Chapter Text
Ryland still has memories missing.
He can’t remember his home address, or what type of apple had been his favorite. Not important facts, obviously, and definitely no longer relevant. But still, it bothers him that there are parts of himself that are missing, even after all the time he’s spent in space recovering from Stratt’s memory loss drug. He’s pretty sure it should’ve worn off completely by now, but he also knows he has no way of knowing if that’s true.
It’s been months, now, since he and Rocky started the journey to Erid. They’ve settled into a routine together, which is comforting, and Ryland is happy to have any sense of familiarity and normality he can get. It distracts him from the fact that they’re in a space ship - one that definitely wasn’t meant to last this long – barreling toward an alien planet with an atmosphere he’s incredibly incompatible with, and that that planet is his only hope of surviving once he gets out of the space ship. Rocky has started making plans for how he can live there, once they finally arrive, but there’s no way for either of them to be sure if he’ll make it that far. Ryland wishes he had a distraction, anything else he could dwell on that would make him forget about his likely impending doom.
A memory to reminisce on would be nice. Even a bad one from when he was a kid.
But Ryland isn’t that lucky.
The problem is that nothing he does seems to trigger any memories. It doesn’t help that most days are exactly the same – Ryland wakes up, and Rocky is there, hovering over him in the area above his bed he’d built specifically for watching him sleep; they chat for a bit, and then he gets up, brushes his teeth, drinks his coffee (supplies for which are quickly dwindling) and eats whatever Armando hands him (well, half of it – he eats the rest for lunch), and then spends the rest of the morning working on projects with Rocky in the lab.
They chatter endlessly at each other while they work, still trying to parse out words and grammar for each other’s languages. By the next day, though, Ryland can’t say what those conversations had actually been about if there was a gun to his head. It isn’t a memory problem; it’s just that they aren’t saying or doing anything significant enough to be worth remembering.
Ryland tries to be grateful. All that matters is that he has someone to talk to, and that someone is his best friend. He basically gets to spend every day with someone he cares about more than anyone else, and he knows that a lot of people would kill to be able to do that.
Barring anything on the ship needing repairs or maintenance, they’ve decided that the afternoons and evenings are for goofing off and hanging out. They watch movies, sometimes, although Rocky doesn’t seem particularly interested in classics of cinema so much as he is in big explosions. Ryland doesn’t mind. It’s something to do, and they usually have a lot of fun, leaning against each other while they watch the screens flash in the Don’t Go Crazy room.
At the end of the day, Ryland drinks some of the coma slurry for dinner, and settles into bed, still talking with Rocky until he eventually falls asleep. Rocky is such a big part of Ryland’s sleep routine that he has a hard time falling asleep without him. Thankfully, that only happens now when Rocky is asleep himself.
So, all his days are the same. And nothing triggers any memories at all. Not even the movies, which particularly bothers Ryland. Ryland has the sense that he’d generally liked movies, although it frustrates him to no end that he can’t remember any context surrounding actually watching them before. He figures he would eventually remember, like, watching The Thing at a sleepover and getting so scared he had to go home, but he doesn’t. That isn’t his memory, just a vague notion he has that that might have happened to someone.
Rocky, it should be noted, loved The Thing. Of course he did.
Ryland doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s really starting to bother him, this lack of new memories. He’d been constantly bombarded with them when he was alone and scrambling to keep himself together on the Hail Mary, but now that he’s relatively safe and comfortable? Nothing. Ryland feels like he’s in serious danger of googling himself to see if an old Instagram profile would show up on the laptop’s seemingly infinite internet archive, and he desperately doesn’t want to do that; he’s afraid it would make him homesick.
Luckily for him, that’s when the dreams start.
The dreams aren’t memories, exactly. They’re mostly vague impressions of experiences he’d had, but thinking about some of them in the morning and talking about them with Rocky makes him recall real memories. Ryland’s immensely relieved he isn’t doomed to remember just the last few years of his life on Earth.
At first, he dreams of inane things, like desperately trying to pick up an unreasonable amount of self-multiplying laundry off the floor of his bedroom, trying to get all of it up before his dad gets home from work. He remembers, when he wakes up, that his dad hadn’t allowed him to let his room get messy, even with the normal clutter of being a kid. It had had to be military tidy; everything in its place, and hospital corners on the bedsheets. He remembers that, once, he’d left his clothes from the day before on the floor near the hamper, and his dad hadn’t allowed him to eat dinner that night. His dad hadn’t spoken to him for the two days after that, either.
Ryland’s chest aches. His dad had loved him, he was sure, but he’d been too strict with him. Ryland isn’t sure if he likes remembering his dad, but he still desperately clings to any scrap of memory he can find. Ryland knows, from the content of some other memories he’s already regained, that his dad must have died a long time ago.
He tells Rocky about all of it: the dream, the memory of being punished, and how it made him feel. Rocky listens to him, and offers him sympathy, although Ryland knows he doesn’t have any experience with dreams or regaining memories. He knows what’s it like to feel alone, though, and his soothing words are enough to make Ryland feel better.
The next memory is a happier one. He’d dreamed he was in a waterpark that looked like it came from some fantasy movie, flying down the impossibly long slides and swimming underwater without holding his breath. When he wakes up, he remembers going to the local waterpark with his friends as a teenager, daring each other to go on the tallest slide and shyly glancing at the girls in their swimsuits. He tells Rocky about that one, too, and pulls up a waterpark scene that night in the Don’t Go Crazy room to show him what he’s talking about.
“Scary,” Rocky says, shrinking down into a corner of his ball. “Grace get in tube full of water as child? How not drown, question?
“It’s not full of water,” he replies, switching the screen to a tranquil river video. “There’s water flowing along the bottom. It just helps you slide down faster. There’s less friction that way.”
“Oh,” Rocky says, flatly. “Yes, fluid does reduce friction. Is just science.” He sounds almost disappointed that humans don’t regularly try to drown themselves in tubes as a fun summer activity.
“Anyway,” Ryland says, a little self-conscious, “I just thought you might want to know a little more about Earth culture. We can talk about something else. We can compare Earth and Erid geology maybe, or –”
Rocky abruptly barrels toward him, crashing into his left leg and making him wince. “Apology, apology!” he says, and Ryland isn’t sure if it’s for the bump or for his attitude. “I want to know about all Earth activity that’s important to Grace. Tell Rocky everything. Science-related or boring water sports. Does not matter, statement.”
Ryland makes a mental note to let Rocky continue to think that “water sports” only has one definition for the rest of all time. He doesn’t think it’ll ever come up, but Rocky does have access to one of the laptops, so he has to be careful. Maybe he should put some parental controls on the search function, just in case.
Ryland shakes his head to clear it of the weird path his thoughts had gone down. It was late, and he was tired; that’s why he was starting to make odd connections he had no business making around Rocky.
“Thanks, bud,” he says, trying not to yawn when he speaks. Rocky says it makes his face look weird. “Maybe we should just call it a night. I’ve kind of had enough of looking at big bodies of water I won’t ever get to be in again.” Ryland had meant to keep that last part inside his head, but he found himself blurting out his inner thoughts to Rocky more and more as they spent time together in the ship. He actually thought, sometimes, that it would be better if Rocky could just read his thoughts; then they wouldn’t have to waste time trying to define new words for the translator.
Yep. That was the only reason he wanted that.
Rocky agrees, reminding him how dumb he gets when he’s tired. He also tells Ryland his hair looks stupid; he’d flattened it on one side by dozing against Rocky’s ball while they watched Star Trek earlier.
Ryland runs a hand through his hair, trying half-heartedly to fix it. He must be exhausted; that’s the only thing that would explain why he feels so giddy in response to Rocky’s teasing. He grins like the idiot he is all the way down to the bedroom.
Teeth brushed and face washed, Ryland climbs into bed, Rocky settling above him in his enclosure. They talk about everything and nothing until Ryland is almost asleep, when Rocky says, into the quiet, “Rocky will build Grace ♪ ♫ on Erid, if Grace wants.” He sounds… hesitant, or something.
“Need a word, bud. We haven’t talked about that one yet,” Ryland mumbles into his pillow, half asleep.
“Is big tank, full of water. Is for relaxing. Rocky saw in video of water park. You said you used to spend hours in one on Earth when it was too hot.”
“Oh,” Ryland says. A pool. Rocky wants to build him a pool. He tells him as much, and makes a mental note to add the word in his translation software later. Privately, he thinks he may not even make it long enough to see the boiling sulfuric oceans of Erid. But on the off chance he does, a pool would be lovely.
As long as it’s not boiling.
That night, the dreams are different. Wildly different.
He can’t make out any details, but he knows he wants something, and he wants it bad. He’s in his bedroom, maybe, in his apartment on Earth, or maybe he’s on the Hail Mary in the dorm. It doesn’t matter, really, but he’s not alone. There’s someone there with him, near the bed, close but out of reach. He doesn’t know who it is; they seem familiar to him, but he can’t make out any details. He feels… hot. No, not hot. Aching. Empty. It’s burning him up inside, this desperate want, and he needs to do something about it but he can’t figure out what. In his dream, he grabs frantically for anything he can reach, hoping for some relief. Finally, he can feel the person in the room with him; yes, they’re real, he can touch them, and then he’s sliding closer and inside and –
“Grace! Grace! Are you having a bad dream, question?”
Ugh. What? Who’s talking to him right now?
“Huh? Rock –” he says, abruptly pushing his upper body up off the bed in his confusion. “M’fine. Wha’happen?”
“Grace’s heart rate rapid. Breathing fast and uneven too. Body swelling in genital region. Grace sick, question?”
Well. He’s certainly awake now.
“No, Rock, I’m fine. Promise.” He settles back down on the bed, trying not to move his hips too much. The embarrassment hasn’t fully sunk in yet, but he knows it will. He almost just got off while his best friend watched, and he didn’t even know it was happening. Neither of them did. Rocky thinks he might be sick, for cripes sakes.
“Oh. Okay.” Rocky sounds disappointed again. If Ryland didn’t know any better, he’d think Rocky was just waiting for a situation where he needed to swoop in and save him. Again. “Is normal human behavior, question?”
“Um,” Ryland starts. Where to begin with that one. He decides it’s probably best to be factual, like he’s teaching the sex ed class at school. “Yes. I was just having a… nice dream, and my body responded. It’s a… natural biological process.” Ryland makes the conscious decision to not tell Rocky what it’s called. “It’s related to reproduction, sort of. It mostly happens to humans that are much younger than me, though.” Wait, how old is he, now? Ryland decides it doesn’t really matter.
“Oh,” Rocky says again. “Understand. Is biological process finished now, question?”
Even through the filter of the computer voice, Ryland can pick up on Rocky's devious tone. He knows the answer to his question. Ryland had gone over basic human reproductive biology with him on like, day 25 of their relationship. Friendship? Whatever. And Rocky never forgets anything, so of course he knows he wasn’t “finished.” He can tell Ryland is embarrassed, and he’s trying to make it worse, for some reason.
Well, it’s working. Despite his best efforts to remain neutral, Ryland is pretty sure he’s blushing down to his chest.
“Yes and no,” he finally answers, trying to ignore that despite everything that’s happened since he woke up, he’s still very hard in his underwear. He rubs at his face, trying to make the blush go away. “I’m… going back to sleep.”
“Okay,” Rocky says. “Sweet dreams.”
That little… fudging… freak. Darn him to heck.
Ryland doesn’t sleep anymore, but he pretends to. Eventually, his hard-on finally goes away after he makes a point to think about dying in some sort of airlock accident for twenty minutes straight. It hadn’t even been a particularly good dream; it was basically just… orifices in the void. Nothing specific he could point at and say yes, I like that. But he’d gained back a little knowledge about himself from it. He liked sex, or at least the idea of it. He didn’t think he was a virgin; he was pretty old, and he went to college and had at least one girlfriend. Not that he could remember her face, or really anything about her. He didn’t even think that was supposed to be her in the dream.
Was it a her? He’d thought so when he first woke up, but he couldn’t really be sure. Did he care if it wasn’t? That question was easy to answer: nope. No, he didn’t. It was an instinctual answer, and he was grateful for a little more insight into his own brain. It occurs to him, then, that he could try asking himself some more questions and see what his gut answers were. It would probably be easier if someone else could ask him questions, but the only other person around was Rocky, and he was kind of trying to avoid talking to him for a bit. At least until seven or eight hours had passed, and he could pretend he’d just been sleeping the whole time, not avoiding his best friend.
He also hoped that by then, he could pretend he wasn’t still embarrassed about the whole incident.
Alright. Time to play twenty questions with himself.
What do I like?
Men, women, whatever, his brain replies. Interesting. He’d pretty much gathered that, but getting the same results twice from different tests was just good scientific practice. It meant he had a reliable answer.
Next question: Am I a virgin?
NO!
Huh. He didn’t know the voice in his head could be loud like that.
Here goes nothing: How many times have I had sex?
Silence. No answer is forthcoming. Well, no data is also data, in a sense.
Trying again: How many people have I had sex with?
More silence. Less helpful this time.
Ryland decides to swing for the fences with his next question: Am I the kind of person who would be okay with getting off when I know my alien best friend can hear everything?
Probably, his brain replies.
Aw, crap.
They don’t talk about it the next day.
In fact, Ryland is a bit suspicious that Rocky doesn’t bring it up at all, but he’s not about to say something stupid like “so, about last night…” or “When do you plan on going to sleep again? Was it soon? Very soon? Now, maybe?”
Instead, Ryland just barely manages to keep his trap shut until bedtime. Rocky still hasn’t brought it up. “Good night,” Rocky says, as neutrally as he ever says it. He does not add “sweet dreams” this time, and Ryland quietly seethes a bit. Yesterday, Rocky was all teasing and saccharine, but absolutely nothing today? What the fudge happened to his best friend? Did he get a personality transplant overnight?
Ryland knows, logically, that it’s best to just let it go. Soon enough, Rocky will go to sleep himself, and Ryland will be able to sneak off to some remote corner of the ship to experiment with his newfound interest in jerking off. (Maybe in the pilot’s seat, if he’s feeling particularly adventurous.) Until then, he just has to wait, and deal with the fact that Rocky is being weird by not acting like anything is weird.
Hmm. Does Rocky think it’s weird? He barely has any context for wet dreams or hard-ons or anything relating to those things. Maybe he just doesn’t know what to say.
Eventually, Ryland manages to fall asleep. His last thoughts are of Rocky, tinkering quietly with one of his art projects above his head. Ryland knows it’s a gift for him, and he can’t wait to see what Rocky’s made for him.
Rocky always makes him the best gifts.