Chapter Text
The first time Grace realized he was touch starved was right around the time he found the photos on the laptop. Stratt was an ass for this, he knew, heart in his throat as he scrolled through dozens of pictures from his own life back on Earth. The life he couldn’t remember. There were some women that jogged vague memories of drunken nights and soft flesh, and many more men whose images felt like hard surfaces and panting breaths in his brain. And some were family. He found his mother in there and relished her face, straining to remember her touch and her warmth. Grandparents too, presumably. No father though. He did not mind this as much as he thought he should.
His shoulders tensed as he looked through them and he eventually found himself wrapping his bad arm around his own torso for some semblance of touch. The nerves were totally shot from the ammonia burns so it was almost easy to pretend that the arm belonged to someone else. How long had it been since someone had hugged him? Kissed him, even? Shook his hand?
Hazy remnants of his last conscious moments on Earth made him wince and shake his head, glasses falling from their precarious spot dangling from one ear to clatter quietly to the desk. That didn’t count as touch, he decided firmly. Nothing like that would ever count as touch.
Behind him, Rocky slept soundly, unbothered by the emotional turmoil his human was in. At least, Grace assumed he slept soundly. There wasn’t really a way to tell with Eridians that he knew of. Looking at him made his chest tight with fondness. There were silvery streaks of what was probably the Eridian equivalent of scar tissue crisscrossing Rocky’s carapace and one of his limbs—his dominant claw was entirely grey with it. Grace rubbed his deepest scar thoughtfully.
It was deep, as third-degree burns tend to be. He could barely feel it unless he focused and pressed hard on the textured skin. He had been touched since his kidnapping, even if for only a few moments and in the heat of the near-death moment. It matched the shape and size of Rocky’s scarred claw exactly, skin meeting carapace and both killing themselves to hold on.
Grace slipped from his chair and crawled across the floor to lean up against the xenonite barrier of Rocky’s enclosure. He was astounded by the Eridian’s strength, always, both physical and mental. He had dragged 180 pounds of dead weight and EVA across the entire ship and had withstood every evolutionary urge to run back to his own atmosphere as his carapace cracked and his organs burst into flames. Rocky was the bravest person (person? Creature?) Grace had ever met, and he had wasted that bravery on the universe’s most pathetic coward.
Would Rocky regret it, if he told him? Grace turned his head to press his cheek against the clear panels and sighed, watching his breath fog it up in a hazy line away from his mouth. The warmth was comforting and eased the sting of wishing that he could feel his best friend burning into his skin again. Rocky wouldn’t regret it. Grace knew it even as he tried to wallow in his own self-pity. Rocky loved Grace with such a simple ease that it was overwhelming sometimes and would be insulted at the idea that being a coward did not mean one shouldn’t be saved.
Grace began to hum under his breath, feeling the ridges of the burn scars that travelled from his fingertips all the way over his shoulder and down his back. Maybe he was less of a coward now than he had been. Maybe he had earned that love a little bit since that.
Rocky shifted and Grace realized he had been humming for a little too long. He couldn’t even remember what song he had been trying to render the tune to.
Grace okay, question? Rocky’s voice had the low tones of still being sleepy as he eased himself off of the strange contraption that he used to sleep.
“Yeah buddy, I’m okay. Just watching you sleep,” Grace replied, lifting his head from the xenonite ruefully.
Rocky tilted his carapace. Grace leaking again. Think very loudly. Grace sure is fine?
Grace swiped at his cheeks and rolled his eyes when he found them wet. Leaky space blob indeed. “I was just thinking about our adventure so far, that’s all.”
Rocky’s damaged claw came up in front of his own face like he was inspecting it, the same way Grace had been to his arm. Hmm. Adventure dangerous, but reward very good. Rocky glad Rocky and Grace live and go home. Maybe not repeat dangerous part.
Grace laughed. “Definitely. I’ve had enough danger for a lifetime.”
As if on cue, Mary’s lights began to brighten with her circadian cycle, indicating what approximated dawn on the ship. He had stayed up all night. Again. Maybe he should have her swap them. It wasn’t like Rocky needed the light, and he clearly was not on the same wavelength as Mary thought he should be. But changing it meant giving up his last link to the Earthly time-approximation that he had partially abandoned for painkillers several months back.
He could handle some whack sleep schedules for now.
He lifted himself from the floor with a grunt and meandered back to his laptop, still open to pictures of his past life. He closed the program decisively without bothering to linger any longer. What was the point? This was his life now. Rocky would be the closest thing he had to family. Maybe Adrian too, if they would have him. There was no need to dwell on the past.