TeaFig

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[stiffyck]

Heck, if he wanted to do open-heart surgery on me, I’d probably let him.

[dailycatsblog]

[bittersweetresilience]

offering up a little something to feed the rygos obsession 👉👈

[elalalune]

DBH au with K as Dr. Grace's android bodyguard

[musical-ghostie]

he wants to know if you're gonna eat it- it's his birthday and he's kinda hungery :<

[anna-scribbles]

thirteen update 📸👻📚📝

chapter 11: august

summary:

“Father…” Adrien said. The distance between them was eons wide, insurmountable. All of Adrien’s drive and confidence, his fighting spirit, evaporated in an instant. His hands shook. His mouth went dry. Silence crawled down his throat.

Adrien swallowed thickly. Somehow, he spoke.

“Can I go to school this year?”

excerpt:

Spectral light fades and the show's over, curtains drawn. Dusk sneaks in through the broken windows, filtering the wreckage in hazy, antiquated light. A marker of time passing on this endless day. Somewhere, there is a sun burning through the hours, skating across the sky. It seems as much a myth as ghosts and hauntings and houses that swallow you whole, but Adrien's judgment of reality is always worse in here. Ceilings so high they seem endless. Rooms so cold they freeze time. When he turns away from his mother's portrait, the atelier is deafeningly empty. It's hollowed out, more than usual.

The room is a shattered ribcage. Desks are splintered to bits. Couches gutted, stuffing spilling out. Mannequins lie contorted, faceless casualties of the battle Adrien never fought. The only wars he ever saw in this room were waged with icy stares and pursed lips. Volleys for connection shattered against an impenetrable wall of apathy. There is something—a dog or a child or a ghost, something—living just within Adrien's skin. There is some undergrown thing in him that shrinks and whines in this room.

It's the same part of him that wants. The part that doesn't let go. The part that playacts a goodbye hug with a memory. Get up, he wants to scold himself. This is it. There is no one coming to save you.

The room is a mess. The room belongs to Adrien. Or Adrien belongs to the room. Either way, it's his to deal with. There is no one coming.

Adrien gets to work.

read on ao3

[taylortut]

CHAPTER ONE IS HERE!!!!!!!

Title: you land badly, but you crash standing

Word count: 4073 (1 chapter of 5)

Summary:

When Rocky wakes up after Adrian, he's relieved they're both alive, but immediately knows that something is off with Grace. He's having trouble breathing, sleeping a lot, and spiking fevers. As much as Grace wants to blame it on lung irritation from the ammonia in Rocky's atmosphere, Rocky knows he's downplaying it, and it's not going to work. However, before he can actually do anything about it, the ship's power goes out. Taumoeba have gotten into the fuel and eaten all the astrophage, leaving them with no choice but to steal from the beetles. Which are on the outside of the ship. Which means two EVAs and a lot of lab work for Grace, all while his condition declines from what's quickly turning into a serious health problem. All Rocky can do is make sure he has what he needs and try to take care of him as best he can from afar, hoping they can get to safety before Grace's health is too fragile to recover.

Rocky knows Grace's respiration rate as well as he knows the rhythm of a ticking clock. It's constant background noise, just like his heartbeat. The expansion and contraction of his lungs, once a foreign, windy sound that made him feel like he was always in a storm. Now, it's a sort of white noise that he intentionally listens for when Grace is quiet for too long, focused or sleeping. It's a convenient little reminder that Grace is alive.

For the past 46 hours, the noises of Grace's biological functions have been overshadowed by the sounds of machines.

Rocky hates it. Every heartbeat is eclipsed by a mechanical beeping where the medical robot is tracking its too rapid, too weak rhythm. His breaths are being controlled by a tube that's pumping air in and out while his body is too weak to do it. Instead of the rapid tapping of fingernails on the benchtop as Grace thinks, he's left to fixate on the drip of fluids in a bag being injected through a cannula into his far too hot bloodstream. He hasn't made a sound of his own since the horrifying thump of his head hitting the floor when he collapsed.

The worst part is that he should have seen this coming sooner. No, worse than that: he did, but they didn't have a choice. Grace was sick, getting worse fast, and though both of them knew it, there wasn't a moment to spare to treat it, not without ensuring both their deaths. It was better, in Grace's opinion, to give them a fighting chance and deal with the illness later. Rocky hadn't known how bad it was going to get, and foolishly agreed.

And now he's here, in the medical bay, barely clinging to life, and Rocky has no idea what's going to happen. Not for the first time today, he drops down impatiently, his carapace clunking against the bottom of the ball in despair. Then, he regrets that, too.

"Grace sleep," he calls again. He does that after every time he loses his composure and makes some sort of sound of anguish, whether that's his body or his claws or just plain saying it aloud. He hopes Grace can hear him, and if he can, he doesn't want him to feel rushed to wake before he's ready just because Rocky is desperate for him to move again. "Rocky still watching. Rocky no go anywhere."

-------

LAST WEEK

Echolocation kicks in before anything else. Before pain, before olfactory sensation, before rational thought: it's a general sense of awareness of his surroundings.

That means that the first thing Rocky is aware of when he wakes up after saving Grace is that Grace saved him, too.

"Grace," he calls, but Grace is sleeping. Just before he reaches out to tap tap tap the xenonite and wake him, he realizes that he can do one better and hops in his ball. Though he's wobbly and it's a bit tiring, he's strong enough, finally, to roll right up next to him. "Grace?"

"Rock," he mumbles, stretching. Grace always wakes up stupid. "Would you give me a chance, please, to sleep a little--?" He trails off, looks at the xenonite behind him, and looks back to Rocky. He trills musically. The computer doesn’t translate. Whatever feeling this is, they've never had occasion to define it between their languages.

Grace throws his arms around the ball, but immediately draws away, hissing in pain. It startles him.

“Grace okay, question?”

“Me?” He laughs. “Yeah, just a little burn. Are YOU okay? You’ve been out for days.”

“Rocky still tired, still weak, but healing. Okay.”

“It’s so good to hear your voice, bud. I’m so relieved.”

Another happy little trill. Grace wipes away a tear. He’s pretty sure they’re the same emotion.

“Did we… find predator?”

Grace grins, then motions for Rocky to follow him into the lab.

When he sees it, he’s speechless. It’s incredible what Grace has managed to do in so little time. Dozens of containers of budding taumoeba colonies line the storage wall, enough to study for a long, long time, plus have enough left over to save both their stars. Rocky has all kinds of questions, and the teacher in him is thrilled to answer.

Grace coughs, a sound that’s been getting increasingly familiar throughout their little tour. Rocky has heard him cough before, obviously: dry air, and all the times he’s choked on coffee, but this is different. Persistent and painful-sounding.

“Grace is okay, question? Cough a lot.” He waits for Grace to stop, and when he finally replies, he’s a little breathless.

“Just a little irritation in my lungs from the ammonia. It’ll go away in a few days.”

“Hurts, question?”

“Don’t worry about that. What do you think of my taumoeba farm? I was kind of expecting more of a reaction, to be honest.”

“Is great!” he chirps. “Amaze amaze amaze!”

“Thank you. Now, let’s get you something to eat, huh? You’ve got to be hungry.”

“Yes. Grace eat, too.”

Rocky follows Grace to the dormitory, where he prepares a hot burrito as Rocky gets his own meal ready. Weird that precooked human food needs to be heated up when it doesn’t actually change the nutritional value. Grace has explained to him over and over that it’s just about the experience of eating, but it still seems like unnecessary work.

He’s so relieved to see Grace again that he isn’t even bothered by his chewing and digestion sounds. Neither of them speak it aloud, but he’s sure Grace felt the same fear when he found Rocky collapsed and burning that Rocky did when Grace passed out in the command room.

The relief is undercut by something, though, and Rocky can’t quite pinpoint it. There’s a vague but ominous wrongness afoot. He scans his surroundings to see if he can find it. Nothing on the ship is beeping or making otherwise concerning noises, so that’s good. Nothing shaking or falling apart. Nothing obvious at all, really.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Rocky refocuses. Grace is looking at him. “Feeling okay?”

“Yes,” he replies. “Feel good.” Grace coughs again, and that’s when it hits him. “Grace heartbeat is fast.”

“Is it?” he asks lightly, unconcerned. “Hm. I’m still healing, too. We both need some rest, I think.”

“Agree. Grace sleep?”

“Only if you will.” Rocky hesitates, nervous. “Want me to watch you? I don’t mind.”

“No. Grace need sleep. Is okay.”

“You sure?”

“Maybe just… stay awake until Rocky sleep?”

Grace nods. After a week of helplessness, he seems relieved to have a task.

“Of course. Get some rest. I’ll be here.”

Rocky settles down and falls into a much needed sleep.

——

When he wakes, Rocky is stronger, but Grace isn’t feeling well.

He sleeps for 10 hours before Rocky is concerned enough to wake him.

“Grace,” he calls, tapping on the panel. “Grace wake up.” It takes a little effort, but eventually, he rouses, rubbing his face tiredly.

“Mmph,” he groans as he stretches. “Hey, Rock. How do you feel? Did sleep help?”

“Yes. Feel good.” Grace seems content, humming happily before rolling over and bundling the blanket tighter around him. “Grace wake up. Sleep long time already.”

“In a minute.”

Grace says that sometimes, so Rocky waits patiently for him to muster up the will power to get up. He sleeps another hour.

When he finally does get up, he agrees to a cup of coffee, but doesn’t want breakfast. He claims he isn’t hungry.

“Been too many hours since Grace last eat. How not hungry?”

“I don’t know. Just feeling a little nauseous. I’ll eat something when I’m a little more awake.” He coughs into his elbow and it makes Rocky nervous, but Grace seems okay otherwise, so maybe he’s being sensitive. “I have some work to get done, if you’re up to sitting with me.”

“Yes! Rocky watch. Want know what Grace been working on.”

Grace grins. “I have so much to tell you.”

Despite Grace’s concerns, Rocky ends up feeling bored just sitting and wants to work on making some new taumoeba farm containers. He insists they have enough, but that’s never enough. They need backups. They need backup backups. Rocky will make sure they have all they need and more.

For a while, they work in silence. It's so, so nice to be back to this, Grace at the benchtop and Rocky in his bulb, big science. However, Rocky can't tune out the noises Grace is making, and not because they're bothersome. Chewing annoys him. Tapping annoys him. This--this is something else.

The cough is bad. Grace writes it off as just a little irritation, and sometimes it seems like maybe that's acceptable, but others, he's not so convinced. Sometimes, it sounds like he's struggling to get it under control, or like he's laboring to catch his breath when he finally does so. It's frequent, even more frequent when he tries to stifle it behind closed lips. Whether that's to keep Rocky from worrying or because his chest clearly aches, as evidenced by the absent rubbing of his knuckles against the middle of it, he's not sure, but it makes things worse.

"Grace should not do that," he finally says when he can't take it anymore. Grace looks up, pen balanced between his thumb and his forefinger, confused.

"Do what?"

"If Grace need clear lungs, just cough. Stop trying make sound quieter. Makes it worse."

He frowns. "Oh. I didn't realize I was." Turning his attention back to the computer. "I'll be more careful."

He isn't.

Grace would think it's beyond nitpicking if he told him this, but the sound of Grace's cardigan rubbing against his skin is also upsetting him. It's been doing so for the better part of two hours, rapid and rhythmic. He's shaking, something that has been explained to him as a reaction to the cold. It normally doesn't worry him, but then again, there's usually a clear cause, and it stops after he puts on his cardigan. Now, however, he's wearing that and sitting under his quilt, plus gripping his mug of hot coffee in both hands, and he's still cold. Rocky doesn't know what that means, but he silently notes it as odd.

The final thing is his posture. Every once in a while, he puts down his coffee to massage one shoulder or to pinch the bridge of his nose. It means tension, which means pain. It's not abnormal for him to do that absently, like he's doing now--Grace isn't always the best at receiving signals from his body when he focuses--but he's doing it a lot, and they haven't been working that long. Again, nothing so strange as to bring it up and risk another argument, but something to log away. He's becoming a detective, piecing together pieces of a puzzle. Problem is, he's got no idea what the picture is supposed to look like.

They sit like that, Grace silently working, oblivious to the fact that Rocky is scrutinizing him, and Rocky, secretly scrutinizing him, for another two hours before Grace groans, tossing his pen down and leaning forward to put his forehead to the benchtop. Rocky turns toward him, questioning, but his eyes are shut.

"Grace okay, question?"

"Yeah, fine," he replies. "Just a headache."

Maybe that's why he's been acting so weird. He's in pain and exhausted. Perhaps it's time to pause.

"Grace take break."

"Yeah. I think I might go see if Armando can give me something for it."

That, too, is what Grace would call a red flag: something that sticks out as a warning that something isn't right and that if something doesn't change, disaster could strike. As Grace stands, Rocky, obviously, trails closely behind. He's coughing pretty badly by the time they get to the med bay, any exertion seemingly enough to set that off, and, hearing that, Armando is leaping into action before they're even through the doorway.

"Down, boy," Grace says, swatting at his probing arm. Armando may be stupid, but if there's one thing that can be said for him, it's that he doesn't give up. If Grace wants medicine, he's going to have to be good and allow the quick scan he's trying to give. He looks annoyed as he tolerates a quick pinch to his finger with a little plastic bit and a probe swiped across his forehead from temple to temple.

"Blood oxygen content: 94%. Recommended treatment: immediate rest. Elevated temperature detected: 38.1 degrees Celsius. Recommended treatment: 200 mg ibuprofen and immediate rest."

"Huh," Grace say. He's not nervous, just surprised.

"Grace have fever, question?"

Fever has been explained to him as the most comparable human equivalent they have to Eridians' method of fighting off sickness: the body heats up to create an environment in which viruses and bacteria struggle to multiply and survive. For Eridians, that means boiling them off, but for humans, it just gives their immune system (something that is so complicated that Grace only knows the basics and Rocky barely even understood that) to fight off the infection.

"A little bit," he replies. "Guess that explains why I feel so rough."

"Grace sick, question?"

"Nah. Sometimes it just means your body is working hard to heal. It can be a good thing."

"Could also be bad thing," he points out. "Could mean Grace is sick."

"I'm not sick, bud. Promise." He accepts the offered pills and a pouch of water. "I'll take these and get a little rest; I'll be fine." Rocky isn't convinced, and Grace can sense that, so he places a reassuring hand on top of his ball. It means nothing to him, but Grace seems to use it as a comforting gesture. It's the thought that counts. "It's okay. You're a little on edge after everything that happened. I am, too. I say we call it a day and get out of the lab. Maybe watch something in the viewing room?"

Well, Rocky will never say no to the viewing room, now that he's improved it with his little device that allows him to see the screen. It always relaxes Grace, too, which is apparently the correct course of treatment for whatever is going on with him, anyway. At least he feels better knowing that he's seen medical. If anything were seriously wrong, they'd know.

"Yes!" Rocky chirps excitedly. Grace laughs and pats his ball.

-----

Grace keeps falling asleep during the movie.

That's not typical, either. Rocky always has a lot of questions, and Grace is always keen to answer them. Instead, He's dozing on and off, head resting on the arm he's thrown over Rocky's ball. It doesn't appear as though he realizes he's doing it, either.

"It's just the fever," he explains when Rocky points it out. "It can make you sleepy."

This is a new kind of tired. He's not grumpy angry stupid, but slow, unfocused, and quiet.

When the movie ends, Rocky isn't sure Grace watched even half of it, but that's okay. It's more important that he rests. As is typical for him when they finish a movie, Rocky expects him to be restless to get back in the lab, antsy from sitting still for so long. Instead, he yawns, stretching.

"I think I might go take a nap for a little while."

"Grace sleep again, question? Sleep so much today."

"Rich, coming from you," he teases. "You were asleep for like a week. It's part of the healing process." He coughs again, rubs his chest. That, Rocky believes, is not a normal part of the healing process, no matter what Grace says. "It's just a nap. I'll wake up in like half an hour. You don't have to watch me, if you've got work to do."

"Nothing Rocky can't do while watch Grace sleep."

"Figured. Alright. Well, let's go, then."

Once again, Grace is wrong. Sure, he wakes up after half an hour, but it's not for long. He says his head still hurts and wants to get a little more sleep, so he takes another dose of medicine from the med bay and goes back to bed.

For five more hours.

Sometimes he doesn't even sleep that long through the night, let alone a nap. Not to mention, it doesn't look restful. He tosses and turns, frequently waking to cough or because his blanket brushes the burn on his arm the wrong way and it hurts so badly he jumps. If he's been sleeping this poorly, perhaps that explains why he's sleeping more often.

Making more taumoeba farm containers passes the time for a little while, but eventually, he becomes too focused on Grace's elevated heart and respiration rate to think about anything else, even idly. It's just so weird. He's barely moving.

He frets that way until Grace stirs, then sits up and stretches.

"Grace feel better, question?" he asks before he's even exhaled all the way.

"Yeah, I do. But I feel like I slept for more than half an hour."

"Grace sleep five hours. Long time. Rocky worry."

"Five?" he echoes, then whistles. "Man, I was more tired than I thought. Sorry I worried you. I really do feel better. Head doesn't hurt as much, and I have some energy."

"Good good good," Rocky replies, noting the qualifiers "as much," and "some." "Grace hungry?"

"I could eat a little something." Rocky trills excitedly. This is good. He really is feeling better.

Then, he coughs again, and Rocky slackens in dismay at how it has changed over the course of the day and while he slept. No longer is it an airy, tight sound, but a deep rumble that lasts longer and makes him wince. It's almost like there's fluid in there.

"Grace chest make weird sound."

"Yeah, huh. It's fine. I'll take more meds. Clear it right up."

Well, it's not like he's going to get any more information out of him than that, so he'll take what he can get and get Grace a meal. That should help.

Grace eats half a bowl of oatmeal, saying he'll just have a bigger lunch today to make up for his pathetic breakfast. Because he doesn't have any solid evidence to utilize to keep him from working, he follows Grace to the lab, warning him to be careful and not to overwork himself.

Of course, that advice goes unheeded.

Four hours later, Grace is shivering, struggling to stay awake, and coughing badly again. He's been perfectly still for 15 minutes, no longer pretending to read or taking notes, save for the occasional bobbing down and then back up of his head as he fights sleep.

"Grace..." Rocky says after he gets so close to unconsciousness that his head almost hits the benchtop.

"Yeah," he replies. His voice is lower, rougher than it should be. "You don't have to say it."

"Grace should say. So I understand."

He sighs. "I don't feel right." That clears up nothing. He digs his thumbs firmly into his temple and rubs it in tiny circles, eyes shut. His head hurts.

"Grace needs more medicine. Grace take now."

"Okay, okay. I'm going."

Rocky leads the way to the med bay, so anxious that he doesn't realize he left Grace behind until he drags himself in several second later. He gently sits on the bed, this time not fighting Armando off as he checks his vitals.

"Temperature moderately elevated," he reports. "38.8 degrees Celsius. Recommended treatment: 400 mg ibuprofen and bed rest. Blood oxygen content: 92%. Recommended treatment: oxygen therapy."

After he swallows the pills, Armando places a mask over Grace's nose and mouth, which Rocky immediately recognizes. It's the same treatment he'd been given when he'd dragged him to the med bay. When he was dying.

"Bad bad bad," he says, an anxious feeling he hasn't had in 40 years digging its fingers into him. When Grace was dying, instinct had taken over, and he hadn’t felt much about it at the time in favor of acting fast. This is worse. "Grace sick sick sick."

"No, Rock," Grace says, taking the mask off, and oh, no, Grace is taking the mask off just to comfort him, when he needs to keep it on.

"Keep mask on," he demands. He won't let his panic be responsible for Grace's death. “Breathe.”

"Hey. I know this looks scary, but it's just the inflammation. Fever's spiking a little. It's okay."

"Diagnosis: pneumonitis secondary to chemical exposure. Recommended treatment: high doseprednisone."

Just as Grace is given the pills, whatever they are, the ship goes silent. No humming machines, no beeping systems, no chattering Armando. Most devastatingly, that includes the machine that's supposed to be pumping oxygen into the mask to help Grace breathe.

"What just happened?" Grace asks. "It's pitch black."

"Ship lose power," Rocky supplies the obvious answer to the question Grace is only asking conversationally.

"Okay," he says in that tone that means he's forcing calm, "why?"

But, fever and low-grade suffocation forgotten, he's already off to figure that out.

---

"Where's the door to the control room?"

"Left."

"Ow!"

"Watch wall."

"I can't watch anything, that's why I asked--wait."

"Grace see something?"

"Yeah, actually. There's a red button in here."

There's a clicking sound as he presses it without any deliberation, and then a low hum.

"Lights working, question?"

"A little, but they're dim. I can barely see anything. Found a screen, though." He shuffles around a little more until he reads something that makes his posture stiffen. "Oh, no," he breathes.

"What, question?"

"No, no, no, no!" Rocky trails behind him as he rushes down the hall and down a ladder, where he can't follow. He's still muttering to himself in a high-pitched, panicked voice. He fumbles around for a while down there, emerging only to once again ignore Rocky in favor of rushing straight to the lab. He smears--something--from his hand onto a microscope slide and looks at it, then grunts loudly in frustration so deep it sounds like pain.

"What, question? What is wrong, question?"

"There's taumoeba in the generator," he replies, devastated and numb. "They're in the ship's fuel supply. That's why we have no power. Taumoeba ate all the astrophage." Rocky's mind starts working faster while Grace's halts completely, devolving into panic so deep that his already abnormal breath sounds start coming faster and faster. "Oh, god. We're stuck out here forever. We're going to die out here."

"There is astrophage on Rocky ship," Rocky suggests.

"Yeah, but we have no way to get to your ship. And even if we did, the engine's full of taumoeba. Anything we put in there is just going to get eaten."

"Hm," Rocky hums. Grace coughs, breaths still coming shallow and fast from either illness or fear. He's shaking again, probably for a lot of reasons, and leans heavily against Rocky's ball. "Rocky think. You sleep."

"What? I can't--"

"Grace sick. Rest help, question?"

"Well, yeah, but--"

"Sleep. Rocky watch. Think of solution after."

Grace sighs. He sounds exhausted.

"Okay." He follows Rocky to the dormitory and lays down in bed where Rocky can see him. Sometimes, worry keeps Grace awake. Often, in fact. It speaks volumes about just how sick he really is that within just a few minutes, he's already drifting.

Suddenly, he shoots upright with a gasp, startling Rocky so badly he jumps.

"Problem, question?"

"No, solution! The little," Rocky can barely understand what he's saying because he's coughing, but continuing to talk, anyway, "little ships on my ship--the beetles; I've told you--for sending--they didn't expect us to come home, so they sent us with--and their fuel supply isn't connected to the ship's. We have plenty of astrophage!"

"Good good good!" Rocky cheers with a little dancey dance. "Knew Grace would think of something."

"Your confidence means so much to me." He begins to push the blankets off himself and sit up, but Rocky taps on the xenonite panel to stop him. "What? They're in the nose of the ship, I have to--"

"Later. Grace sleep now. Fever bad. Lungs bad. Beetles will still be there after sleep." Though he pouts a little, he doesn't argue.

"Fine." Rocky is glad Grace gave him the word "impatient," because that's what he calls him, and Grace can't fight him on it. He needs to save the energy for tomorrow.

[taylortut]

CHAPTER TWO BABEY!!! FIRST EVA DOWN!!!!

Though Armando seems to be doing an adequate job at meeting Grace's physical needs--he's breathing, he's receiving steroids through his IV, and he's sedated enough to keep him from being in utter panic and agony--Rocky wishes he could do more. 

Grace isn't cold. He's far too hot, actually, and that's part of the problem. That doesn't mean that Rocky can't wish he could drape his quilt over top of him after having spent the better part of a week watching him shiver from fever chills. He's receiving nutrients through a tube that's been inserted through his nose, but he's expressed so many times that enjoyment is an important part of the human eating experience, so all he wants to do is make him one of his strange, unnecessarily hot meals. Grace can't talk, but there's still nothing he wants more than to be able to entertain him with some stupid conversation about nothing. Warm, fed, happy. All Grace's favorite things. They'll do them, soon; he has to believe that. 

Things are looking as good as they possibly can, given the circumstances, or at least they're not getting worse anymore. His oxygen is holding steady; his temperature, though high, is stable, and lower than it was when he collapsed and Rocky couldn't wake him. However, that gives him little comfort, not after watching his fever spike and fall relentlessly while he was getting sicker and sicker. 

The worst part is the not knowing. Not knowing when Grace will once again breathe on his own, because Mary doesn't announce these things, if she even knows. Not knowing if there will be permanent damage when Grace wakes up. Not knowing when he'll wake up. Relying on pure relentless hope to not use the word "if."

For the first time in days, Grace moves. It's ever so slight, just a twitch of his fingers. If he saw like Grace does, he would have missed it. However, Rocky is too deep in abysmal despair to take it as a good sign. It could be nothing. It could be involuntary. It could even be a nightmare. Grace twitches a lot during those. 

He's almost leaning into the helplessness, now. Knowing he can't do anything relieves some of the anxiety that there's something he could or should be doing. 

He's been alone for 46 years, he tells himself. How is this so much worse?

LAST WEEK

"I was a lot more confident when I was half delirious," Grace says, standing in the doorway to the airlock in his EVA suit. "Maybe we should wait to do this until my fever spikes again."

"Can't wait for that," Rocky admonishes. "Need Grace brain to work best it can. Otherwise--"

"We don't need to get into otherwise," he curtails. "I'm very familiar with otherwise." 

"Grace will do great. Just climb ship and get beetles. Tie with tether. Come back inside. Easy."

"He says, from his bulb," Grace teases. He takes a deliberately slow deep, steadying breath. "This isn't going to be fun."

"Grace feel okay, question?" 

The medicine managed to bring his fever down a little, which has decreased the chills and headache, but his cough is still awful. When he was getting into his EVA suit, he'd gotten so lightheaded he had to sit down and take deep breaths (well, as deep as he can, which is not impressive). Apparently, the medicine that's going to treat the actual swelling in his lungs is going to take a few days to start working, and they don't have that kind of time. As Grace pointed out, at least the suit is pumping in oxygen just like the mask in the med bay would have, so it might be good for him to wear it for a little while. He doesn't acknowledge that he'll be concurrently performing a demanding physical task. 

"As good as I'm going to," he replies. Not reassuring. Not reassuring at all. "Let's do this." 

"Words of encouragement."

Grace sighs. "Yeah. Thanks." 

The airlock closes between him and Rocky, depressurizes, then opens on the other side, allowing Grace to crawl out onto the outside of the ship. As long as he stays close, Rocky can still see him, plus the communication they have on the radio. It's still not enough, because all he can do is watch and talk. If something goes wrong, Rocky has no way of intervening. 

No, he decides. Like Grace said, there's no sense in getting into "otherwise."

"Can you still hear me?" Grace calls. It's not like they didn't trust the ship's microphone communication with the suit, but it's nice to be sure it's working in practice. 

"Yes," Rocky replies as he watches him crawl out of the airlock and on to the hull. "Grace get out of ship okay?" 

"Yeah, but that's not the part I was worried about." 

"Rock worried about every part."

Grace chuckles, then coughs. "Don't say that. I'm terrified out here. I need you to keep me calm."

"Rocky terrified, too. Be terrified together. Comforting, question?" 

"In its own way," he replies. "Okay. I tied my tethers. Problem is, there's no hooks on the top of the ship, so they're really far down. I'm afraid that if I fall, the force is gonna be too much for the tether to hold." 

"Then don't fall." 

"Great, thank you. I don't know why I didn't think of that."

"Sarcasm."

"I've earned it." 

It's slow going, and Grace is struggling by the time he's made it halfway to to the compartment where the beetles are stored. He's breathing hard, which makes him cough, which makes him breathe harder. 

The fear of falling isn't exactly helping, either. The worst part is that, since he really has no business on the nose of the ship, it was not designed to be climbed. There are no places to stop and rest along the way. He's going to have to push until he can tether himself at the very top.

"Status update," Rocky requests.

"Making progress," he says tightly. "M'so out of breath." He sounds it. "Getting dizzy."

"Focus on top of ship. Use as guide. Getting close, Rocky promise." In reality, he's closer to the top of the ship than he is to the air lock, but not by much. There's still a lot to climb. It would be difficult for Grace on a normal day. Today, they've both been performing their own superstitions: a word Grace taught Rocky to mean "a ritual one does to desperately try to prevent bad things from happening or when begging for something impossible."

By the time he reaches the top, he's exhausted. Almost completely spent, in fact. 

"I gotta stop, Rock. I can't do this. I can't breathe." 

"Grace is talking, Grace is breathing. Doing very very very good job. Almost done."

"I'm not almost done. I have to open this stupid hatch before I can even get to the beetles, and it wasn't exactly built for dismantling. These bolts are tight; I don't even know if I can get 'em off." 

"Grace have to. Use tool."

He clamps the wrench around the first bolt and tightens the jaw around it, then begins pushing at the handle as hard as he can. He's making straining noises, a lot of them, loudly. Hopefully, that means he's succeeding. 

It takes about ten minutes, but finally, the first bolt comes loose. 

"I got it!" he exclaims. 

"Amaze amaze amaze!" Rocky cheers. He lets him celebrate and chooses not to remind him that there are three more. 

Each bolt takes longer than the last, and it's taking its toll. The burn on his arm is throbbing. His head is pounding and spinning. His arms are so weak that he's less "pushing on the wrench" and more "shoving his body into it." 

But it works. After about an hour of painful effort, Grace unscrews the last bolt and the hatch pops open. 

"Rocky!" he laughs. "I see--the beetles!" It's probably not a good sign that he's having to stop to breathe mid-sentence. 

"Rocky big proud," he encourages. "Grace do good. Take break, now. Don't want to faint on top of ship." 

"Okay." The fluid sound is so deep in his lungs that coughing doesn't clear it, just moves it around. "God, I feel like I'm drowning." 

"No understand word." 

"Never mind. It's gonna sound morbid if I explain it. Just. I'm really feeling the--low blood oxygen."

"Not good. Hurts, question?

Grace hesitates. "My head does. Mostly just feel like I can't--catch my breath."

Rocky really doesn't have a frame of reference for that, but it sounds miserable. Grace sounds miserable. He's sick and tired and in pain and has fever, not to mention, now stuck performing an exhausting, dangerous task that both their lives depend on. He can't even imagine how much he's suffering. 

"Rocky wish we could switch places," is the closest he can get to expressing his guilt about forcing Grace to do this. Grace laughs breathlessly.

"Yeah, you'd be--a lot better at this." 

"No," he insists. "Just--wish Grace didn't hurt. Wasn't sick. Wish Grace could be safe inside ship doing Rocky job instead." Grace hums. 

"That's sweet. It's gonna," he chokes, gasps, recovers, "be okay." Somehow, that wasn't super reassuring. Still, the longer Grace is out there, the less time they have to work on a solution. They're already scraping Adrian's atmosphere every 90 minutes, and they're only dipping as time passes. If they don't work fast, they're going to crash land. 

And die.

"Grace feel okay, question? Good rest, question?" 

"Yeah. Rested long enough. M'gonna start tying these suckers to the tether so we can pull 'em in." 

 For a long time, Grace is quiet again. At first, he tries to keep up a little banter, to let Rocky know what he's doing as he's doing it, but he quickly stops. He has to save his air for remaining conscious as he works. 

He successfully ties the first beetle to the tether and lets it down, where it bounces off the hull of the ship and remains tied down. Perfect, Rocky thinks. Grace's plan worked. He knew it would. One by one, he tosses down three of the beetles, then sags against the hull of the ship for support. His breathing is ragged and uneven, unlike anything Rocky has ever heard from him. Way beyond just heavy breathing. This is desperate.

"I'm done," he groans. 

"Great! Good good good! Grace come back now. Grace rest. Take medicine drink water sleep." 

"Sounds good, Rock. Here I come." 

The return trip is easier, but not easy. He's no longer fighting against the ship's rotation, but he's still outside, still risking falling, especially given how weak he's feeling. 

"I can't do this," he pants when he gets to the tether point about halfway up the ship. "S'too hard." 

"Grace do hard things all the time," Rocky says. "Grace brave. Brave brave brave. Keep moving." 

"M'so hot," he whines, earnestly whines. "Hard to move."

"So close. So so close. One more step." Grace obeys. "One more. One at time. Don't think about ship. Think about foot." Grace groans again. 

Slowly, far too slowly for Rocky's liking, he makes his way back to the airlock and comes inside. He presses the button and the entrance shuts, the cabin pressurizes, and the door to the inside of the ship slides open. Rocky wouldn't be Rocky if he were standing anywhere but as close to it as he possibly can. 

"Grace Grace Grace," he frets. "Grace is okay, question?" 

"Mph," he hums indecipherably. He stumbles forward in the EVA suit and catches himself on the wall with his bad arm, then cries out in pain, recoiling and pulling it close to his chest. 

"Grace!" Arm still cradled, he staggers to the side, looking terrifyingly like he's going to fall. "Grace careful!" 

"Ugh," he groans. He overcorrects his balance by shifting it heavily to the opposite side, which, instead of sending him careening into the floor, has him hitting the wall, hard. At least he's steady, now that he has something to brace against.

"Grace is okay, question?" he repeats. "Grace can hear me, question?" 

"Yeah, I hear ya," he slurs. He's desperately tugging at the helmet of the suit, trying and failing to pull it up over his head or to push it up past his chin. "Can't breathe. Need'a get this off."

"Grace can breathe. Suit pump oxygen, remember, question?"

Logic isn't reaching him. He just keeps shoving at the helmet in a frantic attempt to remove it. When he finally gets it off, he lets it clatter to the ground. 

Obviously, he's not breathing any better without it, because the helmet isn't the problem. It wasn't stopping him from breathing, just making him feel entrapped and panicked. The deep, heaving breaths he tries to take when he frees himself, however, are a big problem. 

"Grace breathe slow," Rocky tries to remind him as he chokes, his chest cavity rumbling with agitated fluid. Grace sways, steadying himself on Rocky's ball to keep from hitting the ground entirely as his knees give out and he sinks down against the wall to the floor. "Grace?" 

He doesn't pass out entirely. Rocky knows this because when he finally manages to get the cough under control, he just sits there on the floor, back against the wall and head tipped back, breathing. It's shallow, because when he takes a breath too deep, it triggers more coughing. It's rapid because it's so shallow. Its no wonder he's not taking in enough oxygen. 

"Rock," he whispers roughly. 

"No need to talk yet." As much as he wants Grace to talk to him, to give him some modicum of understanding about the situation at hand or to promise him it's going to be okay, he knows he has to be the rational one right now. To put Grace's needs first, where he can. "Breathe now. Talk later." Grace nods.

He ends up dozing off after a few minutes of sitting there, and Rocky is happy to let him. Rest is good. And, if nothing else, at least he's not in pain. He's been in so, so much pain. He's been careful not to complain about it often, but Rocky can tell in the way that he protects and favors his burned arm, and in the way that he holds his chest when he coughs. He's hurting, but they can't give him pain medicine. It makes him too stupid. One wrong move, and they both die a painful, slow death. 

Not that there's any pressure on him or anything. 

While Grace sleeps curled up in the EVA suit on the floor--it's simply not worth the effort to change, since he's going to have to go back out as soon as Rocky finishes with the beetles--Rocky works. 

First, he has to dismantle the beetle to get a feel for its parts. That... takes a while. It's complicated. There are a LOT of parts, all of them tiny. He doesn't understand it at all, but as long as he can see what wires connect to what, that's all he needs. He has to be careful, here. Not only do they have to be able to thrust them forward when Grace attaches them to the outside of the ship, they also have to correspond with the audio-driven remote Rocky made so he can steer the ship. Grace won't be able to do it--both due to illness and because he'll likely be unconscious from the centrifugal force required to escape Adrian's orbit--so it's up to Rocky, this time. Good. He's glad to be helpful. Grace is doing all this amazing work, and here he is, unable to do anything but sit in the ship and watch his best friend risk his life. It sucks. Grace taught him that word. If Grace hadn't refused to teach him the qualifiers that make the word stronger, he'd use those, but he said they're rude and ignored Rocky when he said that's why he wanted them.

All in all, it takes about three hours, a disproportionate amount of which is spent on the first beetle. After he figures it out, they go pretty quickly. The faster he works, the more time he gives Grace to do the EVA, but it's--is there an Earth word for both bad and good? Eridians have one--since Grace only has until he finishes rigging the beetles to sleep. They're getting too close to Adrian, now. Grace is going to have to go back out and place the modified beetles on the hull. 

Objectively, this isn't the hardest part, but to Rocky, it sure feels like it: when he puts the final touches on the last of the three beetles (Grace said they had to leave one in tact to send their findings back to Earth), he has to wake Grace and make him go back outside. He wishes he could put it off a little longer. They don't have the time to spare. 

"Grace," he calls, rolling his ball close and tapping on the xenonite lightly. "Grace wake up now." 

"Ngh," he grumbles, requiring worryingly little effort to wake. "Later."

"Big apology. Big apology but Grace must wake up now. No time for later." 

He blinks awake, shifting to scrub at his face before realizing that his hands are still in the thick gloves of the EVA suit. 

"Ugh, hey, Rock. How long was I asleep?"

"Three hours. How Grace feel, question?" 

"A little better. The sleep helped. Head doesn't hurt so bad anymore." Rocky knows that means far from "good," but he trills happily, anyway. At this point, they have to take what they can get. 

"Feel ready go back out on ship?" 

"Wouldn't go that far," he mutters, "but I feel like I might survive it. You finished with the beetles?"

"Yes, finish. Good connection with remote. Everything is ready." 

"Great," he says. Sarcasm again. Slowly, he gets to his feet, where he remains steady enough that Rocky feels okay about it. 

"Water and medicine," he reminds him. They'd brought his fever reducers, prednisone, and a pouch of water into the room with them so he could access them without having to make the trip all the way to the med bay for them, but Grace hadn't even been well enough to cross the room when he'd gotten back inside. Now is better than never, he supposes. Grace complies, drinking as much of the water as he can stomach. Not enough, but again, deal with the worst case scenario for long enough and the second worst starts to look a little brighter. When he gets back, they can get him on the fluids that go from the bag straight into his blood. He just has to get through this. 

Grace examines the beetles in awe for a moment. 

"I just realized, if I slept for three hours, that means you did all this that fast?"

"Yes," Rocky replies. "Apology. Would have given Grace more time to sleep, but--"

"No," he curtails, actually smiling, "it's amazing. You should be proud."

Rocky shrinks away from the compliment modestly, but trills in appreciation. His momentary joy is undercut by Grace attempting to take a deep breath to focus himself and ending up coughing again. He might be feeling better, but he doesn't sound any healthier. 

"I'm nervous," Grace admits. Rocky thinks that's an understatement. 

"Nervous together. Comforting, statement." 

"In its own way," he repeats. "Thanks. I think I'm ready."

Well, that's a lie, but Rocky has to lie back when he says, "Rocky ready, too," so they're even. "Grace put on helmet. Time for space walk."

[taylortut]

CHAPTER THREE!! ANOTHER EVA, PLUS SEVERAL ROCKY CRASHOUTS!!

Despite it having been stable for about 36 hours, Grace's fever starts to climb again. Armando has gone from checking it every 2 hours to every 30 minutes, and each time, the number Mary announces is higher than the last. Grace is shivering, constantly and hard. Is he awake enough to feel the discomfort, or is it just something his body is doing? When Grace is cold in the lab, he complains about it. In fact, he might complain about that more than anything else: more than headaches, more than when he accidentally hits his elbow on the corner of the benchtop, more than being sleepy or hungry or thirsty. It's one of his least favorite sensations. Maybe unconsciousness is at least giving him the small mercy of relief. 

When Mary announces that his temperature has surpassed his emergency threshold of 40 and climbed to an astounding, terrifying 40.3 degrees, Rocky makes the mistake of thinking it can't get any worse than this. 

He's wrong.

Suddenly, Grace's heart rate begins to skip up. Rocky senses it before the machine starts to alarm, launching Armando into immediate action. He skitters back and forth behind the xenonite, unable to sit still for panic. 

"Grace?" he calls, desperate for a reply he knows isn't going to come. "Grace?!" 

Then, something happens that he doesn't understand. Grace has never mentioned it and there is no Eridian equivalent. His muscles begin to tense and release, tense and release, tense and release so rapidly that his whole body is trembling. It's different than shivering. Wild, uncontrolled, and just plain wrong. His breaths come out choked, like he's being squeezed, and he's making small vocalizations unlike anything he's heard before. This is it. This is Grace dying. 

Rocky squeals words of anguish that the computer can't translate. Sometimes they're not even words, just deep, crushing cries as he beats against the xenonite as if it's going to do anything. There's nothing he can do. Rocky can't fix it this time. He can't even be there next to him to offer any kind of solace as he slips away. 

After the scariest minute of his life, Grace's shaking begins to calm down. Mary announces to no one that he's had what she calls a "febrile seizure" and says that the treatment is to bring down the fever, as if that hasn't been the goal since the moment Grace got sick. 

"Grace is--Grace not okay," he curtails a stupid question that would go unanswered, anyway. 

As his breathing and heart rate return to their new normal, which is elevated and strained, Armando leaves the med bay and returns with towels and water, a lot of water. He wets the towels and places them over Grace with the intention of cooling him down mechanically, since medicine isn't helping. Rocky can't imagine how uncomfortable this must be for Grace, already feeling as though he's freezing. Torture. It's torture. And Rocky is becoming more sure every hour that it's going to be the last thing Grace ever feels.

LAST WEEK:

Each time Grace's cough gets so bad that his breath arrests and he has to gasp for air to kick start it once more, Rocky vividly pictures him dragging Rocky's unconscious body into the airlock and letting in the hot ammonia. That same pain that Rocky had felt all over his own body when he'd broken free from the xenonite to rescue Grace, but possibly worse, because it wasn't just the atmosphere itself, but the temperature that burned. Grace has trillions of microscopic sensors all over. In his skin, his eyes, his throat, his lungs. All of them must have been overwhelmed. It should have been debilitating, impossible to push through for incapacitating pain. 

But he'd done just that. Pushed through to save Rocky, because he hadn't been able to make it just a little further to get to the airlock himself. If he'd moved faster, Grace might be okay. Tried harder, been stronger, had an actual plan before he'd broken the xenonite so he wasn't just acting on fear alone--

"Rocky?" Grace calls through the speaker. Rocky realizes that in the time he's been in his guilt spiral, he's managed to move a significant distance toward the bottom of the ship. "Been a minute since I've heard your voice. Could use some words of encouragement, here." 

Grace needed him then, and he'd messed it up. Grace needs him now, and he's so close to messing it up again. No matter what, he can't do that to him. 

"Grace is killing," Rocky says, and Grace laughs. 

"I'm what?" 

"Grace has said before. Killing. Means do good." 

"Killing it?" he clarifies, a grin clear in his voice. "That's--that's really funny. Thanks." 

"Grace is close to where first beetle should go. Feel okay, question?" 

"Could be worse," he replies, "theoretically. How's the engine comin' along?" 

The conversation is making him audibly out of breath. He's terrified up there. 

"Good good good, almost done." Because the Hail Mary's engine is full of taumoeba, Rocky is making a new one. Grace had been absolutely blown away at the idea that he could do that, but Rocky feels as though that's the easy job. At least he's inside. "Grace need breathe, not talk." 

"Talk to me, then," he says. "Need something to--focus on." 

"What Grace want Rocky to talk about, question?" 

"I don't know. Anything." 

Personal, he'd wanted when they'd named Adrian, planet. Something personal. So, Rocky tells him about Adrian, mate. 

Grace places the first beetle, then praises Rocky about his xenonite adhesive, which sticks to the side of the ship securely and easily. At least he could make something easy.

"Grace do great. Brave brave brave. Next beetle." 

"Next beetle." Grace is breathing hard, and has been for a while, and he can only walk for so long before his climbing starts to slow. Rocky doesn't say anything until he comes to a complete halt. 

"Grace stop moving," he says. 

"Yeah..." he replies. Rocky waits for more, and doesn't get it.

"Grace is hurting, question?" Grace flails for a second, like the ship has moved under him and he's trying to keep his balance. He's lucky that when he hits his knee, he doesn't fall off the hull.  "Grace! Grace is dizzy, question?" He's been feeling that way so often, it's impressive that he's managed to keep his balance this long. 

"Yeah," he says. "Ugh. Everything's, like... tilting." 

"Grace is not safe," he warns. All he wants to do is tell him to sit and rest, but that can't happen up there. The faster he gets this done, the faster he can come back. If he stops walking, he risks slipping off the side. "Grace get up. Next beetle. Now." 

"Rocky," he whines. "Gimme a sec."

"No. Next beetle now demand." 

He coughs pitifully, deep and low and long, which isn't meant to hurt Rocky, even though it does. But the important thing is that he gets up. 

When he places the second beetle, he's so dizzy that he has to lean up against it for a minute and focus on not vomiting. As the glue sets on the third beetle, Grace laughs, which ends in a soupy cough. 

"We did it," he celebrates. 

"Grace did it," Rocky corrects. 

"You set 'em up; I knock 'em down." Rocky doesn't want him to waste the air it would take him to explain what he just said. "'M comin' back in. Finally."

"Careful. Grace stay safe." 

Rocky watches him make his way up the ship. His steps are uneven and slightly meandering. He wavers from side to side because he can't tell what way's what, anymore. 

"Tether lead back to door. If Grace feel dizzy, follow where tether is pulling." 

"Mhm," he mumbles. "M'tryin. Vision's a little blurry."

"No need to see, only feel." He's tentatively allowing himself more hope that they might actually pull this off with each step closer Grace gets to the door. It's looking like he's going to make it until suddenly, Grace trips over his own feet and stumbles. This time, his hands are too busy trying to feel out the path of the tether for him to reach out and catch himself in time, so instead of landing on the hull, he slips off it with a guttural yell. 

Rocky scans the surface of the ship to see where he might have landed and only confirms the worst: he hadn't. He's in freefall. 

"Grace!" he shouts, not bothering to try to mask the terror in his voice. Grace probably can't hear it, anyway, over his own screaming. "Grace, status update!" 

Silence. 

“Gra--"

His desperate call is interrupted by a sound as relieving as it is deeply concerning: his scream is cut off by a choked, strangled grunt as the tether catches Grace and knocks the air out of him. Rocky waits several seconds for him to inhale, but he doesn't, not immediately. It takes another forceful bounce on the tether to get his breathing moving again. He gasps vocally. That air is released as another coughing fit, the worst he's heard yet. By the time he realizes that it's not going to pass on its own, Grace is... well, whatever the word Grace had deemed too morbid to explain yesterday, "drowning," means, it's probably pretty close to what this must feel like. 

"Grace," Rocky calls, not expecting an answer. There's no way he could give one in this state. "Grace, breathe." He can't even get enough air to reply. "Lungs are bad. Breathe shallow. In as much as you can."

Grace takes a hitching double breath, which quickly turns into more coughing. 

"In again. Hold for one second." Yeah, that doesn't happen. "Did not hold. Try again. In. Hold one second. Only one. Grace can do one. Not that hard." He's hoping that if he can get a rise out of him, that the urge to bicker might motivate him to get his breath back even more than, say, not passing out on the side of the ship and dying.

Grace's inhale sounds so, so painful, and strained, and it's not deep enough. However, he manages to hold it. Rocky isn't sure if it's even a whole second, but it's something. 

"Amaze amaze amaze!" he cheers. "Do again. Then breathe out and hold for second." 

Slowly, that seems to help. He's not breathing so deep as to agitate the fluid in his chest and cause him to choke, but now, there's a new problem. He's breathing so shallowly that his breaths are coming in uneven, rapid, wild puffs. Great. He's replaced one problem with another and swapped coughing for hyperventilating. 

"Now hold two seconds," he commands. 

"Can't," he manages to choke out between gasps.

"Grace is panicking, but can breathe. Breathe careful." 

It takes him a while and a lot of fight, but eventually, he manages to do that, too. Now, he's actually breathing enough that Rocky isn't so afraid he's going to actually suffocate, which takes away one problem. Now, to tackle the next. 

"Grace get back on ship."

"How?" he demands, voice shredded from his ordeal. 

"Find something to grab." He's not completely underneath the ship, and if he gets lucky, he might be able to reach one of the handholds on the bottom. "Handles on side. Use those." 

"Can't--reach that!" 

"Then get closer. Swing to hull."

"If I miss, I--hit the side; I--bounce off again--can't breathe." It seems so impossible that Grace doesn't even want to try. Rocky is going to need to give him one last push.

"Grace trust Rocky question?" 

"I--yeah," he says. "It's me I--don't trust." 

"Well, Rocky trust Grace. And Grace trust Rocky. So do what I say. Swing tether." 

"We're gonna--talk about that logic." 

"Swing now." 

Because he's his incredible, brave, so strong best friend and Rocky knew, just knew he could because Grace always manages the impossible when he has to, Grace swings his legs once, then twice, then more, until he's built enough momentum to reach for the ship. One more swing is going to put him at a critical point where he either successfully grabs one of the handholds, or misses, swings back with even more force, and hits the hull with no control over which way he's facing. If that happens and he hits it with his back, that's it. There's no way his lungs can withstand recovering that kind of air again.

"Grab now!" Rocky shouts, and Grace reaches out, thankfully, miraculously managing to grab the handhold and grip it tight enough to pull himself toward the side of the Hail Mary, where he's able to get a foothold, as well. That places him firmly on the ship's hull once more, where he can climb, with great effort, back up to the top. There, he's able to finally walk again. All the way to the door.

By the time the airlock pressurizes to let him into the ship, he's fallen on his hands and knees, coughing from the impact. Rocky and Grace can't both fit in the airlock at the same time, so he has no choice but to wait right outside the door. Grace rocks back into a kneeling position and reaches out to place a hand onto Rocky's ball, but doesn't look up at him. Rocky isn't sure what that means, but to be safe, he presses his claw to it from the inside. 

"Grace is amaze," Rocky practically whispers. Strangely, Grace still hasn't looked up. It's not until a small drop of liquid drips down from his chin that Rocky realizes why. He's crying. That could mean so many things, and Rocky suspects that it does. No matter what,it means Grace needs him. "Grace want... hug? Question?" 

He laughs soggily. He nods. Now, with motivation to do so, he gets to his feet and stumbles into the ship, dropping to his knees once more upon entrance and wrapping his arms around Rocky, who leans into it with a little tap of the xenonite as his carapace hits the panel. This had seemed like a strange human activity at first, but it's starting to grow on him. Being this close to Grace, he can hear his heart beating. He can also hear the fluid in his lungs, a low crackling noise that has to hurt.

"Grace need oxygen machine," he says softly after he's pretty sure this is starting to turn from "hug" to "falling asleep against the xenonite." 

"Mhm," he murmurs. "'Kay." 

He uses Rocky's ball to get to his feet and touches the wall for balance until they make it to the med bay, where Armando is practically flailing. 

Grace nearly falls into the bed, completely exhausted. He's not acting like himself. He's quiet, which he never is, and still. Armando scans the probe over his forehead again while he breathes in the mask and the result makes Grace wince. 39.7 degrees Celsius. Far, far away from the normal human body temperature Rocky has been taught. 

"How bad is fever?" he asks, squirming a little as Armando places the needle in Grace's arm for fluids. He knows that if a fever gets too high, things start shutting down. How close is Grace to that point?

"Uh, 40 is usually the like, uh, emergency threshold."

That's far too close for comfort.

"Bad bad bad."

"Maybe just 'bad bad.' Save that last one for later, because we're not done yet."

Right. They still have to actually get out of Adrian's orbit. 

"Sleep now. Worry later."

"There is no later, Rock, we've go to move. I have so much math to do to figure out the angles for the beetle thrusters--"

"No. One hour. One hour sleep, breathe, fluids. Grace not allowed in lab until then."

Grace chuckles, which makes him cough, and now, Rocky notices something. His arm comes up to protect his abdomen, holding his torso tightly. 

"Ow," he whines. 

"Hurt, question?" 

"I think I bruised my ribs from coughing so much. The fall from the ship really didn't help. Hurts a ton."

So, not only had his fall been terrifying and suffocating, it had been excruciatingly painful, too. And he can't take anything for it because he still has to think clearly to get them out of here. 

And all of this because Grace saved him.

"Sleep. One hour better than no hours."

Grace nods. "Yeah, okay. That sounds nice. I'm... so tired." 

"Rocky watch."

----

Rocky thought he could handle one hour alone. 

He'd handled 46 years alone, after all, but it turns out, that's a big part of the problem. While Grace sleeps, all Rocky can think about is losing him. 

His crew had gotten sick slowly. At the beginning, things had been okay. Things ran smoothly, as they were supposed to. He spent his days in his workshop, so happy. Friends popped in and out all day to request things they needed him to make, and when he made them, they were thrilled. Impressed, even. Just like Grace is, every time. 

But slowly, things went wrong. The hustle and bustle of the ship calmed, and it was rarer and rarer to see his friends wandering around. No one came into his workshop to ask for favors anymore because no one was working. 

The ship was set to run in shifts so everyone got to sleep and everyone had someone to watch. If it had happened one by one, he could have handled it. The loss, the pain, the confusion, the helplessness--those were his to deal with. What he wanted to do was watch them sleep, but it happened all at once, so fast. One day, everyone is okay. A week later, they're all too sick to leave their rooms. 

Rocky couldn't keep up. They were sleeping longer and longer, and he couldn't watch everyone at once. His best wasn't good enough. He watched a few die. Mostly, though, what hurts is those he didn't. So, so many of them died when Rocky was watching over someone else. Rather than with a comforting presence on their chest, most died alone, afraid. He would have experienced the hostile, gnashing pain of comforting the dying 22 times over if it meant sparing them that end. 

But he couldn't. 

Instead, he would enter the rooms of the dead, scrape at his arm until it hurt to give them a proper goodbye, one that still wasn't enough, and try to move on to the next one. And, just to keep the ship running, because no one else was well enough to do it, he had to spend most of his time in his workshop, just keeping up with daily maintenance. 

Eventually, there were no more crew to watch sleep. Because they weren't sleeping. 

Rocky holed up in his workshop many days, far too depressed to move. He, too, slept longer hours, none of them restful. For a while, he thought he might be getting sick. Maybe it hurt more when he realized he wasn't. 

He doesn't realize he's pacing frantically back and forth until Grace calls his name. 

"Grace!" he replies quickly. "Grace is feeling better, question? How bad is fever? How bad is pain? If you need--"

"Woah," he cuts him off, pulling the mask away from his face so he can speak. "Are you okay? What's all," he gestures, because apparently, though he forced himself to stop pacing, he's still vibrating, "this about?" 

"Was waiting for you to wake up."

"You do that every day, and it's never looked like this before." Rocky can't lay this burden onto him, but he also can't stop shaking. There is enough to worry about without adding his own meltdown to the list, and even if he does have to have one (which he feels he does not), the last thing he wants to do is make it Grace's burden.

The problem is that the only thing that might make it feel better is to talk about it with Grace. 

"Come on, buddy. I know something's wrong." 

"Everything is wrong," Rocky snaps, immediately regretting the sharpness in his tone. He hadn't intended to put it there. "Apology, I don't know--Grace has enough to--and I should be--"

"Hey." His tone is soothing and soft as he gets up from the bed to sit on the floor beside Rocky's ball. "Talk to me." 

"Grace is so sick, and Rocky make worse, asking Grace to do more and more." 

Grace's eyebrows crease in confusion. "You didn't ask me to do anything. We're making a plan. Together."

"Plan is bad. Plan make Grace sickness worse and worse."

"Not a whole lot we can do about that. We'll fix it when we get to safety." 

Rocky almost asks the dark question that's been on his mind for the past few days, ever since Grace's fever spiked and the power went out. What if it's too late by then? He manages to stifle it, but it makes him shake anew, even worse than before. 

"Rocky?" Grace asks, sounding frightened. "What did I say wrong?" 

He's going to shake apart if he doesn't move, so he rocks back and forth in his ball, hoping that something, anything might distract from how overwhelming and horrifying and hopeless this is. An anxious little trill escapes his vents. 

"Rock, you gotta calm down for me. I think you're having a panic attack." That's a human thing, he wants to argue. Eridians don't get those, don't have nervous systems that dump a bunch of fear chemicals into their blood for no good reason. Grace's, "You're okay," doesn't help because he's not worried about himself. "Listen. Repeat after me."

Just like when they met, before they could communicate, when Grace thought Rocky was playing a game rather than trying to show him the oxygen molecule he'd made to let him know he could breathe in the tunnel, he taps rhythmically on the xenonite in a little pattern. It's five beats long, each accompanied by a little hummed note. Rocky angles his body to one side to show Grace his confusion. 

"Come on, you can do it. Repeat it." 

Well, he's not exactly in a position where he wants to deny Grace anything, so if this is what he's asking him to do, this is what he'll do, though it seems like a stupid time to play a stupid game. Maybe he's building to something less stupid. Rocky taps the panel back, claw right where Grace's fingers are, in the same pattern repeating the same notes. 

"You got it. Now do this one." He taps in another little pattern, this one a little longer. It really doesn't feel like they have time for this, but he complies. 

By the time Grace is tapping more complex songs into the ball, Rocky finds that his thoughts have slowed down. The tapping gave him something to cut through the noise, something to focus on for long enough to snap himself back into reality. This isn't the same as what happened with his crew. They were sick, and no one knew why. Grace knows what's wrong with him, and has medicine to help. They didn't wake up. Grace is awake and tapping. 

"Okay, now?" Grace asks. 

"Yes," he replies honestly. "Calmer." 

"Good. We're gonna get through this, okay? Together."

Rocky trusts Grace. 

"Okay. Together." Grace smiles, then wrestles the IV pole out of the med bay and to the lab. 

[taylortut]

CHAPTER FOUR FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE!!

Though things are looking better, Rocky is not allowing himself to hope that they're going to stay that way. 

The towels appear to have brought down the fever significantly, and it's been stable for a good while, now. Which means nothing. He's seen this before. It gets better only to get worse than it was before, and he's pretty sure that Grace can't survive worse than the seizure. Rocky feels like he can't, either. He's been occupied with those despairing thoughts for who knows how long until Mary's voice startles him back to the present.

"Blood oxygen content has been stable for 24 hours. Patient is hemodynamically stable. Fluid sounds in lungs have diminished, and breath capacity appears adequate. Requesting permission to perform spontaneous breathing trial to assess possibility of weaning patient Doctor Grace off the ventilator. Assessment will require pausing of sedative medications." 

Rocky doesn't know what that means, but he hates the sound of "off the ventilator." What he's understanding is this: Grace's condition has not changed in a day. There is nothing left to do. He's past the point of hope for recovery, and Mary has giving up. 

Meanwhile, it's been... so many hours since Rocky last slept. He can feel it creeping up. He's bought himself some time by not moving, which has kept his body temperature lower for longer, but it can't last forever. The timing couldn't be worse. Grace is going to die, but he can't move his legs. Unconsciousness is imminent, and there's nothing he can do to control it. What if Grace dies while Rocky is asleep? Worse, what if he's in pain the entire time Rocky is out? 

He should have thought of this earlier. Before his limbs were paralyzed by sleep. Now, his best friend is going to be gone before he wakes, and he can't even rub his claw over the ridges in his arm to give a proper goodbye. 

"Permission to begin spontaneous breathing trial," Mary repeats. Rocky has to give him the one small mercy of not prolonging his suffering while Rocky can't watch. If this is what Mary is deeming is best, then he has to trust her, because he has nothing else to trust. 

"Permission is granted," he slurs drowsily. He can barely hear the beeping of the monitors.

"Proceeding with treatment plan. Sedative medications will be paused in order to begin spontaneous breathing trial."

Rocky keens until he can't anymore.

LAST WEEK:

Grace's temperature perception is becoming inconsistent, and whichever way it swings, it's wrong. Two hours ago, he was shivering, curled into himself in his cardigan and under his quilts, unable to get warm as his fever climbed.

Now, his fever is a bit more stable, but he's sprawled on the floor of the lab, limbs positioned as far away from one another as possible in a position he called "starfish," complaining about the heat. Rocky isn't sure which he hates more. At least when he'd been cold, he was able to apply clothes and blankets for comfort. Now, however, he's stripped down to the strange clothes that go underneath his normal clothes and is still suffering. Not to mention, he's sweating, losing water and salts that he doesn't have to spare. 

Things have not been going well. He thought that they would get easier now that Grace is safe inside, but turns out that doing a bunch of rushed math is almost as bad as an EVA, with as much pain as he's in and as high as his fever has climbed. Rocky feels so guilty for it, but he'd been asked to time Grace's break to ensure that it lasted no more than ten minutes, and that has passed. He's pretty sure that in those minutes, Grace has managed to fully fall asleep. 

"Grace," he calls. "Grace is awake, question?" 

"Mhm," Grace mumbles. Rocky waits patiently for him to move. 

"If awake, then Grace open eyes." 

"You can't tell that my eyes are closed."

"Grace just admit." 

"Hm. Well played." He groans as he forces himself to sit up. 

"Feel less hot, question? Lie on floor help?"

"Not really," he admits, turning back to the laptop, "but I can see straight again. The numbers aren't as... wavy." Rocky trills anxiously, and Grace reaches out, tapping his ball with his whole hand like he does sometimes when Rocky is feeling upset or nervous. He frowns at his math. "Don't let me take another break. It's hard to remember where I left off." 

"Grace need breaks or get grumpy."

"I'm already pretty grumpy." 

"No, not grumpy. Tired and sick and hurting." Grace hums in indifference. "Grace should eat. Been many many hours since last eat." 

"I'm not hungry."

"Grace is hungry. Stomach make weird sounds."

"Yeah, that happens when humans get nauseous. Sometimes means you need to eat, sometimes means you're gonna throw up."

"Same noise means opposite things, question? Inefficient. Stupid." Grace huffs a puff of air through his nose in amusement. "Grace drink water. Voice sound bad. Rocky can barely understand."

"Bossy," Grace teases. That's a good sign. His demeanor has been shifting around a lot ever since the second EVA. At times, he's smiling and joking, if still weak, but others, he can barely speak through the pain and discomfort. Still, he takes the pouch and sips. Not much, but something. The attempt is reassuring, in any case. When he shifts his attention back to the screen, his mood drops. "Ugh, am I the dumbest person alive?" 

"Grace is smartest person Rocky has ever met," he replies honestly. "Except for Adrian. Adrian is smarter."

"Think we could give them a call?" he jokes. He knows that's not possible. Then, he sighs. "Sorry. I'm just frustrated. Nothing is making sense." 

"Impatient. Fever is bad, pain is bad, math is hard. Stupid to be angry at self." 

"Yeah, okay. I'll ease up." He coughs, gripping his ribs, then groans in pain. Helplessness grips Rocky in an icy vice, able to do nothing other than watch Grace writhe in pain trying to simply breathe. Just like Grace does when Rocky is uncomfortable, he rolls beside Grace as he's doubled over trying to catch his breath and taps against the front panel of the ball. At first, he doesn't realize what Rocky is attempting to do, and thinks he wants something from him. 

"Gimme a sec." 

"No," he argues. "Rocky tap ball like Grace. Provide comfort."

"Oh," he realizes, uncurling slightly. "You're... patting me." 

"Helping, question?" 

"Yeah. I can't really feel it, but the support is nice." 

"Rocky is cheerleader."

Grace laughs. "I don't remember teaching you that word." 

"You did."

"I believe you." After a moment, he sits up straight and hones his attention in on the computer. Not long after that, he coughs until he brings up the water, plus a thick sludge from his lungs that he spits into the (wildly underutilized) trash basin. It's followed by pain sounds. 

"Grace is leaking," Rocky accuses worriedly. Grace nods. 

"Happens," he pants, barely able to catch his breath. "Body's fighting the infection."

"Good good good," Rocky celebrates, feeling more hopeful than he has in hours. "Grace fight infection. Lungs get better."

"Not... quite that simple. Makes it really," he inhales heavily, "hard to breathe."

Wait, so there's no winning? "Confusing," he's used as a descriptor for the human body before. When Grace gets nauseous from not eating, which makes eating less appealing. When he cuts his finger in the lab and faints at the sight of his blood, preventing him from being able to get up and treat the wound. This, though, this is worse than that. "Confusing" doesn't encompass how maddening it is. 

Rocky has a thousand questions, but the most important one, and the one he asks, is, "Hurts, question?" 

Grace nods, wiping sweat from his forehead. Rocky pats the ball again, and Grace leans back against it, completely exhausted. 

"This's good," he murmurs. "Nice and cool." 

"Rocky atmosphere hot to Grace." 

"Xenonite's a good insulator." He does seem a little more relaxed and comfortable than he has in a while. "Do you mind?" 

"Grace lean against Rocky ball," he can't say quickly enough. Finally, something he can do that can provide a little comfort. "As long as need." 

"Hm." 

Leaning against the xenonite does seem to help. The next time Armando checks his temperature half an hour later, it's a little cooler. Not by much, but Grace says he will "take a win where he can get it," so Rocky doesn't move. Not even as the proximity makes the sound of his rapid heart and crackling lungs overbearingly loud, nor as his coughing reverberates inside the ball so badly that he can practically feel the vibration in his carapace. That's a small price to pay for Grace's comfort. So what if it's all he can hear? It's all he'd be thinking about, anyway. 

-----

The small reduction of his body temperature appears significant, because Grace perks up for a few hours. He's actively working, not erasing so many numbers, not pounding on the sides of his head with the palms of his hands anymore. 

"I actually think I'm getting somewhere," he says happily. 

"Is great!" Rocky forces. The sounds coming from his chest are uncomfortable, but he hasn't seen Grace this optimistic in days. He settles down in his ball to ride out the noise. 

"You okay?" he asks. "Seem a little quiet. When was the last time you slept?" 

Hm. Maybe that's it. It's been a while. Everything is starting to feel overwhelming because he's exhausted. Eridians can't really control when they sleep. He's not sure how he's managed to stave it off this long, but yes, Grace is right. He needs sleep. 

But how could he possibly sleep at a time like this?

Apparently, he ponders the question for too long, because Grace scoots away from the ball. 

No. That's not right. The ball was helping Grace's fever, so there is absolutely no circumstance under which he should be scooting away from the ball. 

"Grace no move!" 

He startles a little, because it comes out more intensely than he intends. 

"Sorry?" 

"Fever will go back up. Bad bad bad. Stay with Rocky." 

"You need to sleep. I know you're worried, but I'll be okay. Now's a good time, really. I'm feeling a little better. I can watch you while I work." 

"Grace should not be alone."

"Ah, come on. I'm not alone. I've got Armando." 

"Robot arm is useless."

"Sounds like someone is grumpy angry stupid," he teases. "You're not fooling me, Rock. Just go get on your bed. I can see you from here." 

"Rocky sleep in ball, then."

Grace blinks. 

"Why?" 

He... doesn't know. Because he'll be by Grace's side faster if something goes wrong? To do what, pat him? He's just as helpless in his ball as he is in his bulb, but he can't bear to separate himself from Grace's side right now. Before he can try to find a way to vocalize these thoughts through the grumpy angry stupid filter, Grace is scooting back toward him. 

"Okay." 

"Okay what, question?" 

"Okay, you can sleep in your ball, if you want. I don't get it, but I don't have to. If it makes you feel better, that's good enough for me." 

"And Grace will stay? Not move?" 

"I mean, I can't promise I won't move at all, since I have, like, a bladder. But I'll stay." 

"Relief," he replies. "Stay next to Rocky, get better." 

"Thanks. Get some rest, buddy. I'll watch." 

Rocky settles in, telling himself he'll wake as fast as possible to get back to Grace. 

-----

Waking is always a little unsettling for Eridians. His senses cut in before his control over his limbs, which leads to one vulnerable minute in which he is conscious, but paralyzed. That's why it's best to have someone sit on your chest. Immediate reassurance that you're safe. 

It's been 46 years since someone has sat on his chest while he slept, and he hasn't had a single wake cycle that hasn't begun with terrified immobility since. He never gets used to it and won't until he can get back home. Adrain is four times his size. No one makes him feel safer than they do. 

While Grace can't sit on his chest, Rocky has learned to identify different cues to remind himself that he's not alone. First of all, Grace is always making some kind of sound. Whether he's working (and talking to himself) or sleeping (and somehow still talking to himself), humans are noisy. He likes that, now. 

The first noise he has learned to hone in on is the beating of Grace's heart, steady and omnipresent. When he listens for that, he's quickly reminded that he cannot soothe himself until he can move again by telling himself that everything is okay and everyone is safe, because that's not true. Grace's heartbeat is very fast again, faster than earlier. 

Rocky's claw twitches, and he clenches and unclenches his fist. 

Thankfully, he's still leaning against his ball, just as he'd promised, but he's not as okay as he'd said he would be when Rocky woke up. He's working on his computer, but his breathing is loud and rumbling and fast. He doesn't need to know much about human biology to know that isn't healthy. 

Rocky kicks one leg, then another, then another, all with a clicky clacky sound that gets Grace's attention. At least it means he's awake. 

"Rocky," he greets, voice low and wrecked. "You awake, now?" 

It takes another few seconds of shaking out his limbs, but he replies in the affirmative, which makes Grace smile. 

"Good. Missed you." Something, whether it's the fever or the stress or the exhaustion or the fear, has been making Grace a little emotional, lately. 

"Rocky miss Grace, too," he says. "Grace voice sound worse. Feel worse, question?" 

"Not so bad," he promises, but that's a lie if he's ever heard one. "Fever's up a little." 

Yeah, that's obvious in the way he's barely sitting up of his own accord. And, great. He's shivering again. 

"Grace is cold, question? Because of fever?" 

"Yeah. Freezing."

"Then why Grace not use blankets? Why Grace still lean against ball, question?" 

"Fever needs to go down." His teeth are clicking together fast fast fast. 

"Uncomfortable."

"Doesn't matter. I need to think." 

Once again, Grace is putting his own needs last. 

"How is math going, question?" 

"I was onto something for a while, I thought. Now it all just kind of looks like alphabet soup." He knows both those words individually. 

"No understand word combination."

"Mixed together. Nonsense." 

"Hm. Soup is wrong. Grace has some sense." 

He laughs. "On a good day, I guess." 

"Keep working. Doing great. Grace is so smart. Rocky believe in Grace."

"Hey," he chuckles with a tired smile. "Now those are some words of encouragement." 

With that, he turns his attention back to the task at hand.

------

The math is going well. Grace is getting worse. 

As time goes on, soreness from the fall sets in, making him too stiff to move, but also making it hard to sit in one position for long for the pain. He's exhausted and wants to lie down, but he can't breathe when he's anything but upright. Cold and hot flashes wash over him in a torturous cycle, but he's damp with sweat no matter what. The fever makes it difficult to focus, and when he is focusing, it hurts his head and eyes. 

"This is the worst," Grace more or less whines, voicing exactly what Rocky is thinking. He's been rationing his complaints, trying to remain as positive as he can when he can. The fact that he's complaining means that the discomfort is peaking again. 

"Agree agree agree," Rocky says. "Grace take break if need." 

"Need, but can't. I'll fall asleep." 

Frustration. Anger. Fear. Rocky taps the ball and sings to self soothe just like Grace taught him, and Grace taps back with a matching melody. Oxygen deprived, Grace tries to allow himself a deep breath, either forgetting or ignoring the fact that he can't. It ends as Rocky anticipates it will: the fluid in his lungs shifts around, choking him. It appears as though that's gotten worse in the time that Rocky was asleep. He tries not to think about how scary that must have been for Grace, to be getting less and less air, feeling dizzier and achier and more exhausted, all alone. 

He leans over the trash bin and coughs until he brings up more of the sludge from his chest with a horrible, pained gag. The sound bounces around Rocky's ball, a devastating cacophony of agony and despair. 

"Ugh," he groans. "Sorry, Rock. This must sound disgusting. I can move, if it's grossing you out." So long as the ball is helping his fever, Grace will not be going anywhere.

"If Grace move, Rocky chase."

His laugh is so wheezy it's barely recognizable as mirth. 

"For somebody that says he doesn't get humor, you're funny." He shifts his posture upward a little. 

"Keep Grace happy, question?" 

"Yeah. Keeping me happy." 

-----

For the most part, Grace asks for quiet. He's having enough trouble staying focused already, and his fevered mind can't filter out distractions like he usually can. Every once in a while, he'll say something--a reassurance that he's doing okay, a complaint that he's not, a plea for encouragement--but mostly, it's silence. The only thing keeping Rocky from losing it entirely is the clacking of his keyboard and the squeaking of his dry erase marker on the board. 

So, when that stops, he notices. Immediately. 

"Grace," he prompts after it becomes clear that this lack of movement is more than just Grace thinking. "Grace is awake, question?" 

Silence. 

"Grace." 

He's slumped bonelessly against the ball, chin to his chest. 

"Grace fall asleep, question?" 

"Hm?" he intones, head bobbing forward. "No. M'awake." 

"Ignore Rocky, question?" 

"I... What?" 

"I call your name three times. No answer." 

"Huh. Maybe I did fall asleep for a second. I didn't notice." He forces stiff muscles to cooperate so he can sit up. "Think I need to take a lap."

Rocky knows what that means. It's something Grace does when he's been awake too long but doesn't want to sleep yet. A stupid walk around the perimeter of the lab. This... seems like a bad time for that. He's barely tolerating half lying, half sitting on the floor, motionless. Is this really worth the energy?

"Idea is bad. Grace is too tired."

"That's why I need to move. Wake myself back up." 

Just getting to his feet makes him dizzy enough that he has to steady himself on a benchtop for balance. That should be enough exertion for him in his condition, but he's stubborn. He pushes himself to walk, clumsy and slow. By the time he returns to his pillow nest on the floor, he's making an effort to cover up how hard he's breathing. That's pointless. Rocky can hear his racing heart and crackling lungs. He can't hide anything from him. 

"There," he breathes, trying to sound casual. "Awake." He coughs, lips clamped tight as he attempts to control it. He always tries to hide things from Rocky when he's made a stupid decision. 

"Grace drink water."

"Can't keep it down," he says breathlessly. "I really don't want to throw up again." 

"Have to do something. Body distressed."

"Just... gimme a second." He leans forward, pressing his forehead to the xenonite ball, breathing slowly. 

He should have just drank the water, because he coughs until he throws up stomach acid, anyway.

Through sheer power of will, he manages to refocus. It comes in spurts--between coughing and wallowing--but, because Grace is brilliant, it's enough. 

"Think I'm gettin' close to the end," he finally announces, slurring his words at the edges. "Stuff's addin' up."

"Amaze amaze amaze! Show me."

"Yeah, okay. They're gonna be... tricky. Lotsa... lotsa numbers." 

"Is okay," Rocky reassures. "Show me."

He's squinting at the board, like he's trying to make sense of it. And he does it for a long time.

"Grace see okay, question?"

"Yeah... Just. Having trouble. Remembering."

"Math is on computer and on board. Can't remember, question?"

He nods slowly. "Need'a... sec... b'cs... j's a 'lil...d'zzy..." 

"Grace need say word better. Rocky can't understand." 

"Mmphng," is the reply, even less coherent than the garbled attempt at a sentence. Then, he goes limp, slumping down the side of the ball and hitting the floor on his burned arm. He doesn't react at all, but Rocky sure does. 

"Grace! Grace hurt arm! Grace wake up!" Usually, pain is enough to wake him from even the deepest sleep. When he bumps his burn wrong in his bed, he always jerks upright, gasping. Something is wrong. 

His sleep is short. Just a minute later, he slowly wakes up, hissing in pain and clutching his arm. 

"That hurt," he manages through gritted teeth. "What happened?"

"Grace fall asleep in middle of speaking. Scary." He scrubs his face with his hands. 

"Oh. I... don't think that was sleeping. I think I'm passing out. Little different."

"Not good," he guesses. 

"No. It might keep happening until my fever comes down."

"Bad bad bad?" 

"I think so, bud." He leans his head back against Rocky's ball. The fever isn't going anywhere, at this point. This is just for comfort, so Rocky presses against the same spot. "I'm awake now. I should explain the math while I'm still lucid."

"Grace take five minutes." 

"Mhm." 

The ship dips a little closer to Adrian's surface.

------

Grace spends the next two hours slipping in and out of consciousness.

When he's up, he's teaching. When he's not, he lies on the floor, sweaty and unresponsive.

But it's the in-between states that are the worst.

Sometimes, he's mostly awake, but just out of it enough to be frustrated and impatient with his slow, muddled thoughts. Others, he's mostly unconscious, just aware enough to know he's supposed to be doing something important that he's failing to do. His emotions are everywhere, rolling between happy to be conscious and angry or very, very sad that they're here at all. 

Rocky pats his ball as Grace coughs up another glob of sludge. When he's caught his breath as much as he can, he presses the palms of his hands to his eyes, shoving his glasses up and out of the way. His breathing is ragged. 

"Can't keep doing this," he rasps for the--Rocky has stopped counting how many times he's said it. "Head's killing me." 

Rocky hasn't heard that expression before. 

"Means bad pain?"

"Really bad." He coughs again.

"Lungs bad pain, too."

"It's all bad. Feel really bad. Really sick." Rocky's carapace hits the bottom of the ball in dismay. "How are you holding up?" 

Rocky hesitates. "Why ask if Rocky is okay, question? Grace is in very much bad pain. Focus on Grace."

"You're healing, too. Plus, I'm sure this stuff is hard on you. I want to know." 

"Good," he says, referring only to his physical healing to keep himself from feeling like he's lying to him. "Feel good."

"Would you tell me if you didn't?" Rocky hesitates. Lazily and clumsily, Grace mimics the motion Rocky had showed him when they first found one another. "Only us, remember? Gotta take care of each other."

It's enough to break him. "Scared. Feel very scared."

Grace nods patiently. "Me, too. Scared together. Comforting?"

It is, he thinks, in its own way. Grace sits up, but looks down. He might be crying. 

"What if I got everything wrong?" he asks. "If I can't do this, we die. I'll be the reason Earth dies, Erid dies, everyone dies." 

"No. Sickness is reason, not Grace. If math is wrong, then sickness is reason." That doesn't do much. "But math is not wrong."

"How do you know?" 

"I trust Grace." He sniffles. So he is crying. "And Grace trust Rocky." Crying makes Grace breathe weird, and it's not good for the cough. "Rocky understand beetles math. Grace explain well."

"I was incoherent," he replies. "There's no way you got all that." 

"Rocky is smart," he brags. "And good good good pilot. Not like Grace."

He huffs out a laugh. "Did we die?"

"No."

"Then I was good enough." 

"Yes. Rocky is teasing."

"I know, buddy." 

It's time. They have to get to the control room so Rocky can get them out of here. Maybe the math isn't 100% clear, but he's pretty sure it's good enough, and Grace intentionally left a little fuel so they have some wiggle room to correct any mistakes. He simply can't bear to push him any further than he already has. Every time he passes out and wakes up again, he's a little less present. He's got a feeling that even if he were to keep explaining, he wouldn't get much more useful information out of it, so it's better to just let him rest. In fact, he doesn't have a choice, because Grace's hand falls from the panel where he'd been resting it and he blinks back out of awareness.

They have to go. But what's ten minutes?

------

Turns out, ten minutes is a mistake. 

Grace sleeps hard. It's not like the other faints he's been experiencing, which only last a few seconds to minutes at a time. This is worse. For a horrifying moment, Rocky is left alone to wonder whether he's going to wake up at all, but as if to swoop in once again and save him from his anxious thoughts, Grace shifts, groaning. He's awake once more. 

Sort of. 

He's fighting to sit up, lying on the floor in his blanket nest nearly curled up in a ball, shaking. He doesn't speak, just stares, looking around the room like he's never seen it before. Grace can only see what his eyes are pointing at, so he's moving his head frantically, fearfully. As he does so, his heart rate begins to increase at an alarming speed.

"Grace?" Rocky calls. "Something is wrong, question?" 

"Stratt," he replies, voice tight and fearful. A new word for Rocky. "She gave me--something, and--I don't--where--and I can't--remember--" 

This is something new. He's desperately worked up and terrified out of his mind, scrambling to sit up. His breathing is so fast that he immediately starts coughing again, but this time, he's not lucid enough to understand what's happening. 

"Grace had nightmare," he tries to reassure. "Awake, now. Not real." 

"No!" he snaps. Rocky flinches. He's seen Grace have nightmares before, some of them pretty intense. It's not uncommon for him to toss and turn, or even to shoot up in bed, sweating and breathing hard for several seconds until he recognizes where he is and calms down, but this time, he's not coming to his senses. The fever probably has something to do with that. He's disoriented and can't think straight. 

"Grace is safe." The truth won't do him any favors right now. "Rocky keep Grace safe." 

"Where--I don't know--where are we?" 

Rocky freezes. Even the worst of his nightmares haven't done that. He always comes back when he hears Rocky's voice. 

"We are on Hail Mary." 

That... has the opposite of his intended effect. Rather than soothing him, it devolves his mental state deeper into panic. His heart is beating faster than it does even when he's exercising hard, and he's coughing more than he's getting a full breath. 

"Calm down! Will hurt self!" 

"No! No, I can't do it!" 

As much as he wants to help, he can't speak for fear of making this worse, since it seems like that's the only thing he's been doing. He watches as Grace notices the thin tube from the IV in his arm and his panic grows, immediately clawing at it. 

"Grace no remove!" Rocky shouts. "Medicine is helping! Helping!" 

That doesn't stop him from ripping it out of his arm. Blood spurts out of the hole in his skin where the cannula had been, then begins rolling down his arm with every rapid heartbeat. Rocky screams. He's hurting himself in his wild terror, and now, clambering desperately to his feet. 

"Grace lie down! Will fall and get hurt!" 

"I won't go," he chokes. "I can't!" 

Far too late, by Rocky's standards, Armando rolls in at the sound of the commotion. 

"Sounds like you're having an argument," Mary's voice announces, and Rocky could scream again. 

"No argument! Grace need help!" 

"What is that?!" he demands, backing away from the robot until his back hits the wall and his strength gives out, head bobbing forward as he sinks down against it. 

"Physical distress detected. Doctor Grace, please remain calm." As the arm attempts to touch him, he continues to thrash, shoving the hand out of the way like it's trying to kill him. He probably thinks it is. "Doctor Grace, if you cannot calm down, a sedative will be administered." 

A syringe is raised. He jumps to his feet, where his balance is so off-kilter that he stumbles forward, knocking hard into the benchtop with his hip. It has to hurt, but he's so scared that he doesn't react. His eyes remain trained on the syringe. 

"Don't do it!" he cries. He's fighting for his life, throwing things, hiding behind benches, shoving chairs to create distance between him and Armando. 

"Grace, robot is helping! Do not fight robot!" 

The lack of air is beginning to get to him. He can't take in enough oxygen to support his pounding heart, and he begins choking again, gagging on fluid. It's too much. Too much strain on his so, so sick body, and he collapses forward, head hitting the floor with a sickening thump. All he can do is sob and squirm as Armando holds him down, pinning his chest to the floor to keep him still while the sedative is injected through the side of his neck. Watching him fight until he goes still is the worst thing Rocky has ever seen. 

Armando rearranges Grace's limbs so he's lying flat, so he doesn't wake up in more pain. That's nice. It's what Rocky would do if he could touch him, but it's not enough. He doesn't put his pillow under his head, and Grace loves that. Rocky would. He doesn't cover him with his quilt, and Grace is shivering without it. Rocky would. 

Instead, once he's good and unconscious, Armando drags Grace's limp body to the med bay and places him onto the bed, strapping him down to immobilize him. He replaces his IV to administer more medicine and cold fluids. Rocky chitters anxiously, torn between desires. All he wants to do is watch Grace sleep. He needs someone to keep him safe, and he doesn't trust the stupid robot arm to do that. Eridians would never, ever leave someone to sleep alone while they're so critically sick and confused and upset. 

On the other hand, he knows what he should do. Now is the perfect time. Grace is strapped down, more secure in the bed than he would be in his chair in the command room. He's unconscious, unable to experience the fear of gradually passing out from the centrifugal force, the pain of his bruised ribs being shoved against the restraints of his seat, the panic of the what little breath he has being forced out of his lungs as the gravity crushes them. Armando can monitor his vitals and treat him as fit. By all means, it's the best case scenario. 

But he's alone. 

And so is Rocky. 

It's not really a debate. It's a sacrifice. And there's no sacrifice he wouldn't make for Grace, nor Grace for him. He refuses to say goodbye as he turns and runs from the med bay toward the control room by himself. 

[taylortut]

LAST CHAPTER Y'ALL!! PLEASE COMMENT MUCH MUCH MUCH!

Rocky hops from his ball into his tunnel, scrambling toward the control room as fast as his legs will take him. Glancing over at Grace's empty pilot's chair is almost enough to break his confidence. As much trouble as he'd given Grace about his skills, at least they'd been able to practice. Even then, he didn't get good at it, just better, good enough that there was a chance they wouldn't die entering Adrian's orbit. Rocky is confident in his work on the beetles, and in his work on the audio-driven remote, and in their connection. It's everything else he's worried about. 

"Mary," he calls. "What is Grace status, question?" He has to know that before he can even begin to think about his next move. 

"Doctor Grace is currently in critical condition. Efforts are being made to stabilize vitals," she replies. He doesn't know why he asked. That means nothing to him. It sounds bad. 

"Grace is secure in bed, question? Will not get hurt when ship move around?"

"Correct, Rocky." 

"Good good good." 

With that settled, now he can focus. 

----

Grace's math isn't perfect, but he left them quite a bit of fuel left to account for any adjustments that Rocky has to improvise. It takes a while and a lot of effort, but eventually, Rocky manages to get them out of Adrian's orbit. The force is much easier for Rocky to withstand than it would have been for Grace, but that doesn't mean it's easy. The beetles themselves are okay to control, but the ship with the beetles is another story. Not to mention the fact that part of his mind never leaves Grace. Is he okay in the med bay like Mary promised, strapped down safely, or is he hurt? Is he still asleep, or is he conscious and panicking and confused without Rocky there to soothe him? Did Armando mange to get his breathing and heart rate under control? His pain? 

As soon as the beetles have them pointed in the right direction and he can leave them on autopilot for a while, and he means the very second he can leave them, he's racing through his tunnels as fast as he can, headed straight for the med bay, and doesn't stop sprinting until he's close enough to hear Grace's heartbeat again. 

"Mary," he calls, then realizes he doesn't know enough about human biology to know what to ask, "is Grace okay?" 

She pauses. 

"Doctor Grace has been placed in a medically induced coma." Coma. Like how Grace got here. Sleep he can't wake up from by himself. Really, that's the only thing about this situation he does know what to do with. He can watch. 

Mary lists off the tubes they've placed, where they've placed them, and what they do, but he doesn't understand much of it. Words, just words. All he has to go on is what he can see before him. Grace, silent and motionless. He tucks his legs under him and settles in. 

"Get as much sleep as need," he says, unsure if Grace can hear him. Either way, it feels good to say it, after so many days of pushing him to his absolute limits. Maybe Grace can't understand him, but he hopes that it will at least feel nice to hear something soft. "Rocky will be here watching."

---

Rocky barely moves for days. The only occasions that warrant getting up are getting food and occasionally checking the ship's trajectory. He spends a lot of time telling Grace all the things he should be proud of, making a list for when he wakes up. He reminds himself to make a joke that putting him in a coma is the only way to get him not to reject a compliment. Grace will find that funny. 

As Mary makes her announcements about Grace's condition, he learns a few things based on context. Grace is doing nothing on his own, not even sleeping. It's all tubes and machines. The IV he's hooked up to is continuously administering a medicine that keeps him unconscious while the medicine and machines work. A tube through his nose is giving him nutrients. Another, in his chest, drains the fluid. One down his throat helps him breathe. His anatomy is just so complicated. Rocky can barely keep everything straight.

He sleeps when his body forces him to, every time asking Mary to keep him safe while he can't watch. So far, she's been doing a good job. More than Rocky can do, certainly. It kills him. Grace needs his weird hot food and his pointless soft bed items and his indirect touch with Rocky through the xenonite. He's explained this before. Cold, clinical caretaking can't meet his needs. It has to be personal, and that's the one thing Rocky could do. Having to sit here and do nothing is just... cruel.

When, finally, Mary announces that they're going to turn off the machines, Rocky feels more devastation than he's ever felt in his entire life. It's a mercy when unconsciousness comes for him.

------

Dread washes over him when Rocky's echolocation kicks in for the first time in he doesn't even know how long. He tries to blur it for as long as he can, terrified to fully wake, but he can't ignore the immediate fact that he no longer hears the humming of machinery from the med bay. Everything is off. The things that have been keeping him alive are shut down. Anxiety and grief well up in him so excruciatingly that he doesn't hear it at first, the sound that he's so used to honing in on the second he wakes up. When he has control of his limbs again, he doesn't even use it. He goes limp, carapace hitting the xenonite tunnel in utter, hopeless despair. 

"Rocky?" 

Thump thump.

He's too shocked to move. Too scared that he's somehow imagining things.

"Aw, don't be like that. Come here."

Thump thump.

Grace's voice, raspy but solid. Grace's heartbeat, steady and strong. He's alive.

"Grace?" he calls tentatively, unsure whether he trusts it, yet. 

"Yeah, bud. I'm here." 

Rocky shoots to his feet so fast he smacks up against the wall before breaking into a clumsy sprint that has him falling over himself in restless excitement.

"Grace! Grace!" He hears him shift as if to stand. "No move! I come to you!" 

"Hey," he laughs, "slow down. You're gonna hurt yourself. "

By the time he crashes into his ball, Grace has climbed down from his bed to sit on the floor. Rocky almost knocks him right over. 

"Gentle," he warns, doing that strangely contradictory laugh-cry thing he does when he's happy happy happy. He wraps his arms around the ball, and Rocky presses the top of his carapace to it so hard he's afraid he's about to hear the whoosh of Grace's atmosphere rush in through a new crack.

"I thought! Was scared that! And! Grace is!" 

"Me too," he says, not needing to hear the ends of those sentences to understand them. "I missed you!" 

"I missed you so so so much!" He pulls away from the xenonite and presses his claws to it instead, because he knows Grace likes to look at him when he talks, and Grace places his hands over them. "Feel okay? Still in pain? Still can't breathe?" 

"I can breathe. My ribs still hurt, but that's gonna be a while. Fever's gone, and so is the pneumonia. I'm okay, really." 

This feeling cannot be dealt with standing still. He loses it in his ball, rolling around in tiny circles as he stomps around aimlessly, claws doing his little jazz hands. 

"How about you? Are you okay?"

"Rocky is great! Never felt better!" 

He returns the jazz hands. "I'm glad!" 

"When did you wake up, question?"

"Not too long after you fell asleep, I think. Mary took the breathing tube out a few hours ago."

"Grace was scared waking up without Rocky?" 

"Nah, I knew you were watching me sleep while I was sick. I felt safe." He pats the ball. "Great job getting us out of orbit with the beetles." 

"Grace math was good! I knew it would be!" 

"Wouldn't have worked if you weren't a good pilot. I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes." 

"Did we die, question?" 

"No."

"Then was good enough." 

Grace laughs again. "I guess you're right." 

Rocky rolls around in his ball once more, still not done processing the joy and relief pulsing through him. "Happy happy happy." 

"Me too, bud." For a moment, it feels like everything is going to be okay.

----

 For a while, things do improve. Grace gets out of breath easier, but Rocky is glad to slow down to accommodate that. There's nowhere he wants to be more than by Grace's side, after all, so he's in no rush. He tires faster, but watching him sleep without the crackling in his lungs, without the tubes and machines, is such a relief that he doesn't feel as impatient for him to wake up as he used to before all this. If a few daytime naps are necessary for him to recover, then he can sleep as long as he wants. Besides, the hindrances are getting better by the day. His stamina and energy levels are both increasing steadily. What more could Rocky ask for?

However, a few unforeseen concerns arise. Partially because everything else is getting easier, he's even more worried about the few things that seem to be getting harder. 

Sure, Grace is sleeping more, but he's also waking up more during his sleep cycles. It's normal for him to wake every once in a while, but he usually gets himself a pouch of water and returns to bed, falling asleep almost immediately. Sometimes, he doesn't even remember doing it. Rocky has even seen him have a few nightmares. Those had taken a while to explain. Apparently, sleep for humans comes with vivid, often nonsensical hallucinations that can range from funny to terrifying. Stress plays a major role in the experience, so Grace combated them with silly routines like reading before bed or playing soft music while he slept (Rocky doesn't like that one. Weird noise for several hours. Annoying.).

Now, Grace is waking up with bad nightmares several times a night. The first time it happens, Rocky thinks he's dying. He's watching him sleep, per usual, when Grace starts to shift around in bed. Negligible. Then, his breathing starts to pick up, first in little puffs, then heavier. 

"Grace?" he calls quietly. Their rule since their first night in the tunnel has been no talking to Grace while he's sleeping, but this might be an exception. Something isn't right. "Grace?" he repeats a little louder.

Suddenly, Grace shoots upright, gasping, chest heaving as he gulps in air at a desperate pace. 

"Grace!" he cries. Once again, Grace can't breathe, and once again, there's nothing he can do about it. Rocky hops into his ball as fast as he can, scurrying to his side. "Grace need medicine! Grace need machines!" He's clutching his chest, just like he was when his cough was so so bad and so so painful, but he shakes his head. "Yes!"

"Rock, no," he chokes, deliberately slowing his breathing--that's something he hadn't been able to do when he was sick--until he's composed enough to speak. It only takes a few seconds. Rocky is shaking. "Rocky, it's okay; calm down; I can breathe." 

"Grace can't breathe; Grace lying!" 

"I'm not dying, buddy, see? Breathing fine. I'm sorry. It was just a nightmare." 

"Grace has had nightmares. That was not nightmare. Lungs still sick." Grace scrubs his hands over his face. 

"There's nothing wrong with my lungs, I promise. It was just... panic. I'm fine, now." Rocky doesn't believe that. He waits for further explanation, something to tell him why he had reacted so strongly, what he'd dreamed about, but Grace doesn't do that. Instead, he pulls the quilt back up over his shoulder and rolls onto his other side. "I'm going back to sleep." 

"Grace should go get oxygen checked. See if you need medicine."

"I already know I don't. Goodnight." Rocky dips down in his ball, unusually scolded. 

"Grace..." 

"Later, Rock. In the morning." 

If he doesn't want to talk about it yet, Rocky can't force him. "Understand. Sleep, now."

Grace pretends to.

-----

Grace seems to be in a better mood when he wakes. For the past few days, he's been opting for softer foods like mashed potatoes and applesauce because his throat still hurt from the tube, but today, he chooses dried sausage and powdered eggs. Things he needs to chew again, Rocky thinks with conflicted emotions. Happy for Grace. Disgusting to hear.

"I think I'm going to try to clean up the lab today," he announces, prompting excited chirps from Rocky. They've been working around the mess for a while, since he's been too sore and weak to go pushing around furniture and picking up everything that was scattered to the floor in his delirious fight with Armando. To his credit, Rocky hasn't said a word about it. "My ribs don't hurt as bad." 

"Go slow. Grace not need clean up all at once." 

"I'll at least get started. Want to come with me?" 

"I will help."

"No, you won't. You'll roll around in your ball telling me all the spots I'm missing." Rocky follows him down the hall toward the lab. 

"Yes, is helping. Grace is bad at cleaning. Worse at keeping clean. Only good at making mess." 

"Thanks," he says sarcastically. Rocky is getting better at recognizing that. "You know, I'd be organized, too, if I was only responsible for a 90 square centimeter ball." When they turn the corner, Grace sighs at the sight of it all. It's been easy enough to ignore, but the idea of actually picking it up is daunting. Where do they start? "Man, this place is wrecked." 

"Doesn't always look like this, question?" 

"Funny. How did I even do this much damage?" 

"Grace was very confused. Very scared. Run from medicine, panic, screaming."

"I ran from what?" 

"Medicine. Ripped out tube in arm. Robot tried to replace, but you run." 

"Oh," he says softly. His heart rate is increasing, but Rocky can excuse that, because it happens often when he finally has to force himself to do something he doesn't want to do. Dread, he assumes. "I, uh, I see. I don't remember much. I was pretty out of it." 

"You did not know you were on Hail Mary. Thought you needed to go somewhere you didn't want." 

In addition to the rapid heartbeat, now his breathing is becoming fast and shallow. 

"Let's, uh, change the subject," he implores. 

"Why, question? Grace not remember, so Rocky explain."

"Yeah," he says, running one hand through his hair and tugging at the roots. "I. I think I need a minute." 

"Minute for what?" 

But he doesn't answer, instead choosing to dash out of the lab clumsily, gripping his chest. This happened when he first said it, too, when Grace was delirious. He asked where he was, and Rocky told him the Hail Mary. It seems like that was the moment that shifted everything. Now, he's reminding him, and it's hurting him again. 

Determined not to let him get away when he's clearly not breathing well again, Rocky pursues him. He finally stops in the control room, fighting to catch his breath. 

"What's wrong, question?" 

"Please go away," he gasps. 

"No. Grace can't breathe." 

"Stop," he demands. He swipes his sleeve over his eyes. Leaking? "Leave me alone." 

"Not alone." Against his wishes, Rocky scoots his ball closer. Grace doesn't want to be alone, not really. He doesn't like being alone. Whatever this is, he just doesn't want Rocky to see it. Which means it must be bad. As if to confirm what he already knows, Grace places a hand on the cool xenonite panel, then the other. His palms are pressed tightly to the surface. He might be asking for solitude, but he's clinging to Rocky. 

After a few minutes, the episode passes. Grace's breathing and heart rate return to normal, and he slides down the wall to sit next to Rocky. While he won't leave him by himself, the need for quiet is something he's learned to respect, so he waits for Grace to speak first. Waits for a long time, Rocky with his legs folded beneath him and Grace with his forehead pressed to his knees. 

"That wasn't what you think," he finally says. 

"What Grace think Rocky think?" 

"I don't know. That my--my lungs are broken, or I'm still sick, or that I'm lying to you." 

"Grace not lying. But... there's something you aren't telling me." 

Grace is silent for a beat.

"Yeah." He pulls his head up and looks at Rocky. "Are you mad?" 

"Mad?" he repeats. "Why do you think that?" 

He chuckles, then sniffles. He is leaking. 

"I don't know. For keeping things from you." 

"Have to have boundaries," Rocky says after a pensive pause, "like Grace say. Grace not have to tell me everything."

"Thank you."

"Just... Rocky worry. Feel scared when you run away not breathing right. Like when Grace was dying. Like when crew die."

"Right. That's not fair to you." He dries his face with his hands one final time. "I'll talk to you when I'm ready, but for now, just know I'm not in any danger. I'd tell you, I promise." 

"Okay. Rocky trust Grace. And Grace trust Rocky, question?" 

"More than anything." 

"Then we get through this together." He gestures his arms the way he did when they met in the tunnel. Grace does the same. 

"Only us." 

------

Realistically, Rocky knows that whatever is going on with Grace is too complicated to be solved with the power of "only us," but some part of him hopes it could be enough and is disappointed when it's not. A week after their conversation, the lab remains as messy as it was the day Grace collapsed, his nightmares are occurring every time he sleeps, and Rocky sits with him through a lot of what Grace confirms to be panic attacks. For all of Rocky's begging, Grace refuses to go to the med bay and get checked out again, insisting that he's handling this. He gets grumpy when he presses the issue, so he stops. It's all very confusing and scary, but mostly, it's sad. Sad to see him gasp and leak and lie awake for hours. Something is hurting. 

As much as he hates to admit it, it's taking its toll on Rocky, too. The feeling that something is about to go desperately wrong carves its way into his carapace and doesn't leave, even when things are okay. When Grace is struggling, he's scared. When Grace is not struggling, he's scared waiting for the next time he's going to struggle. There's nothing he hates more than a problem he can't fix.

Finally, after finally getting Grace back to sleep after another nightmare, Rocky cracks. It sneaks up on him. Before he can get ahead of it, like he's been forcing himself to do, he begins to feel strange. Bad bad bad feelings begin to orbit him, picking up speed and dipping closer to his mind with each revolution. In no time at all, he goes from watching Grace sleep to shaking so hard in his bulb that Grace hears it. 

"Rocky?" 

He can't speak. Grace gets out of bed. 

"Rock, hey. Are you okay?" 

He rocks back and forth on his legs so aggressively that his carapace collides with the xenonite. 

"Woah!" Grace exclaims. "Hey, listen, it's okay! You're okay!" 

"Is not okay!" he snaps back when he finds his voice, eliciting a startled jump from Grace. "Nothing is okay anymore!" 

"What does that mean?" 

"Rocky just want to fix, fix, fix."

Grace rubs his thumb over the panel. "You mean me?" 

A frustrated trill leaves his vents. "No," he replies, frustrated, "not Grace. Grace not broken. I hurt Grace and don't know how to fix." Grace frowns. 

"What? You never hurt me." 

"I did. Grace was too sick, maybe not remember."

"What do you think you did?" 

"You didn't know where you were," he replies, "and I told you Hail Mary." 

At that, Grace stiffens. 

"Oh." 

"I don't know why that hurt Grace. Didn't mean to hurt, meant to help, but I made it worse."

"Buddy, you didn't... You didn't do anything wrong. You're not the one that hurt me."

Now, it's Rocky's turn to go still. "But someone hurt Grace."

"Yeah." 

"Is what Grace won't talk about. Why Grace panic. Boundary." 

"I didn't know you thought this was your fault, or I would have said something." He sighs. "Come sit with me in the projector room. It's a long story." 

Rocky follows him there, where Grace throws on just randomized images; some screensaver. They might not watch it closely, but Rocky brings his screen reader, anyway, just in case. A sky full of clouds. A bee and a flower. Snow falling on a hill. It doesn't matter. It's not important. Grace just wants somewhere quiet and dim to talk. 

"First off, I don't really remember anything from that night. You're gonna have to fill me in, so I know where your head's at. What happened after you reminded me I'm on the ship?"

"You got mad. Started yelling 'no,' started hurting self and running from Rocky and robot." Grace nods patiently. "Afraid you were too sick to fight that much. Dangerous. Robot tried to help, but Grace not want anyone to touch. Had to hold Grace down on floor to give coma medicine."

Grace shudders at the thought. 

"That... makes sense." His hands are trembling, so he shoves them in his lap. "So, I told you that no one was supposed to come back from this mission. That the astronauts were going to die in space." 

"Yes. Rocky give astrophage so Grace can get home. Rocky fix." 

"Yeah, and I can't thank you enough for that. But there's... something else." 

"Worse than die in space, question?"

"Maybe not, but it--well. Human brains hold onto bad memories more than good ones. It's a survival thing. To remind you to avoid danger. And you know that when I woke up, I didn't remember anything." 

"Yes." 

"Okay. Well, when Armando held me down like that, I guess I remembered something. Something really bad, and I was too out of it to tell what was real and what wasn't. I forgot where I was." 

"What did you remember?" 

"It was... how I got onto the ship, I guess. Kind of. Or a little before then. I'm a scientist, not an astronaut. I was working on astrophage research for the mission, but I wasn't supposed to be part of the crew. Then, there was an accident. The scientists who volunteered to go both died. There was--I mean, it's not like there were other options. I was the right person for the job." 

"So Grace join crew."

"No."

That doesn't make sense. "No?" 

"No. I didn't join. They asked me to. She told me everything I already knew. That half the planet will be dead within 30 years. That I was the only person left, if we even wanted a shot at making this work. And, what did I do? I ran." 

"Ran." 

"Yeah. She told me I was going no matter what I said, and I ran. And they chased me. And they caught me. The only person who could save the entire planet, and they have to pin him to the ground and knock him out just to get him to do it? Like, how much of a coward--"

"New word?"

"Coward? Like, the opposite of brave. Somebody who chooses himself over saving others."

It takes a long moment for Rocky to process this, and Grace doesn't want to say more until Rocky speaks. Distantly, he hears a single soft sob that lets him know Grace is leaking. 

"Grace did not want to go on Hail Mary." A shivering breath.

"Nope. That's why I panicked when you told me where I was. And you know what? It's worse. Because it means that after all this, after everything we've been through, I was still too scared to say yes." 

"Earth hold Grace down and put in coma."

"They had to. There was no time to make a new plan. They gave me three hours to think about it." 

"Three?" Rocky exclaims, horrified. "Is not enough."

"It's what they had." 

"No! Don't care about Earth. Is not enough time for Grace. Grace blame self for being scared three hours?" he demands. "Is not enough time to ask you to give up life." Grace reels, shocked. "Grace love Earth. Three hours not enough time to say..." he huffs. "Need word." 

"What word do you need?" 

"Like see you later. But you won't see later."

"Goodbye," he says.

"Yes. Is not enough time." It catches him so off guard that he can't stifle the next sob that bursts from his chest. "If brave cannot mean also scared, then I need new word. Grace is here and good good good. Need word for choosing to be good even when scared." 

"That's... I don't know." 

"Then word is Grace." Rocky rolls forward to pat him as he buries his face in his hands and breathes. "Better than brave."

He needs a lot of time to compose himself. So long that Rocky starts to think maybe he said something wrong again and made everything worse, but eventually, he wipes his face and wraps his arms around the ball. Rocky, of course, leans in with a resounding thunk. 

"Thank you," he says. "For everything. You saved me." 

"And Grace save Rocky." He thunks against the ball once more for good measure. "Stop leaking, now. Everything is okay." 

"Yeah. I guess it is." Grace laughs. "Okay, enough crying."

"Grace want to watch movie, question?" 

"Nah." On the screensaver before them, the projector has started playing images of the night sky, of the moon, and of stars. "I'd rather just talk to you." 

[wakameyogurt]

congrats !

[mars11e]

boothill 2 year anniversary... he is the loml and i would not be the same person without him . corny but i have never had a fictional character that i love as much as him

[bittersweetresilience]

offering up a little something to feed the rygos obsession 👉👈

[bittersweetresilience]

offering up a little something to feed the rygos obsession 👉👈

[bittersweetresilience]

hello, hello...

...my name is sunny! currently drowning in the ryan gosling cinematic universe. aside from that, i enjoy rarepairs, sibling relationships, aromantic themes, experimental media, psychological horror, and tragedy.

i write a lot but i can take my time with sharing. i also make webweaves, amvs, and just about anything if i am at a sufficient level of insanity.

i tag things by fandom. asks are always open if you want anything.

[daily-basil]

just hold me

[bulkhummus]

its a long journey to erid

[i-am-a-fish]

I've been a bit too normal lately both on and off the court. the court being tumblr