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He likes Rocky. That's the funny part.
He really expected the personal space thing to be more of an issue. He needed a lot of it, before. Some people, people who he couldn't exactly remember all of the details of yet but okay, he's getting there, had implied (more than implied) that Grace required too much personal space. That he could perhaps prioritize whether or not he actually needed to go two days without a text back confirming dinner, and if that needed to happen three months in a row. And maybe it's because they're trapped in a spaceship together, but he hasn't felt the need to hide in the bathroom from Rocky even once.
He just likes hanging out with the guy. It's nice to go tit for tat with someone who's as game as you are, and has the brains to back it up. That was the problem back on Earth; so many people weren't smart enough to keep up with him, but here's a guy who arguably has Grace beat in the memory and mathematical processing department at minimum, and rather than being a point of contention it's honestly kind of fun. He doesn't enjoy being wrong, but it's not half bad if Rocky's the one calling him out on it. There's a flexibility to the boundaries there, and also when he calls Grace an idiot, Grace knows he doesn't actually mean it. Which is weird. Usually he's the last person to be confident in what anyone is actually thinking, but god bless Rocky who tells it like it is.
He hates being wrong just as much as Grace does, but the other thing is that Rocky is curious. He's usually open to the possibility, even if said possibility is that the second Princess Diaries movie is better than the first (they got bored on the way to Adrian. Really, really bored. And it was probably best to explain the whole monarchy thing with a fake one that didn't have any kind of serious colonial baggage. Also, Julie Andrews. C'mon).
The discussion of what Grace is mentally calling the Adrian Situation, mainly because it basically slant-rhymes and the part of him that apparently owned a CATS t-shirt didn't get nixed with the post-coma amnesia, has gotten wildly off topic since they started humming at each other, but that's okay. This is nice. The two of them on the floor, making dumb noises and waiting to see who's going to crack first. It would be the most ridiculous game of chicken Grace had ever played back on Earth, but it's not even the dumbest one this week.
Their hums both trickle out into silence at the same time, which feels fitting. Grace lets his gaze rest gently in front of him, cheek propped against his knuckles, staring at nothing and also at Rocky. He's happy, he realizes. Two worlds are ending, he can't remember his own birthday, and he's remarkably, quietly happy.
It's kind of difficult to put into words, the initial feeling. It starts somewhere at the base of his throat, where the resonance of the hum lies, and slithers down the inside of his chest in a gentle pressure right towards his sternum. The weight is extremely benign. There are little echoes and ripples, moving outward, touching the sides of his ribcage and expanding in a bloom of sensation to fill the entirety of his throat, down to his stomach, out even to touch his shoulders until it feels like there is something living inside of him, breathing in a secondary pattern that slots right in with his natural heartbeat like how he felt when he saw the ocean for the first time and thought, dumbly and on the verge of weeping, Oh, this is big.
It's the only thing he has to describe it: big. Tremendous is too flowery, all-consuming isn't right, and life-shattering implies some kind of break in the world around him. Nothing changes, not precisely. There's just that pressure, welling up in a constant state of being right about to happy cry. The feeling compounds until it bursts out of his mouth in a soft huff of air, and then his throat closes up.
He can't put a name to the specific emotion or rather, he can but it doesn't feel right; he didn't expect it to feel like this. Like he could lift a car if he wanted to, but wouldn't because it would break the silence. It's so delicate, the hum of the ship around them and the gentle click of Rocky's ball as it shifts back and forth on the metal floor. There is something glowing inside of him, and if he moves too suddenly it will shatter the glass of his body and escape.
"We match," he says stupidly, for want of having anything to say at all. Then, clarifying quickly, "The hum. You guys probably have perfect pitch or something."
[Rocky have perfect everything, statement,] says Rocky, in a tone that Grace is already starting to pick up means smug as all get out. He's presented with a tantalizing set of options: he could go along with it and watch Rocky preen and wiggle, his whole body becoming one big affectation of a smile, or he could immediately contradict him and dive headfirst into one of their interspecies play-fights that have grown more and more elaborate the more they learn about each other. He wants to do both at the same time, and also just sit here and make silly noises at each other.
Frivolously, he presses his hand against the surface of Rocky's ball and feels his face break into an even wider smile when Rocky immediately returns the gesture. Their hands remain like that for a moment, heat radiating between them through the xenonite. Shared expressed energy. The thing inside his chest throbs, not unpleasantly.
"Hey," he says, with nothing planned afterwards.
[Hi Grace,] Rocky says back.
"I don't really think we're cousins," Grace continues, musing just so his mouth has something to do other than grin stupidly. "Might be, y'know. Stretching it a little far. But I can sort of get down with panspermia."
[What that?] Rocky asks. Grace swishes his mouth back and forth, humming a little as he thinks without even realizing it. Rocky immediately starts humming back, matching pitch, and Grace breaks off the noise to laugh jerkily as the pressure that glows pushes the air out of him again. He might be getting a little dizzy with it.
"Uh, it's this idea that life didn't originate on Earth. Or at least, all the life on Earth didn't start on Earth." Neither of their hands have moved. Grace doesn't really feel the need to pull his away, and so he doesn't. "It says that maybe we all started somewhere else, and then comets and asteroids and other traveling space objects took that DNA and spread it all over the universe, and it eventually reached places like Earth and Erid. Could be here." He gestures out the window towards Adrian. "All of the cells in both of us could be just above home right now."
Rocky tilts his whole body again, a mimicry of human confusion that he's clearly picked up from Grace over the past couple of weeks. It's ridiculously endearing. [So, Grace and Rocky… made of same cells, question?] He taps his foot twice, then tilts harder. [Grace ♪♪♫ blind, question?]
Grace chuckles, which turns into a full peal of laughter when Rocky starts making those little broken chirping noises, bouncing his carapace up and down in what is unmistakably a laugh of his own. The realization that laughter was, at least to their species, universal, was at once so corny and beautiful that it almost knocked him sideways. So many differences between them- atmospheres, biology, cognitive prioritization- but they both have noises for joy. Rocky's laugh is sharp and sweet and- there's really no other word for it- cute. It's a full-body snicker. Grace hears it, and the thing inside of him grows warmer and warmer until it feels like all the heat and light is spilling out wherever it can; his eyes are luminous in his head.
He realizes in the span of a heartbeat that he gets it now. This thing, this big nebulous thing that he has spent his whole life waiting to feel, waiting for so long that at some point he convinced himself it was never coming at all, but now it's here and it's blossoming into every corner of his body like pins and needles after coming in from the cold, and it is so overwhelming that he understands with frighteningly potent empathy why people fall on swords for this. He knows that no matter what happens, no matter how long he lives after this is all over and he and Rocky go their separate ways, he will never forget how this feels. The tender little weight of it just behind his ribcage.
He presses his free hand there and taps the spot where it feels the brightest with his thumb. Echolocating. The sensation is purely psychosomatic, but he believes in it. Funny; he can count on one hand the list of things he can't see that he's ever believed in before.