Work Text:
Rocky knocks on his door one day and dances in as soon as he opens it, though that’s not terribly out of the ordinary. Grace shuffles into the kitchen to get his (Eridian equivalent of) coffee and settles on the couch, pulling a thick throw over his legs. These days, any semblance of chill makes his knees ache, and he can’t afford to waste his dwindling medicine supply on something as trivial as that.
⸻
The problem of being shipped off to space as someone not trained to be an astronaut: his muscles had suffered in zero gravity.
Further problem, he was shipped off to space and expected to die; ergo, no exercise equipment had been installed on the Hail Mary.
And the consequence? Well, by the time he’d acted on the problem, it’d been a little too late to reverse it.
He wouldn’t have considered himself out of shape when he was shipped off. He rode a bike to school every day, after all, and the terrain wasn’t always entirely flat. But combined with absolutely no training in zero gravity and a rapidly dwindling food supply, he really had stood no chance.
He’d noticed it while in orbit around Erid, but had brushed it off. Chalked it up to sea-legs (space-legs?) after not much artificial gravity on the way there. Then general exhaustion from the rationing. But he couldn’t make excuses when he finally made land and all but collapsed.
Rocky had been… agitated, as Adrian so delicately put it, fussing over him and rehashing the inferiority of humans in equal parts.
Grace most stupid smart human Rocky know.
Yeah, Rock, I’m the only one you know.
Then came the trouble of balancing exercise (on a newly designed torture machine made by Eridian engineers) with intake. Rocky and the scientists were working as fast as they could on a food source, but in the meantime Grace was stuck with whatever was on the ship. There was plenty of medical data in the ship files on recommended daily calories. Rocky had looked at the numbers for a moment before letting out a jingle of sounds that Grace didn’t recognize, but was almost afraid to learn the meaning of.
At first, they focused on maintenance. Short walks, yoga stretches, and anything small that Grace could do without injuring himself. Then, once they finally got him some new foods to eat, Rocky shoved him into the torture machine and made him work out until he could barely walk a room over to his bed.
He complained, of course, but he also knew just how little he was actually doing, compared to what he could’ve done back on Earth, and it was concerning enough to make him suck it up.
Day by day, meal by meal, Grace grew stronger. He could walk all the way around his house without wheezing, could walk outside on the gravel and sand without tripping. But muscle wasn’t the only thing he lost in zero-gravity.
Muscle could be regained. So could bone density, to an extent. Cartilage, however, could not.
As Rocky tinkered with the atmosphere settings, pain flared in all of Grace’s joints. One morning, after giving feedback about the temperature being a bit too hot, he woke up to frost on the windows and a deep, aching pain in every one of his limbs.
He’d shivered his way to the kitchen, creaking and cracking with every step, to make something warm. It was many minutes later, hot mug in hand as he waited for Rocky, that he’d been able to feel his fingers again. It was much later in the day, after the atmosphere’s temperature had been brought back up, that he could do more than limp.
⸻
The atmosphere is stable now, but even the small, natural fluctuations make his joints protest. He feels it most in his knees and hips, but it’s everywhere, even his fingers. And so he finds comfort in his coffee, hands wrapped fully around the mug. Finds comfort in the thick sweater and soft blanket, and how they hide the swelling and stiffness of his elbows and knees.
“Grace is in pain, question?” Rocky, ever perceptive, interrupts his thoughts.
Guess he doesn’t hide it as well as he thought. He takes a sip of his coffee. “No, I’m just old, Rocky.”
“Grace is young.”
Grace laughs. “I’m solidly middle-aged.”
Rocky does the Eridian equivalent of clicking his tongue and hops up onto the couch. “Humans die young. So fragile, stupid, squishy.”
Grace hums, familiar with this line of conversation. He recognizes it for what is now, as Rocky’s frustration that their time together is finite. By the time he dies, Grace will have lived more years with Rocky than without. But Grace is just a blip in comparison in Rocky’s life.
“Grace is dying, question?” Rocky demands. “Grace need new nutrient, question?”
“No and no.” Grace lays a hand on Rocky’s leg. “New word, arthritis. Joint pain with the weather change.” A simplification, but Grace could pull up the full documentation later.
Rocky clicks and hums. “Grace call Armando.”
Grace sighs. “I’m fine.”
“Grace call Armando, command.”
What Rocky wants, Rocky gets. Grace gets a full-body scan. The results are… not great. Grace isn’t that kind of doctor, but he does have the entirety of the Mayo Clinic website at his fingertips (“It’s probably cancer.” “WHAT, QUESTION?” “Sorry. Bad joke.”). He and Rocky read through description pages and treatment plans, though most of the treatments are for maintenance, rather than cures.
Rocky takes it worse than Grace. He swipes the computer and continues searching away while Grace leans back and lets his glasses dangle precariously. As Grace gently flexes his fingers, he doesn’t miss the way Rocky’s claws stutter over the keys.
Back when they were on the Hail Mary, they’d spent a day trying to explain their senses to each other, Grace his sight, Rocky his hearing. Grace had been, well, surprised wasn’t the right word, but he’d just never thought about it before, when Rocky told him that he didn’t have to face a certain direction to hear where something was. Grace had to explain that no, he couldn’t see behind him unless he turned around, prompting Rocky into his usual spiel of Eridian superiority.
Rocky had also explained just everything he could hear, and how.
“Humans wet. And loud.”
“If you really wanted some quiet, you could just ask. I’ll stop talking.”
“Humans stupid.”
“Oh. Ohh, you can hear my organs.”
Rocky had demonstrated by tracing one of Grace’s veins, farther up his arm than Grace himself could see. He showed Grace the carvings on one of his arms, straight lines of varying distances from each other that he could run a hand across to create different pitches, and how it let him focus in on different parts, like Grace’s bones.
Rocky has always been emotive in general, which served Grace well in the beginning. But now, six years in, Grace likes to think he can pick up on the subtleties when Rocky isn’t so emotive.
Moments like now, where he doesn’t miss how Rocky swipes against those same lines he showed him years ago and freezes.
Grace had known what it was for some time, or at least had an idea. He’d assumed it was arthritis. His parents had gotten it as they aged, after all, and if he knew anything about space (and starvation), it was that the body could only take so much before it started to wear down. He remembered the studies done on the International Space Station on microgravity, scientists wanting to know what happened to the body without the constant push and pull of Earth and its atmosphere. When his muscles didn’t go quite back to normal, even after going through a full exercise regimen. When his arms and legs cramped up after sitting in one place for too long. And when the temperature changed and he suddenly moved like a robot. Whether he’d wanted to acknowledge it was a different story, but he’d known.
He guessed Rocky hadn’t noticed. And sure, even though they had Armando’s results right in front of them, it was different to have numbers on a page than to actually see the damage first-hand.
Rocky shuts the laptop and hops off the couch.
“Where’re you going?” Grace sits up, quickly setting his coffee on the table.
“Time for Grace to teach. Rocky will see later.”
A quick glance at the clock shows Grace that he does need to get going, but they still have plenty of time for their normal walk over. Rocky always walks with him.
The Eridian is already at the door by the time he manages to stand up, and he doesn’t even get a goodbye out before Rocky’s closed the door. His blanket slides off the couch onto his feet but he just stands there, staring at the door.
What had just happened with Rocky?
⸻
His girlfriend, the one long ago, had broken up with him on a Sunday night. And come Monday morning, he’d dragged himself out of bed, the other side empty, and put on a clean shirt. Tied his tie. Laced his shoes and put on his helmet like normal. And even if it hadn’t felt normal, going through the motions was easy enough. He’d gotten to his classroom, set up the projector for the day’s lesson, and pasted on a smile as the first kid walked in.
The one perk about not being able to physically speak Eridian, is that the translator can’t pick up on his tone. He’s sure some of the more astute of his students can pick up on his marginally-less-than-perky demeanor, even if they can’t understand English directly, but he thinks he does an alright job hiding it.
When the last student is out of view at the end of the day, he lets his smile drop. He takes the long way back home, stopping to sit at the edge of the water until the promise of dinner lures him away. The quiet whir of Armando is the only thing that greets him when he enters.
He’d felt a sort of relief all those years ago, coming home to an empty apartment. He doesn’t feel anything of the sort now.
Dinner is a robotic affair, and once he’s finally finished his bowl, he runs a hot bath in the hope of soothing his aching… everything. The pain almost feels worse now, as if being shown the proof made it impossible to brush aside and power through. Sitting on the cold and unforgiving gravel hadn’t helped either, and he feels a twinge in his left hip as he steps into the tub.
The heat nearly burns, soaking through his skin and into his muscles as he leans back. As he offhandedly considers mentioning water therapy to Rocky as a way to reduce joint pressure, thinking about his friend reminds him of the morning’s events.
Was it something he’d said? In their many years on the Hail Mary, they’d annoyed each other, sure, but Rocky had never been like that. Usually, he just called Grace a stupid human and walked away for a few minutes. Or the one time they’d really fought, he’d stomped away, still clicking and chirping, and then looped back around the ship to tell Grace off once again.
Never had he been so… quiet. Grace had wondered, aboard the ship, if all Eridians were like Rocky. His students were similarly excitable, but that was to be expected of children. Adrian was also excitable, especially when Rocky brought up something they were interested in, but Rocky’s energy still outpaced theirs.
Was he really so upset that Grace’s joints were bad? It wasn’t like Rocky hadn’t helped design the exercise torture machine. He knew how bad Grace’s body had deteriorated. His body is… inferiorly human. Inevitably human.
His pondering, moping, musing, what-have-you is brought to an end when the water becomes too cold to bear. He quickly cleans up and puts on some pajamas, still favoring his left side, cursing the fact that he must’ve sat on his tailbone on the beach.
He’s in the middle of toweling off his hair, considering whether to cut it or let it keep growing, when there’s a knock at the door. He drops the towel on the floor, then immediately almost trips on it, but manages to make it out of the bathroom alive and in one piece.
“Adrian!” He greets with surprise.
“Hello, Grace.” Adrian skitters in and starts checking the readings on the atmosphere control panel hidden in the living room wall. There’s one on the outside of the dome, but Grace knows that they like to check this interior one too, just to make sure nothing is amiss.
“Have you talked to Rocky today?” Grace asks as he shuts the door and sits on the couch.
After finding seemingly satisfactory readings, Adrian joins him on the couch, tucking their legs under themself like a cat. “Yes. Rocky is upset and wouldn’t tell me why.”
With a sigh, Grace tells them about the morning’s events. “I don’t think he’s said less than four words to me since we first met.”
Adrian is a little bit harder for Grace to read, but he can tell they’re thinking.
“I will talk to Rocky,” they say eventually.
“Thanks, Adrian.”
⸻
Whatever Adrian said worked, because Grace gets an entire Eridian three seconds to himself once his alarm goes off before there is an impatient knocking at his door.
“Rocky watch videos. Maaaany videos. Look at diagrams of human invention. Copy and improve!”
Grace gets no greeting as his best friend runs in and sets his bag down next to the coffee table. Rocky pulls out his laptop and many small xenonite models. Having just rolled out of bed, Grace doesn’t have his glasses on, so he grabs them from his bedside before joining Rocky on the couch.
There’s an entire diorama of his dome enclosure awaiting him. He watches as Rocky pushes a few pieces into place. The most noticeable pieces are two gently waving paths across the beach. One trails off at the water’s edge, and the other, up higher on the beach, widens into a platform where his classroom is. Rocky places a little two-legged figure on the upper path. Grace.
“Rocky ask Adrian for help to design paths for Grace! Most important places first. Adrian can add later.” Rocky reaches into his bag and pulls out another model. This one is about half as tall as the Grace figurine, with little wheels. He places it on the path, and bends little Grace in half and puts him on it.
It’s articulated??? Flits through Grace’s mind, but he both knows he shouldn’t be surprised, and that he should be focused on what the model is sitting on, because—
“Is that a wheelchair?”
Rocky chirps with excitement. “Rocky make wheelchair for Grace!” He brings out another model and stands up mini-Grace to hold it. “Or cane! Humans use for body pain, yes, question?”
Grace nods silently, gently picking up his mini-self. It hadn’t occurred to him to simply design something here on Erid like the doctors would’ve given him on Earth. “How did you hear about these?” Grace asks. He may have mentioned crutches to Rocky once or twice, when talking about breaking a bone as a child, but he doesn’t remember mentioning a wheelchair.
“Grace not listen! Rocky say watch many videos. Find many things! Grace choose what Grace like and Rocky will make.” Rocky dumps a handful of models onto the table. Among them are traditional crutches, like Grace remembers having. Others, he’s not sure he’s seen before. He picks them up one-by-one, rolling them in his hand.
He still doesn’t quite know what to make of Rocky’s behavior. He’s glad that Adrian seemed to have talked to him, but…
All the options in front of him are, well, a lot. Rocky must have been busy working on them all night. He tries to picture himself with each of them, but really, he has no idea what would be best.
“You made all of these last night?”
“Yes yes yes!”
He’d say Rocky almost seems… overexcited, but that’s how he gets with a new project. Grace, too, in a way. Rocky’s fine. He’s fine.
He needs to know a lot more about wheelchairs and crutches.
He picks up a pair that look similar to normal crutches, but bend halfway up at a handle.
“What type are these?” He asks, holding them up.
Rocky flips open his laptop and shows him a page. Forearm crutches. Interesting. As he reads more, Rocky hops up on the couch for a more comfortable angle and pulls up all his references to share.
Grace has always been a scientist, and most importantly, curious. It only takes a few minutes before he gets dragged down the rabbit hole of charts and guides, same as Rocky had, and before long the two of them are gesturing and pointing and drawing diagrams together.
Eventually, Grace gets his laptop out and puts it side-by-side, a video on Rocky’s and a design patent on his own. They drag chairs around, and anything round, to use as references. It reminds him, fondly, of their time on the Hail Mary. It’d been stressful, most certainly, but he’d missed the feeling of working side by side. He’d been out of commission for so long on Erid, and there weren’t any projects he and Rocky could work on just the two of them recently. It’s nice.
Adrian stops by for a while, and Rocky and Grace rope them into the discussion. Grace can see how they resist the chaos at first, but before long there are three impassioned voices instead of two, all talking over each other as they float different ideas on how to approach the designs.
Adrian has other matters to attend to, so after a while it’s back to just the two of them. They plug on a bit longer, but the light outside has dimmed for the night, and Grace can’t stifle a yawn. He flops back onto the couch, pushing his glasses haphazardly into his hair as he rubs his eyes. “Ughhhhh,” he says eloquently.
Rocky makes a similar sighing sound and lets his carapace thump against the floor. Who knew recreating something with so many diagrams and videos would still be so challenging?
“Let’s break for now, yeah? Hit the hay, come back to it tomorrow.”
Rocky clicks in agreement and gathers his models.
Grace sits up and shuffles through his sketches and chicken scratch math. “At least we have a good idea for the cane and crutches, right?”
“I will get started on them right away!”
⸻
Designing the wheelchair takes them a little longer, but in the meantime, Rocky finishes making the forearm crutches and a cane. They’re shiny and, while clearly modeled after their Earth counterparts, distinctly Eridian. Grace loves the style. He likens it to Art Deco with extra glass, and once, the two of them, plus Adrian, had spent the night looking through architecture archives. Adrian had taken a particular interest in Post Modern, and Grace is pretty sure the roof of his house was inspired by it.
He takes the cane for a spin first on a short walk around the house. Its handle glitters in the sunlight, a soft white like opal. The rest of it is traditional Eridian dark silver, a single sleek pole down to…
Oh.
They’d discussed the benefits of a single-point tip or a multi-point tip and watched way, way too many videos showing the differences between the two. And after intense debate (Rocky argued for single, Grace for multi. Then they switched, and then Adrian asked why they were fighting, so Grace and Rocky decided to present the case and let them decide), they’d settled on a multi-point.
At the end, it splits into five points. And of course it would be five.
He brushes a tear away before it can fall and sets it down, testing the height. He’s never doubted, of course, but it is once again abundantly clear why Rocky was chosen for the Astrophage mission. His engineering skills are impeccable. The cane is the perfect height, and as he gives it a little swing, the perfect weight too. Not heavy, but just heavy enough that he can leverage it in the direction he wants to go.
It takes him a lap around to get into the rhythm, but once he does, it feels great. Rocky does his little jazz hands when Grace makes it back again, and then presents the forearm crutches to try out. They’re a matching style to the cane, completed with opal handles.
While it takes him a bit longer to get the hang of it, he finds that he quite likes them. He can already tell that these ones will be better for the walk home from class. Even on Erid, he hardly sits while teaching, too busy moving between boards or pacing as he monologues to pull the stool out from under the table to rest. He likes to think it’s more engaging for the pebbles, too, but after a full day, his joints pay the price. More support will be nice, so he can get home and take his time instead of immediately lying down to give his body a rest.
“Grace like, question?”
Grace switches the crutches to one hand so he can lean over to give Rocky a hug. “They’re perfect, Rock. You’re amazing.”
“Amaze amaze amaze!”
Grace laughs. “Amaze amaze amaze.”
Rocky does a little spin and then takes a few steps toward the door. “Grace Rocky go walk, question?”
Grace fits his arms back into the crutches and follows Rocky out. They go slowly, Rocky right in front of him as he descends the many steps onto the path proper in case he loses his balance. He almost whiffs it on the very last step, the coordination between crutch and leg and leg and crutch momentarily getting all mixed up, but between Rocky’s hand shooting up to catch him and his quick-step stumble forward, he saves it.
“Maybe I should just take the stairs normally for now,” he says once his heart rate is no longer jumping in his throat. Majority of the stairs cleared or not, he doesn’t want the same thing to happen ten steps up the next time.
Rocky whistles in agreement. “Grace can practice when Rocky here to help. Or wait for ramp!”
Adrian and their crew were still designing the ramp up to his door, but they’d promised it would be ready when Rocky was ready with the chair. Grace was excited. The stairs weren’t terrible, but some days they had started to feel a little steep.
The paths, though, are finished, and Grace has been taking them to school every day. He’d had a few reservations about them, not wanting to detract from the natural-ness of the beach, but he shouldn’t have worried. Adrian has surpassed expectations. The paths are wide and smooth, their color just different enough that they’re easy to see, even in the dim light of night, but close enough to the rock and sand that they blend well with the landscape. They aren’t like concrete, a square slab set into its surrounding area with no regard for how it fits in with the natural shifts of the ground around it. Instead, they gently curve with the hills, like a river following valleys. Their edges are textured, gently sloping in some places, dropping off in others, like the paths are naturally-worn ledges. They are, in their subtlety, stunning.
Rocky leads them along the upper path, as if they were heading to the classroom. They don’t talk, but Grace can see Rocky tap-tapping every so often, checking to make sure he’s alright. It gets easier the farther along they go, the motions becoming easier even if he’s still slow about it.
They’re about halfway across the beach when Grace realizes that he doesn’t need to look down so much as he walks. He’s surprised he hadn’t even noticed it up until now, that these past weeks he’s been carefully watching the placement of his feet with each step he takes. The pain was obvious, but the instability he’d adapted to without even thinking about it.
“This is far enough,” Grace says.
He steps off the path and onto the sand, letting out a short whistle akin to an Eridian head tilt. Rocky follows him down to the water and rolls right into the waves. Grace laughs and, once he’s set his shoes, socks, and crutches aside, wades in after. It had taken Adrian and the team a few tries to get the temperature right, but it is perfect now. Just cool enough to be refreshing under the light, and warm enough that he’s not running for the hills at an accidental splash.
As the light begins to dim and warm in color, they settle on the sand. Grace balls up his jacket to use as a pillow, and Rocky nestles right at his side. It’s warm and right.
“What Grace think about, question?”
Grace hums. “That we should do this more often.”
“We do all the time.”
“Not always at sunset. It’s nicer.”
“Is no different from other times.”
Grace huffs. “It’s like…” he whistles a two-tone call, high then low, twice. “When the petrales call before a storm.”
Rocky hums. Eridians generally consider the petrales call to be a pleasing sound. It reminds Grace of the birds he would hear on his ride to school.
Grace watches the shimmer of the dome for a moment. “What are you thinking about?”
Rocky turns his “front” face to Grace. “Rocky is sorry.”
Grace sits up. “For what?”
“Rocky did not notice Grace injuries. If find sooner, help sooner.” Rocky bumps lightly into Grace’s chest. “Grace not be in pain so long.”
And finally, Grace realizes why Rocky had run out that day. “Rock, no.” He throws an arm around him. “Not your fault.”
“Yes. Grace sick. Rocky take care.”
Grace taps the arm closest to his hand. “Hey. I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you.”
It was Rocky who had helped him design edible Taumoeba. Rocky who had demanded the best Eridian scientists to design real food, and the biodome, and everything else Grace needed. Rocky who had stayed by his side when he became too weak to leave his bed. Rocky, who had been there for every step, every wobble, arms outstretched to catch Grace if he fell.
“Grace save Erid. Grace save Rocky. Rocky owe Grace.”
For a choice that Grace had made himself? That he wanted to make? He has a home. A class of children he loves. He’s sitting on a beach with one of the most important beings in his life. He has all of this because of Rocky.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he says firmly. He presses his face against Rocky’s top and lines up his heart with the nearest arm, so that Rocky can hear his heartbeat and know he’s being honest. And then, just to make sure it gets through his friend’s thick carapace, he does his best, in his clumsy, human Eridian, to say,
“I love you.”
He laughs as Rocky erupts in whistles and tackles him back onto the sand.
⸻
The next week, Rocky shows up at his door with a package.
“Do I need to sign?”
Rocky barges in, per usual, dragging the wheelchair behind him and then pushing it over by the couch. “Grace make Earth reference, question?”
Grace shuts the door. “The mail. When people have a big item delivered to their house, sometimes they have to sign a piece of paper to prove they received it.”
Rocky hums and fiddles with the chair briefly, then stands to the side and sweeps an arm out in a “ta-da!” motion. Grace steps closer, ghosting a hand over it as he makes a circle. Rocky chose a different color than the crutches, a golden-brown like the Blip-A, and it’s beautifully warm in the light coming in from the windows. A sturdy fabric covers the seat, but the padding it’s stuffed with gives comfortably under his fingers. The overall shape looks much like its Earth counterpart, with two big wheels on the side and two smaller ones in front to stabilize. There are five main spokes on the big wheels, and then, thinner, smaller, decorative ones fanning out from the center. The design looks like a sun, again reminding him of Art Deco. The front wheels are simpler, but no less beautiful, and as he experimentally rolls the chair back and forth, he watches the spokes glint in the light.
“A fifth wheel,” Grace notes, rounding to the back.
“Five points contact is superior!” Rocky sings.
Grace hums a note of agreement. It will certainly give him some peace of mind going up inclines, that he won’t tip too far back.
Once he’s rounded back to the front, Grace carefully takes a seat. It’s perfectly shaped to him, wheels at just the right height, backrest providing support right where he needs it. Admittedly, he doesn’t have much experience (see: any) with wheelchairs before this, but he can feel how good the design is. Rocky does his research well.
He gives the wheels a good push and can’t help a laugh as he rolls across the room. Rocky chirps and whistles, dancing in place when Grace comes rolling back to him.
“Grace try out Adrian ramp!”
“Yeah!” Grace rolls over to the door and pauses. “Rocky, how did those people do this in the videos?”
Rocky squeaks and tries to give him pointers, but after a minute of re-angling, and scooting back and forth, Grace just gets up, opens the door like usual, and then sits back down. Baby steps. Or, baby rolls. He’d rather focus on just getting around than opening doors right now.
Adrian outdid themself with the ramp. It slopes gently, winding its way down the rockface and connecting with the path in the sand. It matches the paths in color and form, effortlessly blending into the hill. Grace rolls up to the edge of the slope and is about to roll when—
“Wait!” Grace white-knuckles the wheels. “Where are the brakes?” Visions of flying down the hill like a speed racer and Rocky running behind, while unlikely given the grade, flash unbidden in his head.
“Grace cannot use brakes! Brakes only to stay still.”
Right. Riiiight.
Grace rolls back toward the front door. “Nope.”
Ignoring Rocky’s clicks of disapproval, he heads into the house. He can do a few laps inside and call it a day. Come back tomorrow with a new attitude.
Rocky watches him circle once. “Adrian is good at job! Grace will be safe.”
“Adrian did great. I just need more practice!” Grace circles again, letting himself pick up speed.
“Why is Grace afraid, question?”
“I don’t want to go flying down the hill!” Grace throws his hands out to his sides.
“Is too steep?”
Grace sighs. “No, but what if I can’t stop myself?”
“If Grace does not try, will not know!” Rocky bobs side to side.
“I’m not teaching you any more Earth phrases if you’re just going to use them against me!”
Rocky whistles with laughter and hooks an arm around Grace’s leg, giving it a tug toward the door as he declares, “Grace can learn.”
And that’s how they end up on the lowest landing, laptop in Grace’s hand, watching a video tutorial on how to go down hills. After practicing on the landing and watching the video three times (Rocky won’t let him watch a fourth), Grace finally works up the courage to try the decline.
He lines up his wheels right before the path starts to slope and inhales.
“Okay, Rock, here I go.”
He puts his hands on the wheels. Rolls back, then forward to the same place.
“Grace not going.”
“I am! I am!” Grace throws his hands up with a huff before regripping the wheels with intention. He can do this. This section is no more than 20 feet.
He inches forward, just until he can feel gravity start to take the wheels, and down he goes.
It’s anticlimactic, really, almost comically so at the pace he ends up going. But he still lets out a whoop when he makes it to the bottom and does a little dance as Rocky walks down.
“Grace do again.”
“I just did!”
“Again!”
Grace does what Rocky demands, and so up he goes. The second time, he lets himself go just fast enough for the wind to catch his bangs and flip them up. It’s fun, when he’s not terrified of face planting.
Rocky dances circles around him when he makes it down, and Grace laughs as he attempts a spin of his own.
“Fist my bump!”
Grace knows Rocky only says it that way to annoy him. He does it nonetheless.
⸻
As excited as he was for it, Grace avoids his wheelchair for the better part of the week.
“Ah…” he scratches his neck, “no, Rock, it’s fine.”
“Problem! Rocky need to fix!” The Eridian jumps around, two arms in the air in distress.
Grace holds out a hand. “No, no, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Rocky is still, pondering, then, “Grace is afraid, question?”
“No.”
Rocky makes a whistling sound he’s unfamiliar with. “Stupid humans. Too much pride.”
It isn’t pride that’s holding him back, though.
Grace isn’t a stranger to grief. Waking up lightyears away from home is a special kind of hell, a grief so strong that the entire bag of vodka Ilyukhina had stashed away wasn’t enough to even take the edge off. Leaving Rocky, when he hadn’t thought they’d ever see each other again, was another. How could you mourn someone who wasn’t even dead? Who was, in fact, on his way back to living, not just surviving?
This grief is one he’s experienced before, but tenfold. A kind that nearly everybody experiences, a hundred small griefs over decades. A former college partier waking up with a headache after a relatively tame night out. A high school football champ with a bad knee years down the line. A parent with a bad back, no longer able to pick up their kids.
The grief of getting older, of losing the nimbleness and resilience of a child. Expedited because he was tackled to the grass and shipped off to the stars. He’s mostly made his peace with Stratt’s choice, but sometimes the gravity of it hits all at once and takes his breath away, like when he realizes just how much pain he’s gotten used to.
Rocky, for once, declines to comment on the tears now making their way down his cheeks, instead gently bumping his side as he sinks down to the floor. Grace leans into his xenonite suit, taking comfort in the warmth that radiates off of it as he hiccups.
“It makes it… real,” he eventually manages with a half-hearted wave at the wheelchair.
“Is not real already, question?”
Grace laughs wetly. “It is.”
“Acknowledging not bad,” Rocky insists. “If acknowledge, can fix!” He moves so he’s in front of Grace. “Grace tell Rocky about pain. Rocky build tools. Tools stop pain! Cannot be bad.”
He makes it sound so simple. And yet… his cane, his crutches, his wheelchair, they do help. They make it so that he’s not losing more. And maybe if he’d been using his wheelchair this week, he’d have been able to go an extra five minutes on a walk, or get out of bed without stopping halfway in pain.
He’s gotten used to the grief and the pain. Accepted them as fact, but what if they aren’t just that?
Grace lays a hand on Rocky’s carapace with a wobbly smile.
“Grace know Rocky is riiight!”
“You got me,” Grace admits. He wipes his eyes with his shirt sleeve and drums his fingers, eliciting a happy whistle from Rocky. He can’t resist pulling him into a hug, uncaring as corners of his xenonite suit dig into his arms as he squeezes as tightly as he can.
“Grace try again, question?” Rocky asks after a moment.
Grace nods. With a deep breath, he pushes himself to stand and walks over to the corner where his wheelchair is parked.
It really is a beauty. On the Hail Mary, Rocky’s inventions had always been functional first and foremost, and they were pretty as such in their own right. But now that he’s back on Erid, the threat of imminent demise no longer forcing him to prioritize just making the thing work, his artistic side is getting its moment to shine. Adrian may be the architect, and Grace can see here and there where their expertise was taken into account, but the design overall is distinctly Rocky.
Grace settles into the seat and unlocks the brakes. He rolls back over to Rocky. “Up for a walk?”
Rocky sings with joy and bounds over to the door. Once Grace is through, he closes it gently and dances over to his side, and then they slowly make their way down the ramp.
They decide to take the lower path down to the beach. Grace carefully rolls along, not missing how Rocky adapts to his pace. They stop just before the waterline, and Grace lets the sound of the waves wash over him.
Back on the Hail Mary, he’d thought he’d never hear the crash of seawater in person again. Had mourned the sun on his face. His classroom, and the planets he’d stayed after school let out to hang up. Even his shitty bike, for as much as it was a necessity, he had loved seeing the flowers on the way to work, and the quiet solidarity of the people he passed every day, each of them going about their routine, same as he was.
But now, carefully engineered saltwater laps at his feet. A skydome casts gentle, sunset oranges upon his skin. Tomorrow he will wake up, and cross the way to teach 40-odd students who delight in his lessons. And instead of a bike, well, now he has a chair. One that lets him keep going to class, and going on long walks with his best friend.
So many of the things he thought were gone forever he had found. Losses that weren’t permanent, but an evolution, an adaptation that was surely different, but no lesser.
Grace reaches out a hand, laying it atop Rocky’s body. “Thank you.”
“Grace no need thank Rocky. Is what friend do.”
He smiles out at the water.