Work Text:
Someone, at some point, assumed the Hail Mary crew would consume three cups of coffee every day for—
Grace checks the math he scribbled on his arm.
A year and a half.
Granted, instant coffee doesn't take up much space. And varying the water-to-bean-powder ratio meant a little could go a long way. But still!
Wasn't Grace on that team? He was probably in the meeting when someone decided that. Or mentioned it in passing. He can't remember, and he tries not to think about the fact he can’t remember.
Instead, he thinks about coffee. He basically had an IV drip of it in grad school. He burnt himself out on the taste (And burnt himself out, period.)
He still had a cup here and there when he taught his classes. It gave him something to hold. He'd gotten used to the taste of iced coffee because he'd forget the mug was there and get tired of reheating it. He could make one cup last an entire day that way.
And Grace was getting very good at making things last. Like his food.
Rocky's “eating taumoeba” suggestion wasn't completely unfounded. In the sense that it wouldn't kill him, and it was technically calories. A big win over dying of starvation or heavy metal poisoning! Not that his body agreed.
The first spoonful of the taumoeba-water soup he'd tried immediately came back up. Rocky got to learn a new fun human biology fact. Everyone disliked that.
He still had freeze dried meals. Quite a few, since he was one person making a dent in a three-person food supply. (Don’t think about it.) But considering they were two months into a three year trip, he needed to start on the food problem before he didn’t have a choice. Splitting meals in half, cutting out breakfast, and of course, the taumoeba.
It didn't even taste that bad. Mostly nothing with a mildew aftertaste. Which is still pretty bad. But the gelatinous slime it created was disgusting. Like soaked chia seeds if they'd been left in a festering greenhouse for a few months.
And the taste lingered. Water did very little to clear it. Gum was safe in space, right? Why didn't anyone pack gum? A box of tic-tacs?
Grace was contemplating eating raw toothpaste when he found the coffee. The coffee! Barely touched. The whole “dying in space” thing kept his nervous system on high alert, it’s not like he’d been missing it before.
At his request, Mary handed him a steaming…pouch. Like a hot Capri Sun after soccer practice. Maybe he could pour it in a beaker and pretend it was a mug.
Rocky didn't look up from his work, but he asked, “Hot drink, question?”
Grace hummed around a mouthful. It was bitter and burnt, but at least it didn't taste like a petri dish. “Coffee.”
“Grace need energy, question?”
They must have talked about human bean water before, though Grace hardly remembers. He shakes his head.
“Not really. Just something that isn't sludge.”
“You make gross face while drinking.”
“Yeah. It's kinda gross.”
“You no need drink and no enjoy it. Drink just to drink, question? Stupid.”
Grace huffed. “Human thing.”
Rocky made a warbling sound that Grace associated with an eye roll. Ear roll? Sound roll? “Can use extra energy to clean lab. Statement.”
“The lab is clean enough!” Grace said. The fact he was heading there to put things back into places they should already be was irrelevant. He stuck his head around the corner. “Statement.”
Gosh, maybe he did need the coffee. He'd forgotten the buzz it left under his skin, like the hum of an extra cog whirring in his brain. He knew that coffee didn't provide energy – just suppressed the brain's ability to feel tired – but hey. He felt what he felt. And it felt pretty good!
Monitor taumoeba farms. Check. Update logs. Check. Add to notes. Check.
He put away loose cover slides and other equipment, and then took to reorganizing all his notes on taumoeba and their molecular structure. Because he'd been meaning to forever, and why not now?
Without thinking of it, Grace makes it through two and three fourths of a bag of coffee. Rookie numbers. The taste didn't get better, but it was something new, almost comforting in how demanding it was of his senses. It shushed that little voice telling him if he had to see another white spaceship panel, or taste taumoeba again, he would throw himself into the nearest star’s orbit. It certainly washed away the taste he was trying to get rid of.
The taste he was going to have to live with…not forever, according to Rocky. He's so confident in his planet figuring out how to keep Grace from starving to death. Grace wants to believe him, he really really does. But even in the best case scenario, taumoeba will need to supplement most of his diet by the end of their trip.
He takes more images of the taumoeba slides under the microscope. He uses two hands to move the slides, to keep them from shaking.
The coffee is also a distraction from the hollow of his stomach. Twenty six hours wasn't that long without a full meal. He needed to get used to it. Coffee was an appetite suppressant. Win, win. Save the food while he can.
Grace runs a hand through his hair, damp at the roots with sweat. There’s a dull pounding behind his eyes.
Could he mix taumoeba with coffee? No, that's ridiculous. Is it? Grace writes that down, forehead pressed into his open palm. In the right ratio he could make some kind of coffee bacteria pudding. CBP. He can workshop the name.
He has to rewrite the last sentence because he skips over two words, and spells pudding with one G. No, one D. Jeez. Well, he did spell it with one G, because that's how you're supposed to-
The pen is shaking. His legs are bouncing against the foot rest of the stool. He forces them still. The pen is still shaking. He presses the tip into the paper, like he can ground the electricity in his own body and close whatever circuit is going haywire. He watches the ink bleed through. The splotch of it pulses in time with his heart. The shaking doesn't stop.
He wraps his arms around his shoulders, feeling, suddenly, very exposed. His heart hammers away in his chest, through his arms. He takes a few deep breaths and they don’t make anything worse, but the air just sits there in his lungs until he forces it away.
That's fine. He just needs to move. He can do something standing up. Writing is stupid, anyway.
Somewhere between standing and opening the supply cabinet, he feels. Not right. Why did he open the cabinet? At least it's there. Grace can brace his shaking hands against it and wait for the spots in his vision to disappear. What was that clanging sound?
Grace almost failed his first English class in college. The professor was nice, but he always forgot to finish the readings. Even if he didn’t forget, it felt impossible. Eighty pages between a Tuesday and a Thursday class? Absolutely not.
He'd put the final essay off for so long, he had to pull two all-nighters to finish it. He'd gripped a take out coffee cup while forcing himself to read the same paragraph over and over again. The ticking clock was a physical feeling as it creeped closer to the deadline. His head hurt, his eyes hurt, his neck hurt and no amount of stretching fixed it. It felt like making lemonade out of his brain matter. He turned his sorry excuse of an assignment in with shaking hands, two minutes before the deadline. Avoiding eye contact with everyone in the building, he made it to an empty bathroom where he proceeded to vomit stomach acid and have a panic attack, in that order. The tiled wall was cold against his back. He pressed himself against it, listening to ragged breaths echo back at him. Even then, he didn't remember getting home.
Ah! New memory. Zelda achievement sound, or something.
Nausea hits him like a truck. In through his nose, out through his mouth. You’re fine, you’re fine.
The clanging is louder. It doesn't help with the headache.
“Grace okay? Okay, question?”
“Grace okay!” Grace can't open his eyes. He nods and it makes him dizzy. “Just…getting some work done.”
What did he need beakers for?
“Heartbeat is different. Fast. Danger, question?”
“No danger.” Except his own free will. He was going to…move something. Somewhere.
“Is it taumoeba farms, question?”
“Farms are–” He has to gasp halfway through and he chokes on it. “Farms are good.”
Grace checked those. They were fine, right? He'd checked them. Right? The only hope for Erid? The thing that would have to keep Grace alive for the next three years? The thing they almost died for?
The beaker that was in his hands is now on the floor.
Rocky says his name, sandwiched between two high pitched noises. It sucks that the cabinet had glass in it, but Grace is thankful for it when he slides down its front so he can sit on the floor. Floor is good.
He hears Rocky’s metallic steps again. They were getting softer, or Grace was passing out. Even sitting, his vision was fuzzy around the edges. Rocky is saying something that Grace can’t parse, even without the ringing in his ears.
His arms are braced on the floor, keeping him upright. He wants to lean forward, to put his head between his bent knees because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you feel like this. But if he moves he’ll fall over, and maybe if he just stays very, very still, he’ll be fine. He can become a piece of lab furniture and not have to think about any of it.
If his chest would stop heaving. Dread sits like an ingot in his stomach. His hands are tingling. He tilts his head back until it thunks against the cabinet.
Grace! Grace hurt, question!?
Rocky is in his xenonite ball, as close to Grace as he can get without rolling over him. His notes are doing that thing where they sound close together, chords overlapping. He does that when he’s stressed, or scared. Grace is making him sound like that.
“’S okay. ‘M okay.” He punches air out through his teeth. “H-human thing.” Not a lie.
Two of Rocky’s limbs are fidgeting in front of him. “Stress response. But no stress happening. Ship is okay.” Rocky puts a hand on the glass. “Grace shaking.”
Correct he was, as usual. Grace can’t stop trembling. He feels sick.
“Caffeine is a stimulant. Increases…heart rate. Blood flow. Too much is bad.”
“Make you sick, question?”
“S-sort of. It’s usually safe. But I haven’t had it in a long time. Grace swallows. “And not eating a lot. Makes it worse. I’ll be okay but it – it sucks for a bit.”
Scratch coffee off of the list of things he can enjoy while he tries not to starve to death. Grace, get it together. Crying will only make the headache worse.
Rocky trills, warbling high again. “What will fix, question? We fix.”
Before Grace can answer, Rocky shouts, “Grace is leaking!”
Grace swallows again, trying and failing to keep the knot out of his throat. “Don’t remind me, please.”
“No! Hand leaking. Different leaking.”
Huh?
Rocky scurries to Grace’s other side, trying to nudge his arm. Shards of glass crunch under the xenonite. Oh, hell.
In Grace’s defence, he wasn’t trying to not feel the palms of his hands. It just sort of happened. It’s far, far from the worst thing he’s seen, but Grace can’t look too closely at the three bleeding cuts on his palm. More blood pounds in his ears.
Clumsy human, Rocky says. Not as an insult, but as a concerned observation. Grace prefers it as an insult, to be honest.
“Clumsy, stupid human,” Grace chokes out. Blood wells on his hand and tears well in his eyes.
Rocky shakes his carapice. “No. No clumsy-stupid. Clumsy as in need help. Rocky help.”
“S-sorry, it’s st–”
Grace can’t finish his sentence. He’s breathing fast again, and now he’s crying.
No sorry! No stupid. Rocky nudges closer, pushing into Grace’s arm. He can feel Rocky’s warmth through the xenonite. “Grace go to medicine bot, question? Medicine bot help with human medicine.”
It was a great idea. Rocky had a lot of those. But the anxiety is still strumming under his skin, making his muscles weak. “I…I need a minute. I can’t…”
“Is okay.” Rocky taps multiple claws against his barrier, like he does when he’s listening extra hard. “Grace have minute. Many minutes. Rocky have minutes with Grace.”
Grace exhales shakily. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Fortunately the cuts are shallow, and he can stem the bleeding on the hem of his shirt. His unfortunately white shirt. Things he can worry about later. Rocky moves closer, and Grace slumps to the side, resting his cheek on Rocky’s ball. Rocky presses up to meet him.
“This help? Like hug, question?”
Grace can’t speak. He can barely nod at this angle, but he tries anyway. Rocky gets it.
His face is sweating from Rocky’s body heat. Or it’s the tears. If Rocky cares, he doesn’t say anything. It feels nice. They sit in not-silence, between the humming of the Hail Mary and the humming Rocky makes. A low, soothing purr that Grace feels against his ear drum. He’s still shaking, but it’s less I’m-going-to-die and more I’m-going-to-live-comma-I-think.
I’m going to live, I think.
Moments or minutes pass in a haze.
“Grace heartbeat still fast, but more normal.”
Grace hums in acknowledgement. “Just need water. A nap, probably.”
"Always need nap. Put off sleep cycle for too long."
Grace can’t argue with that. He could, but he doesn’t have the energy.
“Need food.”
The dread is back, carving a hole through him. “I ate today.”
“Real food.”
“You don’t even like food.” It’s not even an argument. Grace just can’t bear to leave the statement hanging in the air like that.
Rocky chirps quietly. “When need sleep, you sleep. When need food, you eat. Food keep friend Grace healthy. Less…sad.”
Grace can’t have this argument on the floor of the lab, when he feels like a puff of air from the circulation system would blow him over. He’d smash into a bunch of pieces like the glass on the floor. So he just says, “Okay.”
Rocky senses the hesitation. Or resignation, more like. He hums again, tapping the xenonite where my arm is pressed against it. It feels nice.
A few more moments pass. Then Rocky trills, “Lab does look cleaner, statement!”
Grace snorts. “Except for the beaker.”
“We clean glass, easy. Rocky make more beakers!”
Grace’s next breath makes it further into his lungs. “Thanks.”
Rocky trills again, but not a word Grace recognizes. Just a flurry of notes that resonate in Grace’s skull and make him feel warm. The rest can come later. Have many minutes.