Work Text:
1. Music
Grace is interesting to listen to.
It is great relief to have someone to listen to again. Ship is too quiet. When they set off from 𝄢𝄞𝄫, ship sang. The Singers made ships to not just be functional, but beautiful as well. The ship hummed and sang as they worked, a song that connected all twenty-three of them.
Ship had been quiet for many, many years. The silence had been drowning.
Grace-human was interesting to listen to as they worked. Grace talked and talked and talked. Talked to Rocky, talked to ship, talked to screens, talked to self, talked in sleep. Talked and talked and talked. His voice was not beautiful – it was so uniform. Rocky liked it anyway. It was great relief to be back on a ship that hummed and beeped and whistled. It was great relief to be working alongside a crew member again. Space did not seem so crushingly quiet and cold. Made Rocky feel alive again, no longer a frozen-one haunting dead halls.
Grace bad at taking rest periods, Rocky found. Wanted to work and work and work and work, even when sleepy and clumsy (not so graceful). They had argued. Rocky had won, because Rocky was right. Grace was now cleaning. Still not rest, but better. Rocky rested and listened. Glass clinked and metal scraped as Grace fixed lab.
He was humming. Interesting. Interesting. The tones went up and down. It almost sounded like words.
“What Grace sing, question?”
Grace jumped, dropping the vial he’d been holding. “Christ, Rock!”
“Clumsy,” Rocky noted. “Why Grace name Grace, question?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, did I?” Grace leaned down to get the vial. “What were you asking about? I didn’t hear you.”
The thinking-machine translated statement with a different tone than Grace meant, Rocky thought. For Singers, not hearing was very rare. Only disabled or sick or injured or dead Singers did not hear. Humans almost deaf. Unsettling, unsettling, unsettling.
Rocky did not voice this thought. “Grace sing. What Grace sing, question?”
“Oh!” Grace’s voice rose with understanding. “It was a sea shanty. One of my students really liked them.” He set the vials aside and came over to lean against the xenonite wall. “Any time we had a class party and I let them pick the music, she was always trying to pick sea shanties. I must have heard The Wellerman fifty times.”
“Not understand. Need word. What Grace sing?”
“Oh, sea shanty?”
“Yes. What is meaning, question?”
Grace slid down the xenonite. Curled up, close to Rocky. Close close close. This close Rocky could hear Grace-heart beating thump, thump, thump. Grace sounded wet. He swallowed. His light-sensing organs – his eyes leaked. Whole body sounded like pump system. Liquid moving through tubes. Wet wet wet. Disgusting. Rocky pressed themself against the xenonite, trying to be closer.
“It’s like...a work song? It helps keep everyone in rhythm, so people don’t trip over each other’s feet and stuff.”
Rocky beeped, surprised. “Eridians have this also!”
“Oh, really?” Grace turned to face Rocky.
“Yes! Yes yes yes. Helps work to keep rhythm. Helps connect to other workers. Eridians sing together. Rocky likes to sing with -”
Rocky likes to sing with the biologists – but the biologists were dead. 🎶𝄆𝄑𝄢 and 𝄫𝄅♯𝄡 and all twenty-two of them, dead and cold and frozen and still. It had been slow. It had been slow and cold and they’d cried like a newborn hatchling -
Tap, tap, tap.
Grace tapped on glass. The sound made the xenonite thrum. Rocky felt the vibrations through their feet.
Grace didn’t talk. Didn’t tell Rocky it was okay. Just tapped out a beat.
Rocky listened. Still tapping out a beat, Grace started to sing.
His voice was not beautiful. Still so flat, so uniform. When he sang, though, it almost sounded like a Singer’s voice. It cracked through Rocky’s shell to soft core inside.
Rocky still couldn’t touch Grace. Rocky pushed as close to Grace as possible and listened and listened and listened. Mary hummed and beeped and Grace sang softly and his heart beat thump thump thump and Rocky was alive, somehow, still. Space was cold and dead and Singer-home was far far far far away and 🎶🎼𝄡𝄞𝇇𝄫🎼 was there, waiting for Rocky still. But here and now Grace was alive. Rocky was alive. Alive, alive, alive.
2. Children
The journey to Erid is actually pretty chill, as it goes.
Don’t get him wrong, it sucks in so many ways. It is hard to exist in such close spaces with only one other person for four years. Rocky’s hearing makes privacy a challenging prospect, especially since Eridians, as far as he can tell, enjoy hearing each other. Rooms can be soundproofed for privacy, but they like sound.
What they don’t like is the lack of space. They need to be able to move, to have space to climb. They don’t have the xenonite to expand Rocky’s side of the ship, so he’s stuck with the space that he has. It makes them both snappy, and mean. They drift towards each other and apart like the waves at the Marin Headlands, a sinusoid frequency of social tension.
They attack this problem too, with the same determination that they attacked the astrophages. Rocky helps make soundproofing that can work for Eridian hearing, and they soundproof the rec room. Suddenly they can feel apart when they have to. It does not solve the space problem, but it does help.
Somehow, once they can be apart if they want to be, they seem to be together even more. Something something consent? Grace isn’t going to complain.
He shifts, adjusting the hoodie that he’s balled up underneath his neck to serve as a pillow. Rocky moves as he does, allowing him to get his arm free.
“Told you to get support for head,” Rocky grumbles.
“I didn’t want to walk all that way,” Grace complains.
“Grace lazy, statement.”
“Rocky rude, statement,” he rejoins, but there’s no venom in it. When you’re laying on the floor of the rec room with your whole body pressed as close to your friend as you can get it, it’s hard to be convincing that you’re actually upset.
Rocky is pressed against him too, all five limbs folded to allow being as close to the xenonite wall – as close to Grace – as was physically possible. “Truth. Grace continue tell Rocky about human work?”
Even through the xenonite, the heat of Rocky and his atmosphere radiates outward, the xenonite keeping it comfortably warm instead of burning. Grace presses his cheek against it. “What was I saying about it?”
“Grace tell Rocky about child named Olivia.”
“Oh! Right. Olivia was one of my students in my last class before I joined the Hail Mary project. She’s gotta be – God, how old would she be now...probably out of high school, at least. She was fun to work with. She was one of those kids that helps set the tone of the whole class, you know? She was very popular – liked to help other kids with their homework. One time she told me about how she tried to get another teacher she had fired.”
Rocky didn’t tilt his head, but Grace was getting better at reading his body language. That little chirp and shift was curiosity and amusement. “Why?”
“He yelled at her for asking a question. How stupid is that? That’s literally the whole center of the job is to let them ask questions. He’d yelled at her and then he graded her badly just because she’d spoken up.”
Rocky digested this. “Olivia have bad teacher, statement.”
“Right! That’s what I said. I signed her little petition about it. I wonder if she actually got him out like she wanted…”
He swallowed. The ache of never going home had started to settle into the duller pressure of a healing wound, but thinking about his students – he pressed one hand over his heart, as if that was going to ease the pain. Some part of him had been cut out and left back at Grover Cleveland Middle School. He was growing around it, but the hole was still there. “What are Eridian schools like?”
Rocky hummed, considering. “Annoying.”
Grace barked out a startled laugh. “Yeah? You were a bad student, huh?”
Rocky grumbled. “Rocky not bad student. It is teachers who were wrong.”
“Oh, I have to hear this.” Even though it didn’t matter to Rocky, Grace rolled over to face him properly. Around them, water lapped gently against the rec room screens. The sound of wind blew from hidden speakers. Grace wondered if he’d ever feel wind again. “What happened? What did you do?”
Rocky made a sound that Grace was starting to be able to recognize as fond exasperation. (He heard it a lot.) “Eridian schools grouped by ability, not by age. Hatchlings study with adults, if ability allows. No limit for how long schooling lasts. Enter school, student until you learn, unless drop out.”
“Huh.” Grace digested this. “But what about – you know, making friends?”
“Human children only in school? No outside lives?” Rocky's voice dripped with scorn.
Grace winced. “Sort of. At least where I live. People want to be in control of what their kids do, I guess.”
“Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid. How human children learn independence? Bad organization. Bad bad bad.”
“Hey, I didn’t say I liked it either. And you didn’t tell me what you did as a student, also. Don’t think I forgot about it.”
Rocky made an irritated hum. “Rocky teacher refuse to graduate Rocky from 🎶𝄢𝄞 class. Disagreement on lesson content. Rocky teacher say was stupid and wrong and not understanding properties of xenonite creation.”
“Well, that’s clearly dumb,” Grace snorted. “What happened? Did you have to get your parents involved?”
Rocky fluted at him. “Rocky petitioned 🎶𝄅𝄆 for graduation all by own self. Hatch-parent assist in scientific corroboration. Rocky ask for graduation and teacher’s position to be re-evaluated. Next season in different class. Not see teacher again.”
“Huh.” Grace paused. “So you also tried to get your teacher fired for messing up your grades?”
“Hatchlings and children petty as hell, statement.”
3. Relationships
Adrian was beautiful, Grace was surprised to think.
Not beautiful like a human, obviously, but beautiful. They were larger than Rocky, a deep turquoise with a carapace that shone slick like a gemstone. They had much neater facets as well, five-pointed that matched their limbs.
They looked like a d12, was Grace’s first thought upon seeing them. That would have been fine. Babbling that to Adrian in a low-nutrition-induced haze before passing out from the amount of drugs in his system was significantly less fine.
“Adrian not angry with Grace,” Rocky said. He was sort of sitting on Grace’s chest, pressed as close as he could be without actually dropping his full weight onto Grace. His new xenonite suit glittered in the stark white light from the room’s lamps. Intentionally making light-creating devices was a new consideration for the Eridians, of much lower priority than figuring out nutrition and atmosphere. Adrian had promised to work on it. “Appearance same as human game piece is not insult.”
“It’s just – it’s embarrassing.” Grace turned his face away. The walls were an unpainted dull golden. He wondered what they were made out of. Adrian had mentioned once long-term survival was certain, aesthetics would follow.
“Many things Grace do embarrassing.”
“Hey!”
“Many things Rocky do embarrassing. Embarrassing part of life. Why think on this?”
“I just -” Grace sighed. He would be made fun of for this, because that was just the way that Rocky was, but they were beyond having any secrets between them. “I want your mate to like me,” he said, and tried not to sound like a shy little kid while he said it. He was pretty sure he failed.
Rocky, unusually, was silent. That was a dirty trick. Grace couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of him. “I just – I’m already getting in the way of you guys’ happy ending,” he said lamely. “They waited for you for so long, and I just -”
Rocky lifted up one limb and slammed it down against the bed. Grace’s mouth snapped shut with a click.
“Grace not get in way of anything.” Even through the technological filter, Grace could hear the sharpness of Rocky’s tone. “Grace is Rocky happy ending.”
And there was nothing that could be done after that except to close his eyes and let the tears stream down his face and try not to choke on his own snot.
Rocky waited until Grace’s breathing had slowed before speaking again. “Grace know Rocky loves him, question?”
The words caught in Grace’s throat.
“Grace?”
“I just...they’re your mate,” Grace managed. “Back home – that’d be like, the most important person in your life. I wouldn’t blame you if -”
“Some Eridians think this also,” Rocky interrupted. “Believe Eridians should only take one mate, one, only one person to love best and raise eggs with. Disagree. Bad bad bad! Rocky has one mate. Truth. But Rocky has friend Grace. Friend Grace is -” Rocky faltered. “Need words. I don’t…”
Grace reached up, laying his hand over Rocky’s front right leg. Even through the xenonite, it was warm.
“Adrian is love,” Rocky said finally. “Beautiful one. Brilliant one. Gentle one. Adrian is Rocky lodestone. But Grace is Rocky compass. No happy ending without Grace.”
Grace had foolishly thought that he’d been empty of tears. He really should know better by now, he thought faintly.
“Even though Grace leak constantly,” Rocky added dryly. “Will need to make Grace many towels.”
“Yeah, love you too. Wake me up when the doctors come back.”
Grace closed his eyes. There was no question that Rocky would watch.
Fin.