Chapter Text
Waking up and not knowing who you are was one of the most terrifying things Ryland Grace has ever had to deal with. The struggle to move as he was waking up from a coma, the thirst in his mouth as he tried to form words, even the long hair making his face overstimulated…it all was scary. No. Scary wasn’t the right word… it was worse than scary.
Then realizing he was in space, alone, with two dead crewmates, light years from home, his kids…no who are they to him?….students would be old enough to graduate, his friends would have forgotten him by now (not that he was probably that close to them anyways because he couldn’t even remember any faces or names). He wasn’t a pilot and couldn’t go home even if he was. Christmas he really was alone. Alone. His heart was aching just thinking about it.
He shuffled through the luggage he found before finding vodka and getting more drunk than he had when he finished his doctorate. And trust me that’s surprising, but honestly it didn’t take much since he had a new baseline for tolerance. That’s what over four years sober does to someone. He didn’t even finish going through the rest of the luggage before passing out. Whatever, there was always tomorrow where he would still be here, alone.
He woke up with a headache and found ramen but was still too upset to really do anything. More drinking, sleeping, crying, and trying to remember. Why is a schoolteacher in space? Does he have a partner? Does he have any family even? Is there literally anyone missing him right now?
Clothes, clothes, photos (none with him except one Polaroid, he checked), a blanket, a dildo, clothes….. wait what the fudge. A dildo? Whose pack is this anyways…. Ilyukhina… you know what. Grace couldn’t find it in himself to judge because if he was going into space with two men he would bring one too. It was brand new packaging too so he didn’t even have to worry about the handling of someone’s used sex toys.
Grace began wondering what his own sexuality was, he knew he had been romantically with some people but still couldn’t pull any faces or names out so did it even matter?
More day to day drinking, eating, sleeping, remembering, “okay, I really need to pull myself together” he thought. No more drinking it is. In fact he should save the rest of the vodka for a bad day or maybe a good day or maybe just a day that wasn’t today.
The beeping is so loud…beeping? BEEPING OH NO. okay okay okay he got up to read the alarm “engine cutoff” WHAT. Okay okay….what does that even mean? He gets up to the pilots seat and sure enough he starts to FUDGE he’s floating….FLOATING…are you kidding me? There’s something new though, a… camera? OOO okay that’s actually really cool he can see so many stars and Tau Ceti and okay not cool… it has a petrova line? His heart dropped, briefly wondering if he had been sent out to space for nothing. Yeah that’s a petrova line. There’s a break in it though. A light flashes. That’s not a break. Something’s in front of it,
fudge
That’s a spaceship. Like that’s a real genuine spaceship. Not human made. That means it’s alien made. Aliens are real, and they’re here. Here with him. Ryland Grace. Who is alone, and not a pilot.
fudge
He’s frozen for a long time. Way too long. It’s a fast spaceship and now it’s there. Right there, maybe like a thousand meters away.
Absolutely not.
Okay time to be a pilot. He can’t think of literally any training. Why would he not have gotten any training? Would that have been a thing just in case? Like for redundancy? He should know at least some things. Luckily he at this point has spent a lot of time in here just looking around and seeing what things are. Can you blame him? He’s alone on a ship. And has been for a while. Obviously he’s looked around the control panels a bit.
He’s 90 percent sure that’s the on button, and that’s the manual flight mode button, that one should let him aim the fuel thrusters and that one….okay now he grabs the lever. There’s only one thing it can be and that’s the control lever to fly. “Oh my god I’m flying. Okay that’s… ugh… I’m technically flying but honestly this thing is so much more sensitive that I thought” Ryland feels dizzy as he whips the ship around
“Okay. So I met an alien.”
There was so much now to do that Rocky was there. Grace tried to be on his best behavior at first. He is representing the whole human race when you think about it, but after a while he lets go a bit. He’s still polite and helpful but he’s with an alien that’s been alone over 40 years, it’s okay to be lonely when someone else is lonely with you. It’s still lonely though. No physically contact is hard for any humans. Grace wanted to find solace in them both feeling that way, but it became clear Eridians didn’t need nearly as much physical contact. Or maybe Rocky’s just been alone for so long he really doesn’t feel the ache anymore.
They do big science as Rocky calls it. They bond. They “hug”. They go fishing. They almost die. Both of them. But they also both live, like no one of their species had before.
The aches almost gone for Grace. He starts thinking he will get over it soon. I mean he hasn’t even masturbated in months. When you meet an alien that uses echolocation to see, you stop thinking you can hide anything. And Grace has already had to explain “5th limb”, he was not about to explain it more. Especially how it “leaks”. You can only be called a “leaky space blob” so much before you feel a little gross.
They say goodbye.
It’s the hardest thing Ryland Grace has ever done.
Then there’s a leak. And he knows what he has to do. It’s not even hard this time to make the decision to sacrifice himself because it’s for Rocky. He starts the trek to find him, and yeah maybe he uses the privacy to masterbate a couple of times, but honestly he never understood the hype. He’s always been very efficient. More doing it as a release and not a necessity. Maybe he’s weird for that. Who cares.
He starts thinking about food. About what he will do to help himself. He asks Armando about the unused feeding tubes from his crewmates. Thinking he can salvage some of it and use it. A feeding tube is uncomfortable, but it could be necessary. He has some small plants on board. He’s been somewhat caring for them, but he knows now he needs to try harder. So he does.
There it is.
Rocky’s ship.
They reunite. They salvage the fuel they can from Rocky’s ship and put it on the Hail Mary. Besides, maybe they can get to Erid faster. Maybe Grace won’t need the feeding tube after all. He can tell Rocky is getting more excited. He starts humming on and on about Erid and how they will take care of Grace.
Grace starts turning the volume down on the translator. Rocky can already understand him without it, so he decides to start working on learning the Eridians language better. It’s slow, but they have time.
Rocky notices Grace is losing weight even as he tries to hide it. Grace has no idea how he figured it out. Rocky heard his stomach growling more and “saw” the muscles get smaller through his shirt. They decide to start working on a food solution. Grace realizes one morning that some of his food has seeds. He had never thought about it before, but now with his mind on it, he notices the nutrition bars have some salvageable parts, he has dehydrated strawberry’s with seeds and other things. He turns some of the extra lab areas into a greenhouse.
Rocky complains he can’t use the space anymore but only to bother Grace. He looks up books on the computers about botany and discovers some of the herbs might be usable. He stops eating anything that might be salvageable. It’s a struggle. He passes out one time and as Armando feeds him IV fluid, Rocky whistles and stomps at him in anger. They discover how to replicate his own cells. He makes Me-Burgers he calls them. They suck. But he’s able to eat and still save the matter that he’s saving for planting,
He successfully grows a little strawberry plant. It’s his pride and joy. And in the meantime, they get close enough to Erid for Rocky to start communicating everything Grace needs. The Eridians are quick to accommodate to help half of the reason they weren’t going extinct. They create something called a bio-dome that Grace is excited to be in. Grace has to explain lightbulb systems to them so he’ll be able to see, but as a teacher he has a fun time doing so.
He tries not to ask for too much but asks specifically for two things. One, A very large greenhouse, larger than the actual house they are building for him, and two, a good shower. And he offhand mentions that he wants his home to be private. Made of some kinda walls that Rocky and the other Eridians, with their echolocation, won’t be able to see into. They are uncomfortably reluctant to help with this. He supposes he can’t be too annoyed since he is discussing these things with all their top scientists, so obviously they are interested in humans and human life and culture.
He asks if they have a way to get things like nitrogen (for his soil composition to be healthy), and other elements before asking about NaCl or table salt. He hears one of the Eridians make a weird noise… he sounded…. Offended? Before Rocky explained to the scientists that, no, Grace is not asking for the remains of Eridians on purpose. And yes, salt is necessary for human life, and the ship was starting to run low. Grace became very interested in the idea that Eridians were very different from each other and pictured that scientist in particular as a large mobile salt lamp.
…. Maybe he needs to eat more….
They touch down with difficulty. Grace tries not to think about the Hail Marys lack of landing equipment. He has to stay up in the ship for a few hours while Rocky gets down and checks the preparations and reunites with Adrian, who Grace couldn’t wait to meet. He finally gets down and grabs his luggage case, knowing he would return for lots more stuff soon.