Chapter Text
There's a bloody man laying on the beach in his dome on Erid. Rocky and a few other Eridians heard a distress signal coming from an iron-rich moon nearby. Rocky said that when they pulled up the ship it looked human-made. So now here's Grace, desperately trying to wash the blood off of this undeniably human figure in his Earth-modeled dome on an alien planet. Crazy how things work.
After bringing the man? Person? Blood-soaked humanoid? Into his home for Armando to take care of, Grace's mind wanders. Why would there be a human this far away from Earth? Why are they covered in blood and missing an arm? How did they get here? But, he supposes, those are all questions that can be answered by the man when he wakes up. Hopefully he wakes up.
Rocky is, as usual, trapezing through his house, full of questions. "Is human, question?"
Grace replies, "yeah buddy. That's a human."
Rocky makes another musical noise, inquisitive, like he's trying to decide what to say next. He gets closer to the floor where Armando works on cleaning and patching the figure up. "Why this human have more mass on chest than Grace, question?"
Grace pauses at this. He's pulled out of his thoughts to look over at the man currently splayed out on his floor. Armando has cut part of his clothing off to examine the stump where his arm should be. The man has what looks to be bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. Grace's breath hitches. He's seen that before, shoot, he's done that before. What are the odds that the only other human on this planet is transgender just like he is?
Rocky continues to stand there, examining the figure while waiting for Grace to reply. He's going to have to explain so much about human gender and social expectations to Rocky. He never did tell Rocky that he's trans, either. It just never came up. He takes a deep breath in, preparing for a very long winded explanation of basically all of human history and culture. He looks at Rocky, who's still just waiting on him to answer the question.
"So.. I've told you about human gender, right?"
"Yes, Grace is man human. Grace use he him. Grace call Rocky he him. Why, question?"
"Well, Rock, it's a lot more complicated than I explained before. Humans have two well-known sexes that society sorts us into based on how we look and what reproductive organs we have. I'm a man, I use he him, but I wasn't born that way."
Rocky trills a musical note, urging him to go on.
"When I was born, with the organs I had, the doctors declared me female. I spent the first thirteen years of my life a girl, a female human."
"But Grace change sex, question?"
"Yeah. The body I had and the way human society viewed me didn't fit with who I was. So I changed my name to a more masculine one and cut my hair short like a boy. Some people, like me, get surgery and take medicine to make themselves feel more comfortable in their bodies. Some don't."
"So humans can change sex, question? Why have it then, question? Eridians have no sex, makes it easy to be self socially. No difference in Eridians mean Eridians look however they want. No expectations. Humans stupid."
"Yeah, humans are kinda stupid. It's just the expectations and sorting that is all society, but the physical differences are biology. It's how we reproduce and all that. Most people don't mind the expectations and the sorting, but some of us are different."
"So, dirty human was female now is male, question? But why have more mass on chest than Grace, question?"
"I mean, we're making a lot of assumptions about this guy and they haven't even woken up yet. But I had surgery to remove the mass on my chest." Grace lifts up his shirt for Rocky to see the two long scars spanning across his chest. "I guess this guy didn't. Maybe he couldn't. That's probably why he has those bandages on his chest, to hide it. To look more like a man. I used to."
"Why would dirty human not able to remove chest mass, question?"
"Sometimes other people don't like it when we change things like that. Some governments on Earth make laws to say we can't. It's not really.. accepted in a lot of places. Also, please don't call him dirty human when he wakes up."
Rocky hums, more to himself than to Grace. "Humans stupid. Rocky go tell Adrian about human in Grace house. Let Eridians know he is alive." With that, Rocky all but skips out of Grace's house to go tell his mate that there's another human on Erid. Grace briefly wonders if Rocky will try to set him up with the man currently laying in his floor getting stitches from Armando. He tries not to think about it too hard.