Work Text:
Grace always knew he’d have to reduce his rations eventually.
They’re close to Erid. They’re so close. He can make it on what he has—at least, technically, he should be able to make it. You can kind of starve for a while, apparently, and stay alive. As much as he could be considered alive, at this point.
He groans, flipping over and pulling the quilt tighter around himself. He’s always cold, lately. His body is using his meager energy for more important things.
“Grace hurt, question?” Rocky asks worriedly, shifting above him. You’d think he’d be used to Grace’s restless sleep, by now.
“I’m fine,” Grace mutters, squeezing his eyes shut. God, he’s nauseous. Who knew hunger made you so nauseous? He doesn’t have the liberty to be puking right now.
“Grace hurt,” Rocky says sadly. It’s surprising how much the sadness seems to seep into the voice of the translator. Or maybe Grace has just gotten used to what a sad Eridian whir sounds like. They hadn’t been using the translator, for a while, but Grace’s brain has become so laggy that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of Eridian like he could before.
Grace doesn’t respond to Rocky, curling more tightly under the quilt and trying his best to breathe. His breathing is so weird and fluttery lately. Like he can never quite get enough oxygen into his lungs.
The nervous tapping of Rocky’s legs against xenonite is a familiar presence above him. He sighs. He doesn’t want Rocky to worry. If he does die here, he doesn’t want that to be what Rocky remembers.
He traces his scar lightly with his fingers. It’s become a strange habitual motion. It’s been so long since anyone living has touched him. Sometimes he almost wishes for the burning pain of Rocky’s claws against his skin.
His body protests every time he moves—rolling nausea and intense bouts of dizziness—so he mostly stays here, lying down under Rocky’s little xenonite shelf or sitting pressed against the wall with his arms around his knees.
This is how he would’ve died, probably, if Rocky hadn’t offered him a way home. Starving over weeks while drifting through space. He was never going to be brave enough for a bullet to the brain or a lethal injection. He would always have taken the coward’s way out. The least actionable way to die.
Sometimes Rocky leaves the room, though never for long. Sometimes he tinkers around with his xenonite from the corner, undoubtedly maintaining a watchful eye on Grace. Wasting away slowly. It can’t be pretty.
Grace has passed out a few times, which stirs a frantic panic from Rocky. Grace is always on the ground, anyway, so it hasn’t really mattered. Just almost like falling asleep. If falling asleep always involved being startled awake to a giant xenonite ball bumping into you repeatedly and whistling musical notes of fear.
“Time for Grace food,” Rocky says.
Grace shifts. Is it already? He hasn’t been keeping track.
“Maybe I’ll save it,” he murmurs. “Not really hungry.”
Rocky taps sharply against the xenonite in reprimand. “Bad bad bad. Grace eat on schedule. Grace not die.”
Grace would roll his eyes, except that it seems like that might take more effort than he can spare.
“I’m not going to die. Just tired.”
“Tired, then die,” Rocky insists. “Grace get food now.”
Grace closes his eyes again.
The coma slurry—he’s long run out of instant ramen—is in the coma room, as Grace so respectfully refers to it. The tubes are in a special little pull-out drawer, with more precise temperature and air quality controls than the rest of the ship. It’d probably be fine to move the rest of the slurry out here, but on the off-chance it wouldn’t, Grace has left it in the coma room thus far.
That just means he has to go get it. Which is a whole thing.
He wiggles out from under Rocky’s xenonite sleep-watching contraption, then flips over, wedging his knees under himself and sitting up. He leans forward a little, blinking at the dizziness that washes over him from the movement.
Rocky is already rolling towards him in his ball, pressing close so that the xenonite brushes Grace’s cheek. It’s always a little warm.
“I’m okay,” Grace whisper-promises, putting a hand on the ball briefly before returning to his efforts.
He’s been—well, it’s probably the least dignified thing he’s ever done, which is saying something, because he did make a fruitless attempt to escape heroic sacrifice which ended with being tackled against the pavement. But lately, he’s been crawling. Crawling everywhere. Every time he has to move.
It’s just, passing out is a lot safer if you’re closer to the ground. It’s not really worth the risk to do anything else. And it takes so much energy to stand up. He doesn’t have energy to spare—he has, like, seventeen more squishy tubes of energy, and then he’s out. Done.
If Rocky can conceptualize how pathetic it is that Grace has to crawl the mere meters between rooms in a tiny spaceship, he hasn’t mentioned it.
It’s really more like half-crawling, half-dragging himself into the coma room, then sitting up on his knees to pull out the drawer and scrounge for a leftover tube of coma slurry before turning back. It feels like it takes hours every time.
“Grace keep moving,” Rocky says, nudging Grace when he pauses to breathe for a little too long. “Come on, come on, Grace need food. Move. Good.”
It’s pretty pitiful how exhausted Grace is by the time he gets back to his quilt. He drags it out of his sleeping nook, pulling it over himself and leaning back against the wall. He tries to catch his breath, though he knows it’s pretty much a losing cause.
Rocky bumps against him. Always so pushy.
“Grace eat,” Rocky insists. “Now.”
“I’m getting to it,” Grace mutters. “Y’know, once I eat, I don’t get to eat again for a while.”
Still, Grace rips open the tube, sectioning off about a third and screwing up his face as he brings the tube to his mouth.
There’s no feeling of relief in eating. Not least because the coma slurry is disgusting—both wet and chewy, somehow, and flavorful in a way that guarantees flavor was not a subject on the table when it was being developed. Which makes sense, Grace supposes. But they couldn’t have foreseen the possibility of non-coma coma slurry consumption and thrown in a little fake strawberry flavor or something?
Anyway, Grace’s body does not like eating anymore. It seems to reject the very concept—the smell alone makes his stomach roil, and he has to coach himself not to gag as he swallows the thick concoction.
Rocky hums sadly, xenonite pressing up against Grace’s side. Grace lets his head fall back against the wall, breathing as slowly as he can manage through the nausea. Ilyukhina was right, of course, to plan for the lethal injection. He has a feeling the coward’s way out tends to hurt more in the end.
Grace folds down the coma slurry tube, rummaging for his most recent empty tube and moving the old binder clip onto this one. He stashes it back under the table—he keeps open tubes there so that Rocky doesn’t accidentally squish them. The tubes seem to hold up for forty-eight hours outside of the coma room drawer. Or at least, he hasn’t died yet.
He’s up to three days per tube now. It used to be one.
“You happy now?” Grace asks, pulling his arms underneath the quilt and folding them around himself. Still cold.
“Rocky not happy,” Rocky says quietly.
Grace pushes his leg against the xenonite. “I’ll be okay. As soon as we make it to Erid, you’ll figure it out, alright? I’ll eat so much taumoeba. It’ll be awesome.”
“If Grace make it to Erid,” Rocky says mournfully. “If Grace not die like crew.”
Grace winces, pulling his knees in closer to his chest. He doesn’t even know which crew Rocky is referring to. He thinks that makes it worse.
“I’m not going to die,” Grace says again. He knows he’s not particularly convincing. He should be able to survive. He’s just not sure what warning signs to look out for. He’s never starved before.
His fingers find their way back to his burn scar, and he presses his thumb gently against the raised skin.
“Grace touch scar often,” Rocky says worriedly from beside him. “Scar hurt, question?”
Grace shakes his head. “S’ comforting.”
Rocky hums, xenonite pushing closer against Grace’s side. Grace leans in, even though the separation of a metal ball isn’t enough. He wonders if he’ll die never again feeling the warmth of someone really pressing against him, or the weight of a hand against his skin. He wonders if the lack of touch is making his body give up faster. It wouldn’t really make any sense, but maybe.
God, he’s tired. He’s so tired. And so hollowed out.
~~~
He must drift to sleep again, because strange, inconsistent dreams pervade his consciousness, and when he comes to, Rocky isn’t beside him anymore. There are familiar sounds of tinkering across the room. Grace blinks blearily, rubbing his eyes.
“Grace sleep long time,” Rocky says from across the room. He almost sounds reprimanding. “Halfway to next food.”
Twelve hours? Grace doesn’t think he’s ever slept that long at once, save the multiple-year coma. Is that concerning? Or maybe it’s good—it’s an energy saver, after all. He doesn’t know. He lets his head fall forward onto his knees.
“Sorry about that,” he murmurs. Rocky doesn’t like when he’s asleep. Especially lately.
He hears xenonite against the floor—Rocky coming towards him again. He must be so bored of doing this by now.
Then there’s a familiar warm presence against his side. But—but it’s not smooth, like he’s used to. What?
He raises his head. For a second, he only sees Rocky—no xenonite at all—and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, sure he’s still dreaming.
“New ball,” Rocky announces, stretching out his legs.
But it’s not a ball. It’s a suit. A spacesuit, kind of, like the one Rocky made him, but even more precise and articulatable around Rocky’s movements.
Grace extracts a hand from under the quilt—it shakes, like it always does now—and drops it tentatively against the xenonite which closely covers Rocky’s carapace. Oh. It’s warm. So much warmer than he’s used to from the disseminated heat of the ball.
Is he hallucinating? He might be hallucinating. That would be an unwelcome development—though in the moment, he isn’t much inclined to go back to reality.
“Now Rocky can get closer to Grace,” Rocky says, shuffling towards him and folding his legs so that he’s sitting pressed up against Grace’s side. But actually pressed up against his side, this time—the xenonite can’t be more than an inch or so from Rocky’s skin, and with the barrier of his clothes and the quilt, Grace can almost imagine it isn’t there at all.
“What made you come up with this?” Grace asks. His voice is thick.
“Grace need comfort,” Rocky says matter-of-factly. “Like a hug. This comfort Grace, question?”
Grace presses his hand more firmly against the top of Rocky’s carapace, and Rocky shifts a bit within the xenonite, rising so that they make nearly direct contact through the panel. It’s not like they haven’t done something like this before—Rocky is always pressing his claws up against Grace’s palm—but it’s different for Grace’s whole hand to be so close, to feel the heat of a living thing against his side and against his palm all at once.
“Yeah,” Grace breathes.
Rocky hums. For the first time, Grace can feel the vibrations of his voice against his skin. He exhales shakily. It’s almost overwhelming.
“Grace calm,” Rocky coos, raising an arm encased with xenonite and patting Grace’s leg through the quilt. “Grace breathe. Calm. Not die.”
Grace nods, resting his head back against the wall. God, this is—how did Rocky think to do this? It’s like Grace is alive, really, actually alive, when he wasn’t before. It’s like he can almost manage to forget everything—forget the nausea, even, and the pain—in favor of the gentle pressure of Rocky’s body against his own.
“You’re so warm,” he mumbles to the ceiling. “S’ nice.”
Rocky shifts. “Grace cold, question? Ship is ideal temperature for human life.”
“Sometimes you get cold under your skin,” Grace tries to explain, a little incoherent. “Even if it’s not cold in the air. Like something is missing.”
“Food is missing.”
“Maybe that,” Grace agrees. “But… but not just that.”
Rocky’s claws tap against Grace’s leg, considering this. It’s strange to be able to feel Rocky’s little fidgets, instead of just seeing them and hearing his rustling against the xenonite. Rocky is right here. Grace is right here. He doesn’t know where he was before.
“Rocky is missing,” Rocky decides. “Grace need Rocky comfort. I understand now.”
Grace almost laughs. He’s sure he’d be crying, too, if his body had any excess water to spare. Rocky is missing. Rocky’s really never going to leave him alone again, is he?
“I think you’re right,” Grace whispers, smiling a little. He’s sure he hasn’t smiled in days—he can feel his dry lips crack, a bit, at the movement. “Thank you, buddy.”
“Grace not die,” Rocky sings, wiggling a bit against him. “Rocky here. Grace warm.”
Grace lifts the quilt up, and when Rocky doesn’t make a move to skitter away, he drops it over Rocky’s carapace.
The effect is immediate. Rocky is closer to Grace’s skin, but even more than that, the quilt traps his warmth from dissipating into the cooler temperature of the ship. Grace is sure it’ll get too hot, eventually, but in the moment, it’s pure relief. Rocky is like a little space heater. He’d probably object to that comparison.
“Grace weird,” Rocky says, notes a little muffled by the fabric, though the translator manages to pick them up.
“You can get out if you want,” Grace offers, lifting the quilt. He’s sure Rocky could wiggle out easily on his own, anyway.
Rocky makes no move to leave.
“Grace weird,” Rocky repeats. “Not bad.”
Grace drops the quilt back over Rocky, leaning back. “I guess I can accept weird.”
“Very brave,” Rocky adds. “Grace very, very brave.”
Rocky doesn’t really mean anything grand by it; Grace knows that. But he’s not sure he ever learned how to handle such declarations.
“Is easy for brave, weird Grace,” Rocky continues solemnly. “Only have to breathe. Eat. Not die. Rocky will take care of everything else. Grace will do this, question?”
Breathe. Eat. Not die. It sounds so simple, when he puts it like that.
Grace takes a shaky breath. Rocky is steady against him, and it’s a reminder that Grace is alive. Alive still. Alive for at least a while longer.
He closes his eyes. “Okay.”
Rocky hums in approval, knocking against Grace’s arm. “Good, good, good.”
Grace absentmindedly traces the familiar pattern of his scar on Rocky’s carapace. Three lines that meet in a point. A little claw print.
It’s funny—Grace has already promised Rocky to live multiple times today. At least twenty times, probably, in the past few weeks. But this feels different. This might be the first time Grace actually believes it.