Chapter Text
Rocky has kept a ten-foot distance between them for the entire evening, and Grace isn’t arguing about it.
It’s a safety thing, in theory. Rocky’s stress-testing his new suit, and is exercising the due caution that comes with less-than-100% certainty in his atmospheric seal. But while Grace doesn’t particularly want to get burned (again) should a leak result in a highly-pressurized plume of superheated gas, he’s less worried about Rocky’s engineering failing – the suit’s seals have held for days now, without a single issue, and also it’s Rocky – and more worried about something else.
Which is that every time Rocky has carried the suit back out of the airlock after another adjustment, it arrives smelling faintly, unmistakably, of cat pee.
Some outgassing byproduct, Grace is pretty sure, though he hasn't worked up the nerve to mention it. And he should be grateful his olfactory receptors fire at all, he had absolutely torched his nasal epithelium on Rocky's atmosphere and twenty-nine atmospheres of superheated ammonia could very well have burnt the cilia right out of him – but the receptors are firing, and they are telling Grace that his best friend smells like cat pee.
So Grace is accepting the distance with uncharacteristic equanimity.
On the laptop screen – and on Rocky’s screen, as well – a mindless crime procedural is running through the plot beats. It’s an unrealistic guilty pleasure. Olivia Benson is casing a neighborhood; Grace is mostly not paying attention in favor of playing catch with his bean bag.
A low vibration is humming from Rocky, loafing at the far end of the dormitory with claws folded under his carapace, rumbling pleasantly through the floor and up the bed frame. He has been humming like this more often lately, he must do it when he’s feeling relaxed; Grace likes the feel of it and shifts his weight to feel it better.
It’s a good night.
The episode’s victim is a housewife. Grace knows the plot structure by heart – cold open, crime scene, interviews – and he’s basically letting his brain take a well-deserved break when Rocky’s carapace shifts forward, the hum stuttering and then cutting out.
Grace looks over to check on him.
The bean bag almost lands on his face. Almost. Smooth catch.
“Other man on screen,” Rocky’s already got a limb un-loafed for the interrogative stamps, “Forced woman into reproduction, question?”
“Yeah,” Grace starts to answer, but then he immediately shuts his mouth.
Oh shoot.
Wow. He’s an idiot.
Grace knows how Eridian reproduction works. And despite this, he had chosen to watch Law & Order SVU. A show whose entire premise requires an understanding of sexual assault to function, and then shared it with a person whose species has little if any framework to conceive of sexual assault. Not, at least, anything like a human would.
“Yes,” he tries again. “That’s – yeah, that’s the crime. A lot of people consider it the worst crime, so. That’s what the show is about, getting justice for it.”
Rocky makes a low considering noise. “No Eridian word.” He taps the floor with his free limb, a few times. Processing.
Rocky tends to dramatics on topics that disgust or horrify him, but he’s pondering this one without displaying any of the usual horror or disgust theatrics Rocky normally would when exposed to the darker parts of human nature.
But it makes sense. Eridians reproduce more like fish than any other taxonomic class on Earth, more or less, laying eggs in a controlled environment; the entire architecture of sexual assault doesn’t have a meaningly correlary on a body plan where the most intimate act of reproduction, as far as Grace understands, doesn’t even need both parties present at the same time. The entire mechanical basis for forced sex simply isn’t there, not when no part of the process requires one body to access another.
On screen, Olivia Benson is interviewing the victim. Grace stares past it. What could sexual assault even look like, for an Eridian? Physical assault would be possible, but devoid of sexual intent. Would it be someone running off with an egg? Putting their eggs to fuse where they aren’t welcome?
It unsettles Grace to watch Rocky confront this uglier facet of humanity so quietly. Rocky has been quiet long enough, actually, that Grace glances back in his direction. Rocky’s clicking the claws of two limbs, a habit Grace has noticed when Rocky is concentrating or working through a problem.
“No understand,” he says finally. “Is bad crime, yes. Explain why is worst crime.”
Grace pauses the show, grimacing as he sits all the way up from his slouch and straightens his glasses to sit properly on the bridge of his nose. This one’s going to be a doozy, he can already tell.
“The word is,” and this is already feeling awkward and he hasn’t even started yet, “Rape. Or sexual assault, but that can mean a few different things. We’re talking about rape specifically.” He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, and the gesture turns into rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “And just a heads up, this is shaping up to be a really intense and uncomfortable conversation for me.”
Rocky’s vents are shifting around, and Grace still doesn’t know all what that piece of body language means. Or if it means anything. “Curious. But. Can stop, if not important.”
“No, no. It kind of is.”
And it is, he really does believe that. It’s just that Grace is a molecular biologist who’d specialized early, and subsequently blown through his Ethics in Biology credit with the blithe confidence of someone who knew he’d never need it. No one convenes a review board over the ethical treatment of an amoeba. Grace has, in fact, spent months actively tormenting an amoeba in the Hail Mary’s lab and sleeps perfectly fine, thank you. And even after all his teacher’s training on mandatory reporting and how to handle students in need, it’s not something he’s ever worried about or dealt with personally – he’s a tall guy, not exactly a target demographic – and the point is that he is feeling really, really underequipped for this conversation.
“Ok. So.” He exhales. “So there’s only really two candidates for the Worst Crime. Meaning, the thing one human can do to another that’s the most wrong. Those are murder, and rape.”
“Eridians know murder.”
“Yep. Right. But murder is – murder can be justified, sometimes. Like if someone is trying to kill you, and you kill them first instead, most humans would say that’s acceptable. Like, it’s acceptable to kill in self-defense or in defense of others.” Grace watches Rocky processing this, watches his claws fold and unfold. “But rape is never justified. There’s no context where it’s ok. It’s – it’s purely cruel. It exists only to hurt someone, to – to impose power over them.”
“Many ways to impose power,” Rocky replies. “Why is worst, question?”
“You don’t – ok.” Grace turns to face Rocky fully. “You’ve got a shell. A carapace. You’re armored. Human skin is – it’s incredibly sensitive, Rocks. I can feel the air moving. I can feel the weight of a human hair. Touch can be really intense for us. Physical intimacy is one of the most vulnerable things a human can do, and sex – reproduction – is the most intimate version of that. The – the act itself, the mechanics of it, it requires access to the most vulnerable and taboo parts of a person’s body.”
Grace feels his shoulders drawing up the longer he talks.
This is excruciating. He’d never even had to give his kids The Talk before, ok; they’d always given that to a female teacher. This is ten times worse, at least.
“So it’s basically taking the most personal, vulnerable act that most humans ever experience and it – someone takes that from you, they go inside the boundaries of your body without permission. They’ve made you vulnerable in the worst way. It’s the most fundamental personal violation we’ve got.”
Rocky is continuing to process – but in those last few sentences he finally stops and goes still. And he very slowly wilts, carapace drooping a bit. “Oh,” he says. His voice has dropped. “Eridian has equivalent. Word is, ♩♫♪♬.”
Grace blinks. “But you said you didn’t have a word for – for forcing someone into reproduction?”
“No. Is different, but equivalent violation.” He pauses, carapace even drawing lower to the ground. “Means, to force to sleep.”
Grace takes a moment to stare at Rocky, who for the first time in this conversation looks as uncomfortable as Grace is.
…That’s kind of a heavy concept to take in.
Ok. Ok, so, he’d known that Eridians are pretty intense about the sleep thing, already. And it makes sense: an Eridian asleep is an Eridian defenseless, total paralysis, physical and mental lockdown, an uninterruptible loss of consciousness. The culture that Grace is still learning about increasingly seems structured around that vulnerability, generations upon generations of messy societal norms and constructs devoted to ensuring a safe and watchful eye, rituals of trust and guardianship so deeply embedded they might as well be biological.
Then again, Grace frowns, one maybe could say the same about Earth and the threat of sexual violence. Gendered norms, rituals of guardianship, thousands of years of legal codes and cultural rituals all built unwieldily around the same problem: weaker bodies are vulnerable, and people will exploit that – and oh wow, that really is kind of a cultural parallel –
Not the point. The point is that Grace was put into a medically induced coma against his will, loaded up with amnesia drugs, and kept unconscious until the mission was too far along to turn back. They made sure he didn’t wake up until it was well too late to turn the ship around, and didn’t remember until it was too late to do anything about it but seethe.
Grace wasn’t sure if it made it better or worse that he kinda deserved it. Anyone who knew that he’d run for the fences at the idea of dying for 7 billion people would agree that what came after was necessary, and it’s stupid to resent that.
The point is that all of this, in Eridian terms –
The point is that Rocky is a good person, and he really likes Grace. Grace really likes Rocky too, obviously, but Rocky’s been particularly fussy about Grace lately, harping over Grace’s rest cycle and humming at him to get him to sleep at night.
The point is that if Rocky ever finds out, he is absolutely going to freak out.
Grace has spent the last several months looking down the barrel of a pretty miserable fact: Rocky’s friendship is the only good thing in Grace’s life, right now.
He watches Rocky closely as he readjusts into his little cat loaf. Grace likes to watch him. Rocky is amazing. He’s a genius, he fixes everything he touches, he calls Grace stupid when he doesn’t sleep and watches as Grace tries futilely to do it, and he has become the single most meaningful relationship Grace has ever had. Earth is unreachably behind him, the nearest humans are lightyears away, and all he has left is a five-limbed rock alien that he’d literally die for, and might, calories depending.
Not that he’d really had anyone meaningful back on Earth. Stratt comes to mind. No family, not even a dog. But he’d had his students. And he’d had friends, or at least he’d thought. And now they’re all gone or taken or were never really his friends to begin with – Stratt, again, comes to mind – and that’s more than a little pathetic.
So Rocky’s it, and Rocky’s going to continue to be it for the foreseeable future, and the feeling isn’t even mutual because the second they get to Erid, Grace will be in a firm second place to Rocky’s beloved mate Adrian (who, admittedly, sounds incredibly smart and cool). And that thought makes Grace feel like one of his middle schoolers sulking because they aren’t their best friend’s best friend.
Rocky does think highly of Grace. He’s somehow led Rocky to believe that Grace is nearly as impressive as he is. Grace doesn’t know how he managed it, and doesn’t really feel like finding out what happens if that little misconception manages to correct itself. Would Rocky be more horrified that Grace’s species had managed to commit Erid’s most heinous crime, without even having a word for it? Or more disappointed that it was so necessary to do to Grace?
Grace pulls down his glasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose.
Good thing he’d never need to find out, since he was never going to tell Rocky.
Rocky doesn’t need to know any of it.
Rocky is somewhat curling into a ball now, and it’s making Grace feel some kind of way because Rocky doesn’t deserve to feel bad about anything. Grace puts his glasses back on and turns back towards the laptop. “Wanna keep watching?”
Rocky’s carapace lifts up – not all the way but better than before. “Yes. Want to see if Olivia Benson catches the bad man.”
“Olivia Benson always catches the bad man, Rocks. That’s the whole point.”
“Then why watch, question?”
“It’s a fantasy. It’s nice to imagine the system working, and bad people getting punished for hurting other people. It doesn’t work like this in real life.”
Grace unpauses the show. Rocky’s carapace lifts incrementally higher – back to his normal posture, or close enough to it – and his extremely pleasant hum resumes, settles into something slower, almost melodic, a low tonal pattern threading underneath the show’s audio.
On screen, Detective Stabler is slamming his hands dramatically on the interrogation table, and Rocky lets out a high pitched bobbing chitter of amusement.
“Angry man is effective, question?”
“Sometimes? Depends.”
“Hmm.” A considering whistle. “Angry man should try being smarter, instead.”
Grace huffs. “Not everyone can be smart as you, Rocks.”
“Yes. Is unfortunate for them,” Rocky says, which is either bone-dry humor or a total lack of irony, and it being Rocky there’s no real reliable way to tell the difference. At least not to Grace, even after over a year of each other’s exclusive company.
It’s charming either way, and Grace grins at the screen. Rocky can be so arrogant without even trying and he’s absolutely earned it, even if his suit does smell like cat pee, and Grace wouldn’t trade this – the easy conversation, the shorthand they’ve built between two very different species alone in the middle of interstellar space – for anything. This is worth protecting.
And soon, Olivia Benson is closing the case. Justice, in forty-two minutes. Grace stretches out his arms and torso and lets out a long yawn, and the vibration in Rocky’s carapace stutters for a moment before recommencing – low and steady, threading through the bedframe and up Grace’s spine, and it’s always way easier to go to sleep when Rocky is doing his thing like that.
A good night.
“Grace should sleep soon,” says Rocky from across the room. “Grace watch too much angry man, brain does not rest.”
“One more episode,” Grace whines, like he actually has to listen to Rocky when he’s being a bossy nag. He usually does, but it’s the principle of the thing.
“One,” Rocky hisses reluctantly, “Then sleep, I watch.”
Grace has a good friend, a brilliant one even, and Grace is not going to jeopardize that by volunteering information that would only serve to upset Rocky and accomplish nothing.
Besides – he glances over at Rocky, which is now deeply invested in the new episode’s cold open – this is something Grace has control over. Rocky can’t find it out from any source other than Grace, there’s no existing records of it anywhere, Grace had looked. The information exists in only one place on the ship, and that is in Grace’s head, and that’s where it is going to stay. It’s just the two of them, the stars, and a backlog of terrible Earth television for Grace to wallow in.
The hum deepens and Grace closes his eyes.
The lab is quiet, Grace is pipetting Taumoeba samples, and he is thinking about Rocky.
The night before, Rocky had cut him off after one more episode as promised. Grace had protested – pro forma, if he’s being honest – yet Rocky still herded Grace to his nightly ablutions. Then Grace had to stand there for a frankly unreasonable amount of time, toothbrush in mouth, while Rocky used the new suit’s mobility to adjust Grace’s blankets and pillows, fluffing and adjusting until the configuration met some internal standard Grace could not identify and did not ask about. Grace watched him from under a half closed eye, amused and too tired to protest, and when Rocky was fully satisfied with whatever he’d been working toward he’d stepped back and jazz-handsed and it was –
– it had not been adorable, Rocky is a grown adult alien with a career, he probably wouldn’t like being called that.
Rocky had scuttled back into his tunnels to watch, and Grace had crawled into bed, and to be fair, he’d gotten extremely comfortable and slept really well.
Even if the pillows had smelled faintly of ammonia, after Rocky got his mitts on them.
Grace sets a pipette back in the holder and stretches, rolling out the stiffness in his shoulders and then stopping his glasses from falling off his face. The day’s work is slow and a bit tedious, and he’s reaching over for the next sample tray when there’s a distinct tokka-tokka-tokka sound coming in from the catwalk.
Rocky’s not in his ball, he’s in his cat pee suit – and ok, the suit is incredibly cool and Grace absolutely can not keep calling it that. He’s going to wind up saying it out loud on accident.
“Suit is good,” Rocky announces, turning in place as if to model, limbs striking the floor panels with more tok-tok-tok noises. “No issues from yesterday. Small adjustments needed. But functional. Will continue to monitor, but is –” He searches. “Enough done.”
“Rocks! That’s fantastic!” Grace throws a celebratory jazz hands at him, grinning. “You look amazing! It’s really stable now? Fully functional? I can give you ship systems access, now that you can actually interface with Mary.”
Rocky jazz hands an affirmative back.
“And!” Grace strips off his lab gloves gleefully. “You know what else that suit can be used for?”
“Many things,” Rocky answers, coyly turning in a circle. “What thing Grace need, question?”
“It’s safe for me to touch, right?” Grace takes a knee and holds his arms out. “How about a hug for your best friend in the whole wide universe? You know I’m a sucker for hugs.”
So Rocky had built the suit for a future in which Grace was dead, or close to it, and Rocky had to fly the Hail Mary alone. They’d had a nice, long conversation about what prolonged calorie deficits can do to a human. Grace had learned that Eridians apparently don’t have a self-cannibalizing starvation mode; they just sleep more until they die, relatively quickly. Rocky had been perturbed for days before deciding the project was worth dipping into his dwindling xenonite stores.
That was months ago. The suit isn’t for the resident touch-starved human to get an oxytocin hit, it’s not what the suit is designed for.
Doesn’t mean Grace hasn’t been looking forward to this since the design phase.
Humiliatingly, though, Rocky does not skip merrily into the circle of Grace’s arms. When asked for a hug from the only guy in actual lightyears, Rocky shuffles his limbs around like an anxious horse sidling away from a rodent. This goes on for a few seconds before Rocky stances up a bit broader, planting his limbs a bit akimbo as though in a brace. It’s very deliberate looking.
Grace’s arms drop, slowly.
“That,” Rocky says, “is conversation Rocky needs with Grace.”