Idia Shroud Simp

his alarms went off as soon as he noticed you were about to get out of bed, he hadn't even finished opening his eyes properly and you were already about to leave? no! his hands quickly circled your waist, pulling you back against him, you fell onto the mattress with a gasp of surprise, feeling your boyfriend's arms tightening to prevent you from being able to pull away again.

“Idia? I have to go to class,” you reminded him trying to rid yourself of his grip once more. you weren't even supposed to be there, you weren't sure what the rules were about staying the night in the room of other students, but without a doubt it couldn't be anything good. especially if that student was your boyfriend… but Idia had an incredible way of manipulating you and well, how could you resist when he had your favorite snacks in his room and had the exact couch you'd mentioned you needed for your gaming sessions?

“five minutes. it's too bright outside, and there are too many NPCs that aren't worth your time.” you huffed when he pulled you close again, completely ignoring your words. however, it was enough to feel the way he buried his face in the curve of your neck to make you melt. Idia rarely allowed himself to be just as clingy as in those moments, he liked feeling you close, yet sometimes he was afraid of invading your personal space too much.

your mind was torn between being a responsible person and getting out of bed at that moment with the intention of returning to your own room and arriving on time for class… or staying a few more minutes, even the rest of the day, was there any way to justify a class absence due to your boyfriend's need for affection? probably not.

it wasn't until you felt Idia’s lips slide from your jaw to your cheek that you gave up. you let out a sound of frustration at your own lack of self-control and shifted under the covers so you could turn and look at his still sleepy face. “only five more minutes,” you warned before sinking into his arms again.

a wide smile spread across his face, revealing his sharp teeth, as he tightened his arms around you. and just as he had predicted: in the end it hadn't been only five minutes.

The Eridian visitors clearly do not know what to make of that. “We think we misunderstood Savior Grace’s word,” they say, apparently hoping this is a vocabulary mix-up. “Explain (question, polite)?”

“Didn’t misunderstand,” says Rocky, sounding very sheepish. “That is sacrifice wheel.”

“So. While we were on our way to Erid, we might have gotten… anxious about each other’s well-being,” Grace says, which everyone is already very aware is a wild understatement. “And, well, you heard what happened at Tau Ceti, and after. There were a lot of unexpected dangers for the whole trip that required a lot of, at least, attempted self-sacrifice to solve. We ended up almost dying for each other several times. And we had an argument about what we’d do if another crisis like that came up. And we couldn't agree.”

“Grace argued that Grace already was unlikely to survive long-term on Erid, so he should be the one to do any potential deadly but necessary maneuvers to make sure I was able to bring taumoeba back,” Rocky says.

“Which made sense.”

“Did not make sense! Grace already sacrificed so much for me and for Erid, wouldn’t be fair to make you do it again—“ Rocky cuts himself off with a huff. They have obviously had this conversation before. “So sacrifice wheel was compromise.”

“Yeah,” Grace says. He spins it to demonstrate; it whirls around in a blur and a rattle of the flap hitting the pegs, then eventually slows down, and stops—pointing at the segment depicting a very bad but very clear image of an Eridian. “Rocky made the wheel, I spin the wheel, and whoever it lands on, that’s who gets to sacrifice themself to save the other and the other person does not get to argue. This way, we wouldn’t waste time debating who does the self-sacrifice and who survives, it’s just a plain fifty-fifty chance. Or, eighteen-eighteen chance in base six. But the point is it could be either of us and we would have to accept the outcome.”

Rocky started fidgeting while Grace was explaining. When Grace finishes, proud of the equitable solution they came up with to allow them to die for each other fairly, Rocky says, “Now that we are back and we don’t need sacrifice wheel anymore… I have confession to make. About the wheel.”

“What about the wheel?”

Rocky doesn’t answer. Grace frowns, first confused, then suspicious, and spins the wheel again.

It lands on Rocky again.

He spins the wheel again, and again, and again, and it lands on Rocky every single time.

“Rocky!”

“I weighted the wheel,” Rocky admits.

“Rocky the whole point was that it was equal, that was why we even made it—“

“Never was necessary so doesn’t matter anymore!”

“But you WOULD have!”

“And you never noticed because you were hungry and cranky and distracted and so would have done bad job on heroic self-sacrifice anyway!”

“I would not! I would have done fine!”