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“Why Grace so surprised, question? How long do humans live, question?”
“I still have a lot to go, Rock, if that’s what you mean.” With a final clap to his knees, Grace pushed himself up off the floor, separating himself from where he had been leaning against Rocky’s Xenonite ball. He swatted away absent dust from his hands and moved to the table to check on the current Taumeoba batch.
“Grace no answer Rocky question.” Rocky’s melody drew Grace’s eyes back to him. Rocky’s claws were doing it again—the pinching and opening; pinching and opening. Apprehension, Grace recalled.
In their quest to save Earth and Erid, they had not had much time for casual chatter. However, now that the Taumeoba had been safely packed, and the journey back to Erid had been carefully mapped, all that was left to do was wait. Waiting gave them plenty of opportunities to talk.
Grace was now regretting that.
He picked up the peanut butter bottle from the table. His nails absently scratched the fraying edge of the bottle’s nutrition information. Haphazardly slapped to the top of that sticker was a label about the Taumeoba inside. He meticulously noted how much longer until the Taumeoba ripened, before placing the bottle back down with a thunk, and picking up the next one.
“An average human lives… for around 80 years, Rock.”
But Grace wasn't sure if he would even live that long.
He opened the second bottle, this time Nutella, and gingerly brought it to his nose, taking a whiff of his science experiment inside. Pursing his lips, he forced back a gag. Normal food was at a premium now. It was only two days ago when Grace’s grumbling stomach woke him up from sleep – the results of rationing his once rationed food, much against Mary’s complaints. Soon, he will run out of his coma slurry. Soon, Taumeoba would have to provide him his sustenance. If he could not get the Taumeoba to a version that doesn’t gag him by then, he would be in quite the predicament.
Lost in his thoughts, Grace had not realized how quiet the control room had become until the gag threw him up off his spiralling mind. He was already having a difficult time with this conversation; the quiet struck Grace as even more concerning, if not downright eerie.
Once Rocky had joined him on Mary, Grace had become quite used to the low music that always seemed to accompany him — Rocky’s speaking, of course, was a melody he could never tire of listening to, but as he grew closer to Rocky, he grew more attentive of him, and he began discovering how every little movement of Rocky, whether of body or of thought, co-occured with its own tune; once Grace noticed that, he could never unnotice it, and, in fact, he sought the music out, most especially in times like these, when his chest tightened and tangled to a point where only music, and Rocky’s music, could sort him out; Rocky was nothing if not Grace, and in Grace’s very unbiased opinion, the one more deserving of his name, and as such, Rocky put him out of his misery, by breaking this silence spell — only to follow it with a more terrible question.
“How… How old Grace, question?”
Oh boy.
“Rock! Look, this Taumeoba batch grew resistant for 10–”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Expected Result. Now, Grace tell Rocky Grace age.”
Grace knew the pain too well, and knew Rocky to be no stranger to it. For the four years of travel it took to get to Tau Ceti, Earth’s astronauts had to be put in a coma in fear of them succumbing to the weight of the unbridled loneliness of space. But Rocky was alone in Blip-A, without a soul to keep him company, to watch him sleep, for 46 long years.
Faced with Rocky’s questions, Grace remembers how he woke in the strange world of Mary, only to be greeted by the withering faces of unknown people on the verge of recognition. He remembers the mush of tangled hair that fell over his shoulders as he danced and danced, holding something that could never hold him back; he does not remember how long his feet kept moving, but when he felt the pain in his soles, a relief washed over him, for that pain distracted him from the burn in his chest, and he danced through the pain, cradling its body tighter; when the pain gave way to numbness, a sob escaped his lips, and his arms tried to hold the body still tighter, but its slim thickness was merely a few centimeters that his hands had nowhere to wrap around completely, in their search for closeness, but around himself.
Did he cry? Did he fall? He does not remember, but the floor had met him in sympathy as the most tragic sound he had ever heard rang inside Mary. He so badly wanted it to stop before he realized it emerged from his own mouth. The hug came off him as his hands moved instead to clasp his mouth. Without anything holding it, the body fell with a thunk, and the sounds in the room became blaring. To lose two was this painful, when you could barely surface any memories of them. To lose twenty-two, Grace could not even begin to fathom.
Grace did not want to make it a twenty-three. But was dancing around the subject of death going to ease the pain he assumed Rocky would feel when his death came to pass?
A part of him believed that once they arrived on Erid and Rocky reunited with Adrian, Rocky would grow out of this co-dependency they had formed with each other. Then, when Grace left first, it would not hurt Rocky as much. But, there was a part of him, a more selfish part, that wished Rocky would never forget him. Condemning his best friend to a life of pain — how cruel he had turned out to be.
Grace let out a heavy sigh. “Rock, listen. I will have plenty of time left even after we reach Erid. By then, we will have told each other all the stories we know– Heck, we probably would even go through them multiple times that you would get sick of listening to them — sick of me.” He took in a mouthful of breath. “The point is, it will be alright, Rock. Besides, it’s just human nature. I have made peace with it.” Rocky thumped together his claws, but before he could begin, Grace followed through. “It’s not like the Astrophage! I really do mean it this time!”
Rocky tapped his foot against the Xenonite floor.
“Rocky…”
“No. No. No.”
“No what, bud?” Rocky turned away from him. “Look at me, hmm?”
“No. No. No,” Rocky protested. “Rocky no listen to Grace. Grace only open mouth for lie. Grace only open mouth for disgust eat.”
“Ey?! Rock—”
“Why Grace not tell Rocky earlier, question?”
“It just never came up, bud.”
“Grace talk about stupid stupid stupid all the time. But Grace forget important detail, question?”
“Rocky, of course, I would tell you. But I did not know how old you were either, remember? Or how long Eridian lifespans are. You are so small and so full of energy, Rock. I hardly would have taken you for a two-hundred-ninety-one years old Eridian. You seem much younger than me, even. I am only twenty-nine years old, and I am already so tired…”
Rocky’s sound viewer clanged to the floor. Did something happen? Did he accidentally blurt out something wrong? Grace opened his mouth to check on Rocky. But he saw Rocky’s hands blur. They moved with an unbelievable haste. He watched as Rocky near lunged towards him. Grace’s eyes went wide. Instinctively, his hands came up in front of his face. He tried to brace for the incoming impact. But it was Rocky. His Rocky. His Rocky would never hurt him. Grace’s hands wavered. The impact never came. Rocky controlled his momentum at the last moment. The ball thumped to a stop right at Grace’s nose.
“Ro–”
“Grace tired, question? Grace weak? Grace die? Grace die?! Grace die?!!” The blur that was Rocky pirouetted around him, his multiple hands all reaching to touch, to check, to care, but stopped short by the Xenonite. Rocky stomped his foot in frustration, and a tune that registered to Grace as a whine escaped Rocky.
Grace shifted in rhythm to face Rocky, but it was made eternally difficult by Rocky’s attempt at Quickstep. Exasperated, Grace splayed himself on top of Rocky, reaching over and melting into the Xenonite. Rocky’s panic extinguished as he tiptoed on his claws and nudged into Grace’s embrace.
“Rock, pal, no, I am not dying. I can see how that might have been bad phrasing, given the context, but it’s just a —”
“Grace stupid. Live so many years yet don't even how to use own language.”
Grace held himself back from launching into a metaphor lesson.
It was hard not to be playful with Rocky.
The mirth remained in the air, and Rocky wished that their previous conversation was one of those weird, scary mind pictures that Grace had told him about. But Rocky had not been sleeping. And Eridians do not dream. Unless, of course, his biology had changed somehow after spending so much time with his alien.
“Grace is sure Grace not dying, question?”
“Yes, at least for now,” he responded in what he hoped wasn’t a lie.
Grace shifted out of the embrace, which got another whine from Rocky. Grace, however, wanted the earnestness in his intentions conveyed, so he fixed his eyes on Rocky, giving him all his attention.
“Rock, I– I will make sure we get you back to your family. That I promise to you.”
“Grace misunderstands. Rocky love Adrian. Rocky excited to see family. Rocky happy to see Erid. But meaningless without Grace. Rocky needs his Grace. Need. Need. Need.”
Grace’s eyes burned. He opened his mouth to respond, but only a sob broke out through his constricted throat.
Rocky raised his carapace at an angle that bumped it against the wall of the Xenonite ball — the first time Rocky ever initiated physical affection — and Grace sobbed hard as he leaned his forhead forward in response, meeting Rocky through the thin layer of Xenonite, from where he could feel the warmth of Rocky’s body coursing through him now, Grace’s own eyes brimming to the top with tears at this realization, which he initially blinked away as he took in shaky breath after shaky breath, to save himself from the embarrassment of being Rocky’s leaky space blob, but Grace had never been the kind of person to be able to stop his tears, so after the first few blinks, he let them fall, and fall it did, against Rocky’s ball, and though Rocky had always found Grace’s leakiness to be disgust disgust disgust, this time he wished from the depths of all his five hearts that he could reach and cradle Grace’s face and wipe the tears away, but Grace was suffering a far too similar torture for he nuzzled and nuzzled, but he could not find the true comfort he longed for, and he imagined for a minute, falling to his intrusive thoughts and opening the airlock and somehow letting himself fit inside Rocky’s ball, but the cramps he would get from squatting for so long wasn’t the only drawback; infact, if that was the only problem, he would have caved to it a thousand times already; the problem was, of course, death; Grace laughed through his sobs at the irony of it all, because imagine being fated for each other across the stars that they met each other light years away from either of their homes, an interstellar destiny, but that was where their lucks had decided to run out; it could cross all the stars, but it could not cross this five centimeters panel of Xenonite; it could not cross the difference in their times.