, like he’d thought about how to hold me. Like he’d wanted to.
I swallow and stare into the dark.
Unrequired feelings. That’s the phrase. Something you can put in a mental box and label deal with later, except there is no later. There’s just space and time and the slow ticking clock of our mission.
I can’t afford this.
I can’t afford to want him to want me back.
Because what then? Best case scenario, we acknowledge it, share a meaningful look through several centimeters of reinforced xenonite glass, and then… what? Continue exactly as we are, but sadder and more aware of what we’re missing?
No thanks. Hard pass.
I hear a faint sound from the tunnel, Rocky adjusting position.
Watching.
My breath catches in my throat again, because the thing is... I didn’t imagine that part. He really does stay near when I sleep. He really does notice my heart rate, my stress, my breathing. He cares in the way he knows how, without hesitation or embarrassment or second-guessing.
And I... I care in the stupid, human way that comes with yearning and denial and absolutely inappropriate desires.
If I let myself think about it too long, I might cry. And crying in space feels like admitting defeat. So I try to sleep. I focus on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I picture numbers. Sheeps. Anything that isn’t five arms and warmth and a voice saying we stay like this.
It doesn’t work.
My brain, tha traitor that it is, supplies:
We can’t.
The words echo back at me, this time sharp and final. We can’t stay like that. We can’t even try. The universe has been very clear about that. Barrier and pressure and temperature don’t care how much you want something.
Rocky hums softly from the other side of the barrier. A low, steady sound. Comforting. Present.
I turn onto my back and let out a slow, silent breath.
This is enough, I tell myself. It has to be.
He’s here. He’s alive. He’s with me. He watches over me when I sleep. That should be more than I ever had any right to ask for at the end of the world.
So why does it feel like my chest is hollow?
Between Erid, Earth, and absolute annihilation, I allowed myself to want something selfish. I press my hand against my chest to ground myself in the only warmth I’m allowed.
Just sleep, Grace. Don’t want. Don’t hope. Don't... don’t dream.
Except I already did.
And now I have to live with the fact that even if Rocky never knows exactly what I dreamed about, some part of me will always remember how it felt to be held by him in a universe that didn’t say no.