eve

getting back into fandom after 10? years?

[stillarriving]

Your grocky art is gorgeous, I've been thinking about it nonstop. Can I have some more of your thoughts regarding grocky and physical touch?

Grace is lying in bed one night, Rocky already perched above him in his partition. He runs his hands up and down his arms, an old self-soothing habit that helps him relax enough to fall asleep. His hand drags across the scar on his arm and there in the quiet dark it feels-- different. The sensation is magnified both ways: his hand perceiving the scar, his scar perceiving the touch. It’s healed enough that it doesn’t hinder his movements these days, but it’s also still healing. 

He glides his fingers across it now with more purpose. He catalogues the textural differences-- the slightly smooth, hot surface of the scar, his normal skin around it and in the little valleys between. His breath catches. He presses in to feel more, harder, digs his nails in, closes his eyes and imagines what it felt like when Rocky had grabbed him to drag him to Armando. It’s not something he thinks about often, for obvious reasons. But now he finds he can’t stop. His imagination can’t manage anything more than a pale shade of the real thing, but even now it’s heat and pain edging toward too much. He tries to dig for what it had felt like, to be half-dead then suddenly burned alive. He pictures the sizzle of a steak on a griddle, and, absurdly, innocent women set ablaze on a pyre a thousand years ago. He bites down on the inside of his cheek, feeling overcome. By what, he doesn’t know. 

It’s the middle of the night and one thing he knows for sure after two years in space, one of them spent utterly alone, is that you can’t trust anything that pops into your head during these hours. He lets go of himself and tucks his hand safely under the blanket. But he’s never been good at backing off from something once his brain has started chewing on it. His last coherent thought is that maybe he’s traumatized by nearly dying and his best friend nearly dying to save him. He thinks about trying Mary’s therapy modules in the morning, which is such a functional adult thought that he drifts off feeling proud of himself. 

He emerges by slow degrees from a dream that feels like a warm bath, where Rocky is touching him and it doesn’t hurt or burn. It must be Rocky- unless there’s someone else he knows who has concrete for skin. He tries to sink back down but the dream slips through his fingers, splintering into flashes of sense-memory. A shy touch on the hand, then his five fingers curled around three. A nudge on the shoulder that slips into feeling surrounded, securely caged but not trapped, warmed from all directions. Lingering pressure against his left hip that feels like the start of-- something. 

It tilts his world on its axis. He can’t clearly recall a time he ever touched anybody during his time at base. Sure, he shook hands with most people he met across science and engineering and operations, maybe a few fist bumps. But at no point did he want to hug anyone or want anyone to hug him. Or-- another flash, and this time he can’t tell if it came from the dream or if his mind is running away with it now. The phantom sensation of pressure against his back, sliding down, down and around, stopping at the swell of his hip. He doesn’t know how solid rock can be soft, but it is. The warmth lighting him up inside twists into something sour in his stomach. He thrashes back and forth to dislodge whatever the heck is happening in his head. There’s a low, pained moan, and he’s disturbed to find it’s coming from him. 

Three staccato taps on the xenonite divider. “Grace awake.” Rocky chirps urgently. “Is Grace hurt?”

He flops over onto his face because he can’t deal with any of this. “I’m ok,” he mumbles, mouth moving against fabric. “Just a nightmare.” And then, because he knows it’s coming, “I do not want to talk about it, Rock. Pretend my hand is up.” And thank god. Rocky doesn’t push. The conversation where Rocky had learned about dreams- and nightmares- had taken the better part of a day, but he now considers it a smart investment. 

After that it’s like a dam breaking. The dreams don’t let up. They come for him every night, and every night there’s more– more want, increasingly fantastical scenarios, more of Rocky. It spreads like brushfire until it’s consuming his waking hours too. He feels insane with it. Insane with the want, and quite literally from the sleep deprivation. Sleep had been difficult his whole life even during the calmest of times. Now that he’s teleported into his personal hell or paradise every time he closes his eyes, well. Increasing sleep debt plus dwindling rations really bodes well for the mental and physical state he’ll be in when they reach Erid. If he makes it that far. 

Some of the dreams are wet dreams. At least he usually manages to wake up hard instead of… post-hard. So what. Wires get crossed in dreams, it’s not even the weirdest sex dream he’s ever had. The wet dreams are hugely embarrassing but, somehow, not actually the worst ones. 

The worst ones are the ones that are agonizing to wake from. He’s dragged unwillingly out of feeling held and warm and loved, into cold canned air and a stomach gnawing on itself. He wakes with tears already sliding down his face, eyes screwed shut as if by trying hard enough he could go back into the dream or at least keep the tears from leaking out. And the absolute worst part is that Rocky is always right there-- tapping urgently down at him or increasingly, rattling next to him in his ball. He wishes he could say it helps, waking up with Rocky by his side, radiating concern like a palpable force. But it’s nothing like what he needs. It’s not nearly close enough.  

Grace never wakes up feeling normal anymore and he knows that Rocky knows it, knows Rocky is cycling through increasingly catastrophic scenarios in his own head the longer this goes on. He’s steadfastly refused every attempt to start a conversation about it and that’s how he means for it to stay. It will eventually work itself out. The only way out is through. 

Things hold together- he holds it together- until the night he dreams about being back on Adrian. He and Rocky floating in Adrian’s upper atmosphere with no suits. Nothing protecting them from the deep freeze of space or the gases that were toxic to them both. It drives home the absurdity, the sheer impossibility of what he wants and the lengths to which his untethered mind will go to indulge him. There in the coruscating glow of green and blue Rocky had reached for his hand, a gesture that had never happened before and had felt like second nature. In his dreams, Rocky had let Grace move him where he needed him a thousand times over. Grace had cradled Rocky’s hand against his cheek and clutched at his arm, holding Rocky in place, with all of himself living in those few points of contact as they floated silently, Adrian continuing its stately rotation under them. 

This time he can’t do his usual routine– rolling over to hide his tears and his anguish in his pillow. He starts sobbing, great cracking sobs that rip their way out of him. He can’t get enough air. Rocky starts yelling immediately, banging against the divider, and when Grace can’t manage anything but another honking sob, Rocky slams into his ball and comes rattling over, pressing against him babbling “Grace Grace Grace!”

“I’m so– sorry,” says Grace once he’s calmed down enough to sit up and can actually breathe. He swipes at his cheek and is suddenly so, so angry at himself he can’t stand the touch of his own skin. Angry at himself for his desperate need. Angrier for lying about it. “I’m sorry I scared you. It was just another nightmare but this one was…” He swallows, throat clicking. “It was bad.” 

Rocky is silent for an ominously long time. Then, “I think Grace lie,” Rocky says flatly. “Not having nightmare.”

“Rock-” Grace starts, heart hammering. 

“I know when Grace has scared dream. Observed in fifteen sleep cycles. Fast shallow respiration, elevated heart rate, sounds like hurt but not real. Now when Grace sleep Grace is calm. Grace cry only when wake then lie to Rocky, says nightmare. Grace explain now, statement.”

This is a worse outcome than he could’ve imagined. He thinks he’s about to start crying again-- and then something else floods in instead that knocks the breath out of him. He should’ve known better than to think that he could ever get away with anything with Rocky, even in the privacy of his own dreams. Rocky, who can see into him and knows him better than he knows himself. There’s no danger here, nothing he could do that would ruin them.

“If I tell you,” Grace says slowly, dragging his hand over his face. “Will you promise not to overreact. And I want you to promise not to treat it like a problem that you need to find a solution for. This is not anything that you can fix. And more importantly, not something I want you to try to fix,” he adds belatedly. Because Rocky will usually respect what he wants if he asks for it outright, even if he thinks Grace is wrong about what he wants. 

“Yes yes yes,” Rocky says impatiently. “Grace tell. I can fix but promise will not. For Grace, Rocky understand only.”

“Oh no no no,” Grace says as sternly as he can, probably not convincingly since he’s still leaking all over the place. “I’m so serious about this, Rock, I’m only gonna share this with you if you listen to me- only listen, nothing else. Actually you know what– don’t even talk.”

He takes a steadying breath and walks off the ledge. 

By the end of it he can’t look at Rocky at all. But he also does feel steadier and lighter. Free of the weight of his disastrous desire. And true to his word, Rocky hasn’t said anything-- hasn’t interrupted or insulted Grace for being a leaky needy blob, hasn’t offered a single engineering solution. He’d just sat there, not doing anything except listening with his whole being and emitting a low steady hum the entire time that Grace has never heard him make before now. He doesn’t know what it means and is trying not to spiral about it. 

“I’m sorry,” Grace sighs. He’s distantly aware that he’s still miserable but it’s a wrung-out, blessedly empty feeling. “You’re stuck with me for another two years and I’ve already gone off the deep end because I somehow convinced myself I need--” He takes a shuddering breath. “I’ll get over it. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Silence spins out between them, seconds into minutes. Grace realizes Rocky is giving him space, making sure he’s really done, and he’s flooded again with a warm tide that drags up from his core and spreads until all of him feels tight and aching. 

“If Rocky talk now, Grace will listen, question?” Rocky asks, carefully intoning his pitches. He doesn’t sound upset, though, so Grace finally chances a glance over and he doesn’t look upset either. Actually, he can’t read Rocky at all right now.  

He puts on a smile. So what if it wobbles. “Yeah, buddy. My turn to listen now.” 

“I remember taking Grace arm. Burned Grace, regret but no choice. See Grace burned Rocky too, Grace skin so cold.” And when Rocky opens two of his hands and holds them against the xenonite, Grace can see that one palm is cracked and more crumbly looking than the other. “Rocky hurt too, but can never forget. Would not, even if can forget. Is honor to bear Grace♩♪♫♬.”

“Rocky,” Grace breathes. “Why didn’t you tell me? Can I–” He stretches out a hand, hovering an inch away from the ball. He instantly feels foolish. What is he doing, he can’t fix it, can’t even touch him– and that’s– that’s the root cause of this entire wretched thing. He snatches his hand back, because what if Rocky doesn’t want him to “touch” him anymore, even through xenonite? 

“Need a word for– that last one, bud” he settles for saying. 

Rocky drums his fingers together and Grace can see the proverbial lightbulb go off. He points. “Grace arm has Rocky ♩♪♫♬.” 

Grace’s heart thumps. “Scar. We have matching scars.” 

Rocky trills approvingly as Grace gently traces the three-lobed shape. “Grace Rocky matching, yes yes yes.”

Grace’s Eridian vocabulary is still limited but he’s working on expanding it every day. He knows the word for matching sounds a lot like the word for mated. Derived from the same root at least. And he– he needs to shut down that train of thought immediately. 

When he pulls out of his spiral he’s horrified to realize Rocky is still going on, tones pitched in a register he instantly recognizes as serious and sincere. “--can’t dream, but Rocky wants the same when awake. Always want. Want to be close close close, to hold. Is not close enough.” 

Rocky plasters his scarred palm against the ball again, and what can Grace do but reach back, something immense swelling inside of him, and the only thing he can compare it to is the moment he'd had on Adrian the first time, when he’d wished that Rocky could see what he was seeing. And then this morning, when he'd awoken crushed by the wish that Rocky had really been with him when he’d returned to Adrian in his dream, it turns out Rocky had been there with him the whole time, too. 

“Grace Rocky hug now, statement.” Rocky says, holding out two arms imperiously. Grace nearly smashes his face into the flexible panel in the center of it, the one that Rocky uses for fine object manipulation. As a tradeoff for flexibility that he doesn't fully understand, the panel is a lot worse at heat containment. Grace closes his eyes and relishes the way it burns. Almost, but not quite, too much. 

Rocky strokes a hand over the panel, so, so carefully where Grace’s cheek is pressed. “Know Grace forbid Rocky from solving problem,” in his teasing whistle tone now. “But actually can’t solve. Embarrassing for best engineer on Erid.” 

“It’s ok buddy,” Grace hums, boneless. “This really is all I need. I was just being dramatic.” 

“No no no. Can’t solve on Mary. Human ship not have right materials. But can when get home, do big material science.”

“Rocky…” Grace breathes, pulling back to look at him. 

“If Grace let Rocky do science, next time Grace Rocky touch-- no pain.” Rocky’s chirps turn into something like a purr, so low it rumbles through the panel and directly into Grace’s sternum. “If not okay too. Grace want Grace Rocky dead together, also can do. Because Rocky lo--”

Grace shoves him all the way off the bed.

[stillarriving]

who’s got grocky playlists i need them

[stillarriving]

if i were to lose you

maybe i’d lose myself too

[stillarriving]

so grateful to this movie for inspiring me to draw again :)

[stillarriving]

grocky and project hail mary got me to come out of a decade long fandom hibernation.

aspiring to contribute with art and writing :’). would love to make friends!