Archive of Our Own

"Rocky," Grace mumbles. He figures the burning heat on his abdomen is heartburn from sleeping too soon after eating—that is, until the hot and heavy thing on him moves, twitching at his words. "Did you know you're a really warm guy?"

"Am not warm," Rocky chirps, and the vibrations sink right into Grace's chest where his alien friend sits, limbs folded underneath his carapace. "Grace just cold."

Grace slings an arm over Rocky's outer shell, feeling the textured divots and bumpy oxidized mineral with a gently stroking thumb. His fingers trail downward past two of Rocky's favored standing limbs and onto the third where Grace knows is the carving of two interlocked circles.

Rocky's thorax shivers when Grace scratches the teal-indented marriage carving with a dulled fingernail. Murmuring, Grace asks, "Do all Eridians have so many tattoos on 'em or is it just you?"

"What Grace think, question?"

Two front limbs slide up further past Grace's collarbone until the trifurcated claws rest just under his chin, pressing against his soft, vulnerable neck.

When Grace swallows, he feels the blunt end of Rocky's claws follow the bob of his Adam's apple, and the light pressure of another being's warmth against his bare skin crackles in his head like those skinny, handheld sparklers, electrical signals jumping between his neurons, synapses firing on all cylinders. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, the type of pleasant rush of endorphins that have always been just out of reach his entire life.

Grace leans into the tender touch with fluttering eyes, thighs tensing under Rocky's weight. He tilts his head back, clenching his eyes shut and opening up further access to his neck. "Rocky, can you just, please…?"

"Grace want, question? Grace think he deserve, question?"

All of a sudden, the affectionate stroking retracts, and Grace opens his eyes, rapidly blinking with a sense of distant befuddlement.

Rocky next words are laced with a frigid, monotone trill. "Even though Grace lie to Rocky."

Grace is startled awake into a gasp, dry ice sliding down his spine and burning his skin on the way down, revealing his burgeoning guilty conscience underneath. There's a reason he sleeps on his back these days.

It was just a dream.

A rather scary, salacious dream.

His next shuddering realization is that his boxers are tight, slightly strained in the crotch area.

"Oh, oh no," Grace says, forcing his entire body to go rigid. "Oh no, no, no."

"Who Grace talking to, question?" Rocky calls out from a different room.

Grace scrambles into a sitting position following the far off and familiar double-thump of one of Rocky's rear limbs, a physical quirk that usually follows after an inquiry, and winces in pain.

That's what was missing from the deviant dream Grace's brain had conjured into existence. That, and the xenonite barrier that always divides Rocky from Grace's oxygen-rich atmosphere.

Grace is always in some sort of somatic misery these days thanks to his worsening physical condition running concurrent to his rapidly depleting food supplies. He hasn't deteriorated as far as struggling to walk and talk, but if his math is correct, he's getting closer and closer to that tipping point.

He sighs and softly slaps his cheeks, knowing Rocky is going to come tumbling in at any moment.

Sure, he'll admit that he's probably touch-starved. He hasn't seen or felt another live human being in what must be a good two years.

Or more like a bad two years.

Is he slowly going insane? He doesn't want to slowly go insane.

Grace is rapidly becoming aware of how hot his face is beneath his palms, flushed crimson from shame with small beads of sweat dripping from his forehead.

Wanting to touch Rocky skin to skin in his dreams isn't that farfetched; his own bodily reactions, however, is a whole other bag of worms. Whole other vial of astrophage?

He briefly wonders about the cultural impact of the astrophage infection of the sun. With the way language can rapidly evolve, he wouldn't be surprised if this mass extinction event contributed to new vernacular the way wolves made river landscapes shift, even as rock formations changed and nations fought...

Nope! Not going there.

He successfully sent off the Beatles, and whatever's left of Earth will need to deal with it themselves.

With the unprecedented state of the dimming sun, there was never any proper chance to celebrate their first contact with aliens. Well, alien cells. Rocky is different; the Eridians are a foreign lifeform with their own culture, technology, and social habits. How are people going to react to an actual, intelligent alien species? And is Grace technically the world's first and only leading social scientist on Eridian-anthropology?

Okay, he's calmed down a little.

What was that?

It’s just… Grace doesn't do that. It’s near impossible for him to feel that way for anybody he isn't close to, and he doesn't need either of his hands to count how many people he's close to—he knows the answer is zero because he's kept it that way on purpose.

Gosh, taking off his helmet in the tunnel between his ship and Rocky's might have been the first time he's been vulnerable with anybody in the better part of the last two decades. Maybe even longer.

Grace is no psychology expert, but he's fiddled around with those personality tests and attachment style quizzes his kids always used to like hiding in private tabs on their chromebooks whenever they had assignments on their school assigned laptops. He knows he's something called an anxious avoidant type, and maybe it's purely confirmation bias, but he's had enough failed relationships to know there's something a little different in the way his brain is wired.

But to suddenly be able to get it up for a spider shaped rock crab alien of all things? After Grace has finally formed what feels like the first real, reciprocated bond in a long, long time?

It’s no big whoop, Grace tells himself, pressing his palm into his forehead. It'll just be another thing he just so conveniently never brings up into conversations. Like the thing where he was strapped to a rocket and launched into space against his will.

Right on cue, Rocky comes speedily rolling in with his ball until it smacks right into the edge of Grace's bed. It only took Rocky a few days to get used to piloting it with his magnets, so anything other than perfect control is on purpose, an emphasis of emotion.

"Grace is okay, question?!" Without missing a beat, Rocky clarifies. "Why Grace sound different today, question? Different from the last 751 Earth days. Grace body sick, question?"

Holy guacamole.

Rocky's rapidfire questioning shifts into an apology. "Am sorry. Was in taumoeba room. I did not observe Grace sleep close enough."

Grace shakes his head, but the motion induces a sense of sickening nausea in his stomach. He feels himself losing strength in his torso when he begins to slide back down into an inelegant slouch. Grace plants a firm palm on his mattress to support his trembling weight as his mind swirls with a spiral-shaped galaxy of dizzy, purpled thoughts.

Has he been found out? Does Rocky know how bungled up Grace really is?

Rocky retreats to his earlier inquiry. "Can hear body is different where Grace two standing limbs intersect. Is normal for humans, question?"

"... I'm fine, buddy… but y-you—" Grace's voice breaks, an inopportune glimpse at his fraying composure. He clears his voice and continues in an embarrassed squeak, "You can hear those textures?"

"Can hear. Grace body wet and disgust. Liquids everywhere. This time blood move around to new place."

The real, waking world hits Grace across the face with the inertial force of 2000 newtons. Rocky is probably going to search this up later on the very laptop Grace gave him. Rocky's smart. Will he leave the topic alone if Grace waves it off as a biology thing? Or if Grace lies through his teeth and calls it a human cultural thing?

A tenser, exasperated voice rises from Grace's throat, nearly an irritated growl. "Dude, if it's so gross you can just stop looking at me."

Rocky tilts his carapace at Grace's tone, his next musical chords conveying confused, dissonant notes at Grace’s abrupt change in attitude.

"We've talked about private time before," Grace says, slowly. Mild shame and embarrassment continue to color his words, but he isn’t sure if Rocky can pick up on it. "Well, it was more like I talked at you and you didn't pay any attention to my words, but it's time to bring it up again. I'm serious this time, alright, Rocky?"

A slower chirp comes from Rocky, "Grace knows Rocky can hear all of ship. No privacy at all."

"Yeah, but at least I can pretend as long as I don't see you, man." The words come out meaner than Grace intends. Sharper.

"Taumoeba slurry is disgust for Grace, but intermittent food paste helpful. Mary has much much entertainment so Grace not bored. Air sac breathe highly flammable oxygen normal. All condition same as previous week." Rocky eventually arrives at the crux of the matter with a discordant hum. "Grace. What is wrong, question?"

"... Why does there have to be something wrong for me to want some alone time?"

"I know what Grace doing. Portable Earth thinking machine call it deflection."

Grace huffs grumpily, "Well, if you know what I'm doing then you should know why I'm doing it."

Rocky tilts forward in his xenonite ball like he's trying to close the distance between them as much as possible. Any closer and he might just end up in Grace's lap. "Rocky not know."

Does he really? Or is he pretending not to?

If Grace can lie, who says Rocky can't? Is he secretly laughing at Grace on the inside?

Rocky not know echoes in Grace's head. Grace wonders if any part of Rocky resents the way he has to dumb down and shorten his vocabulary for Grace's sake. For crying out loud, Rocky has perfect memory and near perfect, undoubtable math—how must it feel when the stupid fleshy alien you're stuck with conveys information six times slower than you and makes you talk like a ten-year-old?

—and stop it right there.

They're friends. Rocky said so himself. Friends don't think about each other like that.

A light whistle followed by several dissonant notes cuts through Grace's thoughts, and the translation is quick to follow. "What Grace need, question? How can I fix, question?"

Rocky's carapace rotates to different craggly rock face, the side that makes the teal on the connecting joint of one of his limbs more prominently displayed, an indication Grace is recognizing more often as concern. Not unlike the eye-contact humans love so much, but Eridians are omnidirectional, so Rocky is really only doing it for Grace's sake.

... So yeah, they're friends. Which is why Rocky can absolutely never know.

"You're not listening to me. I have two words for you. Alone. Time." Grace's voice is strained with discomfort. He feels like there's still some taumoeba sludge stuck in his throat from his last meal, sour bile creeping back up his esophagus. If the taumoeba can eat astrophage, could it potentially eat human cells, too? It evolved to escape xenonite over dozens of strains; if Grace keeps using it as a food source, will it eventually evolve to survive the stomach acid in Grace's digestive system, eating him from the inside out? Kind of like the way the bromelain enzymes in pineapples dissolve the surface proteins in people's mouths as they're eaten. Fun fact, the human body regenerates and repairs cells too quickly for pineapples to do any real damage. What he wouldn't give to be eaten by a pineapple right now. Where was he again? "Maybe the idea is too foreign for you, but humans need to be by themselves sometimes. Some people can't even physically relax knowing there's someone else nearby. It's—It's a human cultural thing. Let's just leave it at that, okay?"

Rocky's reply is a distinct duration of maddening silence.

He really only gets this quiet when he's sleeping. Maybe it's because noise equals presence to the Eridians, but Grace is always vaguely aware of Rocky's proximity in the back of his mind. The tools hanging off Rocky's burlap-like coveralls clink and clang whenever he works on a new engineering project, the xenonite not-so-spherical-ball holding a dense 170 kilograms or so makes hollow thuds and thumps every time a new fractal face makes contact with the ship floor, and Rocky himself has somehow managed to pick up one of Grace's many bad habits: talking to himself to fill the quiet with chittering and musical hums.

Grace doesn't remember when he stuck his left hand under his thigh, but all he can feel when he slides it out is pin and needles crawling up his forearm. He stares and he stares and he stares into a sterilized corner of the dorm room, wondering if he's just destroyed the friendship he's been trying to bottle up and preserve like a jar of fruit jam.

Come to think of it, that diner he'd always blow his money on every morning for breakfast had homemade fig jam and biscuits he'd been meaning to try. Something a little new.

Fudge, he needs to stop thinking about food.

Finally, Rocky rubs his carapace with a fidgeting claw and looks at Grace strangely, rising higher on all five of his limbs. With what sounds like a quavering whir, he asks, "Grace is certain, question?"

"... Last time I checked, the expert on humans was me, not you, buddy," Grace forces out in a mumble, unmistakably still not looking at Rocky. It's not as though Rocky has a gaze Grace can avoid, which makes his self-conscious body language appear entirely self-serving, a performance for an audience of one.

He gives into the tug of the artificial gravity and lays himself back down into his bed, hoping Rocky takes it as an indication to leave.

"Maybe you should take the time to learn what boundaries are, pal." It's an entirely unnecessary suggestion that Grace winces at as soon as the words leave his mouth, so he immediately yanks his quilt all the way up past his chin and covers his mouth to stop himself from saying anything else he might regret.

Grace eventually hears Rocky roll away, distinctly lacking the energy he came in with. He doesn't bump into a single thing on his way out of the dormitory.

Ugh, why did Grace do that? He's such a terrible friend.

Grace lets out another deeply pained groan, mostly muffled by fabric. When did he become such a dysfunctional jerk?

With just the two of them here for the journey to Erid, their only companionship is really each other. Grace is minutely aware that he makes for poor company. He's boring, talks too much, and slowly growing easily irritable. He knows for a fact Yao and Ilyukhina were personable and funny—both important qualities NASA looked for in their normal astronauts for their normal space excursions.

Did NASA survive through the earth's cooling? Or was it one of the first federal programs to be cut when funding started to dwindle?

That would actually pose a problem. They'll still have to breed more taumoeba down on earth before sending it back into space. They can't exactly do that without any more space programs.

… It’s not Grace's problem anymore. It’s completely out of his hands.

Grace shuts his eyes, suddenly feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over him.

Rocky seemed to take him seriously this time around, albeit reluctantly. To what extent do humans and Eridians feel emotions in the same capacity? Rocky clearly experiences emotions, displays empathy, and even undergoes distress. So do humans. It's why the Hail Mary crew had to be put into comas for the trip to Tau Ceti in the first place—so they wouldn't lose their minds and kill one another.

The Eridians were awake throughout the entire duration of their trip until they eventually succumbed to radiation poisoning. They didn't have potential intraspecies aggression and mental instability concerns.

Humans have plenty of that even without being confined to a ship for four years. Surely it couldn't have all been sunshine and rainbows on the Blip-A?

Rocky insists that Erid's leadership will make sure Grace is taken care of, and Grace believes that Rocky believes this wholeheartedly, but a part of him, once again ashamed, is certain that humans wouldn't reciprocate with the same enthusiastic goodwill. Can Grace really expect stellar hospitality from the Eridians? Not to mention, he's made zero progress toward imagining how Eridian scientists could even begin to create the things Grace's physical body needs out of whatever's on the planet.

And that's just the physical aspect.

Is Rocky aware of psychological concepts? Is there any way for Grace to explain what he's feeling without sounding like a total nut?

It's unsurprisingly difficult to go from completely withdrawn to wanting to search for the right words to express yourself. The profoundly raw sensation of being known is unlike any other, and Grace can barely admit to himself that he's scared again, putting himself in such a new and terrifying situation.

Can’t be that much worse than a spacewalk gone wrong, right?

Right.

Wrong.

The way he treated Rocky just then was wrong, wasn't it?

Taking advantage of Rocky’s lack of knowledge about humans so Grace can wallow in his own miserable feelings alone.

Coward.

He thinks himself into exhaustion, apparently, because the next time he wakes up, his face is drooling on cool metal and he vaguely remembers groggily shuffling over to a quiet corner of the ship, where the massive window is, the small module designed for observation. He isn't laying in his lumpy bed and Rocky isn't tinkering on some new project with his Eridian tools nearby.

He squints, eyes adjusting to the natural radiance of faraway stars, distant specks that may already be dead in the time it takes the light waves to reach him. His disorientation of Earth’s natural night and day cycle has never fully gone away. In fact, it's probably worsened over time, no thanks to his disorganized sleep schedule; he isn't really keeping track of his sleep hours anymore.

… Did he sleepwalk over here? How long has it been? He doesn't remember.

Uh oh. That’s not good. How did he manage to navigate the narrow corridors with ladders and handrails going up and down without slipping and accidentally cracking his skull open? How did he not wake up with his knees and shoulders bumping into things while navigating out of the tight quarters of the dormitory slash medical bay?

What if he sleepwalks into the cockpit and pirates them off course? What if he accidentally jettisons their remaining fuel tanks?

… Is Grace becoming a danger to getting Rocky's half of the nitrogen resistant taumoeba back to Erid?

Is Grace already being subjected to side effects nutritional deficiencies even though he's only mildly malnourished? It's true he hasn't been sleeping well since he scrolled through hours of wikipedia pages and scientific papers about the process of a slow death via starvation. Beyond all the X-rays, MRI and CT scans, and medical gibberish was, in laymen's terms, detailed descriptions about the changing of his gut microbiome, the shrinking of his heart, and eventually, organ failure.

Suffice to say he scared the bejeesus out of himself, and now he can't get those horrifying images of emaciated victims out his head. He tried to picture himself with gaunt, hollowed-out cheeks, brittle bones, and complete hair loss. All in all, not too terrible.

Then the less physical things: psychological distress, cognitive impairment, and brain atrophy. Vastly more terrible.

What if he develops pancreatitis? Or gastroenteritis? Mary may have a complicated, procedural algorithm, but she's no AI. Open-heart surgery isn't in her or Armando's repertoires. It's the exact reason Stratt had his appendix taken out pre-launch, another hole in his punchcard of grievances against her, filed away solely in his head. It’s one of the earliest things he learned, tracing the surgery scar on his abdomen to the side of his belly button as Mary droned on about his post-coma health status.

There's no telling how he's gonna feel later when he's bedridden and unable to even roll over without assistance, and there's only so much Rocky can do from his hamster ball. Grace probably won't even have the strength to think, to regret not killing himself sooner.

… Oh.

Hmm.

That's new.

Stratt hadn't minced her words. this was supposed to be a suicide mission to begin with, and Grace wasn't suicidal. Why else did he run and sob and scream himself hoarse before some stonefaced militant stuck a needle in him?

He had wanted to live.

He had been overjoyed at Rocky's offer of fuel. Grace still remembers the tears leaking uncontrollably from his eyes as the burdensome weight on his chest lifted.

Now? He's not sure how long he can last. He's spending more and more time in bed and he feels like he's being run ragged just from waking up and existing.

He knows. The lack of proper food is beginning to take its real toll. He thinks of that tipping point again, where the remaining journey to Erid will be agony from now on, and each time he wakes up will be worse than the last.

He'll be dead weight by the time they're orbiting Erid, hardly any different from a corpse. Is Grace ready for that?

Forget about Grace, is Rocky ready for that? Watching Grace slowly waste away, virtually the same thing that eventually stole the life of his twenty-two other crewmates?

Making Rocky go through that again would be cruel.

Maybe Grace should put himself back into a coma. Stratt left that as an option, for some reason.

Stratt also left the fuel tanks. She didn't set them to automatically jettison when the Hail Mary would run out of fuel, even in the name of the efficiency she had so doggedly pursued. It would have made the Hail Mary lighter, maybe shorten their trip to Tau Ceti. It's why only three people were assigned to this suicide mission anyway, one that Stratt herself said that she didn't think would succeed. So why even bother?

But the fact that they didn't automatically eject… It's something like when people throw a penny into a fountain, isn't it? The hidden crumbs of the hope she didn't allow herself to explicitly express. Saying, I don't know what's going to happen up there, but if there's a chance, if there's even the smallest possibility of my crew making it all the way to Tau Ceti, discovering the solution to our problems, and finding a way to get more astrophage for fuel to come home, the tanks are still here for you. I sent you to space to die, but here are the fuel tanks if you need them.

Once he had remembered she forced him up here, he was so angry at her, at himself, at the people who callously pinned him to the floor and put him in a coma. He imagined all the things he'd say. Maybe he'd even swear at her.

She'd have wanted him to live, right?

Grace blinks rapidly, feeling the back of his nose begin to burn, and he's suddenly aware of the subtle roar beneath the ship's walls, the knocking and rattling of machinery, and remembers that the Hail Mary was never meant to be a silent, efficient ship.

It's not as though his realizations have changed anything—he ended up meeting Rocky, and Rocky built him new fuel tanks from xenonite anyway.

Grace laughs, and it comes out as a dry sound that rattles his ribcage. His knees pop when he stretches his legs out, pressing his face closer to the window and looking in the vague direction of earth.

In a way, because this was a suicide mission with no return trip, it involuntary helped with the astrophage problem. All the nitrogen for Dubois's method of suicide was stored beneath a collapsable floor hatch marked up in a blueprint of the Hail Mary. Stratt never had it taken out.

It came in very handy for breeding nitrogen resistant taumoeba.

Beyond the leftover however many cubic meters of nitrogen was more crawlspace where Grace is painfully aware of Yao and Ilyukhina's fun picks. A kilogram of heroin and a loaded gun. Grace has probably explored every nook and cranny of the Hail Mary that a grown man can fit into except for that very crawl space. Maybe he'd subconsciously thought at the time that he shouldn't mess with the stuff.

… And he still shouldn't mess with it, right?

Grace wraps his arms around himself until he's gripping an opposite bicep in each hand, squeezing tightly. It's… It's just too much—the inevitability of his mind buckling under the throes of starvation, the way he can already feel the brain fog seeping into his skull and molding up the walls, and even the stricken self-awareness that he isn't thinking like his usual self, that the thoughts in his head are only just hobbling around with their slow, uneven gaits instead of bouncing off the walls like the category five hurricanes he knows they can be.

He wonders if the gun comes pre-loaded with bullets or if they're included separately. It shouldn't be too difficult to get it to work, right? It's not rocket science.

Hypothetically, he'll be too weak to blow his own brains out once they get to Erid, and shooting a gun also introduces the risk of putting a bullet hole in the Hail Mary and accidentally killing Rocky, too.

What about the heroin? Did Stratt actually manage to get her hands on a kilogram of the stuff?

How does a delirious person know when they've fallen into delirium?

It isn't crazy of him to consider going out on his own terms, right? Erid's atmosphere would kill him—there's no doubts on that front—if he doesn't die of starvation first. What's he going to do, orbit Erid all by his lonesome until he eventually withers away?

Rocky selflessly volunteered to come out here. Rocky's got a mate and an entire life on his planet, unlike Grace.

And Grace… threatened to sabotage the mission if he woke up with his memories intact. Some savior of the universe he is.

Just the thought of Rocky finding out what type of person Grace really is makes him queasy, his stomach doing swooping somersaults. Heck, there's probably a whole circus act going on in there with how much he's been thinking about the heroin and the gun over the last few weeks. Acrobats and an ulcer to boot.

There's gotta be a manual out there on the internet on how to do heroin, right?

So it won't hurt when he kills himself.

Grace is seized by a wave of horrified shuddering, and it's by no means the fault of the temperature controlled ship. His exhale comes out stuttered and staccato, and then the next breath is even choppier than the previous.

Shallow, like he isn't getting enough air.

He wants to curl his fingers into the fabric of his quilt and scream until the shaking subsides. Why didn't sleepwalking Grace bring it with him?

He lifts a palm to his chest and rubs just above where he thinks his heart is, and the arrhythmic pulsing extends to his fingertips.

Ba-dump, ba-ba-ba-thump-thump.

Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool.

Breathing is automatic, isn't it?

So where's the next one?

When is it coming?

Grace hunches over, gasping.

His fingers squeak where they're slipping off the window. It's because of friction.

How can he get his lungs to balloon again?

An edge of panic lines his thoughts. Sure, he may have harmlessly sleepwalked to another location, but next time he could accidentally rip hoses and wiring from their clips or bust a hole in the pipes and valves or flip switches that shouldn't be touched.

He's scared, he's so, so scared, he's scared, Grace is terrified.

Rocky is going to find out that Grace is a fraud. The truth will come out; he can't seem to keep his mouth shut, after all, and everyone has always hated that about him. Rocky will go back to Erid and live out his life as a hero, and he's going to leave Grace orbiting around and around and around until engine failure or heart failure or something in between because Grace has been lying to him this entire time.

He chokes down his next inhale, and his legs kick out uselessly.

His hands jump to his throat, trying to feel for the lump blocking his airway.

There's nothing there but a faint, racing thump, thump, ba-thump beneath his fingertips.

It's going to beat right out of his ribcage.

His heart is going to jump out of his chest.

The window is cool on his forehead, his body weighs nothing, and he's certain the last thing he's going to see is some foreign planetary body seared into the underside of his eyelids when rumbling not unlike the vibrations that passed through him as he watched the launching of the Hail Mary's initial pieces assaults his hearing. His ears are pressed to the ground—like this, he can imagine hearing the nightmarish crumpling of the fuel tanks that spun the ship out of control outside of Adrian’s orbit.

He could hardly breathe then, too.

Faster than he's ever seen his Eridian friend move, Rocky comes careening down the hallway like a bug on the run.

"What in the banana shenanigans?!" Grace yelps, by reflex tucking his elbows in closer to his chest to avoid the hurtling ball of xenonite from crushing his fingers.

"Grace heart rate elevated!" Rocky squeaks, banging on a xenonite wall with his back limb. "What happen, question?!"

"Darn," Grace wheezes when he realizes absolutely nothing is wrong. Sure, he's a little sweaty and embarrassed, and his cortisol levels might be higher than it's ever been before, but he's not in any immediate danger. His chest still heaves uncomfortably when he sighs, but Rocky was the perfect external stimuli to stop his nervous system from going haywire. "It's nothing, Rocky. Just, y'know."

"Rocky not know." The notes come out in a deeper octave, like the scared, emotional chords that Grace's computer couldn't recognize way back when. "Rocky not know because Grace not say anything!"

"I sense a bit of anger," Grace says, rubbing his neck. "I promise, I was just being a little bit smooth-brained. Thinking about… well…"

Rocky settles against the crook of Grace's knee, warm. His claws are balled into three digit fists, like he wants to shake Grace by his shoulders.

"Hey, Rock?" Grace asks, desperately trying to stop his voice from wavering. "Does Erid have any moons?"

"Moon is astronomical body orbiting planet, question?"

"Sounds about right to me."

Rocky's vent puffs lightly. "Then, answer is no. Why Grace ask, question?"

"Well…" Grace's head rests against the window with a quiet thunk. "I was just thinking about how cool it would be to be buried on a foreign moon."

A distressed series of warbles and sad chirps come from Rocky's carapace that make Grace wince, squeezing his eyes shut at the pained noises.

"Grace thinking about death, question? Why Grace think about this, question?!"

Rocky's been out in space longer than Grace has even been alive, and yet Grace has heard little to no real complaints from him. The Blip-A had been massive—on the Hail Mary, Rocky barely has the room to maneuver his xenonite ball from room to room outside of the safe spaces they'd built together. Grace is also sure Rocky deeply misses his mate, but his Eridian friend is extremely careful about adding unnecessary baggage to Grace's allostatic load.

"... Just in case. I ran out of shirts to cycle through a long time ago, bud," Grace eventually replies. "My morale's pretty low."

The claws on Rocky's two current front facing limbs click nervously against each other. The only reason Grace can even see this is because Rocky mixed his xenon with whatever makes this particularly clear, glass-like material.

He's always accommodating Grace.

At Grace's non-answer, Rocky seemingly changes the subject. "Before, you say your ship is my ship, question?"

Grace nods. "Yeah, I did say that."

Rocky's claws do their little thoughtful clicking again. "Then Grace no get angry if I say I look at stuff on your ship."

"... Where are you going with this?"

"I find carbon hydrogen nitrogen oxygen compound. No understand. Why Grace worry worry worry, question?"

"You—You found the heroin stash?" Grace stutters in disbelief, his posture going ramrod straight.

"No understand word," Rocky chitters, perking up a little. New words tend not to crop up as much as they did in the first year and a half, but Grace isn't really sure how to translate this one.

"Humans took a plant, turned it into compounds, and eventually ended up with a substance that can make you feel really, really good but also kill you."

"This substance is on ship, question? Right now, question?!" Rocky twists his limbs, skittering wildly. His panic is palpable even through the translator. "Why on ship, question…?!"

Oh, boy.

"Don't worry, I'm pretty sure if anything happens, your rock hard outer shell will keep it out."

"No!" Rocky sounds rattled, like the first time Grace explained sleep to him. He lifts a trembling limb and rubs it against some patterns on his carapace to create what Grace thinks is meant to be soothing vibrations. "Grace talk about moon and death. Then Grace say ship contain dangerous substance harmful to humans! No sense of ♩♩♫! Grace—Grace want to what, question?!"

"I'm sorry I even brought it up," Grace mutters, rubbing his knuckles with a thumb.

"How long since last sleep cycle, question?" Rocky accuses.

Taken aback, Grace rests a fist on the top of Rocky's ball and leans his face in. "I just woke up, bud. Kinda fell asleep during my alone time, but yeah, I know, you always wanna watch me sleep, so that's on me—"

"No!" Rocky's vocalized refusal sounds even more vehement and gritty than the first. "Grace last sleep more than 97,000 Earth seconds ago. You sleepy and stupid! Stupid human!"

"What?" Now it's Grace's turn to be confused. "Hold on a second, I might be a liar, but I'm not lying about this."

Rocky's limbs still. He holds one limb in the trifurcated claws of another limb, like he's nervous. "I hear Grace awake. You talk to self, move around ship. Rocky stay in lab and not move. Not know when Grace alone time is done…"

Guilt wracks Grace's shaky frame, turns his legs to jelly, and he suddenly feels very, very foolish. "I… I didn't mean it like that."

"After predator collector, when Grace injured in Adrian orbit, body temperature much lower than Eridian. Like Rocky dead crew mate, feel ♩♩♫♬♪. Could hear Grace heart organ beat fast and air sac compress. Grace not moving. Was scary scary scary." Then, Rocky continues, as if he's the one who's at fault, "Grace say want alone time, but Rocky hear elevated heart rate and interrupt. Apology apology."

"You… shouldn't worry about me, Rock. I'll be dead weight by the time we get to Erid, anyway," Grace says breezily, but his voice breaks like the time he bit his cheek and lied through his aching teeth I've made peace with it and we've got stars to save.

Rocky's lived three human lifetimes without Grace.

He'll manage, right?

"What mean dead weight, question?" Rocky’s voice is lower, quieter, as close to an appalled whisper as he can get. His carapace even appears to shiver in slight intervals. "Grace say was sleeping but was not. Losing memory. Losing time."

“It… It only happened once, okay?” Grace stammers, but he knows he can’t make it sound any less alarming, even to himself.

"Rocky not know if Eridian can help fix human, but is clear alone time is no good for Grace. Too much alone time unhealthy for human! You are not healthy!"

"Those two things aren't related." Grace turns away from the xenonite ball. "Rock, I know it's difficult, but please try to understand. Or actually, you don't need to understand. Just acknowledge it's—it's an Earth culture thing."

It's their keyword for please don't ask any more, but Rocky has already brushed it off once before.

"I understand," Rocky concludes solemnly. "Rocky understand Grace is ♩♫♩♬♪! Is stupid human!"

"It's gonna happen more and more often, okay?!" Grace raises his voice to a near-shout, almost flinging his glasses off when he makes a wild gesture as his emotions spill out of his body. His gaze is fixed to the cold, hard floor so he doesn't have to watch his hands shake. "Me, losing my memories, losing time. Eventually I'm gonna lose muscle function and speech. I won't be able to crawl out of bed, and who knows? Even further along the line, I'll be in and out of sleep, and I probably won't even know where I am. What if I accidentally do something to the ship and jeopardize your half of the taumoeba? What if I mess things up for you? I'm—I'm trying to think of how I can spare you from the pain, but none of it is good. No matter what, I keep coming back to the same conclusion. This'll be easier on the both of us if I… if I can end things on my own terms while I can still think clearly. Before I become... y'know. Before I become a burden."

“All Rocky hearing is ‘what if’ and ‘who knows’. Grace think like this all the time, question?” And then a little hurt warbling, “Grace think Rocky ♩♫♪♫♩♬, question?”

Shallow, cruel, unfeeling, take your pick. Contextually, it's easy to guess what the word means.

"... I'm… sorry..." Grace's voice is wobbly and wrecked. He can hardly feel his extremities as his heart teeters over the pit of his stomach at the way Rocky is looking at him.

Rocky purposefully bumps his ball into Grace's arm, hard. "... Grace want to die, question?"

"No… No, I don't want to… but I'm—Rock, I’m just so afraid.” Grace's voice begins to crumple, growing nasally as he ducks his head toward his chest in shame.

"Then Rocky will not leave Grace to die," Rocky says, simply. “Am selfish. Also want Grace to stay alive.”

"It's not that easy. No matter what, I'm going to run out of food eventually."

"Grace."

"And it's clear that I'm not good for you, bud. You shouldn't be getting so torn up over me." The pitch of Grace's voice rises, tinged with hysteria. "I mean, how are you gonna go and live out your life on Erid if you stay stuck by my side?"

"Grace!"

"We've got a word for this, you know? Codependency."

"♬♪♩♩♬♪ ♩♫♩♪!" Rocky rises onto the tips of his claws, drawing himself up to be larger as he very nearly honks, “Grace…! Stop this. Listen to me. Eridian species is grateful and Rocky will be savior. Eridian scientists will thrum solution for Grace. If they refuse, no taumoeba for them. We all die together. Problem fixed. Is simple simple simple. Grace forget, measured remaining human food with math already. Journey to Erid will hurt, but Grace will not die. I will not let Grace die."

Grace bursts into hot, pathetic tears at Rocky's verbal validation all at once, and the Gordian knot he's been tangling up in his chest begins to unravel at last.

And they just sit like that, side by side, looking out at the expanding universe. 

Rocky really does make things sound so much easier than they do in Grace's head. 

Even if Grace can't be buried on some foreign moon and his ashes can't be scattered into space dust over a cratered outcrop, he knows Rocky will take care of him. 

"... I'm so sorry, Rocky," Grace snivels out when his weepy sobs begin to subside and he can breathe through his nose again. "You're—You’re completely right. I mean, it’s a little messed up, but I trust you, bud. Boy, I’m a mess.”

“Correct. Leaking liquids everywhere, space blob.”

Grace sputters at Rocky's playful chords and his audacity to be his dry and deadpan self while Grace is busy swiping at his face to dry up his tears, to no avail.

With an inquisitive tilt of his carapace, Rocky asks, "I thought more time before lack of nutrition impact Grace."

"So, um," Grace mumbles slowly, voice thick. "Physical health doesn't always mean mental wellbeing. Not like my physical health is all that fantastic either."

"Grace elaborate."

"I guess I'm feeling homesick," Grace croaks, between wet hiccups. "I really miss teaching. I miss Bay Area weather. And SF's fog. God, I miss Karl the fog." Because he can't muster up the courage to say he misses Carl the not-fog when it comes accompanied with a small sting of betrayal.

"Will remember." With a soothing sequence of chimes, Rocky gently pushes, "I know there is more Grace not saying."

"I'm scared I'm gonna get to Erid and it's just gonna be another version of the pathetic way I lived when I was on Earth. Alone and not important and… and a coward."

"Grace is no coward," Rocky interrupts with an uncanny hiss of his vents. "Who say Grace is coward, question?"

"I… never told you. But I," Grace sucks in a pained breath because getting the words out is like pulling teeth and little bits of nerves and gum still attached and no local anesthesia, sterile tools whirring ominously above you. "I didn't volunteer to come up here. The, um, the captain and the pilot—they both v-volunteered. And a lot of other people were willing to sacrifice themselves, too. I wasn't one of them, Rocky. No one said it, but I bet they were all thinking it. Hell, even I think I'm a coward. No, I know I'm a coward."

And it's out in the air, the ugly truth of how small he feels.

Why does he deserve to be happy on Erid when all these other people couldn't? 

He leans closer to Rocky's ball, wrapping an arm around the flat planes to absorb the tentative warmth while he still can. His other arm is busy doing a bad job rubbing the tear streaks off the inside of his glasses with the hem of his shirt, stilted, half-hearted motions as his range of motion locks up, tension taking over his motor functions.

“I liked—I really liked that you thought of me as brave even though your whole premise has been built on a big fat lie. I didn’t want to upset you, and now I’ve probably ruined everything, like I always do." Grace sniffles. "You... You just deserve to know the truth. I'm sorry for hiding it from you.”

Grace breathes in and out.

His chin is still smudged wet from his crying. 

In and out.

The karaoke mic is in Rocky's claws, now.

"... After you save me, you say you send taumoeba and all information back to Earth in probes." Rocky could technically crush Grace to death if he wanted to, but he doesn't sound particularly upset or disgusted at Grace's confession.

"Sure, pal," Grace replies, tentatively. He traces the shape of North America into the residual mist of his breath on the xenonite ball with his index finger and wonders how the squeak of a fresh Expo marker would feel over its surface. He could even draw a silly face for his Eridian friend. "What about it?"

"If you say you are coward," Rocky points at Grace with a claw, "then I say you put coward Grace into probe and sent him away also. Right now, only human I see is brave Grace. Brave Grace take off helmet without even knowing Rocky. Brave Grace go on spacewalk to collect predator samples. Brave Grace save Earth and save Erid."

Grace blinks rapidly at Rocky's nonsensical counterargument. "Well that's just—"

"Reckless ♩♫♩♫♬, ♩♫♩♬♪ idiot, ♪♫♩♬♬ foolish, irresponsible ♩♩♫♩♩♫ human!" Rocky interrupts, waving his front limbs with wild, scathing gestures. He even jams several digits from different limbs against the xenonite, all pointing at Grace. "Grace save Rocky. Rocky watch all of crew die. Was alone in space for 46 Earth years before Grace came. Thought many things. That I am only engineer. Not scientist. Why me and why not different science Eridian live, question? Then Grace came to Tau Ceti and fix everything. You save me."

The words automatically leave Grace's mouth, "... No, buddy, you're the one who saved me."

He then realizes with a dazed sense of delay that Rocky must have just cursed him out in Eridanese—repetitive, recognizable sounds he's always sure the translator skips over.

Rocky chitters, "Grace brave, statement."

Grace averts his eyes from Rocky’s animated movements. "That's just your opinion, man."

"Grace came back for Rocky instead of going home," Rocky insistently bangs on his xenonite ball where he knows the vibrations will pass through and reach the places Grace is also pressed against. "Grace brave, statement."

That’s just not fair at all. Grace's face is on fire as he relents weakly. "F-Fine, buddy. Grace brave, statement."

His clumsy avoidance could never win against someone with the nerves of steel to approach an alien ship voluntarily and then move in.

With a lower toned whir, Rocky continues, slower. "... Rocky feel shame also. Happy happy happy Grace come back for me… even if you no go back to Earth."

"It's not just you, pal. I… when the choice came for me to either save you or go back to earth, I feel like it was too easy for me to choose. Like maybe it should have been a more difficult decision. I mean, what does it say about me if I don't even feel attached to Earth? It's my home." Grace pauses his rambling. "… Well, I say home, but I've always felt unmoored, like one of those hot air balloon rides they have during special events or maybe a weather balloon, cuz those practically go into space, and well. Here I am. in space."

"What is hot air balloon, question?"

"It's something you couldn't pay me to get on, man," Grace chuckles. "It can carry humans super high up into the air, usually just in the vertical direction. You see, I'm actually afraid of heights."

"Ohh," Rocky says. "Oh, no."

"Oh, no, what?"

"Erid space elevator," Rocky replies.

Grace's glasses slip down the bridge of his nose. "What's that, buddy?"

Rocky repeats himself with a tinge of impatience. "Space elevator may be problem for Grace later. Fussy human."

Grace feels his jaw dropping agape as the two words begin to register in his brain. "Space elevator? As in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator?"

"What that?"

Grace scrambles to sit up, suddenly very interested. "Tell you later, bud. You first. Expand a little more on that, please.”

"Space elevator boring. Like tunnel between Hail Mary and Blip-A. More important, Savior ♩♫♩♬♩♩♫♫♪, Eridian in history, learn Eridians are biggest predator on land not unique. The ♪♩♪♩♫ predator in air near space disturb building space elevator to prepare and launch Blip-A to Tau Ceti. Learn air predator not intelligent, but can keep other air species away if we give them food. Savior ♩♫♩♬♩♩♫♫♪ have much privilege for discovery, Savior Rocky will also have same for saving Erid star.”

"You guys domesticated your version of wolves into dogs?" Grace murmurs. Just think, there’s a whole planet’s worthy of information he’ll be able to learn about. “… That sounds really nice. Not the elevator part, but hearing stuff about your home."

"Is wonderful." Rocky pauses for a moment, like he's thinking hard about his specific wording. "Your home can be with Rocky, on Erid. If Grace would like."

"Grace would like." He just knows there's a stupidly giddy grin on his face right now, the corners of his mouth stretched so much his cheeks ache. Rocky is imagining a life on Erid together, with Grace included. "You like me, then? Enough to want to keep me around?"

"Yes yes, Rocky like Grace."

"I mean, do you like like me?"

"No understand meaning."

Of course he doesn’t. Repetition of words in Eridian is meant to be an emphasis of the word itself, but in Earth English, like like is something grade schoolers toss around. Grace just doesn’t want to say the more serious, vulnerable alternative out loud in typical anxious avoidant Ryland Grace fashion.

Understanding that there's some sort of cultural language barrier in Grace’s hesitance, Rocky tries again. "Grace is special human to me"

"I'm the only human you've ever met, yeah, I know, Rocky."

Rocky bumps against the xenonite in mild frustration. "No no no. Words have wrong meaning. I mean Grace is special to me, statement! Many qualities I like!"

“Oh, that’s… uh, what exactly do you like about me?” Grace can barely get the words out in a mumbled rush over the sound of blood rushing to his ears, the sound of lightheadedness.

Without skipping a beat, Rocky lists out on his claws, "Rocky like Grace big, exaggerated limb gesture even though he not graceful at all. Grace atonal and weird, talk to himself, but Rocky like sound of Grace voice filling ship."

"Sheesh, when did this turn into another nagging session," Grace grumbles, but he's chewing on the inside of his cheek at Rocky's honesty, flooded with what can only be described as affection, his heart growing five sizes larger for his Eridian friend.

"Rocky like how Grace is brave with strong responsibility, even when not want to do something, he complain and complain whole time but still do it anyway. Grace good at listening to Rocky. When much time pass since Grace last sleep cycle and he become grumpy and stupid, I think is cute cute cute. Grace very good at teaching human science to Rocky even if concept sound fake like time dilation. Grace is kind and generous. Came back to save Rocky and Erid instead of going home, crazy crazy crazy human not know if Rocky still alive. Grace have many things to like.”

"I—I really appreciate it... you indulging me like this." Grace's voice comes out soft, mallet-pound tender. If Grace thought he was blushing hard before, he must be as red as Rudolph's glowing nose right about now, flushed hot to the tips of his ears and rubbing the nape of his neck, just as warm. His heart is pounding for all the right reasons, and despite the circumstances, he feels like he’s on cloud nine floating right next to Rocky’s ball even though the artificial gravity of the centrifuge is working properly. "You're really good company, Rock."

Rocky chirps his enthusiastic response, "Thank!"

Grace mutters to himself, "It's a good thing you can't see my face right about now."

"Can hear."

"What's that?"

"Can hear blush."

Grace turns his head slowly, a little mortified. "I thought Eridians couldn't see color? And how do you even know that word?"

"Can hear blood vessels expand inside Grace body."

If Rocky can hear absolutely everything, does that mean…?

"Hey, buddy. What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Have been looking through portable Earth thinking machine." Rocky bulldozes past Grace's question cheekily, completely controlling the pace. With a brief whir, he twists one of his claws around its ball and joint socket several times. "Need word. Daily body movement for health. Twist twist stretch stretch squishy human limbs."

"... Daily stretching?" Grace sputters in disbelief with his entire body, and his lower back protests against the movement. He twiddles his thumbs in his lap, secretly enjoying the idea of Rocky thinking about him. "You mean like… yoga?"

He pictures Rocky with one of those neon headbands wrapped around the top of his carapace and swallows down an ungraceful snort.

"Yes yes," Rocky chirps. "Is good for you. Grace should do! Rocky will join also! But first, Grace sleep. I watch. Then Grace wake up. Eat food paste today, no taumoeba slurry."

"Do I look that bad off to you, Rock?" Grace groans, but his stomach immediately rumbles excitedly at the prospect of flavor on his taste buds. "I'm supposed to save those for when I seriously need it."

"Grace judgement bad bad bad," Rocky scolds, claws clicking to emphasize his words. "I make decision for Grace. Sleep now then eat food paste later. I observe."

Pressing his forehead against the ball where Rock is leaning one of his uneven rock faces, Grace teases, "You'll even watch me eat?"

"Disgust," Rocky says, rolling around and throwing two of his limbs up dramatically. "Disgust disgust disgust! … But Rocky will still observe."

"Yeah, bud," Grace smiles into the clear xenonite, the soft flesh of his cheek squished grossly against the material. This is as close as he can get, for now. But they’ll find a way. "I know you will."