Chapter Text
Rocky Jr
Grace looked at the strange little Eridian. When he had heard that Rocky and Adrian were planning on having a pebble, he insisted upon seeing the little tyke as soon as possible. And Rocky with great pride obliged. From the other side of clear divider he could see Rocky, Adrian, and something small skittering between them. They both encouraged their child forward. If Rocky was the size of labrador, then his child was the size of a chihuahua. At first it shied away, hell, Grace thought, if it was a human baby it would be freaking out a lot worse at the sight of a big alien. But with some goading Rocky introduced his son (daughter?) to Grace. Grace tried not to press his face directly against the divider and scare the pebble off.
"Aww Rocky, he's beautiful! What's the little guy's name?"
"He is called ------." Rocky sung some long beautiful notes that seemed like a combination of the notes in his name and Adrian's name.
"Wow Rocky, okay he's going to need an Earth name, I'm thinking Rocky Jr."
"What is word, question?"
"Junior? We use it on Earth when we give a child the same name as their parent to differentiate between them."
"That is dumb. Why give same name twice when two different people? Statement."
Grace chuckled to himself. Rocky had learned what a rhetorical question was when they were travelling to Erid. At first it was a difficult concept to grasp, their syntax just wasn't structured that way. But he's been slowly learning to use it more and more. Grace thought Rocky even got other Eridians to use it.
Grace slowly crouched then sat crisscross applesauce to get closer to height level with Rocky Jr. Rocky Jr shied away curling around one of Adrian's limbs. Something Grace noticed, Eridians don't exactly hug, but they do cuddle in a way. They kind of make themselves smaller and hold themselves closer to other Eridians. The same way Rocky wanted to sleep as close to Grace as possible, Eridians feel safer when huddled together. If he had to guess it was a survival mechanism to form one large amorphous rock blob, much harder to single out one Eridian to attack. Sort of like the stripes on a zebra making the herd one large amorphous striped blob. Grace couldn't stop looking at the tenderness with which Adrian stroked Rocky Jr's carapace, and she tilted her own carapace in a smile that he had come to recognize. It felt so dumb but Grace's eyes started to well up. He could feel tears forming, but he didn't want to upset Rocky or make him think that he was unhappy to see him and his newly minted Rocky Jr. So he tried to hide it behind a yawn and rubbed at his eyes.
"Wow Rocky, this is really great, thank you so much for bringing the little one. It is such a pleasure to meet him, but I'm sorry I had a late night and I still need to draw up a lesson plan-"
"Why is Grace crying, question?"
Well, so much for that plan. No matter how many years had gone by, Grace kept forgetting the superiority of Rocky's echolocation.
"I'm not crying."
There was a moment and it felt like Rocky, Adrian, and Rocky Jr were all looking at him.
"Why is Grace lying, question?"
Grace sighed and turned back to the trio just as he was getting up and turning away. The truth was he wasn't sure how to explain it to Rocky because he didn't know how to explain it to himself. In a past life he was a middle school teacher, surrounded by various snot nosed kids, but they were his snot nose kids and he loved them, if not liked them in his own way. He liked kids, he was good with them, and they were good with him. But this was different. This was something paternal that he saw in Rocky and Adrian. Part of him wanted to open the barrier and hug Rocky Jr. and hold him in his arms, despite the fact that he was well aware of that even Rocky Jr would burn through his flesh like a giant coal. He still had the scars from Rocky to remember it. But goddamnit, he was touch starved. Alive but touch starved. He was truly grateful to be alive. It was a continuing miracle he was still alive surviving on his meburger. It felt so silly to be sad about not being held in many years. He wasn't too lonely, Eridians make for great company. But sometimes he felt like a hamster in a ball, isolated. He took another breath and thought of how to distill all his complex feelings into words for Rocky.
"Okay, I am crying. But it's complicated."
"Grace explain," said Rocky
"It's a cultural thing."
"Grace explain," Adrian chimed in.
"It's personal."
"----," Rocky Jr sang in what would be the equivalent of Eridian babbling. Actually Rocky Jr did a lot of babbling, a bunch of random singsong-y notes in random order, Noam Chomsky would be proud.
"Okay, okay, you remember what I told you about human relationships, for mates?."
"Yes, Rocky understands."
"You do?"
"Yes, Grace wants sex."
Grace thought he was going to choke on his own tongue, Adrian just tilted her carapace inquisitively. As a force of habit Grace tried to cover his face with his hands to hid the blush but then remembered that Eridians couldn't see color and gave up. "Yes, no, not just that, err, God it's complicated. I mean you're not wrong it's just..." Grace sputtered out but he couldn't make himself make sense.
"Rocky understands. Grace needs mate to have sex and then Grace and mate have baby like Rocky Jr. Grace must be lonely, want mate and want baby. Many years of only Eridian contact."
Grace thought about it for a minute. "Well, you're not wrong, it would be nice. Seeing you and Adrian and Rocky Jr reminds me a of missing that. But I'm not lonely. Honestly, Eridians are better company than humans. Besides, even on Earth with a lot more humans than here, I didn't have much luck with finding a mate. So I'm not missing out on much."
"Ah yes, because Grace get's no bitches. Statement."
Grace scowled, he really regretted teaching Rocky that phrase. He rubbed at where his forehead met the bridge of his nose.
"No Rocky, I do not get bitches. Thank you for rubbing it in."
"Grace is welcome." He chirped a bit that let Grace know he was laughing. Adrian laughed too, Rocky must have taught her what it meant, he really hoped that he didn't introduce the phrase to Eridian culture.
They talked a bit more, about this and that. About the biodome and if there was any success in making more non-toxic food (the last batch only had just a little bit of lead in it!) then they all said their good byes and Grace made Rocky and Adrian promise that as soon as Rocky Jr was old enough, hopefully within Grace's lifetime, that they enroll him in Grace's classes. And they left. Rocky Jr skittered cutely to and fro between his two parents in a way that made Grace's heart clench.
Grace went back to his home to have a meburger, it was days like this he wished the Eridians could figure out how to make him alcohol. But sadly Ilyukna's vodka had no chance of surviving all the way to Erid for the Eridians to recreate it. Neither did the coffee unfortunately. There was still the heroin but that wasn't Grace's forte. He tried to focus on building his lesson plan, but Rocky Jr's visit stuck with him. He couldn't get that cuddling baby alien out of his head. Even though technically, he was the alien in this scenario. He never thought that sentient rocks would look so adorable to him. Besides, it was easier to think about the pebble than what Rocky said. Grace wants sex. He could have died in that moment, ugh. I mean he's not wrong.
Grace was never much a a sexual being. Nerd in high school, nerd in college, nerd in grad school, and then a big stinking loser when he went off the deep end with his paper. If he couldn't get girls before, he alienated a whole scientific community of women after his rant in his waterless organism paper, not that he could blame them now looking back. Besides, he wasn't the kind to stick himself in places uncomfortably. He did science cause that is what he was good at, and when that failed, he did teaching and being with kids cause that is what he was good at. In that Stratt was right, he was a coward too afraid to come out of his comfort zone, it was probably why he never had many relationships, women don't find cowards appealing.
Stratt, ughhh. The exact person he did not want to think of right now. For a moment he was back on Earth, a dark room and damp bed sheets. Soft skin against his own, red-orange hair in his mouth and a gentle moan in his ear. His pulse quickened. He closed the lesson planner and started bashing it against his forehead a few times trying to change the channel of his mind.
Not everything came back after the coma. There were memories that he knew he lost, spans of time that he couldn't remember for the life of him, gone from his existence. He couldn't remember talking to Marissa while he was working on Project Hail Mary. He imagined he would have had to at some point at least call her to tell them he was okay. But he couldn't remember a single conversation with her. Other parts came back in bits and pieces. Like the cafeteria at the compound, his meals there with the various members of Project Hail Mary came back slowly while he was starving on the trip to Erid.
Stratt, the karaoke, what happened afterwards. That was the last of the memories coming back to him. Slowly and in unbearable chunks. And as much as the agony of remembering food while eating bacterial sludge was bad, he could now say he had found a memory he actively tried to leave forgotten.
He opened his eyes and he was back on Erid in the comfort of his biosphere. He wondered what Stratt would think of him now, if she would still call him a coward. He sighed, maybe the heroin isn't a bad idea after all.