Chapter Text
Rocky is an engineer. Rocky is an exceptionally fantastic engineer, one of the best of its generation. If there’s something that needs fixing, Rocky’s the Eridian for the job, and it isn’t self-conscious about that. Though it isn't the most popular Eridian on the planet, it is damn capable, some would call it a generational engineering talent.
Rocky is not a biologist.
Maybe things would have been different if Rocky were a biologist. The crew had them—five of them, two microbiologists, one cell biologist, one bioengineer, and one Eridian medical doctor---but none had survived. Nothing Rocky attempted worked, each and every one of its amateur's medical interventions had failed. In the end, all Not-A-Biologist-Rocky could do was spectate their slow, painful deaths. Maybe if it’s life had just been different enough… if it had made different choices when specializing its studies as a young adult, if it had any aptitude with first-aid, if it had noticed the crew’s declining health sooner, if it had not come along on this doomed expedition in the first place—
Maybe it would not be the last one standing.
Rocky should not be the last one standing.
By merely surviving when the others— more capable others; BIOLOGISTS! —had not, Rocky became the sole ambassador of Erid’s future. And then, as if it's being hopeless and failing at that monumental task was not enough, Rocky was given an opportunity to become Erid’s sole representative during first contact with sapient alien life.
Rocky is a damn good engineer. Rocky is a mediocre and off-putting conversationalist on a good day, with its own species. It has not been a good day in an incredibly long time, and Rocky is not a fucking biologist.
Rocky is barely something it’d call recognizable, anymore.
The ugly truth of the whole wretched and doomed affair is that Eridians just aren’t meant to be alone. If any Eridian has ever survived a comparable catastrophe and subsequent total and complete isolation period… Well, to Rocky’s knowledge, no one ever had before it.
For all intents and purposes, it is a pioneer in a completely new field: what happens to the Eridian mind in total isolation?
The report is ongoing but basically boils down to “a bunch of really bad shit.”
What more can Rocky really say than that? It was hardly even still alive— not in any way that felt real, or meaningful anymore— when the Hail Mary appeared in the system.
Rocky has never before experienced any sort of disconnect with reality. It was familiar with the concept, having heard accounts of various mental illnesses, drugs, or other sorts of traumas that can alter an Eridian’s sense of place, of self, of time. It always found the idea to be terrifying, even a fate worse than death, to lose that most fundamental understanding of one’s self and one’s surroundings.
Alone, time behaves strangely. Rocky loses time. It is terrified of sleeping and never waking, of sleeping and crashing the ship into a star, of sleeping alone without any protection, of sleeping and sleeping and sleeping—
When it does, it is so involuntary and traumatizing that it feels counterproductive, like every time Rocky loses consciousness and wakes up, it's losing pieces of itself— more tired and more terrified and more disoriented than before. The clocks do not help because Rocky stops feeling like it can trust them. Anything could have happened while it was asleep and unaware. It develops a persistent buzz of dread punctuated by periods of heightened panic that leave it debilitated, stupid, and useless. It emotionally exists at two poles: feeling either entirely numb or so overcome with sorrow it’s utterly paralyzing. Rocky has produced frequencies of sound it never knew itself capable of in these fits of intense paralytic mourning. (The first few times, the sounds were so startling when echoed back by the empty ship, it instinctively hid itself from ancestral predators, seeking shelter from the danger of its own unrecognizable agony). These episodes of total paralysis have worsened with time. The ship falls increasingly into disrepair despite Rocky’s best efforts. Time is slippery and escapes it regardless.
The Hail Mary changes these circumstances in ways Rocky is only beginning to understand.
Everything feels miraculous, too miraculous to be real. From the speed with which it managed to communicate with the alien species, to the depth and importance of the conversations they were quickly having about astrophage and their worlds.
Here Rocky was, speaking to a real-life alien person, when it’d given up hope of ever hearing anyone ever again.
Things quickly became even more unprecedented, for Rocky.
The disaster above planet Adrian is one that Rocky has a perfect recollection of, though not one it has any intention of lingering on with any detail ever again. Setting aside the terror, the pain, the despair… It is a turning point, for all of its horror.
In the aftermath, what Rocky is left with is this: the means of salvation for its people, and for Grace’s; a deep well of affection and care for this strange alien unlike anything Rocky has ever known before; an understanding of the depth of Rocky’s own need.
And what a terrible, insatiable need it is.
As far as Not-A-Biologist-Rocky can tell through observation, its instincts have fully embraced Grace as an Eridian. Every cell of Rocky’s body has registered every (wet, squishy, fragile, foreign, sticky gross, gross, gross) cell of Grace’s as belonging to it.
Belonging to it intimately, to be precise.
Rocky has always prided itself on its rationality, its level-head and logical mind. Rocky has only ever responded to Adrian in the way that it is physiologically responding to Grace. It cannot be denied that, having almost lost Grace and died for its survival, Rocky’s most intimate biological processes are treating Grace like its mate.
Grace is an alien, from another sun and planet, with biology as incompatible to Eridian biology as it can probably get. At first approach, Rocky was simply too elated to be afraid. However, it was not too elated that it wasn’t disgusted by the bipedal, carapace-less, practically naked and leaking being with way too-many-orifices just exposed to the Oxygen air it somehow likes. (Disturbingly, it reminded Rocky of some of the more esoteric fetish artwork Adrian had shown it once when they were first courting, like someone’s most depraved and exotic fantasy had simply evolved into existence on the other side of the galaxy). Other Eridians would probably— reasonably — be even more repulsed by, perhaps even afraid of Grace. It has no less than seven vulnerable entry-points in its head, for fuck’s sake! It’s a walking infection risk, and its blood doesn’t even get hot enough to kill most pathogens!
Grace is also terribly, horrifyingly young by Eridian standards. Grace has assured Rocky repeatedly that it is well within maturity for the human species, but the simple fact of it is that Rocky has been stranded in this fucking system alone for longer than Grace has even been alive. Humans apparently have the lifespans of fucking Eridian houseplants.
And yet, every instinct Rocky has is screaming at it to touch, to protect and care for and lavish attention upon its human companion every waking moment. Rocky’s entire nervous system screams at it every time its human strays out of reach (never-mind that Rocky can’t actually touch it without burning through its delicate flesh). The compulsions burn bright and without reprieve, a demanding, whole-body itch to court and claim that never goes away. These incessant, instinctive drives are coded deep within Rocky’s genetic makeup.
Its body is only doing what Eridian bodies do when in the prolonged company of a highly compatible and desirable partner. The only problem– big big big fucking problem— is that Rocky went crazy and is trying to pairbond with a different species.
Even more embarrassing, it was never this bad with Adrian— and their clutch had thought Rocky was so bad with Adrian! If Rocky’s clutch could see them now, they’d call it hopelessly besotted at best and likely also absolutely bonkers delusional. Probably, they’d call Rocky much worse.
It should be a fundamental incompatibility! Grace isn’t even the same species, meaning they cannot share the same atmospheric conditions. Meaning they can never touch without harming each other. Meaning they can never truly embrace, never give each other pleasure, never thrum. Meaning Rocky wants to touch, embrace, give intimate pleasure to, and thrum with Grace and—
Can’t.
Rocky does not have the knowledge or the tools required to cope with this.
It’s fucked up, is what it is. Rocky cannot ever recall being so mercurial, not even in its most embarrassing adolescent years. (Adrian made them feel like that, too— all immature again, bumbling and inexperienced, but never to this extent, never like it’s Rocky’s first day of sapience).
If Rocky were a biologist, it’d maybe have the skills to investigate the possibility of inter-species bond compatibility under conditions of extreme isolation. It doesn’t have any other hypotheses about how something like this could have even become possible. (It can’t entertain that this is just how Rocky is, that the isolation had nothing to do with this at all. It can’t entertain the idea that this is just who it is. So it won’t).
It might be losing what little is left of its mind over this. Rocky can’t be objective about this strange, squishy, stupid, utterly fucking miraculous perfect genius.
But there’s work to do, so Rocky focuses on that work to the exclusion of all else, on saving their respective worlds and keeping all this shit repressed. Even though it hurts more and more every cycle.
Rocky does not want to give Grace the astrophage to return to Earth. It’s need for this human has grown so large, so terrible, so selfish and frightening that Rocky wants to take Grace home to Erid.
Deep down, only in its most private reflections, Rocky can admit to wanting this. Wanting to steal its human. Wanting to just say “fuck Earth, fuck all humans but mine. Fuck this planet and these people who would send this person– this spectacular, miraculous, incredible and lonely person– on a one-way trip to certain death. That’s their loss and Grace is mine now.”
But Rocky knows– still knows — what is right and what is wrong. Its terrible needs are not so great as to have blinded it to that (yet). So Rocky does what is right but feels so wrong, and gives Grace the only gift that is right to give. Rocky sends Grace back home to Earth.
Only once Rocky is well and truly alone again— no trace of the Hail Mary remaining on its systems—does the gravity of that decision register.
If this record is a confession, let it be a complete one: the human-thinking-machine Rocky was gifted has everything on it. With the aid of the device Rocky had made back aboard the Mary that translates light on Grace’s human-visual displays to texture on Rocky’s Eridian-sonar display, accessing all of humanity’s combined wisdom is as easy as making a database query.
With no one around anymore to bear witness, no standards of professionality or sanity left to try and adhere to, here alone again— alone and therefore harmless — Rocky starts exploring what it never had the courage to explore with Grace still in proximity.
Rocky consumes approximately 1,600 Earth-hours of human pornography before the ship’s engines cease to function, leaving it dead and stranded in space.
Admittedly, Rocky does not handle the “I am once again stranded in space, this time permanently, I am going to die here, alone” realization well, let alone the “I will get to die as a one-of-a-kind pervert of prolific freakishness and depravity, furiously masturbating to another species’ porn” realization.
Then, another miracle: Grace comes back for it.
“Thank God for Stratt" becomes somewhat of a daily refrain for Ryland on the way to Erid.
Yeah, no—he didn’t really see that one coming, either.
At the time, Ryland can recall thinking Stratt’s insistence on getting all of humanity’s media downloaded onto Mary was a spectacular waste of time. For textbooks, lectures, tutorials, technical manuals–well, the case practically makes itself. But Ryland quite honestly thought there was no good reason to waste the data uploading copies of Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace or Mario Kart. Why would any of humanity’s brave, intrepid heroes need access to eight whole seasons of Dance Moms? When would Earth’s saviors even have the time?
The Ryland Grace of the present moment– only 1/6th of the way to Erid aboard the Mary with Rocky– is pointing and laughing at the Ryland Grace of the past.
He and Rocky are making their way through Earth’s greatest hits. Inevitably, after the first handful of months on this one-way trip to another world, they stalled out of the hard-sciences. The upkeep and daily maintenance of their Taumeba colonies is simple, mindless work. After having functionally arrived at a working knowledge of each others’ language, planetary ecology, species biology, and engineering capabilities by this point in their friendship, what still remained in abundance was simple curiosity about Ryland’s alien best-friend. Naturally, their conversations turned anthropological– and eridiopological? –and from there, messily cultural.
Funnily enough, it is Rocky who makes the leap into the world of human fiction first.
“Why is boy kept in closet, Grace, question!?”
Ryland– only just waking up, thank you very much– splutters “who!?” with equal alarm. He is instinctively responding to the tone of Rocky’s chirping, sing-song voice that his brain understands to be distress. (It reminds him of the chick-a-dee-dee-dee trill of a black-capped chickadee, alerting its neighbors to danger, including those other species smart enough to know what that sound means).
“Harry Potter, why why why, question? Why parents treat child with cruelty, question?” Rocky trills.
When Ryland squints his eyes open, Rocky has his carapace pressed flush to the xenonite barrier cocooning Ryland’s sleeping nook, directly above his head. He gets a massive, blurry eyeful of Eridian-cloaca. Tap-tap-tap and Rocky is staring– for lack of a better word– down at him. Menacingly. As if Ryland is responsible for JKR’s literary sins.
Ryland closes his eyes, rolls onto his back, and groans while Rocky tap-tap-tap’s away insistently (menacingly) at the barrier.
While he had been taking a nice, peaceful rest-cycle, Rocky had apparently been busy exploring Mission Bay branch’s library archive with his shiny new translation software, sorting by most popular of all-time and turning them into Eridian audio-books.
“Describe Grace parents, request.”
If Ryland were to make a list of things he’d really rather not talk about two minutes after waking up in the morning— or ever— his parents would definitely make it into the top five. Knowing how sensitive Rocky is to cues from Ryland’s unconscious body language, he fights the urge to go tense. “Uh… normal,” he says after a moment.
Rocky chuffs at him, irritated. “Describe, Rocky said.”
Right. Normal is not going to cut it for his very curious friend. He sighs, but pointedly doesn’t straighten up, or move his arm out of his face, continuing to feign nonchalance he doesn’t really feel.
“My mom’s name was Susan, my dad’s name was Robert. People called him Rob. She was an English teacher and he was a divorce attorney– that’s someone who practices a specific kind of law, basically helping people… separate their lives when things… don’t work out. Ironically enough, they were married for thirty years.”
Breezing right past Ryland’s explanation of divorce, Rocky chirps, “Thirty years is long time for human mates, question?”
“Yeah, Rock. Long time.”
They were quiet people, Susan and Rob. It’s hard to know how many blank spots in his memory are the fault of Stratt’s mystery drug cocktail or if the fuzziness about his past predates even her meddling in his life. Anything earlier than eighth-grade is an empty void punctuated by random flashes of sense-memory. Of his parents, Ryland remembers only basic facts and just a couple details besides, like the perfume his mom always wore (apples, in a round silver-and-green bottle). One of the strongest recollections Ryland has of his parents must come from early childhood because everything feels too big, from the height of the door handles to the shoes piled up by the front door. He remembers creeping around far after his bed time, trying to be sneaky, and finding them sitting side-by-side on the couch.
He recalls them each absorbed in a different book, melted so comfortably into each other with the easy familiarity of a very long, very well-worn love. He remembers them like cozy giants there on the couch, legs a hidden tangle under an ugly knit blanket. Ryland doesn’t remember what happened to that blanket; he only remembers how much he loved it.
“Would have been longer, but Mom got diagnosed with breast cancer and passed at fifty-five. Dad died only seven-months later. He had a stroke. It’s a large bleed in the brain, basically.” Ryland wasn’t there when either of them passed. At least not that he can remember.
“Rocky expresses condolences. How old Grace when parents die, question?”
“I was in my twenties.” At the sound of shuffling, Ryland finally moves his arm and peeks up at Rocky, who reeled back from that as if struck. Ryland clarifies, “It’s been a pretty long time for me, bud.”
In an Eridian context, Ryland figures twenties is far too young for someone to be without the support of their parents.
Rocky confirms this hunch— by Eridian standards, that’s horribly tragic— and Ryland learns that Eridians are raised communally in creches. Rocky had seven parents and is obviously distressed to learn that Ryland only had two, both of which had died a decade before Mary ever left Earth’s orbit.
Harry Potter is only the first of many books they tear through together. They start wiling away enormous chunks of their waking hours with heated literary discussion (some more personally awkward for Ryland than others).
Their survey of the classics includes Dante’s Inferno, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Homer’s Iliad, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, to name a few. From there, Rocky wants to explore human religious texts, so they move on from high school English class curriculum and start to read things like the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, the Quran, and the Book of Mormon—that was an exhausting week.
They read some biographies of famous humans that Rocky is interested in (Neil deGrasse Tyson's was Rocky’s clear favorite) and no small number of philosophical texts, too. (They both despise The Prince).
But most of all, Rocky’s favorite thing to read proves to be fiction.
Eridians are apparently not big on fiction. They have some fictional media– it’d be a little odd if they didn’t, Ryland figures– but it’s basically akin to opera, as far as Ryland can tell. Music is the main feature of the art, with some limited storytelling that focuses on sharing feelings with an audience over cause-and-effect, character-driven narratives.
So understandably, Rocky is captivated by all of the fiction that humans have to offer, from the best to the worst.
“Good context for human culture and behavior,” Rocky explains. “Rocky understand why Grace is idiot better through stories!”
“Wow, thank you, buddy.”
It’s fun, is the thing. Ryland is having fun reading all this stuff with Rocky. Experiencing an alien’s perspective of some of the most familiar stories of Ryland’s world is thrilling (and not just for amnesia-reasons). Frankenstein makes Rocky do the Eridian-equivalent of weeping— a haunting, sorrowful crooning cry that makes all the hair on Ryland’s body stand on end— as humans shun Frankenstein’s monster, turning away from it in fear. The Great Gatsby has Rocky so angry that he starts doing the Eridian equivalent of cursing (to Grace’s delight; it sounds like a murmuration of European starlings). And Steinbeck’s Cannery Row makes Rocky giggle!
Which is all to lead Ryland back to “thank God for Stratt” on account of having infinite properties to introduce Rocky too— and entertain him with— as they fill the time on their voyage to Erid.
Ryland is genuinely grateful… Until Rocky makes Ryland read Twilight.
Rocky is enthralled by the romance, practically giddy over the love-triangle— and firmly Team-Jacob-AND-Edward. That’s how Ryland learns that Eridians have no concept of monogamy. No, Ryland doesn’t want to think about it more than he absolutely has to.
It’s inevitably Twilight that brings them to their exploration of all that Hollywood has to offer. Rocky wouldn’t let it go once he found out the books had been adapted to the big screen. No, Ryland doesn’t want to think about that nightmare, either. Rocky absolutely peppered Ryland with questions from beginning to end, utterly transfixed and ridiculously invested.
Does Grace sparkle, question? Why not, question? Lame, lame, lame.
Do human adolescents all speak like this, question? All human adolescents stupid, question?
Edward Cullen is abuser, question?!
Why does Bella Swan not mate with both males, question? Obvious solution.
Why so much mouth contact, question? Humans are gross, gross, gross.
Ryland could really do without some of the conversations Rocky’s media diet is sparking.
It feels stupid, but Ryland Grace is just a little bit stupid. The thing is… the more Rocky experiences human media, the more context Rocky is getting for human behavior. And considering that the only other human being Rocky will ever interact with is himself, it feels an awful lot like Ryland is just handing Rocky every signal he needs to realize that Ryland is a terrible representative for his species.
He’s not normal, basically. And every day-cycle, it feels like the two of them hurtle closer and closer to that realization.
(Ryland’s not scared about what happens after that. He’s not.)
“Rocky has question for Grace,” Rocky chirps as soon as Ryland opens his eyes (as he usually does).
“Good morning to you too, pal. What’s on your mind?”
He takes his time stretching in bed, long and indulgent while Rocky tap-tap-tap’s away slightly to the left of his head. Now that their respective planets have been saved, Ryland is more prone to be lazy and indulgent with his pseudo-mornings. Usually, they’ll chat about what Rocky was reading/watching while Ryland got his 8-hours (Rocky insists on it).
“Grace has gender, question?”
Ryland’s brain stalls, hard. His mouth opens but he makes no sound.
Oh boy, do I! also FUCK!!!
“Uh, yes, I do have… a gender. I know you remember that conversation.” It was one of their earliest lessons in each others’ respective biologies.
Eridians are a hermaphroditic species that reproduce by egg-laying; any Eridian can both produce eggs and fertilize them, though not alone. Sex evolved on Erid and Earth for similar reasons, as far as Ryland can tell: the advantages of good, old-fashioned DNA recombination. (Neat!)
Rocky was fascinated by Ryland’s explanation of the (mostly) two human sexes. Though not a biologist himself, Rocky is incredibly clever, and was incredibly incensed by the social implications Ryland was trying his best (clumsily) to skirt around in his explanations. Rocky has become increasingly angry with “stupid stupid stupid humans” the more media he encounters depicting experiences of any kind of marginalized people.
This day was coming, surely. But Ryland still startles at Rocky’s next question, despite bracing for it.
“Grace is cisgender or transgender, question?”
Ryland controls his exhale, almost making a sound like a sigh. He rallies, trying to be so very normal for this conversation, “Someone’s been doing research! What brought this on?”
“Rocky found Tumblr!”
“Oh, of course. Naturally.”
Rocky crackles musically– laughing. Rock is laughing at him. Naturally.
He pinches his nose, shuffles in his bed to be more upright for this conversation. Ryland thought that, having left Earth behind him permanently, he’d be done forever with this exact kind of awkward moment. (Small wins and where one can find them, right?) He takes a deep, bracing breath, fixing his eyes on the slightly-turquoise spots on Rocky’s arms— his familial and spousal markings.
“I’m transgender. For me, that means I was born with female anatomy and raised as a girl or a young woman. I told you about the binary sex model already.” He makes a vague side-to-side gesture, some attempt at representing not-right. “I knew really young that… being female wasn’t right for me. When my body went through female puberty, it was… pretty intense.”
“Intense” meaning utterly wretched.
Ryland’s adolescence was, in a word: brutal.
Other kids scented the queerness on him like blood in the water, relentless in their taunting for his gender ambiguity, his wrongness. (The undiagnosed autism probably wasn’t helping, either).
It started young. All of it did. The isolation from other people his age. The increasing awkwardness because he was poorly socialized (in part because of the aforementioned isolation). All the requisite anxiety. Then, as he got older, the disassociation from his own body that he began to wear like armor, practice like a religion, the art of sending his mind elsewhere. Armed only with the feelings (but not the language to understand it) and the intolerable vulnerability of them, Ryland turned away from everything else to focus solely on academics.
He barely inhabited his own life in the pursuit of his scientific career. He preferred things that way.
The adult he became, the adult Stratt sent into space on an involuntary suicide mission, is a man so completely shaped by that raw period of time that was his youth before his medical transition. The same patterns followed him into adulthood, into manhood. No relationships, no attachments—besides his students, his kids— and by that time, not even a family left.
“Ryland” was not a name his parents had ever known him by.
Though she never once spoke about it, Stratt must have known.
It’s not possible that she didn’t know. She had the whole world at her fingertips— world governments asking her “how high?” if it so much as seemed like she wanted them to jump. Of course she knew he was trans. But they never talked about it.
He has only Stratt to thank for the fact that Armando has kept him in surprisingly good supply of testosterone, the same dose he’s maintenanced-at for all these years. He’s carefully not thinking at all about how much he’s got left, about what is going to happen to his body, to him, when it eventually, probably someday soon runs out–
“Grace come back. Grace Grace Grace,” Rocky chants, the thrumming bass vibration all the sudden grounding.
Ryland has been clutching at his chest. He makes himself drop his arms and shake off the urge to rub old scars.
“Sensitive subject, question?” Rocky sings quietly, voice subdued and careful. Tender. Ryland aches. He forces the hot rush of feelings down as forcefully as he can, admonishing himself: be normal.
Rallying, part two. He blows another deliberate breath out, all regulatory. “Yeah, bud. Very sensitive. What other questions do you have?”
Rocky usually has a list they will go over together as a Ryland-waking-up activity. He’s usually up for answering random questions like “Rise of the Planet of the Apes historically accurate, question?!” before so much as a “hello”.
Rocky seems apprehensive, though Ryland can’t guess at why. As far as Ryland is concerned, shame or embarrassment are not part of Rocky’s world.
“Rocky have gender, question? Grace give Rocky gender, question?”
Ryland forces himself to not make any assumptions about this. He chooses his words very carefully, feeling like his mind is really truly racing. “Rocky… in human culture—my experience with human culture, which is regionally influenced, too—gender is a personal identity. An internal sense of self. It’s not something humans give each other. Well, doctors assign you a sex at birth… but gender is all you. It’s something you find for yourself.”
Ryland worries about humanizing Rocky, is the thing. Humans can be so bad about humanizing non-human things and more often than not, it leads to bad science. Although Ryland’s not spending time with Rocky to study Rocky, part of him can’t help but recoil at the thought of imprinting something as human as gender onto his alien friend. For all that he stresses basically daily about humanizing Rocky too much, he still can’t help but get the feeling that the up-and-down bob of Rocky’s cephalothorax is Rocky’s way of rolling his eyes at him.
“Rocky not human. Human have gender, Eridian do not. Rocky sees gender is significant for humans. ♭♩♩♪𝅗𝅥𝅘𝅥, 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅰𝅘𝅥𝅱 𝆕𝆔! Rocky wishes to participate. 𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅰 with Grace. Grace give Rocky gender.”
Ryland boggles. “That’s a lot of new words, Rock, you gotta’ slow down for me.”
“No translation, statement. This is new concept, statement.” With emphasis, Rocky jabs a finger at him— when did Rocky pick up pointing for emphasis? Ryland definitely didn’t teach him that— “Grace give Rocky gender, request.”
Rocky has motives upon motives for bonding with Grace through human media. Chief among those many motives is to get closer to Grace, by any means Grace will allow. Rocky has learned the most from human romance; Pride and Prejudice was particularly illustrative, as was the film Titanic and later, Brokeback Mountain. Rocky particularly enjoyed watching Twilight with Grace, if only to see how Grace engages with and responds to a pseudo-interspecies relationship (and to the idea of a triumvirate intimate relationship structure).
Grace’s responses are inconclusive, at best. No reactions have been indicative enough as to how well received it might be if Rocky were to climb into the form-fitting xenonite skin it has been working on in secret, creep into Grace’s nest, and explore that squishy human skin directly with its hands until Grace squeals—
And Rocky cannot afford to fuck this up.
Rocky will not risk making Grace uncomfortable. Rocky is terrified of scaring Grace, of disgusting them with its unnatural desires, of ruining the bond that they— and only they— have together.
So Rocky begins by asking Grace for a gender, thinking that if Grace is able to think of Rocky like a human with a human identity, Grace will maybe let Rocky try to touch Grace like a human, too. The problem is Rocky does not know Grace’s sexual orientation, which seems like a terrible oversight to have made. Rocky should have asked earlier but isn’t sure that it can directly ask without dissolving into begging for a chance. (Rocky does not want to end up with a gender that Grace does not feel is suitable for a mate).
“Buddy, you don’t need to have a gender for me to feel… close to you,” Grace assures him with their oddly flat and monotonal voice, devoid of all the subvocalizations and richness that characterizes Eridian speech. Rocky still finds it beautiful, even more so for its strange simplicity. “You’re closer to me than anyone else ever has been, believe me!”
Yeah, and Rocky wants to be even closer. What about that is not abundantly clear? Time for a different approach. Rocky begins, “Language is important to humans, statement. Language reflects gender for humans, statement. ‘Rocky’ is name for male human or female human, question?”
Grace frowns at this new approach. Rocky hears the corners of Grace’s mouth turn down. Bad sign. Not good. It taps harder at the xenonite barrier between them, seeking more detail.
“It’s… neither? But I did just start calling you ‘he/him’ in my head when we first met. I didn’t really think about how you might feel about that.” This seems to strike Grace with particular importance. It awkwardly and clumsily begins to scramble out of its nest, showing stress indicators. One of Grace’s limbs gets caught in its blanket and it flails gracelessly to untangle itself, grumbling ambient frustrations.
Rocky follows as best as it can as Grace gets up to wander aimlessly around Mary. “Oh shit. I didn’t think about how you’d feel about that.”
“He/him are masculine pronouns, statement. Grace give Rocky masculine pronouns, question? Grace and Rocky share masculine pronouns, question?” this is going better than Rocky thought it could! Not only did Grace already give Rocky this human trait— Grace gave Rocky matching gender-pronouns. Rocky is ecstatic about that; not professional at all.
Grace stops his agitated walking. If Rocky concentrates, he can hear Grace’s eyes swivel to fix in Rocky’s direction.
“You’re… not upset about that? I assigned you male without your input, Rocky.”
“Grace give Rocky human-gift, statement. Rocky-Grace he-him together, statement.”
Grace’s breathing makes that horrible shuddering sound, staccato and jagged. Rocky knows this means that Grace is feeling some strong emotion from Rocky’s words alone. Rocky feels that like a powerful rush, like a victory.
If Grace were Eridian, he would know how Rocky’s body is betraying him utterly. He’d understand that the fine tremble passing through each limb makes him physically unable to stay still. He'd know that it is all involuntary because of how much, how strongly, Rocky aches for him. Rocky may as well be crooning “take me” and showing hole.
Rocky is fiercely glad Adrian isn’t here, suddenly. Adrian would be laughing hysterically at him right now.
Thankfully, Grace is not Eridian and is wholly oblivious to how inappropriately Rocky is behaving. Sure, Grace has clocked that this is weird as fuck, but he’s at least wearing his considering face of deep consideration; he is thinking hard.
Good good good, let me closer, Rocky’s sub-vocalizations warble in registers humans do not hear. I want to be this with you; I don’t care that it’s strange. I still want this with you.
“Okay, well, when you say it like that,” Grace eventually mutters (mostly to himself). “This is really something you want?”
“Yes, want want want VERY much, statement!” Rocky is fantasizing about being able to bully this man physically and satiates this rabid desire by turning his tap-tap-taps on his side of the barrier to SMACK-SMACK-SMACKS.
“Alright, alright! You can be he/him! We can be two guys in space!”
“Yay yay yay, two males in space!” Rocky says instead of I want to eat you alive and I want you to like it.