I'm so cool trust

The rest of the meeting went without a hiccup. Reviewing the mission for Dr. Ryland Grace, discussing strategies for Astrophage breeding, and a brief mention of some bureaucratic problems Stratt was having. 

I started packing up my stuff and turned to Dimitri.

“What do you think?” I asked. 

“Of?” He replied. 

“Dr. Grace?” I said, slightly exasperated. 

“He made an absolute fool of himself. But, he’s clearly no idiot.” He answered.

I only nodded in response. Dimitri was spot on so there wasn’t really anything else to say. We both silently finished gathering our things before heading out of the conference room. 

I peered out the aircraft carrier’s windows as I walked back to the office. The conference room was open-air so I already saw that the sun was beginning to set. I didn’t need to be too weary of the time or anything, but I was understandably hyperfocused on the sun lately. With all my meetings done for the day I could go back to my office and work for as long as I pleased. There were intense security protocols on board The Stratt Vat but it’s not like the scientists were being babysat. As long as we met deadlines and showed up to meetings on time, we could do as we pleased. 

I got back to my office, running completely on autopilot now. I almost didn’t notice the blonde man sitting at the corner of my desk. Keyword almost. When I finally clued in I nearly jumped, it took me a second to recognize this stranger as Dr. Ryland Grace.

I must have been visibly shocked because an earnest look spread across his face almost instantly. Dr. Grace stood up and approached me with his arms up in a surrender-like gesture. A timid smile slowly spread to his cheeks. 

“Woah, hey. I, uh, I didn’t mean to startle. Stratt just told me to go here and, well you know how she is. She’s, she’s pretty impossible to say no to.” He chuckled softly. 

“No, no you’re all good. I just didn’t know I’d be having company.” 

I introduced myself, my doctor title sitting proudly before my name.

I outstretched my hand. A silent gesture to try and bridge this gap. Something to try and quell the awkward tension in the air. 

“Dr. Ryland Grace, but please, just call me Ryland.” He shook my hand. 

“Likewise. Or rather, just call me by my first name. There’s enough formalities on The Stratt Vat.” I said. 

“The Stratt Vat?” Asked Ryland, a more comfortable smile crept its way onto his face. 

I nodded. “That’s what the locals call it.”

“Good to know.” He responded. 

I gazed past the scientist, checking out the corner of my desk that he’d taken over. That was all due to Stratt’s orders, no doubt. My office was a decent size, it wasn’t very pretty (no room on board an aircraft carrier was) aluminum walls enclosed the space on all sides only broken by a small window on the wall opposite the door. All that was really in here was my desk, work materials, and some miscellaneous boxes. If we got the boxes moved soon there should be plenty of room for the two of us; and for now, Ryland didn’t seem like a bad person to share a desk with. 

“I’ll move some of my papers out of the way.” I said, gesturing to the now shared desk. “Did Stratt mention anything about you getting your own desk at some point?’

“Yeah she said I’d have one within a couple days. I’m sorry I had to commandeer some of yours.” Ryland replied, looking worried once again. 

“Genuienly, don’t worry.” I said, trying my best to reassure him.

I moved across the room toward the desk. Only now was it apparent how many papers were strewn about everywhere. I wasted no time in picking them all up and shoving them into semi-matching folders. 

“I just hope you don’t mind what a disaster I’ve left the place.” I continued.

“Hey, you’re talking to a bachelor about messes right now. In other words, you’re preaching to the choir.” He chuckled.

“Good to know.” I nodded as a slight smile crept up onto my face. 

A beat of silence passed. It wasn't super awkward or anything, it was actually pretty comfortable considering we had only just met. However, I felt that I needed to fill it. 

“What did you say your doctorate was in?” I asked.

“I have a PHD in molecular biology.” He said.

It was clear from his tone that he wasn’t trying to brag. Not that he’d get much luck with that behaviour on a ship that was practically all PHD or MD holders. However there was a certain weight to his tone that I couldn’t quite discern. 

“Yourself?” He asked.

“Astronomy.” I answered.

“Impressive.” The blonde smiled.

The room fell into silence again. I was still moving around the office, trying to make some sense of the seemingly endless clutter. One would think that all of these papers would be digitized, but oh no. The Russians worked in physical media, and you didn’t argue with the Russians. Apparently, Stratt had found that out the hard way. 

“Who’s Carl?” I asked, breaking the silence once again.

Ryland looked at me, brows furrowed. His expression conveyed a great degree of confusion and weariness before he finally clued in. 

“He was a security guard back in San Francisco, where I’m from. I didn’t have much of a team when Stratt first recruited me, well I didn’t have a team at all actually. But Carl was a huge help.” Ryland explained.

I simply nodded. With every passing second it became even more clear how different our paths onto Project Hail Mary were. I tried not to dwell on that because if I did… Well, I’d just get bitter and snarky all over again. I opted to change subjects in an attempt to avoid that.

“I’ve read some of your dissertation. It wasn’t half bad.” I said.

The molecular biologists face flushed slightly. It was hard to tell if that reaction was rooted in pride or shame. He wrote a damn good essay, I saw no reason why he should be ashamed of it. But, academics were weird so who knows what trauma he had associated with that paper.

“Thank you, but I wrote that a long time ago. The man who published that is long gone.” He replied, his gaze fixated on the floor. 

I had just finished clearing off my desk and was in the middle of setting a stack of binders on a nearby shelf. I stilled slightly at the change in Ryland’s tone, that definitely wasn’t the response I was expecting. Sure, him being modest or sweeping his accomplishments under the rug wouldn’t be entirely out of the ordinary. But dismissing what seemed to be a life's work outright? That was odd.

“I thought you made some excellent points. Biology isn’t my area of expertise at all but still, it was clearly well thought out.” I said. 

Ryland sighed as he crossed the room toward his now clear side of the desk. He took a seat on the spare chair and I followed suit. Sitting down with him as I awaited his explanation. Over the next 45 odd minutes he explained his academic backstory as I did mine. He told me all about the UNESCO conference in Denmark, and how that paper was essentially meant as a final, ‘fuck you,’ to everyone in his department. He phrased it a lot nicer than that, though. Ryland seemed like the type to be too professional and/or paranoid to swear on the clock. 

He finds himself playing along anyway.

“TIMEOUT! TIME! OUT!” He shouts as loud as he can, the outburst managing to bring the fight to an abrupt halt.

“Rocky,” he attempts to reason with him. “Please. Let Armando do it.”

Rocky whines a shrill, stressed noise of pure desperation and resistance.

Grace makes another attempt at reason. “You haven't slept in nearly two weeks. I can't even remember the last time you ate anything at all. You're quite literally defying every known fact about your species’ biology through sheer willpower at this point. I’m afraid you're gonna just start leaking mercury soon if you don't calm down.”

“Rocky sleep when Grace safe on Erid. All Rocky crew die Rocky could not fix. Rocky mate dying Rocky fix Rocky fix Rocky fix.”

Grace pulls his hand off the old blood-soaked bandages covering the reopened scars where three of Rocky's fingers once left their mark. Sitting up, he reaches too far out and wraps his hand around Rocky's wrist, encouraging him to release the gauze and nearly falling out of bed at the same time.

Rocky screeches, forgetting about his flexible xenonite barrier for one brief horrific moment amidst his delirium. When he snaps back out of it his body moves on instinct, forgoing his grip on the gauze in favor of helping Grace fully back up onto the bed.

Grace smiles, watching his plan work and following through. Clinging to Rocky with every remaining ounce of his strength, he appeals to his current sole desire in a way that's arguably less productive, but inarguably more comforting. “You wanna help fix me?”

“Fix fix fix fix fix fix fix–”

“Then what I need you to do is get on this bed with me.”

He emits a weak noise of confusion but doesn't fight as Grace tugs him upward.

“Come on, get in here. You can't fix me if you're not in this bed, Rocky.”

Grace parts his thin legs as Rocky climbs onto the narrow mattress. There isn't enough room at his side, but there's plenty between his knees, so that's where he convinces Rocky to settle down.

“There we go. That's exactly where I need you right now, okay?”

He's still practically vibrating under Grace's touch, but it's progress.

“What do what do what do question fix fix fix Grace Rocky fix Grace Rocky save Grace.”

“You are,” Grace nods along with the word vomit spilling from the nearby laptop as Armando moves in to treat his wound. “You are fixing me, Rocky. Now, I just need you to do one thing, okay?”

“Okay okay okay what what do question what do what Rocky do Rocky fix Grace save Grace–”

Holding his injured arm out, he presents his open hand to Rocky. “I need you to hold my hand.”

His mate goes oddly still and quiet for a moment before he starts talking again, shakily attempting to stand. “Hold hand? Hold hand, question? Grace fucking dying and all Rocky can do to fix is hold hand?! No no no!”

Well, at least he's forming coherent sentences again.

Fortunately, Armando helps Grace keep Rocky on the bed long enough to listen to reason. “Rocky. Please. I need you to listen to me. Really listen.”

He doesn't fully stop physically resisting, but he goes quiet, and that's enough.

“Rocky, you are crucial here. I need you. If you aren't here to bridge the gap between me and the rest of your species when we land on Erid, I am going to die. They will not understand or trust me in time to save me if the only Eridian life they find on Mary is your corpse.”

Rocky trembles, losing the fight against the combined effort to get him to lay back down. His arms fold beneath him and the bed finally takes his full weight.

“Rocky useless to Grace if Grace dead before land on Erid.”

“That's not gonna happen.”

“Lie.”

“It's not a lie. Rocky, I've made it this far. We're almost home. I can survive for a few more days.”

“Grace have to live more than that. Will take time to create food and shelter.”

Grace nods, running his hands down along the closest pair of Rocky’s arms. “Yep. And if you aren't alive and awake to tell them what I need, then we both know that I'm gonna run out of time before they figure it out on their own.” He takes a deep breath, for Rocky as much as for his own benefit. “They need you too. That's your people. Your home. Your friends, your family, your everything.”

Rocky pivots in a full-body ‘no’.

“You are my everything, Grace.”

They'll probably have to unpack that at some point once he's living around other Eridians again, but Grace tables it for now.

He sighs. “Okay. Okay. Even if so, I still need you to live too. Because… I'm gonna be honest. If you die before, or even after we land on Erid? I’m gonna dig out Ilyukhina's lethal injection and come join you, buddy.”

Rocky folds in on himself. “Do not say that.”

Grace knows he shouldn't. But at this point he'll say whatever he needs to say to get Rocky to listen. Even if it means being a little too honest.

“I will say it. Because I mean it. I'm not doing this without you. Any of it.”

“..Grace–”

He cuts Rocky off, voice beginning to strain as tears well in his eyes. “I mean it, Rocky. I didn't turn back around because I wanted to take a fun little alien summer vacation before going home. I turned around to save you. And now we're going to Erid to save our planet, and ourselves. You are the core of it all for me. I will not live there without you.”

Painfully blunt, codependent, and manipulative as it may be, his words finally manage to shut down the self-sacrificing spiral of thought that his mate was stuck in.

“...Grace crying.”

He blinks hard, ignoring his headache. “Yeah. Because I want you to live. And I want to live. And that is only going to happen if we stay calm and work together.”

“And listen to Mary,” the ship chimes in.

“And listen to Mary,” Grace echoes with an exhausted nod.

Armando takes Grace by the wrist once more, finally able to begin to clean and rebandage the reopened wounds on his forearm.

Rocky carefully takes Grace’s bony hand in two of his own. “...Okay. Rocky understand. Rocky listen. Rocky live. Grace live. Erid live.”

Grace smiles, echoing him as well. “Rocky live. Grace live. Erid live.”

-

A while later, once Grace is all bandaged up and resting from his far-too-exciting afternoon, Rocky still hasn't moved.

Grace asked him to stay. To keep him warm, keep him company, keep him safe, keep him sane. So he will.

Mary and Armando have everything under control until it's time to land. And eventually, after he's had enough time to truly calm down, even Rocky can admit that he's made every preparation possible. There's nothing left for him to do other than hurry up and wait. Wait and watch his mate cling to life, helpless to do anything more than offer comfort in what may still end up being his final hours, regardless of how many stubborn, hopeful affirmations they tell each other.

As Grace falls in and out of a light sleep, Rocky runs his hands up and down along his legs, willing his heat to transfer through the barrier and somehow do more than just warm him. Wills it to save him.

Taking both of Grace's hands in two more of his own, he finds himself feeling so utterly helpless that he throws a desperate little “Hail Mary” of his own.

Going down the list of every single God he's learned of recently, both fictional and allegedly real, he calls upon every single one. And he prays.

It isn't much. Just two desperate words, silently repeated in two languages at once, over and over in his mind throughout the entire night.

Grace Live.

Grace Live.

Grace Live.

Grace Live.

Grace Live.

I bet He watches down and says, “This is when they'll ask for me.”

Notes:

Once again, the only quoted things to credit are the indented lyrics, both lines being from the title song linked at the top.

And once again, no specific inspirations to credit for this part either. (I swear this section serves a purpose we just haven't gotten that far in the fic yet.)

Finally, we've reached the part of the fic that allows the name of the title track to make sense.

I love love looove fucked up, traumatized, codependent, obsessed-with-each-other grocky so much dude it scratches something in my brain juuust right.

Like I said up at the top, this fic takes place in a bit of an AU wherein Adrian doesn't exist, or at least isn't Rocky's mate. I have nothing against them at all, and while I am a polyshipper and love me some grockdrian, I just kinda needed to exclude them for the sake of this fic since having another mate waiting back on Erid would probably give Rocky something else to live for and well we simply can't have that happening in this angst-ridden fic, now can we? Rocky meant it when he said Grace is his everything.

Life on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean was not as cool as I had anticipated. Appropriately coined, The Stratt Vat, it was cold, enclosed, and there was a lot of pressure. But, you wanna know what the worst part of all this was? Not the 16 hour workdays, not the impending doom of potentially going extinct, not the cramped living quarters, no. It was the unending and miserable boredom.

You see, humans can get used to just about anything. We don’t have enough expendable energy to have an active prolonged fear of something. This is why when you live in tragedy for long enough, it becomes part of the routine. Children still had to go to school during World War II (even with frequent bombs being dropped). And I still had to go to work (even with the threat of extinction or the carrier blowing sky high). 

So there I was, in the cafeteria, at 6:00am, drinking shitty coffee, and trying not to fall asleep on my laptop. I rubbed my temples as I stared at the calculations on screen. None of it made any sense but I couldn’t tell if that was because I was still half asleep, or because the data actually didn’t make any sense. I threw my head back with my hands over my face and groaned. 

“Tough morning?” A thick Russian accent appeared behind me. 

I whipped my head around to see Dimitri Komorov. A fellow scientist on board The Stratt Vat, and one I actually liked. Maybe it was weird for a woman who wasn’t even 30 yet to be so close with a middle aged Russian man, but whatever. We got along well and ended up in a lot of the same meetings. All of this also meant he was a great gossiping partner.

“How did you know? I thought I was being so subtle.” I replied sarcastically.

I gestured to the seat across from me as I spoke. Dimitri smiled and sat down without another word. In front of him he sat down a breakfast tray with a smorgasbord of items from the buffet, along with enough bacon to feed a great white. Oh and, we cannot forget the latte that had a decent chance of being spiked.  

Dimitri took a bite of his bacon before speaking up again. 

“You know that American scientist Stratt has studying Astrophage?” He asked. 

“The one who published the dissertation on the goldilocks zone being for idiots?” I responded, my attention going back to my laptop. 

“That’s the one. Apparently he’s made some, ‘breakthrough discovery.’ So, Stratt’s kidnapping him today.” He said.

My focus on the calculations in front of me was broken for just a second. Someone new, that Eva Stratt was recruiting personally? I almost couldn’t believe it. The Stratt Vat was packed enough as it was, so only the absolute best of the best came on board, let alone stayed. 

“Poor soul.” I said. 

Dimitri let out a hearty laugh. 

“Agreed. But this is good for the two of us, no?” He countered.

“How is this good for us? It just means less living space and more mouths to feed. I mean, it’s a good thing we’re making progress on figuring out Astrophage biology. But, don’t we already have a whole team for that on board?” I sighed. “I know I’m not in a place to be questioning Stratt’s judgement but, why bring on another hot-headed professor? Just set him up on land and have him phone-in his findings; I’m sure he can’t be that impressive.” I replied, my tiredness making me more negative than usual. 

“Well, he’s actually not a professor. He’s a middle-school teacher.” Said the Russian, in between bites of food. 

I finally looked up from my laptop. My jaw wasn’t completely on the floor but my mouth was definitely hanging open a little. I had a doctorate in astronomy with a minor in psychology. I was working for The University of Toronto’s astronomy department and had interned multiple times at NASA. All of that and I still had to fight tooth and nail to be here. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I scoffed. 

Dimitri shook his head before taking a sip of his latte. He set the paper cup down on the table and gave me a tired look. It was the kind of look that told me I needed to shut up immediately. 

“I know you have your grievances with Stratt, we all do. But you need to remind yourself that she’s the one in charge for a reason. I don’t know what’s got you acting so pissy and childish this morning, but you need to get over it.” He paused, taking a bite of his breakfast. “Now, this is good for us because he’s a potential friend. He’ll be in our circle, he’s obviously smart, and I know both of us need more people to connect with. Don’t ruin this before it starts.” 

I paused for just a second, hemming and hawing on whether or not to fight back. Ultimately, I knew Dimitri was right. I knew I was being pissy and that accepting a potential friend was probably the right thing to do. It just took me a minute to get there. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I replied quietly.