Chapter Text
You keep me warm when I'm freezing cold
My calloused heart didn't feel so bitter
I felt it change as I held you close
To Rocky, the universe is a tapestry of sound. Mary hums, engines buzzing deep and steady. Inside Rocky's xenonite tubes, filled with ammonia, his workshop is cosy. Across the transparent wall, the human air-space is much thinner and cooler, vibrating in a completely different rhythm.
Then, the symphony shatters. Rocky didn't hear it coming.
Bang!
There was no whistle of air, no warning hum from the ship's hull; just Mary slamming sideways.
Inside his workshop, Rocky is thrown violently against the glass wall. His five claws scramble for purchase on the floor as his tools become flying hazards, crashing loudly and clattering across the area. On the other side of the xenonite tubing, the human air-space is a mess. Storage lockers have popped open. Test tubes and vials have spilled out from their shelves, dropping to the floor. A heavy container rests on its side against the wall. A long scratch mark on the floor stretched from where it tore free from its bolts.
The turbulence stops as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the ship humming once more as gravity returns. Rocky scurries through his workshop towards his side of the lab and knocks on the glass wall.
“Grace, question?” Rocky whines, sending anxious notes into the translator.
Grace is tangled in his rope harness by the desk, his body hanging awkwardly before he manages to stand. He shakes his head and rubs his shoulder where the harness dug into him, but his movements are agile and normal. “I'm okay, Rocky! Just a little rattled,” Grace calls out. He looks down at the mess. “What the heck was that? Did an engine misfire? It felt like we hit a wall!”
Before Rocky can reply, Mary’s clear chime echoes through the lab. “Anomalous object detected. Impact confirmed: Meteoroid debris striking primary forward deflector. Hull integrity is: one hundred percent. No structural or system damage detected. Navigation has been recalculated and trajectory has been readjusted.”
Grace lets out a long sigh of relief, dropping his hands to his sides. “Well, there it is. Space junk. Thanks, Mary.” He starts picking up stray rolls of tape, packing them back into a nearby locker. “Looks like we got lucky, Rock. Just a bunch of messy, clattered equipment.”
“Good. Very good,” Rocky chirps, playing a cheerful note to settle his own nerves. “Mary is strong.”
Neither of them look behind the dented metal panel under the desk; they have no reason to. They do not see the thermostat, crushed by the heavy container that had smashed into the base, snapping internal wires completely. Quietly, invisibly, automated valves in the walls react to false data, detecting a spike of heat and start to release warmth directly out into the freezing void of space.
A comfortable silence settles over the Hail Mary. Under the constant and stable pull of acceleration, everything has its place. Grace sets himself up at his lab station, recalibrating digital sensors for his microscope which was knocked completely out of alignment by the impact. It is slow, brain-soothing work. His right hand delicately adjusts the micrometre dials, his left aligning laser optics. It is tedious work that requires absolute precision.
Rocky is equally as absorbed. He sits cross-legged on the floor of his workshop, working on a joint for a spare air-filtration valve. His claws click rhythmically against the dense metal as he polishes a tiny gear. For a long time, the only sounds are the scratching of Grace’s pencil against his logbook, the occasional tinking of glass, and the whirring of Rocky's mechanical work.
An hour passes. Then two. Then three.
Rocky pauses. He aims a targeted sonar pulse through the glass. Grace is sitting at his desk, but his acoustic profile has subtly changed. A tiny, high-frequency tremor is rippling through the human's body. It is a rhythmic, rapid vibration.
"Grace?" Rocky asked, his chirping low and curious. "Why shaking, question? Grace vibrating very fast."
Grace looks down at his hands. "Honestly, Rocky? I think the vents are acting up. It's getting kind of chilly here. Must be a draft from the cleanup."
"Your heart is beating faster than before, also," Rocky notes, his chords fluttering with a tiny shred of anxiety. He crawls closer to the window. "You shake more now."
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Just gotta focus," Grace mutters. He reaches for a tiny plastic calibration weight sitting on the desk, but his fingers slip off the smooth edge. He tries again, his hand moving with a strange, heavy hesitation. When he finally lifts the weight, his hand gives a sudden, involuntary jerk. The tiny metal piece falls through his fingers and drops with a sharp clink onto the desktop, rolling off the edge and hitting the floor.
Grace watches it settle for a long moment before reacting. He bends down to pick it up, his hand swatting at it clumsily and missing entirely before he finally scoops it up. “My depth perception must be shot. I feel... sluggish.”
“You now drop things," Rocky states, his voice rising. "You do not usually drop things.”
Grace grabs a glass pipette to place it into the slot. He is aiming for the small opening, but his hand shakes. The glass clicks against the metal casing once, twice, and then, snap. The fragile tube shatters in his grip, the broken pieces clicking sharply against the metal desk.
Grace doesn't jump. He doesn't swear. He just stares down at the shards resting near his palm, his expression blank and vacant. “Huh. That broke. Why did that break?”
“Grace,” Rocky taps a claw urgently against the glass. “Look at air-heat screen. Look now!”
Grace blinks, turning his head with agonising delay, not unlike a machine running low on power. He walks back to the main console. His steps are loose, heavy, and uncoordinated. His shoe kicks hard against the leg of the desk, yet he doesn't seem to notice the impact. He raises his hand to type, but his fingers only hover over the keyboard.
“What was I... what was I looking for again?” Grace asks, his brow furrowing deeply. He keeps staring at the glowing monitor, his head tilting. “The screen... the buttons are blurry.”
“The warmth screen, Grace!” Rocky plays a sharp, frantic harmony, making his way into his xenonite ball. “Type buttons!”
Grace fumbles with the keyboard. He hits three wrong buttons, clearing the screen twice before he manages to bring up the life support page. He squints at the numbers. “It says... forty... five. Forty-five degrees... Celsius. That's... that's a big number. But my hands... look at my hands, Rocky.”
He holds his hands up to the window. The skin is pale, a ghostly greyish colour, and his fingers are curling inward like stiff claws. As he holds them there, a sudden and violent shudder rips through his entire body. His shoulders hunch and his jaw locks up, his teeth slamming together in a rapid, involuntary rattle.
“I’m... I'm really... c-cold," Grace stammers, the words clipping harshly as his teeth chatter. “The screen is... it's a lie. The sensor must have... it might’ve… broken. It broke.”
Mary’s chime cuts through the freezing air. “Warning. Cabin temperature indicates extreme heat. Automated cooling systems operating at maximum efficiency.”
Rocky’s top sensor organs whip around. He directs a narrow, high-frequency sonar burst across the cabin, mapping the perimeter of the lab. His acoustic pulses pierce through the loose clutter on the floor, bouncing off the metal paneling beneath the desk. The echo returns a mangled shape. The plate protecting the lower wiring caves inward, crushed against the structural frame of the ship. Hidden directly behind that dent, the delicate ceramic body of the cabin's primary thermometer is shattered, its wires sheared in half.
"Grace! The heat detector box under your table is dead!" Rocky blasts in panic. "Heavy container damage it! Thinking machine think air is hot! Tell the ship to stop! Tell Mary to turn heat up, question!"
Grace blinks dully at the ceiling, his jaw shivering so hard he can barely shape the words. "M-Mary... voice command. Override... override cabin cooling. Increase... i-increase temperature to... twenty-five degrees Cels-sius."
A loud, cheerful chime cuts through the freezing air. "Incorrect command. Manual thermal overrides are locked out during emergency cooling operations. Current cabin sensor telemetry indicates localised thermal runaway at forty-five point two degrees Celsius. Automated life support must maintain maximum radiator output to prevent structural and biological heat damage."
"M-Mary... please," Grace rasps, his hands on the console supporting his weight. His voice is thick, the consonants blurring together into an illegible slurry as his tongue grows heavy. "Not... not fire. Cold. 'S freezing in here..."
"Life support status is online," Mary replies smoothly. "Warning. Your biomedical metrics indicate weakness and disorientation. Please remain stationary while cooling cycles resolve the heat surge."
“The system is killing Grace!” Rocky roars through the speaker, his carapace tightening in absolute horror. Running closer, his whistle is shrill, “It thinks air is hot! Move away from screen!”
Grace doesn't argue. He doesn't have the energy to try. He lets go of the console, his legs buckling slightly under the pull of gravity. He slides down the side of the wall until his legs flatten on the floor plates right next to Rocky. He curls up heavily, his knees pulled up to his chest to trap the remaining heat he has left, letting his side press flush against the curved outer surface of Rocky’s ball.
“Wow,” Grace says quietly, his eyes half-closed. His head lolls to the side against a panel. "You're... you're so warm, Rocky. Like a giant radiator. It's so nice…”
Rocky presses one of his legs against the inside of the glass, exactly where Grace’s trembling body is touching the other side. Through the thick material, the message is clear.
His human is freezing to death, and he is running out of time.
“Grace stay right here,” Rocky says, his voice dropping to a soft, hesitant register, pleading for the human's dulled attention. “Need press your body against Rocky ball soon. Eridian atmosphere very hot for humans. Heat travel through glass into your body. Do not move. Rocky afraid if you move.”
“Yeah... don't worry, I'm not moving... anywhere,” Grace breathes out. His body is slouched heavily, his voice only vibrating faintly. His breathing is fast yet shallow. He shifts his weight, trying to wedge his shoulder tightly against the wall. “'S funny, you know? Xenonite. It’s the greatest s-stuff ever made. If it wasn't for this glass... I’d be crispy, and you’d be a frozen burning popsicle. It keeps all your crazy heat packed inside your little ball, and keeps my cold air out...”
Grace takes a shuddering breath. His teeth begin to slam together in another violent spasm; a sharp rattling that fills Rocky with dread.
“But man…” Grace continues, his voice dropping to a slurred mumble. "The ship has to work so hard now. Extra extra hard. It's looking at the broken thermometer, thinking, ‘Oh no, Grace is gonna get too hot, better turn on the… space air conditioner!’ It's trying so hard to kill me with kindness. It's... it's a joke. A bad joke.”
“Grace not make jokes. Rocky not understand jokes. Only want Grace alive," Rocky rumbles. As he scans through the lab, he finds it again: the crushed thermostat. He needs to make a fix now. While it might have been a little faster, he doesn't work inside his tube. He can't bring himself to leave Grace. If he left, he couldn't keep track of the tiny beats in Grace’s chest that meant life.
Instead, Rocky drags his tool sack, metal instruments clinking as he hauls them right up to where Grace sags sitting on the floor. He sits down heavily, curling his lower limbs beneath his core, positioning himself directly across from Grace. The two are separated only by a layer of glass, yet also by a significant difference in temperature.
“Rocky right here,” he trills. "Rocky make new heat detector box now, next to Grace.”
As Grace slowly leans back on Rocky, Mary's voice cuts through once more. “Warning. Biomedical monitoring indicates that you are experiencing elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, and a dangerous drop in core body temperature. Diagnostic: Mild hypothermia. Recommendation: Increase ambient cabin temperature.”
“But you won't let us!” Grace yells at the ceiling, though his voice lacks any real force and his head remains heavy against Rocky’s ball. He presses his palm flat against the wall, his fingers white and stiff. “You locked the thermostat, remember? You think it's a volcano in here...”
"Grace?" Rocky calls out, his claws twisting two strands of wire together, his musical notes wavering. “What is word, question? Mary diagnostic? Please explain, Rocky fix.”
“It means... it means my water is trying to turn to stone, Rocky," Grace rambles. His head slips down against the glass, leaving a faint smudge of fog from his breath on the panel. “First, you get the shivers. That's... that's the body trying to make heat. Then you get the 'umbles'. Fumbles, stumbles, mumbles… Your brain... your brain goes to sleep. You get confused. You forget how to... how to do things. Like… use a screwdriver. Or remember names. Armando said... he said if you get too cold, you just... you just feel sleepy. Nice, warm, comfortable sleep…”
“No sleep, no sleep!” Rocky's voice rises in a frantic, panicked chord, tangling into a distressed whine. He raps his claw gently but firmly against the glass, right next to Grace’s ear, the sound soft but insistent. “Grace stay awake. Rocky very worried. If you sleep, your heart will stop. Please talk to me? Keep making words. Look at my hands, see, question? I am working very fast for you.”
“Mmm... okay. Words. What words… do you want?” Grace’s eyes drift towards Rocky’s claws, which are a blur of motion to him. “The glass is... cool. No, wait, the glass is hot. I mean, you're cool, Rocky. You're a good... you're a good rock.”
To trick Mary’s system, Rocky decides to build a manual override. He takes a pair of pneumatic shears and slices the main wire coming from Grace's crushed desk, completely severing the broken sensor's connection. He then grabs a Eridian dial switch from his tool sack. The switch is a heavy ceramic block equipped with an internal resistor coil. By stripping the plastic coating off the severed Earth wires and twisting them onto the dial's copper leads, Rocky can alter the electrical current running back to the bridge.
“Grace?” Rocky calls out, his voice small with concern as he twists the dial switch into the wires. “You are quiet. Please speak to me? Why silent, question?”
Despite having helped Grace move closer to the broken thermostat, all Rocky receives in reply is a long, terrifying pause. The only sound from the cabin is the quick, shallow puffing of Grace’s breathing and the erratic, fast chattering of his teeth.
Finally, he hears a weak response. “Just... thinking," Grace processes those words slowly, his voice a feather-light whisper. “Thinking about... how smart you are. You're a wizard, Rocky. A space spider wizard. You're gonna save the day. You.. always do.”
“I am not a wizard. I am just a mechanic, and I am very scared," Rocky replies through the speaker, his claws moving faster. He doesn't move away to use a proper tool to seal the wires; he won't leave Grace's side. Grace, who is now completely silent and still. Instead, keeping his lower body pressed firmly against the window where Grace is leaning, Rocky holds the newly spliced wire bundle tightly against his own hot shell. The sheer radiating heat of his body seals the protective glue into a hardened seal.
He has created a physical bypass. By cutting the wire coming from the crushed thermostat and splicing in his own dial switch, he can feed the ship's computer a fake signal, one that reads as absolute, freezing zero. The system will then automatically open the heat valves to maximum capacity, ignoring its own safety locks. And so, he grabs the manual dial and gently, hesitantly twists it all the way, cutting the resistance.
Deep within the walls of the Hail Mary, a heavy metal valve clicks.
It is a clear sound that travels through the steel of the ship like a bell. The system has received the new forced signal. The main heating lines slam open. Heated fluid begins to rush back into the cabin’s wall panels.
Rocky does not move. He remains exactly where he is, leaning his entire broadside flat against the glass. He spreads his five legs as wide as they can go to cover as much surface as possible. He pumps every bit of his own body heat into the clear barrier, turning himself into a living radiator against the residual chill, mere centimetres away from Grace's face.
Beneath Grace's feet, heat is already rising from the floor plates. The metal pipes along the base of the walls begin to creak and groan as they rapidly warm up with the rush of hot fluid. The stagnant air in the human cabin begins to move, warming up quickly.
"Grace?" Rocky’s voice is a gentle, worried coo against the glass. "Heat is back. Mary listen to me now. Air is growing warm. Speak to me, question?”
For a long, agonising moment, the only response is the sound of warming pipes. Then, Grace lets out a long, ragged groan. He stirs, his head lifting weakly from where it has been resting against the glass. The violent shivering returns, a sign that his body is waking back up, fighting its way out of the numbness.
“Rocky...?” Grace whispers. He blinks slowly, his eyes adjusting as his brain wakes up. His gaze focuses on the dark shape of his friend pressed flat against the glass right in front of him. "Did... d-did you do it?”
"Heat is open wide," Rocky confirms with relief, a series of light tentative clicks bouncing through the speaker. “Air will be normal soon. Grace will not turn to stone.”
Grace lets out a weak, shaky laugh, reaching up with his still trembling hand. He presses his palm against the outside of the glass, right where Rocky’s carapace is pushed against the inside.
"You're an… absolute genius, you know that?" Grace mumbles, his words finally beginning to gain clarity as he warms up. "A genuine hero. I’m writing a song about you when I get my fingers back.”
"Song not necessary," Rocky sings in relief. He carefully tucks his temporary switch into the wall pocket, refusing to move even a roll away from his friend. "But Grace, promise one thing?"
"Anything, buddy. Name it."
"If Mary tell you it is hot again," Rocky clicks softly, his voice full of earnest care, "please not believe the machine. Believe your own body. And please, do not go to sleep. Makes me too scared."
Grace smiles, leaning his head back against the warm glass, wrapped in the life-saving warmth of Rocky. "Deal, Rocky. No more sleeping on the job."