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“Well what am I supposed to do about it, Rock? I’m not an engineer! I’d only make things worse!”
“Grace smart. Grace figure it out.”
“And what if ‘figuring it out’ turns ‘Structural Anomaly Detected’ into ‘Catastrophic System Failure’, huh?! How are we getting to Erid then?”
Simon was returning from the greenhouse, rubbing his dirty face with a rag, when he heard the voices of his shipmates floating down the hall. Rocky’s voice synthesizer had the same matter-of-fact tone it always did, but Grace’s was hovering around alarm and moving towards panic. Simon sighed before he altered his course and followed the voices to their source.
Grace was staring at one of Mary’s displays, his glasses hanging precariously off his chin as he squinted at the screen. Rocky was overhead in one of his makeshift tunnels. He shifted from side to side, chittering softly.
Simon shuddered - he was still slightly wary of the creature despite having been onboard the Mary for several months now. He could at least look Grace in the eyes, read his facial expressions. But the alien was growing on him despite that, especially when the two joined forces to tease Grace about everything from his fashion sense to his lack of coordination.
Simon coughed to announce his presence. Grace let out a soft shout (not a yelp, he would insist), and spun to face Simon. Rocky waved one of his craggy appendages, then gestured towards his companion.
“Grace listen to Simon. Tell Grace to fix hull. Easy easy!”
“Okay MacGyver, why don’t you get out there and do it then?”
“What word, question?”
“Okay, okay, what’s going on?” Simon interrupted the duo and rolled his eyes, half-exasperated and half-fond. Grace spun back to face the monitors quickly.
Were his cheeks turning red? Simon thought.
“Ahem,” Grace cleared his throat and gestured at the model on screen, “Mary says there’s an issue with one of the panels on the starboard side.”
He pointed at a section blinking in red. Simon closed the distance between them and leaned over Grace’s shoulder to look closer. Grace stiffened almost imperceptibly. Almost.
“Something must have hit it and ruptured a duct or something. Like I was just saying,” Grace gestured up at Rocky, “I’m not an engineer. I’m not even an astronaut, but nobody seems to have noticed that either.”
Rocky made a disgruntled sounding noise.
“Grace dumb.”
“You JUST said I was smart!”
“Rocky lie. Grace dumb.”
Simon peered closer at the diagram as Grace moved away to stand face to face with Rocky. Or at least as close to a face as the Eridian had. Simon tapped through the alerts and zoomed in on the diagram. He studied the area - ductwork surrounding a section of the coolant system, now exposed to the vacuum of space. Not good.
He ran his hand down his face - he’d done a few spacewalks on Eden for maintenance and repairs to the station, but that had been before his years in a cell. And with two arms. A cold weight settled in his stomach, but he forced it down as he raised his voice.
“Guys!”
Simon’s voice cut through Grace and Rocky’s bickering. The two fell silent as they turned to regard him. Simon crossed his arm across his body, wilting slightly at the sudden undivided attention.
“I can uh, fix that. But I need help.”
And so Grace found himself trailing slowly behind Simon along the side of the Hail Mary, each step weightless yet heavy with anxiety.
He pulled the bag of tools tighter across his body and slid along the hull, his two tethers attached to the rail system floating alongside him. His focus was entirely on putting one foot in front of the other. He’d hoped after the fishing incident, he’d never have to do a spacewalk again. Yet here he was. At least he had company this time.
Simon walked ahead doggedly, his own bag slung across his body. It was full of xenonite pieces Rocky had crafted in various sizes so Simon could patch the damaged panel. When he’d finished them, Simon had whistled - “Impressive work” - and Rocky had preened under the praise. Grace had had to stifle a laugh.
Their objective soon came into view. Grace winced at the damage to the panel, like some heavyweight boxer had punched a hole straight through it. They both knelt down, Grace hovering behind the other man, unsure of what to do. Simon reached in and rummaged around delicately before he pulled out a pitted hunk of rock the size of a softball.
“Well there’s your problem,” Grace said, watching the offending object drift off as Simon chucked it away.
“Can I get the pliers?” Simon asked, reaching behind him without looking. Grace pressed them into his outstretched hand and felt the fingers close around them. He let his hand linger a moment more before Simon looked over his shoulder with a curious glance.
“Thanks, Ryland,” he said, a rare use of Grace’s first name that startled him out of his temporary trance. Grace was glad Simon had already turned away, or he might have seen the goofy grin on his face.
Simon got to work. Even one-handed, he was precise and efficient. He only paused to twist the tool though the air to get a better angle, or to ask Grace for a different piece of equipment. Grace watched, rapt with attention.
“Grace, Simon, be careful.”
“We’ll be back before you know it, bud,” Grace replied, feeling more at ease by the minute.
Well, it wasn’t as pretty as it could have been, but it was done. After a bit of troubleshooting, the ship’s inner workings were secured back under their new shield. Simon started to pack away the extra xenonite pieces. He could feel sweat dripping down his brow and wished he could wipe it away. It was starting to burn his eyes.
He tilted his head back as he stood up, trying to redirect the sweat away from his eyes. As he did, he was met with a view of an infinite field of stars. The sight jolted him into absolute stillness.
He was so used to an empty sky, devoid of light or hope. On Eden, there was never a reason to look up. You would only grow dizzy from blinding yourself with the abyss. He could have stood here, on the edge of the Hail Mary, for eternity and never had his fill. Something else pricked at his eyes then. It wasn’t sweat.
They’re beautiful aren’t they?
Simon wasn’t sure whose voice was echoing in his ears. Whether it was over the comms in his helmet, or in his own mind. The voice was familiar, as familiar as his own, made up of all the people he had ever known. Maybe all the people that had ever existed. It reverberated, louder and louder, until he was aware of little else.
They are endless. They are divine. They are ripe.
The stars twinkled above him, around him, surrounding him, suspended in inky blackness and sparkling like powdered glass. They seemed so close that Simon felt that he could simply reach up, scoop up a handful of the dark miasma, and consume it. He blindly grabbed at the tether around his waist.
They are yours to take.
Simon reached up, fingers splayed, aching to take the stars in his hands, to pull them down like an apple from a tree. He needed to be closer. He pushed himself up onto the tips of his toes…
“You know, that went smoother than I thought it would!” Grace said, half to his companions and half to himself. He needed to talk, to break up the silence. He was bouncing back along the walkway. God this suit was hot. He couldn’t wait to shower.
“Maybe when we get back inside we can break out the real food, I think we still have a few cups of ramen left! Maybe watch a movie, what you feelin’, Si? Comedy? Sci-fi? Or maybe not, might be a little close to home right now.”
He was rambling, he knew, but the relief of finishing the job was loosening his tongue and lifting his mood. He grinned to himself.
“What about you, Rock? You want another musica-“
“GRACE!”
Grace cringed at the sudden explosion of synthesized sound.
“Simon! Bad, Simon bad, up! Grace, stop!”
Grace turned, ready to reassure Rocky that whatever Simon was doing, it was probably fine.
And then Rocky’s panicked chirruping faded into white noise. All he could hear was his heavy breath and the rush of blood in his own ears
Simon was floating above the surface of the Mary like a puppet with its strings cut. And they were. His tethers hung weightlessly from his body, as he drifted further and further away. Out into the void.
If Grace said anything out loud, he wasn’t conscious of it. He grabbed his own tethers and hauled them down the rail as he moved back down the hull. It was slow, so slow, too slow, Simon was only getting further away. He kicked his feet, propelling himself, trying to gain more speed.
Grace bunched his legs underneath him and pushed, hurtling towards Simon until he felt the tether go taut. He stretched forward, his muscles aching with the effort to get one more inch, just a little further, please…
With a cry, he latched onto the end of one of Simon’s lifelines. He felt the other man jerk in surprise on the other end before he tugged with all his might. Simon drifted back into Grace’s orbit. His face was like it had been when he had first woken up on the Hail Mary - confused and distressed, like he’d just woken up from a nightmare.
Grace held tightly onto Simon with one hand and hauled them both back down his own tether with the other. He could hear Simon’s shaky breathing through the comms now. It rattled like a shoddy car engine.
When they landed back down on the hull, Grace slammed Simon’s tethers back home onto the rail. Then he took them in his hand, pulling them along like a leash. Simon followed obediently with no resistance. Grace gritted his teeth, the need to be back on board, back to safety, screaming inside him.
They retraced their steps back to the airlock without a word - even Rocky had gone radio silent. Grace only released Simon once the doors had sealed shut and the pressurization began. As breathable air hissed back into the room, Grace scrambled to remove the bulky helmet.
Simon was crouched on the floor, unmoving since Grace had released him. Grace dropped to his knees in front of him and fumbled at the catches of the helmet.
“Simon, Jesus Christ, what happened out there!? Are you okay?! God we almost lost you, what were you -“
His voice died in his throat as he lifted Simon’s helmet away. His breath hitched.
He had never seen a man look so devastated. Simon’s eyes were wild with panic, pupils blown so that his eyes looked almost entirely black. Tears streamed down his face. He heaved out a shuddering sob, and Grace could feel, even through the thick EVA suit, as Simon’s body was taken over by tremors.
“Hey,” Grace said, tearing off his gloves and holding Simon’s face in his hands, “Hey, youre here, you’re safe. You’re safe, Si.”
Simon pushed his face into Grace’s shoulder and screamed.
Rocky didn’t leave their side for the next three days, not even to sleep. All three were shaken up, and Rocky would be damned if he let anything happen to his humans. They needed him, almost as much as he needed them.
He dutifully kept watch over Grace and Simon as they slept, which was easier now that they had started sharing a cot. Rocky didn’t have to try to watch two places at once. It was like a switch had been flipped between the two men. They lay in a tangle of limbs, Grace holding tightly onto Simon from behind. Simon woke often, and fretfully. But Grace was always there to run his fingers through his hair, and Rocky would sing softly until Simon’s trembling ceased.
And even after those few days, Grace and Simon were together more often than not. Even if they weren’t working on something together, just existing in the same space. And every time they passed each other, there was some kind of contact. A hand on a shoulder. A brush of their hands. A head in a lap, dozing off mid-sentence. Foreheads pressed together, sharing their breath as they fell asleep. They moored each other with each touch, setting down an anchor that kept them from drifting apart.
And one night, while Simon was asleep, Grace asked Mary to change the security code for the airlock.