Work Text:
Grace was asleep.
He lay against the xenonite barrier in a nest of sheets and blankets that he’d dragged from his bed onto the floor. He hadn’t explained himself as he’d done so, but Rocky was glad for it. The distance between Grace’s bed and Rocky’s usual perch felt too far a distance between them right now. Even this, with just a thin layer of xenonite keeping them apart, was too much. Rocky wanted to crawl into Grace’s atmosphere and wrap his arms around him, to hold him close to his carapace and never let go.
He watched Grace sleep.
Grace — all humans, because Grace had insisted that he wasn’t an outlier for this — spent so much of their time asleep. A third of their life. How any of them managed to get anything done, Rocky didn’t know. Usually Rocky would continue to work while Grace slept, to make good use of the time while keeping watch. Eridians were skilled multitaskers, and Grace’s body was always in some sort of motion even while asleep, so Rocky did not need to focus all of his attention onto Grace in order to watch him.
This was Grace’s first sleep since he’d shown up at the airlock of Rocky’s dead ship with nothing but a wrench and a desperate hope that he wasn’t too late. Rocky couldn’t bring himself to let his attention waver for even a moment.
Grace was here.
He was here, and he was alive, and he’d saved Rocky again.
He’d given up his chance to go home.
He’d maybe even given up his life, if Rocky’s idea about eating Taumoeba didn’t work. It wasn’t typical for Rocky to doubt his own ideas, but he wasn’t always right. If he was then they wouldn’t be here right now because nothing would’ve gone wrong. Grace would be going home.
Grace was supposed to go home.
Rocky had assumed that his xenonite would be able to contain the nitrogen-resistant Taumoeba. They’d both assumed it, but it was Rocky’s engineering and it was Rocky’s material so he was the one responsible for it, and he’d nearly killed them both. He’d nearly doomed both their home worlds. He’d nearly extinguished both their stars.
Grace had nearly died. It would’ve been Rocky’s fault.
In return, Rocky was getting everything he’d ever wanted.
Eridians weren’t built to be alone, and Rocky had been more alone than any other intelligent life form in the universe. He’d spent years, decades in human terms, orbiting Tau Ceti with only corpses for company. The only voice he’d heard was his own. The only communications that had vibrated through the ship had been his own. He’d tried to delude himself into thinking that the star could watch him sleep, but he’d been too keenly aware that it was bullshit to be able to derive any comfort from it.
Then he’d met Grace. A creature from a distant star who breathed oxygen and sensed light, who hadn’t even been alive for as long as Rocky had been alone but who was so smart and so kind and so eager to join forces. A being who didn’t let their incompatible atmospheres or vocal chords stop him from working out how they could talk and talk and talk.
Grace’s body was louder than any Eridian’s. Eridians had a hard exterior that was difficult to sense through, but Grace’s exterior layer was soft. Easy for sound to penetrate. Easy for anything to penetrate, which Grace never showed the slightest bit of concern about because the ease at which he could be harmed was so fucking normal to him.
Grace chased the silence away. Even if they had failed to find what was stopping the Astrophage from consuming Tau Ceti like it was consuming Eridani and Sol, Rocky would’ve been grateful to Grace for the rest of their lives just for that.
He hadn’t wanted to say goodbye.
Saying goodbye to Adrian had been horrible, but Rocky would relive that day over and over again if it meant not letting Grace slip away. It hadn’t even been a goodbye with Adrian, not really. Not permanently. It had been a see you later, because Rocky would see them later, because Rocky was coming home once the Tau Ceti mission was complete. Neither of them had known any of what was to come during that initial goodbye. They hadn’t known how long it would be, or how close Rocky would come to death. They’d only known that they would be apart for a time and then they would be together again. Ultimately that was still true. Rocky was coming home to Adrian.
Whether Adrian would be receptive to Rocky’s return, or to the person who Rocky had become, was another matter. Rocky wouldn’t achieve anything by dwelling on it.
Saying goodbye to Grace had been so much worse.
Earth’s atmosphere was thinner than Erid’s, and its surface temperature was much cooler. What was urgent for Erid was an emergency for Earth. Grace and his deceased crew had been sent to Tau Ceti without the means to return because humanity hadn’t had the time to spare for a kinder alternative.
Grace had thought he was going to die in space.
Rocky wouldn’t have let that happen. Stupid, wonderful, brave Grace had accepted it was inevitable, but it wasn’t. Rocky would’ve taken Grace to Erid, made a home for him there. Grace would never have asked for it but he wouldn’t have needed to. Rocky wouldn’t have left Grace alone to die.
Rocky could’ve pretended not to have the extra fuel. He could’ve let Grace send off his beetles before offering to take him to Erid with him, and Grace would never have needed to know there’d been any other option. Humans had spent an eternity telling themselves stories of how their first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life would involve one of their number being stolen away for said alien’s own purposes. Rocky could’ve so easily proven them all right. His purposes wouldn’t have been as nefarious as those given in Earth’s stories; he wanted to keep Grace safe, to keep him alive, to let Grace be happy and content. Rocky could’ve taken Grace home.
Grace deserved to go home, too.
Rocky loved Grace too much to do that to him. It would’ve been cruel. A betrayal. Even if Grace had never found out that sending him back to Earth was an option, Rocky would’ve known that he’d intentionally prevented him from doing so, and the guilt would not have been bearable. Offering Grace the Astrophage he needed to save himself had been awful in every way. It had also been the only decision Rocky could live with.
Humans didn’t live very long. Erid and Earth were sure to communicate with one another in the future, and Rocky might even live to see it, but the same couldn’t be said for Grace. Their goodbye was supposed to be forever.
Then Rocky’s mistake had made itself known.
He hadn’t done it on purpose. He hadn’t meant for the Taumoeba to leak. He hadn’t meant to make it so that every single drop of Astrophage on his ship would be consumed, leaving him floating adrift, helpless, deafened by the nothingness all around, wondering what would kill him first. He hadn’t meant to stop Grace from going home. He hadn’t. He hadn’t.
It wasn’t surprising that Grace had worked out the source of the leak in time to save himself, and it wasn’t surprising that Grace had been able to calculate Rocky’s whereabouts in space. Grace was a genius when he wasn’t busy being an idiot. And Grace was everything good and kind and brave in the universe. Of course he’d turned around. Grace would’ve turned around to save the life of a confused pigeon, let alone an entire planet. Let alone Rocky. Grace would never abandon Rocky.
Grace should’ve abandoned Rocky.
If Rocky had known before they’d torn themselves away from each other that his xenonite could come so close to destroying both their worlds, and if he’d known exactly what the consequences of his error would be, then he could not say with certainty that he would’ve done anything differently.
Erid was going to live. Rocky was going home. Grace was coming with him.
Everything had fallen into place.
“I can hear you thinking.”
Rocky startled.
He hadn’t expected Grace to speak. He’d been so lost in thought that, even though he’d been watching Grace the entire time, he hadn’t noticed Grace wake up.
Grace’s eyes were still closed. He hadn’t moved at all, hadn’t done any of the movements he usually did to indicate that he’d finished sleeping, but his heartbeat and breathing had quickened just slightly, just enough that Rocky shouldn’t have missed it. Grace was undoubtedly awake.
“Not literally,” Grace continued before Rocky could call him on it. “Humans can’t do that. But right now, close enough. I like to think I know you pretty well by now. What’s on your mind?”
He opened his eyes and raised one of the small strips of hair above them — an eyebrow — like he sometimes did when he asked a question that he knew might be difficult to answer. He also gave the xenonite barrier between them a gentle double tap.
It was such an Eridian gesture, one that Grace could only have learned from Rocky himself, and Rocky couldn’t stand it.
“You should hate me.”
Grace pushed himself upright and sat with his legs crossed beneath him, knees pressed against the barrier. He pressed both his palms against the barrier and leaned in close. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “And I don’t. I don’t know where you’ve got that idea from, but it isn’t true.”
Rocky made a dismissive sound.
“No, Rocky, listen to me,” said Grace. “I do not hate you. I could never hate you. Heck, you could tell me that you orchestrated all of this in some messed up alien abduction plot and I still wouldn’t hate you.”
Rocky tensed.
Grace was joking. Grace was making a joke. His voice had taken on a tone that it often did when he was saying something with the intention of making Rocky or himself laugh. Grace was saying something that he believed to be so ridiculous that he derived humour from it, for the purpose of deriving humour from it.
It wasn’t as ridiculous as Grace thought.
Grace had just said that humans couldn’t hear the thoughts of others, and Rocky believed him. If there was anything in Grace’s gifted database of human knowledge to suggest that such an ability existed outside of the realm of fiction, Rocky was yet to come across it. But Grace had managed to stumble onto Rocky’s thoughts anyway.
Rocky was an awful friend simply for considering the things he’d been considering. He’d be an even worse one if he wasn’t honest with Grace now.
“Did not plan!” Rocky said. His chords came out frantic, too frantic, but even though he was reasonably certain that Grace joking about it meant he didn’t truly believe it, he still needed it to be said. “Rocky no trap Grace on purpose!”
“I know, bud,” replied Grace, all traces of joking gone from his voice, replaced with a tone that was meant to be soothing. As if Rocky was someone who deserved soothing. “I’m not saying you did.”
“Grace does not get it,” said Rocky. He wrung his claws and tapped the xenonite as he tried to distill everything down to words he knew Grace would understand. The translator was on, perched out of reach on top of Grace’s stripped bed, but its voice was turned down low so that it wouldn’t interrupt Grace’s sleep if it happened to pick up on anything Rocky said out loud to himself. Rocky didn’t want this conversation to be interrupted by Grace having to fumble around with it; he’d lose momentum, lose his nerve. If he didn’t confess his thoughts to Grace right now then he wasn’t sure he ever would, and he owed it to Grace to be truthful. He owed it to Grace for Grace to know who he’d saved. He needed Grace to understand. “Xenonite leak,” he said. “Rocky fault. Make engineer mistake. Grace save Rocky. Grace not go home.”
“We’ve been over this,” said Grace. “It wasn’t your fault. We couldn’t have known that—“
“If had known, might have done it anyway!”
Grace stopped talking. A minor miracle, but not one that Rocky could enjoy.
It wasn’t too late. Grace could still turn around and go to Earth. It would only take a little longer than the journey to Erid would take, and it would be easier on Grace because he wouldn’t need to ration his food in anticipation of an unknowable situation at his destination. Even if the Hail Mary returned to Earth to find its star cold and its people gone, Grace would have better luck finding something he could safely eat on a dead Earth than he would on Erid. There was still time for Grace to save himself. For all that it would kill Rocky if Grace made that choice, Grace deserved the chance to make it.
“Did not want leave Grace,” Rocky continued. “Sad sad sad. Grace Rocky go home. Save stars. Should be happy. Not happy, because not with Grace. Then Taumoeba leak, Astrophage gone, stranded in space. Quiet. Rocky die. Erid die. Bad bad bad. But Grace come back. Grace fix. Grace save. Grace stay. Should not want because mean Grace not go home, Grace danger danger danger, Grace maybe starve. But want. Want Grace stay. Want stay with Grace. Would do all again same so Grace stay. Rocky bad bad bad. Grace should hate.”
Neither of them said anything for a few seconds.
Then Grace let out a soft laugh.
Why was he laughing?
“Not funny,” said Rocky. “Serious. Most serious.”
“I know,” said Grace, smiling. “It’s not funny. But, seriously? You think I should hate you for that? Do you want me to hate you?”
Rocky fidgeted with two of his claws. “…No.”
“Well, good, ‘cause I’m not gonna.”
Rocky didn’t understand. “But Grace no go home. Grace no see Earth again.”
Grace shifted his shoulders in a dismissive gesture. “Earth will be fine without me. There are plenty of smart people back there who’ll make good use of the beetles, they don’t need me to talk them through it. And sure, there are things I miss, but you wanna know what I love more than Earth?” He tapped a finger against the barrier in a point. “You. I love you. I’d choose saving you over seeing Earth again every single time. So what if you’re a little secretly glad things worked out this way? I’ll let you in on a secret of my own. So am I.”
Of all the possible responses Rocky had anticipated, this wasn’t one of them. “You are glad, question?”
“Yep.” He pressed his forehead against the barrier. “I just wish we’d decided to do this from the jump. I mean, it’s kinda a good thing we didn’t, because if we’d both been in the Blip-A when the leak happened we’d have been screwed, but I’m a couple months down on food ‘cause I spent that time going in the wrong direction before coming back for you. Should’ve just let you invade my ship and use it to abduct me back to your planet in the first place.”
Was Grace joking again? Rocky couldn’t tell. In any case, Grace was being far too flippant about this. “Grace maybe starve because Rocky mistake. Understand, question? But Rocky want Grace here anyway! Rocky selfish! Rocky bad friend! How Grace so okay with this, question?”
“Our mistake,” Grace corrected. “Either one of us could’ve predicted the Taumoeba would adapt to the xenonite. If anything that one should be on the guy who decided to try wielding evolution as a tool in the first place.”
“Disagree.”
“We can agree to disagree,” said Grace, annoyingly diplomatic. “And yes,” he continued, “I understand the rest of what you’re saying. I understand, and I don’t hate you for it, and, sorry, but you’re just gonna have to get used to that. Everything that’s happened, everything that’s going to happen, it’s all worth it to me because it means getting to be here with you.”
If Rocky were human he could block his main method of sensory input. He could turn away or cover his eyes, preventing himself from having to experience Grace looking at him like that, so painfully earnest and sincere as he said things that Rocky didn’t know how to handle. But Rocky wasn’t human. He didn’t have eyes to cover. Not even fleeing to a different room on the ship would free him of this, because the Hail Mary didn’t have a single sound dampening wall on board.
Rocky put two hands on the xenonite barrier, matching where Grace had kept his own hands during this entire conversation. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to push through the barrier, to entwine their fingers together and never let go. He wanted to crawl inside of Grace, or perhaps have Grace crawl inside of him, to meld together into one amalgamate being.
“Rocky not deserve Grace.”
“Rocky deserves way better than Grace.”
“Grace!”
“I know,” said Grace, his voice soft. “I know, and I don’t care. You’re wrong. I love you, and I will always come back for you. Understand?”
And Rocky still didn’t understand, not really, but he moved his carapace to mimic a human nod anyway because all he’d achieve by arguing about this would be to upset Grace. And maybe if he upset Grace enough then Grace would say fuck it and go home to Earth after all. Rocky wasn’t selfless enough to risk it. He wanted Grace to stay. He wanted to keep Grace by his side forever.
If Adrian still wanted Rocky as their mate then they were going to have to accept Grace as well.
Rocky had already promised Grace that Erid would look after him to the best of its ability, so now Rocky made a second, silent promise to himself.
He would not let Grace die.
Whatever it took. Whatever sacrifices needed to be made. Whatever threats. Whatever. Grace was going to live a long, happy, and healthy life on Erid. And he was going to get the opportunity to go home to Earth if he wanted to, once they knew Earth was safe to return to. Anything Grace wanted, anything Grace needed, Rocky would give.
Rocky was a terrible friend. He was going to spend the rest of Grace’s life making it up to him.