Chapter Text
1 year, 10 months, and 2 days to Erid.
Rocky sits diligently in his ball, twisting a specific surface of his back and forth, back and forth, following Grace’s meticulous movements. They’d been chasing each other around, purely out of boredom, and completely whacked their trajectory off course in the process.
Grace knew it didn’t matter which side of Rocky was facing him with. He was just tilting his ‘head’ to humiliate his failing efforts.
“This feels discriminatory,” Grace mentions lightly. “It’s like I’m the most disappointing human companion you’ve ever had.”
“Grace is only human companion Rocky has ever had, statement.”
Grace chuckles. He’s been catching onto sarcasm way easier.
“Left, left. No, right, move hand- Grace!” Rocky complains.
“I am a fingernail off.”
“Off too much!” He rolls over, shoving Grace aside with a nudge to the thigh and gently, gently, begins tapping the buttons and switches himself. “Press too much. Wrong wrong wrong.”
Rocky locks focus onto the coordinates. Grace only raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms. “Worry too much, bad bad bad,” he replies teasingly. Rocky doesn’t seem to take it as such. He turns away swiftly with a sort of huff and continues to fiddle with the ship’s direction.
Grace blinks.
‘Did he just pout at me?’
He asks, “You alright, pal?” And is met with a frustrated string of “fine, fine, fine,” topped with a hard-punched “statement.” That was…dismissive. It made the scientist shift.
Grace sees Rocky is struggling to really angle it subtly enough through the xenonite. He makes the utterly unfortunate decision to try and help. “Here, you tell me which way and I’ll-“ but his hand is smacked away. “No, no! Not good at it, grace do something else!”
Grace recoils his hand like he’s dipped it in lava. “Woah, pump the ‘rahhh’ a little bit. I’m just trying to help.”
He watched the anger dissolve from the Eridian’s body. The shoulders of all five of his limbs slumped with guilt as he shakes his common sense awake. “I am sorry.” A stunned beat.
“Do not know what came over me.”
The trajectory seemed long foreign at the moment.
“S’alright, rock. Happens to the best of us.”
“Not true that you not good,” he reminds, “Grace very good at establishing direction.”
———
In the end, they’d sort of laughed it off. Though Grace played the act off as ‘happens to the best of us,’ Ryland knew that that was just something you say.
It only got worse from there. The mood swings, that is. Rocky would snap at the smallest, random-est things.
Grace put his suit on incorrectly and would get injured. It was too late to keep working, then too early to stop the following day. Each time, the mood changes consisted of short, small outbursts, followed by adamant apologizing.
It lasted around a week by itself before its neighbour ‘tired-M’Gee’ showed up.
They had been repairing one of Grace’s suits (because apparently, one of those last causes for concern were actually correct and it was in fact being worn wrong.)
Rocky had begun to droop in his ball. A bit to the left at first, then he’d shock himself awake and slowwwly droop to the right.
Around the third time this happens, Grace can’t help but chirp up. “Tired?”
Rocky lets everything out of his vents in one long, dragged out sigh. “Yes, Rocky sleep, you watch?” His ball starts rolling to one of his tubes. The laziness alone had set off red flags, but he was serious?
Grace’s head blared like a fire alarm. “Didn’t you just wake up a few hours ago?” He nudges the ball and presses his palm to it, stopping it in its tracks. “You feeling alright?”
Rocky shudders slightly.
“Alright,” The translator glitches out a tad because of how utterly low he’d said it.
“Sleep,” Rocky says.
Grace’s eyes narrow.
“You sure you’re alright, bud? You’re looking pretty loopy.”
His question is entirely ignored.
“You watch,” he utters, slowly—quietly—almost nodding off right there in his ball. He shoots up again before he can.
“Repair!” He jumps. “Rocky stupid, stupid, Grace need suit repair. Grace cannot watch Rocky if working on suit, Grace and Rocky work on suit.”
Grace stops him again.
“Not so fast. I can take a break on the suit.”
Rocky’s fifth leg meets the part of xenonite Grace’s hand s up against with a kick, dislodging his refinement. “No, no, bad idea. I fix suit for Grace—Grace help.”
“Rocks, what’s up with you? Your left is right and your up is down. You’ve been having mood swings all week and now-“
“What?” Rocky twitches. “What word? Need word. Before ‘all week’.”
Grace kneels down impatiently. “Like, your mood changing constantly. Up one minute and down the next.”
There’s another dreadful beat of silence.
“Mood swings…” mumbles Rocky.
“Mm,” Grace hums knowingly. “Sound familiar, Rocks?”
Rocky only leaned forward, and, to Grace’s confusion, he began to shake.
“Rocks.” He says again, Pressing his hand back to the barrier. “Is there something going on that I don’t know about?”
Grace was worried. More than he’d care to admit. After nearly three years of travelling together, there was almost no room for any kind of curveball. And aside from the occasional depressing one, there wasn’t any space for secrets, either. So the theory that his best friend might be hiding something really didn’t settle well.
Rocky’s shivering intensified a bit. He made a quiet, strained noise similar to that of a dying cat.
“Grace—“ he manages, like he was going to say something but it got caught in translation.
“Rocky, bud-“ he lets out a worried sort of wince at the end.
“You can tell me what’s up. I can’t help if you don’t.” He says. The ball trembles under his touch.
“Grace—“ Rocky tries again. This time he finishes a sentence.
“Need out of ball,” He scrambles away on shaking legs to the entrance of the control centre. “Need out of ball now.”
Grace stands with a jolt in his chest.
“Rocky, what’s- why do you need to-“
“Now!” He insists.
It takes him a second to process the demand
“Okay,” he accepts, “okay, let’s get you in your tube-“
“No tube!”
“What?”
They’d figured out a while ago how to pump ammonia into the airlock chamber. This had been a simple ‘pass-the-time’ experiment, as they’d also been working on turning parts of Rocky’s ship into a suit for Grace that was much more flexible than the previous. ‘I’ll be the one in the ball for once,’ he’d said. Rocky had agreed it was a stupidly entertaining idea.
“Rocks, bud, that takes like fifteen minutes to set up, why do you need the airlock room?”
He’d expected a perfectly logical explanation. One of those detailed descriptions Rocky needed three new words to get through. Instead,
“Please,” he practically begs, “please, please, please Grace, need-“ He says it with a level of desperation Grace didn’t know he was capable of and wasn’t keen on hearing again.
Grace agrees faster than he’d come to question it.
———
Almost all of Grace’s words had been shunned out in a muted hum. When the shivering started, His friend had only caught a glimpse of the real situation
There was a twisting shard of tension deep in Rocky’s core. One he was actually familiar with, but couldn’t place a memory on why. Then he’d realized, and the stars had aligned in his head faster than any real ones ever had for their mission.
The tiredness, the mood swings, things he’d noticed but was too focused to really think about. And, if there was some kind of off-chance he was right about it, He needed a room. Quietness, something still. Blankets, maybe a few of Grace’s shirts, a nest.
He owed his friend a very large explanation in a few minutes.