Chapter Text
Skip, skip, skip, plunk. Grace picked up another rock. Skip, plunk. Well that one didn’t go well. He bent down to find a rock that was less Rocky shaped and a little more disk shaped. Wait. Would skipping rocks be offensive to Eridians? Oops, here’s hoping they’re not distant relatives. Aha! The next rock he found was smooth, flatish, and almost perfectly round. Skip, skip, skip, skip……no plunk? Squinting into the fabricated sunset, Grace looked to find the source of the lack of plunk and…wait a minute. That rock wasn’t there before. Come to think of it, it didn’t look like a rock at all. More, well. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said it looked like a human body floating towards him with the tide. But that was impossible, there were no other human bodies here except him (living or otherwise). He should really go get Rocky or Adrian but oh no nope it was getting too close. Grace stumbled further back onto shore as the body, because he was pretty sure it was a body now (person? was it disrespectful to call them a body if he didn’t know whether or not they were dead?) washed completely onto the beach and settled right at his feet.
Holy mother of- it really was a person. An actual, real life human being who was….wrapped in a blanket? It was dark gray, speckled with black, looked almost like an animal skin, and entirely tangled around the stranger. They (or maybe he? he looked like a man, what with the beard and what looked like a flat chest under the blanket, and actually that was a lot of assumptions to be making- bad time to be fussing over pronouns, Grace, deal with that later, why did he always do this) they weren’t, or he wasn’t, or oh whatever, he wasn’t breathing. Was he even alive? He should check for a pulse, or actually he needed to get him to Armando. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, please don’t be dead, I would really like for you to not be dead”. He reached down and turned the man more on his back, shifting him into a position that would make lifting him easier. Before Grace could fully adjust him, the man’s eyes flew open and he rolled onto his stomach, hacking up the water in his lungs.
“Hey, hey, hi, my name’s Ryland, Ryland Grace, but everyone calls me Grace, what’s your- okay not a good time, but you’re okay, you’re safe, and on Erid, and-”, aaaaand he’d passed back out, slumped in a twisted pile on the sand. At least his breathing had evened out and he probably wouldn’t die. Which. Actually he didn’t know that, he needed to check and make sure he wasn’t hurt beyond what looked like several deep cuts and burns across his face. Grace began to gently peel away the blanket from the man’s shoulders and oh my god he was missing an arm. Most of one, anyway, and it was bleeding profusely. A truly concerning amount of blood was now drifting in and out with the tide. Grace slapped a hand over his mouth at the sight of stringy sinew dangling from what was left of the man’s bicep, desperately trying not to hurl. He really needed to get this stranger in the house so Armando could bandage him up, answers could come later when he was sure the man wouldn’t bleed out in the next five minutes.
Gathering his resolve, Grace hefted the man up into his arms as gently as he could, mindful of his missing arm (holy moly even missing a limb this guy was heavy, he had so much muscle, and wow he actually had a really handsome face, even with the cuts and burns and- now is not the time, Grace). There were few times when he begrudged the Eridians their sturdy anatomy, but carrying a not particularly small man across the beach while trying not to exacerbate how much pain the man was probably definitely in was one of them and oh fudging- of course. How could he forget about the stairs. The only way up to his house and there were a million stairs. Great for keeping up exercise but a real problem considering he had to climb them all with a little over double his body weight to consider. Not to mention the literal wet blanket wrapped around the man. Seriously, what was the deal with the blanket? He really should have gone back to the house for his laptop first, at least then he could have gotten a hold of- “Rocky heard breach alarm, Grace is safe? WHAT IS NEW LEAKY BLOB?” Oh. In his panic he’d forgotten about the alarm system. Bless Adrian and their freakishly good foresight. Rocky came screeching and scrabbling across the beach, frantically trying to reach Grace as quickly as his five legs could carry him.
“Rock, thank god. A-and he’s human, at least I’m pretty sure he’s human, and he’s hurt and I need to get him to Armando but he’s heavy. Do you think you can brace him on your carapace to get up the stairs?” Grace struggled to not let the man slip through his grasp and tumble to the ground. Rocky’s claws clicked gently together, body tilting slightly to the side, a fraction calmer than before. “I think so, yes. Place walking limbs on me”. As soon as the man’s legs were settled, they shifted as a unit so Grace could start backing up the stairs.
A truly excruciating amount of time later, and after more than a few close calls, they reached the top of the stairs. Between all the huffing and puffing and Rocky complaining about “Grace slow, squishy blob, not efficient. Why is new human more help than Grace” (which, rude, he wasn’t even conscious), Grace hadn’t had the chance to check on the man’s breathing. He really hoped the guy hadn’t died on the way up. He didn’t have the time to worry, better to get the man in the house and let Armando take a look at him. Shuffling the last few feet into the house, Grace shouted, “Armando, log new patient: multiple lacerations and burns to the face and neck, severed left arm at the bicep, possible other unknown ailments”. Rocky gently set the man’s legs down and scuttled off to get the cot from Grace’s office (so maybe he still spent a little too much time working and not enough time sleeping, the cot was a compromise okay). Dragging the cot near Armando’s station, Rocky moved to the side as Grace shifted the man onto it, Armando whirring into action. More and more data filtered into the monitor as it worked, and Grace couldn’t believe the man had survived with as many injuries as he’d sustained, and that was without the very nearly acute but thankfully reversible radiation poisoning.
By the time Armando had the stranger (Grace really wished he’d gotten his name, it felt too impersonal and a little rude to keep calling him “the stranger” or even worse Rocky’s label of “new human”, but the stranger -ugh- had been a little busy expelling water from his lungs he supposed) detangled from his blanket, bandaged, medicated, and temporarily sedated, Grace had mopped up the worst of the bloody water puddles on the floor and changed into dry clothes. He’d taken the blanket (it actually looked sort of like a cloak now that he got a closer look at it, who even wore cloaks anymore, where was this guy from) and folded it gingerly, noting that there was a large rip at the top left corner. Maybe Grace could mend it while he waited for the man to wake up. He was sure the sewing kit was somewhere in the mess of his desk. Or, well. If it really was made of animal skin maybe he should wait for the man to wake up and ask how to properly mend it. And wash it, the thing was filthy and bloodstained. The blanket/cloak/thing seemed really important to him given how tightly he’d clutched it even in his sleep, so Grace didn’t want to risk ruining it. He dragged a chair over from the dining room and over to the cot, slumped down into it, and hooked his glasses under his chin, scrubbing his face. What a confusing, horrifying mess.
“I should update Adrian. Grace okay to watch new human sleep?” Right. Yeah, actually he should let Rocky get back to his mate, they were probably worried as hell, and it’s not like they’d be getting answers any time soon. “Yeah, Rock, go see Adrian. I’ll watch the new human sleep”. Rocky raised his front claw in a thumbs down, ambling out the front door with an uneasy hum. Grace turned back to the sleeping man and oh. A lock of hair had fallen onto his face. He brushed the hair back behind his ear as gently as he could, wondering just what he’d gotten himself into. None of this made sense. Another human. Sixteen light years from Earth. And that’s without acknowledging that he’d seemingly teleported into Grace’s biodome. He would have had to, he couldn’t have landed and made his way here without dying immediately after being exposed to Erid’s ammonia based atmosphere. Especially with a missing limb and radiation poisoning. Unless he wasn’t human? But no, he looked human, and acted human, and god Grace just wanted the man to wake up. He was worrying himself in circles. Until then, he’d watch him sleep. Keep him safe. It’s the least he could do.