God Is Dead And I Fucked Him!!

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.