Chapter Text
For the first time in a long time, Grace thinks life might be looking up. He’s settled well into Erid. His biodome is beautiful, his nutrients have been synthesized, and he no longer goes to sleep convinced he’ll never wake up again. In the last six months, Grace even managed to gain twenty pounds. His ribs don’t even stick out anymore.
Life is good. Life is great, even. It’s just a little boring, that’s all.
If his past self heard him complaining about boredom, he would have probably dragged him out of the airlock. Grace used to dream of boring days, nothing to do but rest and not worry about astrophage or taumoeba or starvation. Now that it’s here, he’d be willing to take an erratic maneuver or two just for the sake of switching things up.
Even the meetings with scholars and scientists have begun to slow down. Every few weeks, some group will want to see him, but usually just to ask a handful of questions and then go back to their thrums to continue working on the first round of publications about Erid's strange new alien. Grace doesn't mind being studied, he just never expected it to be quite so boring. He wishes they would collaborate with him more. Maybe even just have a conversation instead of an interview.
It's a selfish thing to complain about, Grace knows. Erid's done everything possible to not only keep him alive, but make him happy. They've fed him with nothing but his own body, alien microbes, and the information on his laptops. They've built an enclosure even bigger than the aircraft carrier he spent the majority of his last years on Earth on. They've learned to understand English to accommodate his incompatible vocal chords. They gave him a beach. He could have never afforded a beach front house on Earth and now he has one on an alien planet and he has the nerve to complain. It's pathetic.
Grace is pondering this as he pretends to watch reruns of Community. He spends a lot of his days doing this. Pretending to consume media while his mind wanders. It's funny. When he was neck deep in his dissertation, he used to think he wanted to disappear into a pocket universe where he could do nothing but catch up on his shows without responsibilities. Now he knows that's deeply overrated.
There's a knock at the door. Probably Rocky. It's almost always Rocky. He stops by everyday, unless he's sleeping or busy with Savior of Erid responsibilities in another part of the planet. Grace is glad for the company, he really is, but he feels like a dog getting its ten minute walk before getting shoved back in the kennel.
Maybe they'll schedule him for euthanasia soon.
No. They won't do that. Why would he even think that? Gosh. He needs to stop watching existential horror before bed.
The knocking gets louder. Grace shuts his laptop and goes to answer. He'd love to say there's a pep in his step as he does, eager as always to see his best friend. That would be a lie, though. He shuffles his way to the door with the same resignation he does most things with these days.
"Slow!" Rocky accuses as soon as the door is open.
Grace grins at him. He's good at this, good at pretending. Especially now that his body is getting a livable amount of calories again. "Maybe I just do it to rile you up, Rock. You ever think of that?"
"Of course. I learned new word for this on human thinking machine. Rage baiter. You are a rage baiter," Rocky accuses.
This time, Grace's laugh is genuine. "You're a way bigger rage baiter than me!"
He slips his shoes on and follows Rocky down to the shore so they can walk while they chat, as they often do. Rocky trills with laughter the whole way down. Gloomy as he's been about the monotony of his life, Grace can't deny he still enjoys these moments. That's the hard part, isn't it? He's having a hard time, but he still would have never made another choice. Not when it had kept Rocky alive.
"Next week is two Earth years since we arrived on Erid!" Rocky tells him.
"Two years," Grace echoes. It's a difficult number to wrap his head around. One one hand, he feels like it was just yesterday he'd piloted them into orbit, half starved and delirious. On the other, it's hard to believe he's already this disastrously bored after just two years. But Rocky doesn't need to hear that after all the hard work he'd done to keep Grace alive all this time. "It sounds like you and I need to have a little celebration."
"Yes yes yes! We will have Eridian celebration clothing, special music, maybe the illumination team can recreate fireworks in the sky. We'll have big big big party," Rocky says. He hops from limb to limb as they walk, clearly excited about his idea.
"We can do that. Or, y'know, I actually had an idea recently." Grace knows he shouldn't bring it up. It had come to him in the middle of a long, lonely day, when nothing he put on could hold his attention for more than two seconds and walking by the beach had filled him with more anger than joy. It should probably stay buried down there. But he's already brought it up and Rocky won't let him back away now, even if he wanted to. Grace continues, "You remember alcohol? The special celebration drink back on the ship? I was thinking maybe the team could synthesize some. It would probably be easier than half the nutrients they've had to figure out for me already."
"You would like celebration liquid for your two year anniversary on Erid?" Rocky asks. "I can speak to the team. I'm sure they can make it happen. Some of the others might want to ask you questions about it, too. To learn about human culture. It's still very strange to us how much you eat in front of each other and now they'll find out you also poison yourselves."
Grace rolls his eyes at the mention of yet another interrogation about his drinking habits, but it's a small price to pay. "That's fine. I'm not drinking in front of them, though."
"See? You're Eridian already!"
***
Just as Grace suspected, the alcohol is far easier for the team to synthesize. Even with the time lost explaining to them that yes, it is technically a poison, but it’s a poison humans enjoy drinking in moderation, they still have it finished by the time his two years on Erid rolls around.
Rocky brings a bottle with him when he visits, tucked in a container with a neon bow wrapped around it. Rocky likes to give things a human flair when he can. Grace thinks it's sweet, even if it makes him feel like a sick kid in a hospital getting a visit from Santa. Or maybe like a dog in a shelter getting a burger before being put to sleep. Or an old man in hospice getting a surprise visit from all his grandkids. There's no shortage of possibilities for how his brain makes him feel terrible about every little thing.
"Your human poison is here!" Rocky declares. The container itself is still too hot for Grace to touch, but Rocky cracks it open and the inside has been kept at a more appropriate temperature for humans. Grace is simply handed the bottle. He's tried to explain a few times that opening gifts is part of the fun for humans, but it hasn't clicked just yet. Grace decides gift etiquette will have to wait another day.
"You really don't need to call it that. We can give it a name," he says, though he's already distracted by his new gift.
They've put it in a clear bottle for him, probably thinking the visual appeal would be important, like with his vitamin shakes and meburgers. He decides it's probably best he doesn't tell them his usual drink of preference on Earth was urine colored. Though it was unnecessary, Grace is glad to see it's not glowing or murky or otherwise suspicious. When he unscrews the top to take a sniff he confirms that, yeah, this is definitely alcohol.
It sort of smells like a cross between paint thinner and rubbing alcohol. If it wasn't because Grace drank cheap vodka that smelled exactly like this back in college, he might have been a little worried that it really will be poison. When he takes a tentative sip, he quickly realizes that not only does it smell like cheap vodka, it tastes like it, too. He's filled with a disgusting nostalgia and, strangely, relief as the burn settles on his tongue.
"♫♩♫♪♯♬ tastes up to human standards?" Rocky asks.
That must be the word Rocky's decided will fill in for alcohol. Grace much prefers it to hearing it referred to as human poison. He makes a mental note of the new word and though he'll likely have to hear it a few more times, he's gotten far better at remembering new vocabulary than when he and Rocky first met. Grace winces through another sip and nods. "Oh, yeah. Tell the team they absolutely nailed it. Takes me back to the Stanford freshman dorms."
"Good! Happy happy happy," Rocky trills, offering Grace a pair of jazz hands. Grace might have developed a better ear for Eridian by now, but they both still pepper their speech with some of the pidgin from the Hail Mary. "We are ready to celebrate now."
Celebrate really just means sitting on the beach together and talking, which is not all too different from what they do every day. But Rocky is in his celebration outfit, Grace put his dangling earrings on, and the illumination team had managed to create fake fireworks that light up the artificial night over his dome. Plus, Grace is sipping on his vodka the whole while. It really does feel like a sort of celebration.
Rocky promises to have a real celebration later, with Adrian and some of the Eridians on the team keeping Grace alive, but for the real anniversary, he'd wanted Grace to himself. Grace doesn't mind. He likes having Rocky to himself, too. By the time he finishes off the last of the bottle, Grace is leaning so heavily against Rocky, it would be better defined as curled around.
"You finished all the alcohol?" Rocky notices. He doesn't need to ask if that's a problem. Grace can pick up on the nervous tremor in his tones now.
"Yeah, but 'm good," Grace promises. Sure the world is sort of spinning and his words are slurred together, but that's because it's been years since he's had any liquor. The bottle was probably about half a liter. Maybe he overdid it a little, but it's nothing to be concerned about. It's a little white lie, but Grace says, "This was a pretty normal amount of alcohol for a human to drink. Don' worry."
"And this is a normal reaction?"
"Wantin' to cuddle up to your best friend? Yeah, pal, I'd say this is preeeeetty normal."
Rocky relaxes. As much trouble as Grace has been having with adjusting to this new life on Erid, he has to admit Rocky gives him a long leash. If Grace asks for something, Rocky will run off and make it happen, no questions asked. He can't imagine how much worse life would be around here if he didn't have Rocky constantly trying to throw enrichment this way.
Grace sighs and nuzzles his face against Rocky's carapace. Man, he loves Rocky. Why's he wasting so much time being all mopey when he could be spending it with Rocky? He lays a few kisses along the top of him, just in case Rocky has started to forget how much Grace loves him.
Rocky lets out a loud, disgusted honk, though it's cut through with laughter. "Disgust! Grace is extra gross after consuming human alcohol. Grace never consume human alcohol again."
"Nooooo!" Grace laughs. His eyes struggle to stay open, but the whole world spins around him when they close, so Grace settles for just sort of smushing his face against Rocky and holding them open that way. "Grace jus' being silly human. Very, very normal human thing. Most human thing Grace do in long time!"
"To be human is to be disgusting?" Rocky teases.
"Sometimes! Yeah!" Grace reaches blindly for the bottle, only to remember it's empty. He sighs. "Hey, maybe next time, will you tell the team to make more? They make bigger bottles on Earth all the time."
"I don't know if that would be wise," Rocky says. If he had a face, he'd probably be frowning. Grace traces a little frown along his carapace where he imagines it would be. "You're already very impaired from only this amount."
"Jus' 'cause I haven't had any in a while and I sorta drank it too fast. But liquor - that's another word for alcohol - holds reeeeeally well. I can jus' store it and won't have to ask as much. I won't have it all in one go!" he promises.
Rocky hums, appeased by that. He shifts his carapace back and forth in a nod. Grace is almost sent toppling into the sand, but one of his arms reaches out to catch him. "I will speak to the team. I think it's time for you to get to bed."
Grace half nods his agreement. That makes him dizzy, too. He's glad Rocky is stronger than his size would suggest, because there's no way Grace would have made it up the path to his house. He would have just fallen asleep on the beach and dealt with it later. Grace has a feeling it wouldn't have been the first time he'd done something like that.
His bed is much cozier, though, especially after Rocky forces some water in him and then tucks him in under his blanket. Gosh. Rocky's the best. Grace really loves that little guy. Why was he ever so upset about life here on Erid in the first place? Erid has Rocky. Erid's the best.
"Sleep. I watch," Rocky instructs.
Grace muffles a yawn into his pillow and reaches out to give the top of Rocky's carapace a pat. "Thanks, buddy. Love ya."
The world is still spinning around him when he closes his eyes, but it's manageable enough if he curls in on himself and holds still. Grace knows he'll have a nasty hangover in the morning. He knows he's going to do whatever he can to chase this feeling again. Neither seem particularly important as he drifts off.
***
Grace has never been drunk before. He's never had more than a glass of wine at Passover before this night. In high school, he wasn't exactly the kind of guy people invited to parties. Now that he's halfway through his first semester at Stanford, liquor and parties are everywhere, but Grace has more important things to do. Every single one of his textbooks seems more interesting than chugging cheap alcohol and throwing it all up.
He'd figured getting into a prestigious university would mean having classmates who agreed that learning was more appealing than partying. He thought he'd be fighting for late night spots at the library or begging to be squeezed into an overflowing office hours.
As it turns out, Grace is a loser even among nerds.
His roommate Cody has to beg and plead to get Grace to go out on Halloween. He says it's practically illegal to be in college and not go out on Halloween. They fight him so much about it in the weeks leading up to it, Grace finally just agrees to go so they'll get off his back. Cody slaps a red shirt on him, tells him he's in Starfleet now, and shoves a drink in his hand.
One drink leads to another and another and another and next thing Grace knows, it's past two in the morning and he's stumbling home from the frat houses, laughing the whole while. He and Cody have their arms wrapped around each other, leaning their weight on the other as they struggle to stay upright. Grace doesn't even mind the touching. Just like he didn't mind the music or strobe lights at the party. He didn't mind, either, when Priya from Biochem gave him his first kiss on the dance floor. There's lots of things he doesn't mind when his head is buzzing.
"You're fun when you want to be, Ry," Cody declares. "I was kinda starting to think you'd be a nightmare all year long."
Grace realizes, suddenly, why so many people drink the way they do. It quiets the endless orchestra in his head, lets him act like a normal human being for once. It makes him tolerable. Maybe even enjoyable. Even as he has to stop their walk home to throw up in the bushes, Grace decides he's going to stop being so uptight about not partying with his classmates. It would do him good to be a little normal every once in a while.
***
Just as he suspected, Grace wakes up nauseous and with a splitting headache. The many windows in his room to let in the not-natural light don't feel like a luxury anymore. He groans and rolls onto his side with the blanket pulled stubbornly over his face in hopes of getting just a few more minutes of darkness.
Unfortunately, his living alarm clock isn't a fan of snoozing.
"You're awake?" Rocky asks, though he could probably tell a few minutes ago as Grace's body had started to wake.
"Yeah, buddy, just-" Grace pauses. He takes a long, slow breath through his nose to curb the nausea. "Just gimme a second."
"You slept a very long time today. Lots of moving in your sleep, too. Is that a side effect of alcohol?" Rocky asks.
"Sometimes. It's... Ugh. Gimme a second."
Grace rolls onto his back and tries to focus on his breathing. It's hard when his head is pounding and his stomach is reeling, though. Rocky putters around his bed nervously, but all the sound and moving out of the corner of his eye only makes it worse. Grace groans and decides he's not going to be a hero. No point in delaying the inevitable.
He drags himself out of bed, ignoring how his head feels like it's going to explode now that he's standing, and stumbles to his sink. He should probably go to the bathroom, where it's nice and soundproofed and actually meant for bodily fluids, but the sink is closer.
He clutches the corners of the sink and heaves. There isn't much in him to throw up. He'd ignored his dinner in favor of his new treat last night. His body still goes through the motions. He convulses with gags, feeling his throat and stomach clench ever tighter as they fight around nothing. After a few seconds of it, his body manages to expel a mouthful of bile. Grace's shoulders relax and he sighs. It's an immediate relief.
A thin layer of sweat had broken out in his brow from the effort. Grace sags against the counter as he catches his breath. His eyes are fixed on the bile sticking to his sink. Foaming and bright yellow. It should disgust him. A nasty hangover is something he can't remember but feels intimately familiar. Mostly, Grace just admires the color. In a manufactured world, it's nice to be surprised by things. Even his own body fluids.
"Grace!" Rocky yells. He's probably been yelling it this whole time. It's hard for Grace to hear much past the pounding in his ears. "Grace, are you okay?"
"'m fine, Rock," he promises, waving away his concern. He stumbles to the little fridge the Eridians had made him and gets out his water pitcher. He feels like he could pour the whole thing down his throat right now, but he takes the extra second to grab a glass. It's important to be civilized, after all. Grace would kill for some Advil right now. "Just a little queasy this morning, that's all."
"Because of the alcohol?" Rocky asks.
Grace sighs. He sits at his dining table. Rocky comes up to his side immediately, brushing up against his legs. It reminds Grace of having a clingy dog. He pets the top of Rocky's carapace to soothe him. "I went a little overboard. It had just been a long time since I'd had any, that's all. I guess I kinda forgot my limits. I'll be better about it next time."
"Next time," Rocky echoes.
Grace knows him well enough by now to hear the things he's not saying. Rocky probably doesn't want Grace to drink again. Even if he doesn't agree, Grace can see where he's coming from. It's technically poison, Rocky had to carry him home the night before, and now he's puking before he's even fully awake. Grace would probably be a little horrified, too, especially considering most of Rocky's memories around vomit are from when Grace was starving.
Normally, he wouldn't care too much about someone else's opinion. Unfortunately, Grace's entire existence on Erid hinges on Rocky, so he'd like to keep his approval.
"C'mon, pal, it's one of three edible things Erid's been able to make for me," Grace points out. "Four if we count water. You can't expect me to give that up."
"It made you sick!" Rocky insists.
"Because I had too much too fast! I got sick and threw up from eating coma slurry, too. And taumoeba. And the vitamin shakes. And my first time having meburgers. It's not like it's the most reliable indicator of what I can deal with," Grace says.
Rocky is quiet for a beat too long. It's how Rocky knows he's won his argument. Finally, Rocky sings an exasperated note. "I will speak to the nutrition team for more. But you have to promise to be more careful next time!"
Grace's whole body relaxes. What would he have done if Rocky put his foot down and insisted he wouldn't get any more? It doesn't matter now. "I'll be super duper careful. I pinkie promise."
"Good! I can't carry your big ass upstairs anymore."
"Oh, c'mon! I'm still underweight for a man my height!"
***
A few days later, Rocky comes with another delivery for Grace. He has a bag this time, instead of the singular xenonite container, and Grace can hear the bottles clinking against each other as Rocky comes up towards the house. He gets more excited than he should at the noise.
"Hey, Rocky!" Grace leans against the door frame as he watches him make the last of the climb up to Grace's door.
"Hello, friend Grace!" Rocky sings. "I have delivery from the nutrition team. More human poison."
"I thought we agreed we weren't going to call it that?" Grace asks. He steps out of the way to let Rocky into the house.
Rocky laughs, a bright collection of notes. There's a teasing edge to it, a familiar trill that Grace is all too familiar with. "I saw how you acted after ingesting it. Poison is the best description."
"Whatever, man, just hand it over."
Grace takes the bottles from him and sticks them in the fridge for later. He doubts cooling them will do much to improve the taste, but it's worth a shot. He'd been tempted to crack into it now, something to keep him entertained in the afternoon boredom, but it's barely past one in the afternoon. Not that time makes any difference. The Eridians are on a different clock and Grace is the only one using what he's come to call Grace Standard Time.
Still, he's gone through all the trouble of keeping the clocks synchronized and timekeeping helps with some of the boredom, even if only barely. The space vodka will just have to wait for another time.
"What's on the agenda today, Rocky?" Grace asks, as though there's many options. They can either sit and talk, walk and talk, play a game and talk, or watch movies and talk. It's all they've done for years.
Rocky hums pensively. "I think I would like to see the next Jurassic Park movie!"
Watch movies and talk it is. Grace leads the way to the screening room. And really, how selfish is he to have his very own screening room and complain about it? As he pulls the movie up on one of his laptops, he warns, 'This one's not very good. Manage your expectations."
"It's okay! We laugh more when they're bad," Rocky says.
And that's true. They do a good bit of laughing all through Jurassic Park: Dominion, at the absurdity of it and the subpar deliveries. It's just like all the other times they've watched movies in this room, but Grace tries not to dwell on that. Really. It's Rocky's company and that's the only thing that should matter.
When the credits roll, Grace stretches out his sore back. Gravity. It turns out bigger isn't always better. He asks, "There's one more. You want to see it? We could check out Alien, if you want another classic. Now that we're not on the ship, I don't mind watching it."
Rocky's vents let out a puff of air. It's a sigh in a way Grace never sees any other Eridians do. Just another of the many quirks they've taken from each other.
"I wish I could, but I have another meeting with one of the engineering thrums. They're still trying to improve a design for the next probe to check on the Petrova line's status. The idiots can't figure it out for themselves," Rocky grumbles.
"Not everyone can be as smart as you, pal." Grace smiles, like it doesn't make his chest ache to know Rocky has to go so soon. It's made worse by remembering how conceited he is to expect all of Rocky's time. He already gets more than he probably should. He heaves himself up and walks Rocky to the door. "Savior of Erid duty calls."
"You are savior of Erid, too!" Rocky reminds him, like he always does. "I wish I was getting the Savior Grace treatment. Enjoying a peaceful retirement. Instead it's always work, work, work. Rocky this, Rocky that. No one can do anything without me! I'm jealous of you."
No, he's not. Grace knows his best friend well enough to know that Rocky would go insane if he was handed a 'peaceful retirement' like Grace is currently experiencing. He might enjoy it for a week or two, but then the boredom would creep in until he felt like bashing his head against the wall until blood clouded his vision and pain took over the endless nothing. He would stop counting the days because there's no reason to and he would find himself staring at the ceiling for hours. He would wonder if he'd actually died in space and this is some sort of purgatory. He would decide a shortened lifespan isn't so bad after all. He'd hate this alleged peace.
Grace keeps that to himself, of course, because he knows he can't add being ungrateful on top of his being selfish of Rocky's time. He'd be more than just a bad friend to Rocky, he'd be a bad guest to all of Erid. Relations between Earth and Erid aren't going to be preemptively ruined just because Grace didn't know how to not be a whiny, needy thing.
So instead, he just grins and crouches down to give Rocky a hug on his way out. "Try not to go too hard on them. They're just trying to learn. I'll see you next time."
"I can be back to watch you sleep?" Rocky offers.
Grace waves him off. "It's all right. Someone from the team can watch me."
"Okay... I'll be back tomorrow. Earth tomorrow." Rocky nuzzles his carapace against Grace a moment longer before finally stepping back and out through the door. "I miss you!"
"Miss you too, buddy." Grace watches him go.
He watches him as he reaches the bottom of the slope, as he walks along the shoreline, as he becomes just a dot on the sand approaching the airlock, keeps watching as he goes through it, imagines Rocky on the other side as he goes back to life on Erid. God. He's pathetic, isn't he?
He doesn't even have a life outside of Rocky. If Grace thought he had any other options, he might try to do something about this codependence they've developed. That he's developed. Rocky has Adrian, his family, his thrums, a whole life outside of this bubble. Grace just has Rocky. It's lonely and disheartening and pathetic and Grace doesn't know how he'll manage a lifetime of this.
He grabs one of the bottles of vodka out of the fridge and goes back to his screening room to watch Alien by himself. It would probably do him good to remember how much worse meeting an alien in space could have gone.
***
Grace dreams again. Vivid and full of old memories. He hasn't had these many memories come back to him in a long time. If the memories were better, Grace might find it a reason to celebrate.
He dreams of more college parties. Of more nights drinking himself into a stupor and stumbling home. He dreams of things escalating beyond just the drinks. Of accepting strange substances from strangers at frat houses, so long as they promised it would make him feel good. A line of coke here, a mystery pill there. Dropping acid between labs, smoking weed until he's nauseous every night.
Grace thinks he might have ventured beyond the party drugs at some point. It's still blurry, trapped in his memories behind the amnesia drugs. But he thinks he remembers lighters and needles. The sort of things even rave music and youthful undergrads can't make pretty.
The rush of memories culminates in his parents’ kitchen. Grace is as clammy and anxiety-ridden reliving the memory as the first time around. It's his Junior spring. Most of his classmates are studying abroad this semester, but he'd been too scared to even apply. It's no problem, though. Grace doesn't need seedy European clubs or South Pacific beaches to make regrettable college memories.
His grades are still phenomenal. Top of his class. He'll have his pick of graduate programs. Already, he has several professors willing to mentor his research. His social life is decent. He has the people he parties with. And he's made sure to keep a close eye on his body and health for any signs of deterioration. He's not stupid.
Still, his parents have asked him home for dinner and are both staring at him with the same wet, wide eyes as when they told him the family dog needed to be put down. They don't say anything at first. They eat their dinner in a tense silence, pushing food around their plates for a small eternity until his mother relents and simply packs everything in tupperware for later. Grace's habit of avoiding difficult conversation didn't come out of thin air.
"I guess I should probably start driving back to campus," he says, making a big show out of checking his watch. "Don't want to be on the roads too late."
"Before you leave," his mother interrupts, "there's something your father and I wanted to talk to you about."
"Oh." Grace leans against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks at his father, but he's avoiding his eyes. He can guess what this might be, but he won't make it easy on them. He's not going to be the one to speak first.
"Do you want to move to the living room?" she offers. "Might be more comfortable there."
Grace shakes his head. "I'm fine here."
"Right. Okay.” His mother nods. She wrings her hands as she tries to find the words.” It's just... Your father and I... You know we're open minded people. You know we like a few drinks with our friends when we go out and we're no strangers to sharing a joint on the porch when the weather's nice. We've never tried to hide that."
"You're both very California, yeah, I know. I don't know what that has to do with anything." Grace tries not to squirm. It wouldn't do him any good to look too guilty, especially not as it becomes increasingly clearer where this is going.
"I think what your mother is trying to say is we're not fundamentally opposed to having a good time with drugs and alcohol. We're just more concerned about it being done responsibly," his father explains.
"And we've started to get worried that, maybe, you might be sort of walking that line?" His mother comes up at his side and takes his hand. Grace has to resist the urge to flinch away. He's never minded his mother's touch, even sober, not like from other people, but in this moment all he feels is judged. It just makes him want to run away. It's all he can do not to bolt when she lays a hand on his cheek. "We're not upset. You just keep so much to yourself and what you do share... We're worried. We don't want to just keep quiet until it's too late."
Grace's mouth feels suddenly dry. His palms sweaty. He has to force himself to swallow around the lump that's formed in his throat. He always thought he played it off well. Sure, he spends more money than he should on it and more often, all the free time he has is spent getting drunk or high. But his bills are paid, his work is done, and he's so normal when he's under the influence. Don't his parents understand that?
"I'm not stupid about it," Grace says. He knows it's pointless to argue when they've already deciphered the signs. "I'm careful."
Grace wishes he had kept staring down at his shoes so he doesn't have to see how his mother's face falls at the confirmation. "I'm sure you are, my smart boy. But careful doesn't mean safe."
"And as often as it seems you're partaking... We just don't want to see this ruin your life, buddy." His father slots up on his other side and winds a sturdy arm around his shoulders. "We can get you professional help, if you need it. If you're scared of withdrawal or you just need someone to talk to."
"Fuck, no. Definitely not. I really don't want that. Or need it. Just... I'll ease up. Okay? If it worries you, I'll ease up," he promises.
"You'll come to us if it gives you any trouble?" his father asks. "There's no shame in needing help, pal."
"I will. Promise."
His mother bursts into tears on his shoulder and his father's hand trembles as he pats Grace's hair down like he's a child and Grace wonders if feeling normal is worth hurting people like this. He'll get rid of the drugs when he goes back to his apartment. It'll be money wasted and he wishes he'd known to appreciate his last trip, but he'll do it. Anything to make sure he's not the reason his parents are hurting.
***
Grace wakes with a pit in his stomach and a craving for more than just a drink. He can't get any of that here, even if he wanted to.
He doesn't remember actually going back to his dorm and getting rid of the drugs. There's enough gaps in his memory still that he can't be sure he never went back to it. Still, Grace is pretty confident he wasn't messing around with anything like that by the time the project rolled around.
He takes that as reassurance that, at least, he's not going to end up helpless to his urges. He was indulging in things much worse than just some vodka back in college and he'd kicked the habit easily enough. When this cloud on Erid passes over him - because Grace can't dwell on the possibility that it won't pass, lest he start thinking of ways to shorten his already wounded lifespan - he'll have no issue cutting back on the liquor.
The habit he's developed for drinking himself to sleep is a temporary issue. When it comes to it, he's already proven he has the discipline to stop. It's fine. Nothing he feels the need to concern himself about. Grace is fine.