rocky is revered as a hero on erid, which comes with way more responsibilities than he was expecting, if he's being perfectly honest. he's constantly consulted on the astrophage crisis, and about half the time he tells them to go ask grace. he has to tell eridian scientists that more often than he'd prefer, considering rocky is an engineer and grace is the molecular biologist who studied taumeoba tirelessly for 4 years.
adrian pours themselves tirelessly into perfecting grace's habitat. not only for grace's sake, thank you very much, but also because it's the most complex and prestigious project they've ever worked on. that's why they have to get the water temperature exactly right. that's why.
the two of them often put off sleep, catching up with each other for hours into the night. it's been too, too long. rocky shares every joke and story he's stored up from his time on the hail mary. he tells adrian about the early days of his own journey, honoring the mutual friends they lost. he never talks about the years in between. adrian is struck by the way grace softens every memory of rocky's, the way the texture of rocky's grief changes when grace is in the story.
rocky and adrian visit grace often. sometimes separately, sometimes together. adrian admits to some jealousy during grace's sick months, when rocky struggled to leave his side. adrian didn't see much in grace back than, this fleshy creature that didn't do much but consume and expel fluids. adrian had believed they thought of every possibility as they waited for rocky to return. alive or dead, still in love or over them, a hero or a failure. but they had to admit they didn't expect their mate to come back soul-bonded to another, especially not one of a different species. it took some getting used to. (adrian calls grace that, early on: rocky's soul-bond. adrian has to define the eridian word for grace. grace gets very hot, then, and a little louder, and a lot less coherent. he denies it profusely. adrian doesn't quite know what the problem is, but mercifully changes the subject.)
the thing is that grace is hard to dislike, once he's able to hold a conversation. he's enthusiastic about adrian's work, asks (slightly invasive) questions about adrian, and rocky, and adrian and rocky's life together, and gets adorably passionate about things adrian doesn't quite understand. after going on a rant about some piece of earth fiction, he shyly asks if adrian would like to "watch" it with him. (rocky had not yet invented texture-based moving pictures, but grace said the earthlings who sent him to space had sent him the versions with audio description, too. he gets a little sad when he mentions the earthlings, and adrian wonders about this sadness.) adrian agrees, though, and grace gets so excited that they forget to ask him about his latent sadness over his home planet. they are, admittedly, taken in by the movie. they don't quite understand all of the audio description, colors and light are new concepts to them, after all, and earth culture is alien even with grace's explanations. but the heart of the movie, the interactions between the characters...adrian sees the appeal.
so, yeah. adrian visits grace often. for movies, and scientific debates, and explanations about earth's environment and culture. they think grace enjoys getting to talk about earth so much with someone new. rocky listens too, but he's not quite as interested in the texture of dirt and the flavor of earth's atmosphere. grace stares wistfully into the distance sometimes, during these discussions. adrian waits patiently for him to re-focus. they're used to rocky doing this sometimes too. if adrian chitters occasionally, at a frequency grace can't hear, just to memorize the shape of his face, the contours of his limbs, well. that's adrian's business.
until rocky catches them doing it on one of their together-visits. the two of them have a big conversation after that.
rocky starts by telling a new story. a story about stroking an alien's hair as the alien comes apart. he tells it softly, for once, without a hint of humor. adrian is confused at first, until rocky says "I didn't know what to do with myself. I just knew I didn't want him to be alone. I knew I wanted us to face every problem together."
and adrian understands. and adrian gets embarrassed, and angry, and remorseful, and grateful, all at once. they're quiet for a while. and then they grab their mate's hand, rub their thumb over his fingers.
"we...we can't do anything about it, can we? that's why you didn't tell me. that's why you haven't told him."
rocky shivers as adrian touches him. "I didn't want...I never meant to keep it from you. I just...didn't want to say it out loud, to anyone. he's too alone. he won't say it, but he's scared. I can't be another reason he has to be brave."
adrian thinks. thinks about how grace was transported to erid, passed out and leaking from wounds that never got enough nutrients to heal. they think about how he was treated by doctors who didn't speak his language, with a single advocate by his side. they think about how grace still flinches if someone approaches them from his periphery, so used to being handled roughly, carelessly, when rocky was asleep and unable to demand gentler treatment. the disorientation he must have felt, waking up in a strange place, surrounded by strangers and subject to all manner of tests.
adrian thinks about the panic attack grace almost had before his speech to the eridian populace. adrian didn't quite know what to do. rocky counted to him, for some reason, counted "in, two, three, four, hold, two, three..." grace was able to calm down, then. his primary care physician patted him on the back when he came offstage, and grace babbled to him—"you really think I did okay? I felt weird about that one joke I told—"
the eridians had been listening with rapt attention, and broken out in cheers with grace's resounding finish. he had flinched, then, too.
since then, grace has made friends—has stopped balking at eridian crowds, stopped flinching when a stranger moves too quickly, and stopped steeling himself when a stranger doesn't immediately have a friendly cadence.
but he still sighs deeply and slowly when he closes the entrance to his habitat. adrian's noticed that. they think maybe there's a weight grace feels on erid, one that he's able to shed in his biodome, alone or with trusted friends.
adrian squeezes rocky's hand, their heart clenching with it.
