Why not me?

Grace nearly launched himself into the ceiling. “Jesus—!”

The tether uncoiled behind you in lazy, metallic loops, its faint clinking traveling up the steel braid and vibrating directly into the chest plate of your suit. Beneath you, the hull of the Hail Mary stretched out like the white belly of some prehistoric deep-sea leviathan. Overhead, the infinite empty void of space yawned open.

Back in the control room, Grace’s eyes scrambled over the main console until they finally locked onto the small microphone. “Hello?” he said, quite frantically. “Cap, can you hear me? Hello? Copy?” 

You smiled behind the glass, though your brows furrowed at the obtrusive volume of Grace’s voice. You were using a handrail to orient yourself as you began the slow hand-over-hand crawl along the ship's spine. “I copy. But turn your mic down a notch, you're practically inside my skull.”

“Right! Sorry. Adjusting. Is that better?” 

“Much.” 

“Everything okay out there?” 

“You tell me, Doc. You’re the one on the screens.” Your laugh was accompanied by static. “S’just dark as far as the eye can see over here.” 

“Oh, god. Right. Okay.” You heard him shuffling across the panels. “Okay, everything looks normal. And there’s this radar here with a bunch of little green dots. None of them are near you. Well, there's one, but it's moving away. It’s moving very fast. Wow, space is terrible.” 

“You’re doing great.”

The damage to the Petrova scope's antenna array was exactly as the diagnostic had described. The primary bracket was sheared through, looking like torn foil. The relay coupling, which was the little yellow case's counterpart, was warped. Its ceramic housing cracked open to expose a nest of severed fiber-optic filaments that floated like tiny transparent hairs. 

“I’m onsite,” you reported, hooking your safety tether to the anchor point. “The bracket is compromised. I'm going to have to manually realign the housing before I can seat the new coupler. It's going to take some muscle. My telemetry might spike a bit; don't panic.”

“Copy that,” said Grace. You could hear him impatiently tapping against the console. “Hey, can I tell you something?” 

“Talk to me, Goose.” You unclipped the tool bag from your thigh and pulled out the pneumatic wrench. The work was tedious, frustratingly restricted by the pressurized bulk of your gloves. 

There was a brief crackle of static as Grace took a breath. “I’m terrified of heights.” 

A soft chuckle huffed out of you, echoing inside your helmet. “If it makes you feel any better, there’s no up and down out here. Technically, no such thing as ‘height’ either. There’s no floor to catch you and no floor to fall from. We’ve got a trillion miles of absolute nothing in every direction.” 

It took a while for him to respond. “You seriously thought that would make me feel better?” 

Every action required an equal and opposite reaction; if you turned the wrench too hard without anchoring your hips, your whole body would swing around the bolt like a pendulum. For five agonizing minutes, the only sounds were the rhythmic whir-snap of the tool, the steady hiss-click of your suit's oxygen regulators, and Grace's occasional, anxious updates.

“Debris field is clear,” he said. He’d begun chewing on a Twizzler that he’d found floating over the panels. “Hull pressure is rock solid... You've got a slight temperature spike in your left glove, is that normal?”

“Yeah. Friction from the wrench. Keep watching.”

“Copy.”

You pulled the cracked coupling free. It drifted away on a short wire lanyard until you clipped it to your tool belt, replacing it with the pristine, yellow-housed component Grace had retrieved for you. It slid into the slot with a gratifying mechanical clack.

“Coupler is seated,” you grunted, bracing your knees against the hull as you reached for the locking lever. “Engaging the primary seal now.” 

As you worked, the cause of the damage became clear. The tricky thing about traveling at the speed of light was that any loose debris you met had the calibre of a bullet. The ship's primary defense was its massive sacrificial bumper, designed to absorb the brutal kinetic energy of cosmic dust. But with the ship now in orbit, (or settling into orbit) there was hardly a need to be wary of such dangers. 

Unless of course, instead of the ship propelling towards the debris, the debris was coming at you. 

“Something’s wrong.” Grace sat up from his chair. “I’m getting alarms, Cap. Foreign objects detected? This wasn't here before. What the – Oh, god the green dots in the radar earlier — there’s a cluster of them now. Heading to you!” 

Your head snapped up. You didn't waste time looking at the void; you wouldn’t see projectiles traveling at kilometers per second until they were already tearing through you. “How long?” you barked, having already abandoned the wrench. 

It didn’t make sense to Grace. How was it coming so fast? How had Mary not seen it sooner? “Five seconds! Four—!” 

You unhooked your knees from the cleats and threw your weight downward. You tried to tuck your body behind the thick, reinforced structural rib of the Petrova scope's primary housing. It was the only substantial piece of shielding within arm's reach. You pulled yourself in, curling into a tight, desperate ball against the hull. But you were a fraction of a second too late. A soundless flurry of violence erupted around you. A spray of cosmic gravel shredded the space where you had just been floating. It didn't make a sound in the vacuum, but you felt it — a series of sharp, rhythmic thuds vibrating violently through the metal hull beneath your chest. Bright sparks danced across your visor as particles vaporized against the ship's skin.

Then came the impact.

A blinding spike of agony caught your trailing left arm. One of the larger fragments slammed directly into your sleeve. Your dutiful EVA suit refused to breach, and as a result, trapped the force into your forearm and shattered the bone under your skin. 

The strike spun you against your tether until your helmet snapped against the hull. You couldn’t tell if you were screaming. You were deaf to the world, hearing only the sharp singing of your broken arm. 

You gasped for air, spots dancing in your eyes. You clutched your shoulder and pulled your wrist toward your chest. The pain was a sickening, throbbing white-hot fire radiating towards your entire torso. You forced your eyes to focus on the flashing HUD data overlaying the dark void.

SUIT PRESSURE: 14.7 PSI (STABLE)

O2 SUPPLY: NOMINAL

INTEGRITY: 100%

The ringing in your ears gradually subsided. In its place, came Grace’s frantic calls. 

“Cap! Cap!” He was screaming into the microphone, his voice slightly distorted by the volume. “I lost your vitals — no, wait, your heart rate is at 180! The suit sensors — is there a breach? Tell me there's no breach. Talk to me!”

The multi-layered Kevlar and reinforced polymer weave of the sleeve had held, absorbing the brunt of the hit without puncturing. But the sheer force of the impact had transferred straight through the insulation.  

“No… no breach,” you squeezed through gritted teeth. You pressed your forehead against your visor, sweating profusely. “Suit’s… suit’s whole, Grace.” 

Grace didn’t realize he was already crying. He angrily wiped his tears away with his fist. Now was not the time. “Okay.” He sniffled. “Okay. Come back. Forget the antenna, come back now.” 

“My arm,” you groaned. A choked sound escaped your throat as the throbbing intensified. Inside the rigid, heavy suit, you tried to move your hand and immediately regretted it as a fresh wave of agony made your stomach churn. “My arm's broken. I can’t move it.” 

Grace paled. 

It took everything in you not to vomit. In zero gravity, a broken arm wasn’t a weight-bearing problem, but a physics problem. Every time you hauled your weight forward with your single good hand, the lack of a counter-stabilizing grip sent your lower body swinging. You kept your injury as close to your body as possible, but the shattered bones under your skin felt as though they were grinding together with sickening, wet friction. You had to time each pull, slowly dragging yourself along the handrails, knowing that one missed grip meant hurtling into the void.

“I see you.” Grace’s trembling voice snapped you out of the haze. “I-I see you, Cap. You’re doing great. You’re past the thrusters. Just six meters to the airlock.” He was lying. It was eight meters. But he needed the distance to be shorter, if only to keep his own lungs from seizing up. He felt completely and utterly useless.

“Tell me… tell me about the radar,” you panted, your voice cracking as you reached for the next magnetic cleat. You needed a distraction. You needed him to talk. “Any—Any more debris?” 

Grace snapped his eyes to the screens. He blinked back the tears that blurred his vision. “No. Nothing. It’s clear. You’re safe, I promise.” 

“Good.” You laughed weakly. “Because I don’t think I have another dodge in me, Doc.” 

“Don’t talk, just focus on the rails,” Grace pleaded. His breath shuddered. “You’re almost there. Just come inside. Please, just come inside.” 

When you got closer towards re-entry, Grace abandoned his station and rushed to the nodes to get you. 

The internal airlock door hadn’t finished its depressurization but Grace was already throwing it open. The sudden rush of cabin air swirled around your helmet. You barely registered it. You were slumped against the bulkhead, your right hand locked onto an emergency handle in a death grip while your left arm hung weightless.

​“Oh my god, oh my god, I’ve got you,” Grace lunged into the airlock, his hands trembling so violently he could barely get a purchase on your suit’s latches.

​He didn't bother with the full decompression protocol. With a frantic grunt, he popped the seals on your helmet and yanked it free. The sudden rush of cool, recycled ship air hit your sweat-drenched face, but the relief was instantly swallowed by a wave of vertigo. The cabin was spinning.

​“Can you talk? A-Are you going to pass out?” Grace’s face was inches from yours, his eyes wide and panicked behind his crooked glasses.

​“Don't… don't touch the left sleeve,” you wheezed, your voice a ragged whisper. Every breath felt like inhaling glass. “Just get me… out of the suit.”

​“Right. Okay. Carefully. We’re going carefully.”

​It was anything but careful. In microgravity, maneuvering a dead-weight human body out of a rigid multi-layered EVA suit was an Olympic sport. Doing it while trying not to jostle a shattered forearm was competing in the finals. Grace worked like a man possessed, unclipping the torso restraints and peeling the heavy material down past your hips, steering entirely clear of your left side.

​When your left arm finally slid free of the inner lining, a sharp, ragged gasp tore from your throat. Without the stiff structure of the suit to hold it, the arm deformed — bending at a sickening, unnatural angle between the wrist and the elbow.

​Grace let out a small, horrified squeak, the blood draining from his face. “Oh, Jesus. Okay. Don't look at it. Just look at me.”

​He grabbed your right hand and draped your good arm over his shoulders, anchoring his arm around your waist to keep you from drifting. “We need to get to the lab. The med bay. Hold onto me, okay? Just hold on.”

​The journey through the narrow, cylindrical corridors of the Hail Mary was an exercise in pain. Without gravity to keep you grounded, every movement required momentum. Every shift was an enemy. Grace used his free hand to pull both of your masses along the guide rails, but he wasn’t a trained astronaut; his movements were jerky and frantic.

​With every forward lurch, your lower body drifted, and the momentum transmitted straight up your torso to your dangling left arm. The shattered ends of your bones shifted and ground against each other inside your swollen skin.

​“Wait—Grace, stop, stop,” you choked out, your eyes squeezing shut as a violent wave of nausea hit you. Your stomach convulsed, and you had to swallow down the bitter taste of bile. If you vomited in zero gravity now, you’d choke on it.

​“Stopping! I’m stopping!” Grace slammed his hand onto a handrail, bringing both of you to a sudden, jarring halt.

​The abrupt deceleration sent a searing shock of lightning straight up your arm and into your brain. Your vision completely blew out into a roaring haze of grey static. You felt your knees buckle into the empty air, your chin dropping against Grace’s shoulder as you shivered from deep, systemic shock.

​“Hey, hey! Stay with me!” Grace’s voice sounded like it was underwater, echoing from the end of a long tunnel. He was panicking, his grip tightening around your waist as he began hauling you forward again, much faster now, his breaths coming in ragged, terrified gapes. “We’re almost there. Come on, don't pass out on me yet. I can't do this by myself!”

​You couldn't answer. You could only press your face into the fabric of his jumpsuit. Your right hand clutched his shoulder so hard your fingers cramped, riding out the humming aches as he dragged you through the hatchway of the infirmary. For what it was worth, it felt good to be held. You kept your cheek against Grace's shoulder, relishing in what little relief his presence brought. 

​“Okay, okay.” Grace set you down on one of the cots. Under the infirmary’s fluorescent lights, the unnatural color your arm was turning became impossible to ignore. He did his best not to look at it as he strapped you down. 

Your head lolled as he moved. “Grace,” you called weakly. 

His eyes snapped to you. “Yes? Yes? What's wrong? It's gonna be okay, we're gonna fix this, okay? Hang on. I'll fix it, I promise.” 

You couldn't even remember why you said his name. You supposed you just wanted to see his face. Dazed and weakened by the deafening pain, you sought comfort in having his attention. At least you weren't alone, you thought. You couldn't imagine going through something like this by yourself. 

As the final strap clicked into place, securing you firmly against the cot, a chime sounded overhead. Mary's perfectly modulated voice echoed through the small room.

​“Warning. Biometric anomaly detected. Commanding Officer: heart rate: 178 beats per minute. Respiration: elevated. Severe localized trauma identified in upper left extremity.”

​“Yeah, no kidding!” Grace yelled at the ceiling, using the back of his arm to wipe a mix of sweat and tears from his face. “Uh… Uh, initialize medical assessment protocol!” 

​With a heavy hydraulic hiss, a panel in the bulkhead beside the cot slid open. Out glided Armando, the ship's sleek, segmented contraption of aluminum and white polymer, tipped with a precise multi-jointed hand. 

​Armando didn't have a face, but the way its optical sensors whirred and clicked as they focused on your left arm felt intensely invasive. The robotic hand hovered a mere inch above your swollen, distorted forearm. A thin line of green laser light swept down from your elbow to your wrist, mapping the grotesque S-shape of the fractured bone beneath the skin.

​You hissed through your teeth, flinching away even though the machine hadn't actually touched you.

​“Assessment complete,” Mary reported. “Displaced compound-adjacent fracture of the left radius and ulna. High risk of compartment syndrome. Radial artery compression detected. Peripheral blood flow to left distal extremity is critical. Immediate manual reduction required to prevent permanent tissue necrosis.”

​Grace stared at the diagnostic monitor, his face losing what little color it had left. “Necrosis? No, no, no... Okay, uh, Mary, initiate automated analgesic protocol? Give him the good stuff, knock him out!”

​“Request denied,” Mary responded instantly. “Mechanical failure detected in primary intravenous delivery valve. Fluid line pressure: insufficient. Administered dosage of localized analgesic: 0.05 milligrams. Maximum threshold reached for current capacity.”

​“What do you mean threshold reached?!” Grace slammed his fist against the medical console. “Override it! Bypass the valve!”

​“Bypass unavailable. Manual intervention required.”

“Grace,” you choked out. “Something's blocking the valve. It's not gonna work till you fix it.” 

​The infirmary lapsed into a terrifying silence, save for the rhythmic, high-pitched beeping of your spiking heart rate. Armando’s robotic hand retracted slightly, twisting its joints into a waiting posture, as if acknowledging its own inability to fix the mechanical jam.

​Grace turned his head to look at you. “Okay, so I'll fix it. I-I'll fix the valve.” 

“Fix it later,” you told him. “Right now you have to activate the centrifuge. We need gravity for the rest of the infirmary to be operational. C-Can you do that for me?” 

Grace nodded. He asked you to stay still, then he was gone. 

Grace had been out of your sight for no more than two minutes, but it was hard to gauge time with how incessantly your arm was burning. It felt like forever. It felt like he'd never return. You breathed shallowly in your cot as you stared up at the ceiling and did your best to stay conscious. 

Then, the world shifted. You held your breath, thinking it was another wave of vertigo. But then your hair fell over your face and you realized that gravity was making a cautious return. Up and down were re-established in a slow, careful descent. 

It felt good to be oriented, but worse to feel pressure against your broken arm. You let out a strangled, breathless cry, your right hand instantly locking onto the metal frame of the cot as the extra weight crushed you into the mattress. Your vision, already swimming with static, began to fade into darkness.

​“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Grace yelled, stumbling as his own feet slammed into the newly formed floor. He nearly ran into your bed upon his return. His glasses slid completely off his nose, dangling from one ear. “I did it. Gravity stable. What now?”

“Shit.” You gasped. “Shit, shit, shit.” You inhaled a deep, unhelpful breath. “Grace, you have to set my arm.” 

“What?!” 

“You do. You have to do it. Armando's not going to with that broken valve. You need to set my arm before he can operate.” You held your good hand out as if to stop him from bolting. “You just — i-it's just one big snap into place, okay? Then I'll pass out, then you can fix the valve.” 

“You're insane!” 

“I'm out of options, Grace!” You were hyperventilating by then. The monitors next to you were going haywire. “You can do this.”

Grace tugged on his hair. He was going to be sick. “Can't I just fix the valve first?” 

“No!” you yelled. He hadn't heard you yell that loud before. “No. Please. Set the arm. I want this over with. It hurts. If you take any longer the injury will be irreparable. You have to do it.” 

Grace froze, momentarily shaken by the desperation in your voice. ​He looked at your face, streaked with sweat, pale with shock, twisted in an agony he doubted he could comprehend. He inhaled a deep, steadying breath. This was the least he could do. 

​“Okay,” Grace breathed, his voice suddenly losing its frantic pitch. He swiped his dangling glasses off his ear and shoved them into his jumpsuit pocket. He didn’t want a clear view of this. “Okay. I’m going to do it.”

​He stepped to the side of the cot, his boots slamming heavily against the floor. He positioned himself over your left arm. Up close, under the harsh infirmary lights, the distortion was stomach-turning. The sharp, jagged edge of the radius was pushing so hard against the underside of your skin that the tissue was white and bloodless, a mere breath away from tearing through.

​“Hold onto the rail with your right hand,” Grace commanded, hands hovering over you. “Don't let go. Don’t move.” 

​You locked your right fingers around the cold titanium frame of the medical bed. You closed your eyes, squeezing so hard your face creased. You took one last ragged breath. “Do it.”

​Grace didn't give you a countdown. He knew if he paused, he’d lose his nerve.

​He clamped his left hand firmly just above your elbow, pinning your upper arm against the mattress to anchor it against the crushing centripetal force. With his right hand, he gripped your wrist, his fingers locking tightly over your cold, purple-tinged skin. ​Then, with a guttural grunt of exertion, Grace leaned his entire body weight backward, pulling your wrist down and away from your shoulder with everything he had.

​The universe fractured.

An ungodly wet grinding screech echoed within the flesh of your arm as the overlapping, shattered ends of the radius and ulna were forcefully dragged back past one another. The sharp shards of bone plowed through muscle and fascia. ​A raw, piercing scream tore from your throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated torment that vibrated through the metal frame of the bed. Your spine violently arched off the cot, fighting against the padded restraint straps as every nerve ending in your upper body flared into a blinding nova of pain.

To Grace’s horror, the job didn’t end there. He felt the horrific, structural resistance of the bones, and with one final, agonizing heave, he gave the wrist a sharp, aligning twist.

​SNAP.

​A heavy, sickening mechanical thud reverberated through your arm as the two main shafts of the bone finally slid back into their parallel tracks. Instantly, the pressure on the radial artery released, and a hot, throbbing rush of restricted blood surged back into your fingertips.

​At the exact same moment, the automated splint on the counter sensed the alignment. With a sharp hydraulic click, it shot forward, wrapping around your forearm and clamping down to lock the newly straightened limb into place. 

​But you didn't feel the splint. The overload to your nervous system was too much. Your eyes rolled back, your grip on the metal rail went completely slack, and your head fell heavily to the side. The world mercifully went black, plunging you into deep, silent unconsciousness. 

​On the monitor, your heart rate plummeted from its frantic peak, settling into a steady thumping.

​Grace let go of your wrist, stumbling backward until his back hit a wall. He slumped down against it, sliding to the floor, his chest heaving as he stared at his trembling, sweat-slicked hands. He was hyperventilating, crying, tugging on his hair again. He wanted to throw up. But he also wanted to be sure you were alright. 

​Above him, Mary’s voice chimed with a serene indifference. “Vascular occlusion resolved. Distal blood flow restored to 100%. Bone alignment within acceptable parameters.”

​Grace sat there for a moment longer, timing his breaths to the steady beeping of your heart rate. 

​“Right,” he choked out, aggressively wiping his cheeks as he forced himself back up. “Not done.” 

Compared to the horror of setting your bones with his bare hands, fixing the valve was a walk in the park. Mary had been there to guide the repair, and soon enough the rest of the medical systems were operational. More hands protruded from the cot. They snipped your shirt off and injected you with needles and tubes. Armando wore an oxygen mask over your peaceful face. They whirred and hummed and then a scalpel was slicing through your skin. 

Grace did not do well with blood. Back on Earth, he felt dizzy at the sight of a drop. But he could not look away from you. He held himself as he stood over your unconscious body and watched as mechanical arms operated on yours. He didn’t leave until the process was done. It had taken hours, and the balls of his feet had ached and numbed, but he wasn’t satisfied until he had confirmation that you were stable. 

When the tension finally bled out of him, it hit his knees first. Grace sank straight into the floor, head dropping to his hands. He cried into the ground and stayed there until he could cry no longer. His lungs burned with a weariness that felt heavier than any force the ship could pull. 

He didn’t think about going back to his quarters. Instead he dragged his blanket and pillow from his bed and pulled them through the corridors, clumsy in his exhaustion. He laid them out on the floor beside your cot and collapsed there. He wedged himself into the tight gap between your bed and the diagnostic console. The space was cramped and ridiculous for a man of his size, but it was the only place he could bear to be. 

Lying there on his side, his cheek pressed against the rough fabric of his pillow, he stared up at the underside of your cot. The position was devastatingly familiar.

It brought him right back to those terrifying first weeks. The fog of his amnesia had been so thick and suffocating, and you had been nothing more than a stranger with a stable heartbeat on a monitor. He remembered watching you until his eyes could no longer do so. Now, he would do it again. He would wait for you to wake up no matter how long it took. 

The hours blurred into a disjointed montage of isolation.

Grace lost track of the ship's artificial day-and-night cycles. He lived in the increments between your medical readouts. Every three hours, the overhead console would hum, cycling a fresh dosage of targeted analgesics and synthetic neuro-blockers into your IV line. Grace would instantly sit up at the sound, his eyes scanning the data streams, verifying the diagnostics and checking your skin temperature before allowing his head to drop back onto his pillow.

He tried to pass the time. He brought your navy moleskine notebook into the bay, holding it under the dim tertiary lights. He traced the crude, jagged diagrams of Astrophage membranes and Petrova formulas he had scrawled just days before. He filled the empty margins with frantic sketches and jagged lists — anything to keep his brain moving. But the science felt flat, and the math was useless. He felt as though the universe’s worth had shrunken down to the hitching breaths of the man on the bed next to him. 

He ate his space ramen cold, sitting on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest, his eyes never leaving your resting profile. The plastic mask obscured the lower half of your face, fogging slightly with every exhale you took.

The twenty-two hours of orbital settling had long since passed. Outside, Tau Ceti held the Hail Mary firmly in its gravitational grip, spinning the ship through the silent, perfect curve of its new home. 

It was late. 

The world outside was dark, and cold, but the lab was warm and lit by the steady hum of monitors. 

A desk lamp cast long shadows across the tiled floor. 

There was so much work to be done and so little time to do it. 

The edges of the room were washed out like an overexposed photograph, but the feeling in your chest was heavy and whole. You were focused on a task, hunched over a surface, pen in hand, scrawling something down into your familiar navy-colored notebook. 

Something was distracting you. 

Someone was distracting you. 

The voice sounded far away, but you could hear the unmistakable cadence of Ryland’s voice. He sounded lighter — softer. He had nothing to be afraid of here. 

Since when did you call him Ryland? 

Hands.

Fingertips.

You could feel him breathing on the back of your neck. You could hear the smile in his words. 

That's enough for tonight, Captain. 

How annoying. Couldn't he see that you were busy?

Stay on your side of the lab, Grace. 

Slowly, deliberately, the tips of his fingers trailed an agonizingly gentle line up the sleeve of your shirt, tracing the curve of your bicep, sending a wave of electric heat straight to your spine.

You snapped. With a low laugh bubbling in your throat, you dropped the pen. 

You caught his wrists and surged forward, using your weight to pin Ryland back against the edge of his desk. 

A pile of folders shifted beneath him, but neither of you cared. He let out a breathless, triumphant gasp, his hands instantly wrapping around your neck to pull you down.

A kiss. 

Warm. 

Familiar. 

Secret. 

Beep. 

Beep. 

Beep…

Your eyelids felt like lead. 

You moved your good hand first, fingers twitching against a rough but thin sheet. The sensation of friction jarred your brain further into consciousness. A dull throbbing ache pulsed in your left arm, muted and distant under a heavy blanket of narcotics. 

Slowly, your eyes blinked open. 

You felt good, all things considered. You were sure you had the morphine to thank. The ceiling of the medical bay took shape above you. You sluggishly turned your head. The plastic straps of the oxygen mask shifted against your cheek. Your arm felt like a distant object. Curious, you commanded the limb to move. It rose with a heavy reluctance, floating up into your line of sight. You blinked, attempting to draw your swimming vision into focus. Your forearm was encased in a thick, rigid medical cast. It locked the limb straight, while your exposed fingertips looked slightly pale against the stark white bandages. 

You felt good. Wait, you thought that already. Boy, those meds sure were working. 

You sat up, tugging the oxygen mask from your face. 

Grace was on you in a millisecond. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do you think you’re doing? Lay back down!” his hands were on your shoulders before your head could even clear the pillow. 

“Narcotics,” you mumbled, your voice sounding like it had been dragged through gravel. The oxygen mask was dangling uselessly around your neck, puffing a gentle hiss against your collarbone. You had a dazed look in your half-lidded eyes. “These are. Good. You should try.” 

“Okay, that’s nice. Please lay back down.” Grace was crying again. His warm eyes glistened with tears. 

You reached your good hand out to touch his cheek. 

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” he whispered. Despite his emotional state, he was still making sure you weren’t hurting yourself. He let you sit up, but kept a close eye on the needles and thin tubes that poked out of your skin. 

“I’m fine,” you insisted. To prove your point, you craned your neck, which triggered your vision into a slow, dizzying spin. Your hand shifted on Grace’s face, thumb clumsily catching the edge of his crooked glasses and shoving them further up his nose. 

“Don't move, just—please, don’t move,” he begged. He didn't pull away from your hand on his cheek. If anything, he leaned into the touch, verifying that you were actually warm; actually alive.

“It'll take more than just a couple of rocks to keep me down,” you slurred. “How long was I out?”

“Three days,” Grace muttered. The answer broke out of him like a sob. 

The resistance in his posture completely collapsed. His forehead dropped against your mattress, landing next to your good arm. His fingers slid down from your shoulder to lock tightly over your right hand. His shoulders shook as the last 72 hours of terror finally gave way to a wave of relief. His tears soaked wet circles into the sterile sheet of your bed.

“You did good,” you muttered.

You ran your functioning fingers through his hair, petting his messy oil-slicked curls. You didn’t know what else to do to comfort him. The sight of him so thoroughly broken by the thought of losing you was doing funny aching things to your chest. These, the painkillers couldn't numb.

“You’re a terrible patient,” he mumbled into the mattress. “An absolutely terrible patient.”

You hummed out a laugh. 

His hand blindly reached for yours. When he found it, he didn’t let go. He squeezed every time his chest hitched with another shuddering breath. He stayed like that for a long time, letting the weight of the universe bleed out of him onto the edge of your cot. 

“C’mere,” you said. You shifted your torso to the side, wincing slightly as the automated splint on your left arm gave a tiny, protective whir to adjust for the movement. You tugged at your blankets with your right hand. You made space for him on the bed; which was hardly any space at all. 

Grace lifted his head from the sheets, staring at you, bewildered. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “What?”

“Lay with me.”

He looked at the tiny gap of mattress you’d cleared. “What?” he repeated.

“C’mon, Grace,” you slurred, your eyelids drooping as another wave of warm drowsiness rolled over your brain. You gave his hand a clumsy, insistent tug. “Who’s gonna fuckin’ see? Lay with me here — I’m cold.”

He could’ve gotten you another blanket. But he had to be numb to reject the offer to be held. Tired and sleepless himself, Grace felt himself crawl into your cot. He was hesitant and careful not to touch your broken arm, but he was also embarrassed at how little convincing it had taken him to lie down next to you. 

The rest was automatic. Grace somehow knew that he laid with his back to your chest, and you somehow knew that your good arm went over his waist. Your chin rested above his head. The mattress was entirely too small for the both of you, but it was impossible to feel uncomfortable when the warmth of another body was there to cushion your every ache. 

You slotted against each other like you'd done it a hundred times before. Grace was too exhausted to have realized this. And before he knew it, he felt himself drifting closer to proper slumber. 

“How did you figure out how to activate the centrifuge?” Your voice had gone low and sleepy. It made Grace’s stomach flip. 

“It just came to me,” he whispered. 

You smiled. “That’s good.” 

“I did this to you,” he muttered, loopy from his own dose of sleep depravity. His fingertips traced idle shapes on your good arm. “I didn't watch the monitors. I should've been able to tell you there was incoming debris.” 

“Wrong.” You nuzzled into his hair. “The Petrova scope wasn’t the only thing damaged. The housing sits right over the main radar antenna — the ship’s main computer couldn't see the debris because the broken scope was blocking its eyes.” 

You felt Grace curl into himself. 

“Mary couldn't have known,” you insisted. “The radar itself was broken. Didn’t even transmit to my suit. You didn't mess up. You gave me four seconds of warning in a total blind spot. If you hadn't been there, I’d be dead.”

Grace went entirely still against you. 

“You saved my life,” you whispered, your eyelids feeling heavier by the second. The morphine was pulling you back under. “Don't do it again. Bad for your heart.”

A tiny, breathless huff of a laugh shook Grace’s chest. 

Grace drifted the rest of the way down until his cheek was against your pillow. His breathing fell into a slow rhythm, matching the steady beeping of your heart monitor. One of his hands remained loosely tangled in your right fingers. You were a protective dead-weight anchor that kept you both pinned to the bed.

The medical bay faded around the edges. The harsh fluorescent lights dimmed in your consciousness, replaced by a thick, safe silence. You didn't think about the four light-years you had traveled, or the memories yet to return, or the dying suns, or the extent of your new injury, or the difficulty it would add to succeeding in your mission. You held onto the warm man beside you and let the momentum of the Hail Mary carry you both into a deep dreamless sleep.

…