Chapter Text
Grace stared at the gruff man on the medical table. He and Rocky had been taking turns watching him for the past few days as they waited for him to wake up.
When he had first arrived, well, let’s just say he was a sight for sore eyes. The man was covered from head to toe in a mysterious, suspiciously blood-like liquid. His entire body was littered with various gashes, wounds and bruises.
Not only was did he look like a soggy wet cat that was just in a brawl, but he seemed to be missing a limb. Miraculously, he didn’t bleed out as there was some strange, almost vine-like, material snaking around his body.
After Armando had cleaned him up, they discovered that he also had extreme radiation poisoning; luckily, though, it wasn’t bad enough that they couldn’t treat him. Grace had been quite worried it would be irreversible, and Rocky…well…Rocky freaked out when he heard radiation. Reasonably so, considering he lost 23 crew mates to it.
Grace let that thought settle for a moment as he thought about the pain his beloved alien friend must’ve felt.
Oh yeah, the new human also had some weird…mutation going on with his face. Along his left cheek ran long, sharp teeth, somewhat resembling an angler fish’s teeth. The area around the mutation was coated with a thick, ruby liquid which seemed to be embedded into his skin.
Putting aside the missing limbs and strange mutations, he seemed like an average guy. He had long black hair that went to about halfway down his neck, dark stubble down his face and neck too. His olive skin was flecked with freckles and lined either scars.
~ ^ ~ ^ ~
It had been a week since the man had been brought onto the ship. Armando reported that he would be waking from his slumber in the near future.
Rocky was on edge about the new human, always chittering about him with, what Grace read to be, a concerned edge. You could never really tell when it came to the whale songs of Eridians.
Grace was suddenly yanked out of his thoughts as the mysterious man on the bed in front of him stirred.
-“Eye movement, detected.”- announced Armando.
In a flash, he was up on his feet, stumbling over his belongings that were carelessly scattered across the floor. Grace plopped into his wheely office chair and scooted towards the man, eagerly waiting for him yo wake up.
The new human murmered as he slowly awoke from his slumber, a pained look was spread across the man’s face as he slowly regained consciousness.
Slowly but surely, his eyes cracked open, squinting as the sharp and blinding light hit them.
If Grace weren’t so mesmerised by the waking of the man, he would’ve asked Mary to dim the lights down in medical. He stood up and took a careful step towards the bed, slowly moving forwards as not to startle him. Of course, his efforts were in vain though as he stepped on a bottle of painkillers and tripped over, landing face-first onto the floor.
“Crumbs!” He exclaimed as he fell with a thud.
The new guy on the bed flinched as he whipped his head around to see what the clatter was, the silky mop on his head falling into his eyes as he did so.
“Who the fuck are you?!” The man yelled, obviously scared. ‘Nice one, Grace’ he scolded himself. “Where am I?” He questioned again, staring daggers into Grace.
Grace pushed himself up slowly, rubbing his nose as he did.
“Woah woah woah, calm down! sorry if I startled you,” he said in a poor attempt to calm the new person down. He stood up and approached the man with his hand out in front, (which Grace honestly thought was a comforting gesture but oh well). Guess the man didn’t quite think the same as he violently flinched away from Grace.
Grace quickly pulled his hand back as he saw the man jerk back.
“Hi, I’m Grace…er, Ryland Grace. You’re aboard the Hail Mary, and you’ve been in a coma for the past,” he stopped to think, “6 and a half days”. This, however, did not seem to sit well with the man as he began to look more panicked by the minute.
Grace also panicked for a moment before trying to fix the situation. “Well, gee, I shouldn’t really say coma, you’ve honestly just been more knocked out! Or er, asleep for the past couple days, no biggie really, ahahahah,” he stumbled through his words as he tried to de-escalate the situation unfolding before him as quick as possible. His glasses hung from the side of his face off his ear.
He audibly sighed in relief when he heard the frantic thuds of Rocky’s space hamster ball coming from the hallway.
< “what happening, Grace?!” >
Rocky appeared around the corner.
< “Ah! New human awake! Good, good, good!” >
Rocky chirped in a joyous fanfare of chords, he did a little shimmy dance in celebration to their new companion (?) having finally woken up.
Grace turned around and glanced at Rocky. The only warning for what happened next was the grunt of the man behind him as his fist connected with the side of his head; with a thump, he hit the ground. Warm pain blossomed through his skull as the impact hit him. He groaned on the floor and rolled over onto his stomach.
< “Ahh! Grace hurt! Is Grace okay question?! Grace die! Bad bad bad.” >
The Rock started panicking and jittering around inside his ball. He fiddled with his fingers and cautiously approached Grace after making sure the new, actually quite aggressive, human could not reach them.
Behind him, Grace heard the new guy choke back whatever he was about to say, like the man was only just realising what he had done. He felt the cold material of Rocky’s dome nudging his arm. He rested his forehead on the cold metal ground, letting it cool his face for a moment before looking up.
Before him he saw two things. Rocky was dipping up and down, continuously chirping and whistling; asking if he was alright. That, he expected. What he didn’t expect though, was the man in front of him looking scared. Grace thought that he should be the one scared right now, not this strange guy. Actually, the guy looked like he was about to get down on his knee’s and apologise. Kind of strange considering how violent he was just moments ago.
“Don’t worry Rock, I’m fine,” Grace finally said through gritted teeth. Pushing himself up off the floor, a pool of blood slowly formed where his head just was. Panic surged through him for a moment before he realised it was just a blood nose. He leant on the ball before him as he stood up shakily and ran over to the counter to find a tissue.
After acquiring it and plugging up his nostrils, he turned around and looked towards the new human. He looked like a little fawn, frightened and lost without its mother. A pang of sympathy washed over him as he took in the sight.
< “Grace alright, Grace safe question?” >
Rocky whistled in a high pitch as he trundled over to him.
“Yeah, Grace okay.” He replied, giving the ball a pat.
< “New human scary, Rocky not like new human at all.” >
Rocky stated. He couldn’t blame him, the new human did look a bit scary. Then he thought about it, if he himself had woken up in a new place with some robot arms hovering over him, he would be quite scared too…wait a minute.
“Look, I know this is scary, I know how you’re feeling right now and I need you to know, we’re here to help.” Grace spoke softly, trying his best to not let his voice shake.
“P-please, don’t send me away, I swear I didn’t mean to hit you. I’m so sorry,” the man pleaded, he looked deeply wounded. Obviously he was physically wounded, but he looked like there was something inside him that was broken. “Please, I’m so fucking sorry, don’t- don’t send me away!” His voice broke at the end of the sentence.
Grace was at a loss of words. Never in his life had he heard someone plead, on the verge of tears, to not be sent away. Even in his years of teaching he had never heard a single student beg like that. This was pure, unadulterated fear.
“I- no, we’re not sending you away,” Grace spoke softly, “please calm down, we just want to help you.” The man seemed to clenched his jaw shut and looked away, like he was about to get punished. Something in Grace’s heart broke at that moment, like a dagger had just been pushed through his chest.
“Come on Rocky, let’s give him some time to adjust.” He said quietly, letting Rocky follow him into the science lab.
Once they reached the lab Grace suddenly realised his glasses were no longer on his face. He patted his pockets down and even checked to see if they had fallen into his shirt before giving up. He pondered a moment before deciding that they must’ve fallen off when he was knocked to the ground.
Quietly, he crept towards the med bay and peaked around the corner. And there they were, on the floor and soaking in his little pool of blood. Gross. Grace knocked on the wall to alert the man of his presence, which didn’t really help as he jumped at the sound anyway.
“Er, sorry to bother you but…I uh, seemed to have dropped my glasses…” he gestured to the floor before the cot. The man quickly glanced down before looking back up. “I..uh, yeah I’m just gonna go grab them,” Grace stuttered before hurrying in and grabbing them, drops of red plipped on the floor as he took them. He stood back, looking back and forth from the puddle of red to the man for a moment.
“I can clean that up now if you want…” Grace started before stopping as the other man eyed him with something just short of a glare, “…or I can some back later.” He took a couple steps backwards before turning around and hurrying out of the room.
Once he arrived back in the lab, he searched for something to wipe the blood off the glasses. Items popped in and out of focus as he got closer and father away. It was a bit annoying that things more than 4 meters were clearly visible but as soon as it passed that threshold it was like trying to see through fog.
After another minute of searching, he finally found a rag to clean the scarlet liquid off the glasses. “Oh you’ve got to be flipping kidding me!” He groaned as he put the glasses on.
< “Why is Grace annoyed question?” >
Rocky chirped from the corner of the room.
Grace sighed and pouted, “my freaking glasses are broken.”
< “Oh no, is bad . Grace cannot see now question?”
“No, Grace can’t see, statement.” He grumbled. He quickly grabbed the hand held mirror from the bench and looked at himself. The frame of the glasses was slightly bent, not that big of a deal compared to the giant crack on the edge of his left lens where the man had punched him.
With a sigh, he tossed the mirror aside and took a seat, turning around to look at Rocky.
“How do I look?” He asked as the alien stared up at him.
< “Grace is leaking.” >
“Huh?” He felt just above his mouth when he tasted warm, wet iron. Ah, his nose still hadn’t stopped bleeding. He grabbed the tissue from his nose and tilted his head back, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did so. Slowly, he kicked off the wall and spun around for a bit on his swivel chair.
Rocky and him sat around for a couple hours. Grace took that time to study some of the articles he had found on the one of his many screens. While he looked through things, Rocky just sat and fiddled with some of his equipment, occasionally leaving the room, but not for long as he would always rejoin Grace soon after.
Slowly, Grace began losing consciousness as his tiredness over took him. Without even bothering going to the dormitory, he let his head rest on the cold metal table in front of him. Almost immediately, he drifted into a dreamless sleep.
~^~^~
Grace awoke to the nudge of Rocky’s ball on his leg. Groggily, he looked down at the alien, taking his glasses off and resting them just below his chin. He’d always thought of Rocky as some kind of dog of some sorts, maybe a golden retriever or something.
He glanced up at the screen before him to see what time it was. Woah! 10 hours had already passed. Wow he must’ve been pretty tired.
He muttered an apology to Rocky as he spun around and stood up, he had other things on his agenda right now. The main one being to check on the new human. Man he really had to find out what his name was.
He paced down the hallway until he was just close enough to the room, slowing down knocking on the wall just the same as he had done the night before. He poked his head around the corner, only to pull it back last second as he almost got taken out by a pillow.
“Hey! That wasn’t nice.” He retaliated after sticking his head back around, pouting at the man. The annoyance fizzled away almost immediately once he saw the tired, hurt look in his eyes, like a baby animal longing to go home.
“I’m so so so sorry oh my gosh. I completely just blacked out and- oh my goodness you must be terrified right now! I’m so sorry, ah I should have checked on you, or slept in here.” Grace rambled as he walked into the room.
He paused when he saw the patch of dry blood on the floor from the previous night. He winced at the sight. Probably should’ve cleaned that up last night when he had the chance.
“Sorry,” Grace mumbled after looking back up at the man.
He didn’t say a word. The bags under his eyes indicated that he didn’t slept a wink last night, Grace felt a pang in his chest as he realised he had left this person alone in a scary, new place with some weird robot hand constantly trying to touch him.
Before he could let himself think any more he continued on with the conversation, “I don’t know if you remem…er…my name is Dr Ryland Grace. You can just call me Grace!” He sighed, god why was he so terrible at socialising. “Er, I’m no one important anyway…what’s your name?” He finished, mentally cursing himself for his terrible wording.
The man looked at him for a moment, deciding whether or not he should speak up.
“Uhh,” his voice cracked a bit. AUUUUU WHY WAS HE SO AWKWARD. He cleared his throat and tried again, “if…uh..don’t feel pressured to say anything by any means either, you are totally, er…” he sighed, giving up on his words and accepting defeat.
The new human looked like he was confused, and honestly who wouldn’t be? Grave just plopped down into his chair and kicked off the wall.
~^~^~
Grace was halfway through reading an article about Neptunes weather cycles when the man finally spoke up.
“Simon,” He’d replied finally. The man had a deep, gravely voice that sent slight shivers down his back. It was something Grace didn’t quite expect but wasn’t overly surprised with.
“Huh?” Grace stalled a moment before realising what he was answering.
He spun his chair around and smiled warmly at the man. “Nice to meet you, Simon.”