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over a hundred years rocky had with their mate. and it wasn't enough.
it'd never be enough.
simple, earnest. that's all it was meant to be. grace knows it wasn't supposed to be anything more. just a small vulnerable moment about how much they missed adrian. how much they cared about them.
it wasn't supposed to pull weight behind his eyes. wasn't supposed be comforting.
because it was in a strange way. the most comforting thing anyone's said to him since you,
well.
fuck.
there were glimpses of whatever was before this. of you. that's all he had at first. before he had enough to piece together who he was, partially.
sometimes those glimpses are relevant to the moment. to a phrase or a feeling. sometimes they're helpful. they give him a new piece of who he was. a moment from his classroom (because he was a teacher, at some point) or sentences and written phrases. from reports he remembers writing. from papers he remembers grading. sometimes those pieces are helpful, sometimes they aren't.
sometimes it's just you. and some of the little details that made up who you were. like how you liked your coffee or how your lips twitched before you smiled.
but he had no idea who you were.
he had to learn all over again. had to fall in love with you all over again.
the first memory he had of you, after he woke up, caught him off guard. razor to his cheek, he could hear a voice. a man's voice, not quite stern. "no, stop. baby."
and he could've sworn he knew that voice, grace feels attached to it. more accustomed to it than his own.
then there's the hand over his, pushing the razor away from his face. a weight that's feels more familiar than it should leaning against his shoulder. and the whole thing is real. he can feel it. all of it. kind of. feels a bit like a chill. like when his body's wracked with too much energy because his heart doesn't trust that he's ok, so grace shudders even though he's not cold. which hadn't happened since he'd woken up.
he's not entirely sure why he thinks he does that. just does in the same way he knows the name out of his mouth is yours. like he's always known, like he never really forgot. it's followed by a protest current-grace isn't very convinced by: "i can do it."
and there's that touch again, that one that isn't there, trailing lightly against him, down his back. slipping the razor from his hand.
distracting, because he - that man. his, well, you - is good at that. grace feels you trying to distract him and he can feel himself falling for it anyway. "ryland," you say it just how he said yours and grace likes it in your voice much more than his own. likes how homey you make his name feel. "you're going to cut it too short."
"it'll grow back." it's half-hearted, doesn't matter much anymore. not when you have the electric cutter anyway. "or," not when the hand that grazed over his hand moves to his face. lightly scratching as his beard, that is still short, just long for grace's preferences. "i can do it, so it's not too short."
because you didn't like ryland clean shaven and his resolve has never been terribly strong with you. grace remembers thinking that as he watched you in the mirror.
he'd nicked himself.
absentmindedly shaving while he remembered you for the first time, something more than a detail or a glimpse, a full moment.
wasn't the first time.
and not just with you. with anything. he just tended to space out. occasionally he remembers his classroom. specific questions (good or unserious) or the silly things his kids would do. sometimes he'd find himself writing parts of class plans he remembered, or ones he'd planned on but never really got around to writing.
more often than not, he remembers stuff about this. the whole suicide mission thing, because apparently, whoever he was, was the kind of guy to sign up for that kind of thing.
but grace appreciated the reprieve from it. liked the memories of the other parts of his life a bit more. of books he read and friends he had. of things they did, which if memory served (and he's impartial to the idea that it might not), grace was not the most social guy. he liked people he thinks. just made him nervous to be around so many. felt awkward around anyone he didn't know, and sometimes the ones he did.
you seemed to be in a lot of them. the not work related ones. when he did spend time with friends, pulled to diners and bars. study groups, when memories go back far enough. and sometimes when he wasn't out with friends. sometimes it was just you two. in your apartment, because you lived together. in your bed, the one you shared, because you weren't roommates. which was good, it felt presumptuous to assume otherwise, but he seemed to think about you more, know you a little more intimately, than just a friend. it was reassuring that he was right, that how you touched him in that first memory, and in subsequent ones, didn't just feel a bit more charged than something between friends.
it was.
you were his person.
that's how he figured out the ring was, in fact, his.
the one on that simple little chain, shoved into the side of his bag. it was one of the only personal effects he had. that and the hacky sack. and all those science pun shirts. he figured the ring was a last minute thing, that it was shoved into the wrong bag at first. that he'd have pictures of a partner if he had one.
it was all weird, but grace is glad he figured out it was his before the funerals.
before he sent his ring with someone else forever.
grace remembered you were sick.
in that kind of way he remembered anything. didn't remember how bad it was, didn't remember how long it was so bad. but there was a part of a memory he had. grace was scared in it and he couldn't figure out why.
he was with you.
in bed, next to you. head just barely on your shoulder. close but hesitant to touch, like you were fragile. and grace laid there with you, trying desperately to sleep. or pretend to. or maybe he just couldn't open his eyes. he remembers you reading to him. remembers that you used to do that, read part of whatever you had your nose stuck in at the time, because what it was about didn't matter. he just liked the low gravel of your voice. calm and steady, grace liked when that was the last thing he'd heard.
this didn't feel like that.
your voice was still calm, but it was raspy. breaking. not quite creaky, but strained. like you were losing your voice. and you were, just not how people usually do. he vaguely remembers the words. they were some of the last he'd heard in your voice.
he remembers the "'- leave where they-'" then a shaky breath that you assured him sounded worse than it was. and maybe you really believed that when you said it. you continued anyway, "'where they are, for i know others will punctually come forever-'"
grace placed his hand over the page. there was a soft sniffle, he'd mistaken for something more playful the first time this memory flooded his mind. or maybe he just didn't want to see that sign for what it was.
there were a lot of those that he'd ignored in some of his memories with you. coughing fits he chose to believe were from allergies. how thin you were in some of those memories was something he tried not to notice. there were also the conversations and car rides to doctors appointments that didn't have to be anything more than menial parts of being alive. that could've just been regular human maintenance if he ignored the signs in the doctors offices and labels on your paperwork.
it was harder to ignore the crack in his own voice. one grace hadn't placed as his own at first, but he couldn't ignore once he did. "baby, please."
"'-and ever.'" you'd finished the last bit. you'd read that book enough times, you didn't really need the pages to know the words.
grace hoped that was still true.
it was right at the end, too, good place to stop. grace remembers you saying that. it was 40-something in that book, he thinks. he's not sure, just couldn't handle the next part. you'd read it to him a few times, and he never liked the poem that came after. didn't like hearing it when you read it.
couldn't do it in that moment.
when he was still piecing it all together, he thought it was just a bad poem. a little too heavy for what felt like a simple moment.
it wasn't, that next one was maybe a little too fitting, actually.
too on the nose.
grace wishes he hadn't stopped you. let you read even if he couldn't handle it. wished he hadn't taken that bit of comfort from you, because you'd always found it in your favorite pieces. books, poetry, short stories.
wishes you hadn't been taken from him. that he didn't have to mourn you twice.
grace doesn't know how much time he had with you, but it doesn't really matter. because rocky was right. it wasn't enough.
it could've been a hundred years - two, even - and it still wouldn't have been enough.