Work Text:
It starts, as most things in my life have started, with a paper I wrote.
Actually, "write" is a strong word for what I’m currently doing, which is spinning around in my bolted-down lab chair while my half-typed paper stares me down, bored out of my mind.
It’s not done yet, but the idea is for it to be a first-of-its kind (at least, for humans), broad-strokes introduction to Eridian biology. It’s been a while since my studies have gone larger than the cell level, and I did forget most of my academic career (except the worst bits) thanks to the fun chemical soup they pumped me with before shooting me up here. But, I’ve got an entire Earth’s worth of academia in my laptop, access to an Eridian with a basic understanding of how his body works, and about four uninterrupted years of travel time. Hey, just enough time to finish up another undergrad!
I don’t like dwelling on the whole time situation for me and Rocky’s extended road trip here, or I really start to lose it. So back to research it is.
“Rocky! Are you busy right now?”
Rocky makes a sound I’ve come to know as vague annoyance and frustration. With two claws, he makes modifications to version three of his EVA suit. Version two, which he’s wearing now, is body-fitted and made of thinner, more resonant xenonite. Version three is supposed to be more flexible so Rocky can, and I quote: “Give better human hugs to Grace.” It’s also supposed to have tool mounts and light sensors built in, so that Rocky doesn’t have to point his crystal gun at me all the time.
With another two claws, he punches holes into a soft, thin metal sheet using a special machine that looks like a cross between a typewriter and a keyboard. From what I understand, this is a fairly universal and efficient method of Eridian writing.
While I’ve been taking a deep dive into his biology, Rocky’s been documenting humanity’s most interesting technological advancements. He alternates between referencing the laptop I gave him and questioning me directly. We’re sticking to our lanes, him and I. We were even thinking of swapping projects and trying to transcribe our work into each other’s language if we have time.
If. Funny word. We have approximately 3 years, 4 months, and 23 days left in our journey. Plus a little extra for me. Once we get to Erid, Rocky’s gonna have plenty to do, but I’ll mostly be waiting for the Eridian scientist to figure out if and how they’re going to create all of the human vitamins from scratch. In fact, the problem won’t even be time; it’ll be if I’m physically well enough to read and translate Eridian to English-
Research. I’m supposed to be researching.
“I’m assuming that’s a no, then?” I say.
“Rocky always busy.” He uses a pen-shaped tool to melt a very delicate line of metal between two small pentagons of xenonite while tapping away a little symphony on his key-writer. I’m once again impressed by how easily Eridians can multitask. “Busy figuring out modifications needed for later iterations of EVA suit, busy cataloging maintenance of Hail Mary, busy planning how Grace survive on Erid-”
“You guys were apex carnivores, right? How did you guys hunt?”
Right now, I’m on the “eating” part of my research. Digestion, defecation, energy distribution, all that fun stuff. Unlike Rocky, I don’t have a fancy Eridian thinking-machine that can tell me about this topic, so any gaps in my knowledge have to be filled in by Rocky himself.
He, of course, is thrilled by this development.
“If Rocky answers, will Grace let Rocky pick movie tonight?”
“No way! I let you pick for all of last month. We're finishing Jurassic Park, and that's that!
Rocky hums a flat, unamused note before answering me anyway.
“Rocky does not know much about early Eridian hunting. Today, animals kept in groups and taken care of by Eridians to produce lots of food, which is shared and distributed among clusters.”
“Farm. You farm animals.”
Rocky makes an affirmative trill. At the same time, he bobs his carapace, mimicking my habit of nodding. I, on the other hand, have already gotten into the habit of whistling and doing jazz hands whenever I am excited.
“Word is ♫♫ ♩♫. Before, animals needed to be found, hunted, and killed. Mostly small land animals, like ♫ ♩♫ and ♩♩-♩. But sometimes also air and water animals. Depended on where Eridian lived. Eridian plural were… need more word. To sit and wait for animal to come close before killing.”
“Ambush predator. You guys were ambush predators.” I grin, leg bouncing with energy. Jazz hands. “That’s so cool.”
Rocky waves me off easily. “Grace obsessed with Eridian eating. Disgust disgust. Grace weirdo freak pervert.”
I laugh, mostly from shock. “I don’t think that last one means what you think it does. Where in the world did you hear it?”
Rocky brandishes his metal-pen at me. “Human thinking machine. And Rocky understand, Rocky is adult Eridian. Grace is pervert freak who only thinks about food.”
“Right.” I wonder, briefly, if I should restrict Rocky’s internet access, and quickly decide against it. I want to know all about his species, he should know all about mine. The good, bad, and weird.
I drift back to my original train of thought. Ambush predator. Clips of nature documentaries flash through my mind. I think of trapdoor spiders. These sneaky little guys create inconspicuous carpets of dirt to hide under, which they surround with ropey webs radiating outwards from their hiding spot. When prey comes by, the webs act as tripwires, alerting the spider via vibrations so they can dash out of their hide and pounce.
I imagine Rocky peeking out from underneath a xenonite rug, pouncing onto a little river pebble with legs. It’s hilarious. It’s also probably extremely inaccurate. Erid probably has as richly diverse an ecosystem as Earth, with many different types of outer membranes. For all I know, ♫ ♩♫ and ♩♩-♩ could have as squishy a carapace as me. I’ll have to ask Rocky about the specifics later.
Rocky’s been continuing while I was distracted. “Eridian hunt alone. When prey come close, we-”
“No no, wait.” I hold up my hands, and his notes are cut short. “Don’t tell me. Show me.”
“What?”
“Eridian hunting strategies,” I say. “Is it possible to set that up here? I know it's a bit cramped, but surely we can do an approximation?”
“Grace want Rocky to hunt it?”
“Yeah! It’ll be fun.” I seal the deal with- “It’ll be enrichment.”
"Enrichment" is a word worth its weight in gold here. It’s an excuse me and Rocky use all the time to do weird things and not have to explain why to the other in detail. I want to have a karaoke night with Rocky where we sing the entirety of Queen’s discography? Enrichment. Rocky is curious how long humans can run for before tiring? Who needs Wikipedia? Let’s put me on a stopwatch and run laps around the Hail Mary until I physically collapse.
Rocky wants me to lean very close to the xenonite wall that makes up his enclosure and sing a song — any human song is fine, thank you Grace — right before he falls asleep for very normal reasons that are completely unrelated to him spending 46 years alone in space?
That one might not be enrichment, no matter how much Rocky tries to insist that's all it is.
“Rocky has never done this before,” he warns me. “No need in present culture. Eridian farming very advanc-ing.”
He’s still figuring out the whole suffix thing. He’s determined to learn my backwards English grammar. As punishment, though, he's forcing me to develop perfect pitch and understand the grammar of his language. It’s kind of like learning music theory, if music theory was taught in base six and also meant to be played with five vocal systems at once.
“I’m sure you know enough to give a decent demonstration, though, right? Come on, please?” I throw myself on top of the second-generation EVA suit he’s wearing, and — like a grumpy toddler — start slapping it with my palms. “Please please please please-”
Rocky sputters with annoyance, as he usually does when forced to confront my squishy, soggy body. He rocks back and forth, trying to shake me off. He exclaims like a boiling tea kettle when my foot knocks over his tiny xenonite panels from their organized pile on the floor.
“Grace!”
If he really wanted to, he could bowl me over with ease. The problem with that is that he’d very likely crush all of his beloved human roommate friend’s bones doing that. So, effectively, he is stuck listening to all my gross organs in vivid detail.
“Pretty please with a cherry on top and sprinkles and taumoeba and-”
“FINE!” Rocky throws three hands up. “Will hunt if Grace stop getting gross human sweat and skin oils on shiny new EVA suit. Rocky will tell Eridians plural how disgusting Grace is. Will shoot Grace back into space and blow up Earth while at it. Gross gross gross.”
I’m already rolling off of him onto the floor, laughing my butt off. "Yes!"
Rocky rearranges his pile of xenonite pentagons and pushes aside his writing tool. He crawls closer to me and settles down by my side.
"Could be fun," he says, mostly to himself. "When Rocky very young, used to play hunting games with other young Eridians. Not real hunting. Evolution instinct, to practice skills. Unnecessary in present. Now is just for fun."
I roll over onto my back and lie with him, staring at the ceiling. The life support system of Mary drones on and on, its pipes and wires and intricate technology hidden above me. Temperature control, atmosphere composition, lighting, all whirring away.
"Us too," I say. "Young humans chase each other around when we're little. It's called tag. We're endurance predators, so we can just run and run and run..."
I smell grass. It smells different these days.
"Fun for humans to run?"
"Yeah. Lots of fun."
We lay there, doing and saying nothing, until my alarm goes off and I have to choke down another portion of rationed coma-slurry taumoeba slop.
~
The hunt begins, officially, the following morning.
I wake up, and Rocky greets me, as normal. I go to the bathroom, I brush my teeth, use the restroom, wash up, try not to look too hard at my general appearance and the growing unkemptness of my hair.
And when I get back to the bedroom, Rocky is gone.
I am expecting this. I’ve been practically vibrating with anticipation since he agreed. I half-remember a short story about something like this from my 9th-grade English class years and years ago. The Most Dangerous Game.
Instinctively, I start walking slower, lower to the ground. For any Earth predator, this would make me smaller and harder to spot. Here, it’s useless, for two reasons: 1) The predator already knows I’m here. 2) He has 360-degree echolocation that would put dolphins to shame.
Okay, Rocky knows I’m here. What else do I do?
I quickly locate a “weapon” to protect myself. The best thing I come up with is a plastic broom from one of the storage closets.
I’m not actually planning to hurt Rocky in any way; the broom has no sharp ends, and the plastic handle has nothing against Eridian xenonite, but I want to at least put up a fair fight, represent my species properly. And what’s more classic human hunter than what is essentially a big stick?
I also run through a mental map of the ship through my head, locating the best routes to run in if I spot Rocky. Eridians don’t have spatial memory in the same way humans do, but Rocky's hearing is good enough to see the entire ship, so we'll be relatively equal there. My main advantage is gonna be my endurance, which I'm hoping to use to outlast any chase scenario Rocky attempts.
Plan in mind, I carefully scan my surroundings as I walk slowly forward to the lab, heart beating in my ears. I wield my soft-bristled broom in front of me, sticking it through the doorway and poking the blind spots around the edge of the entrance before going through it.
Everything seems to be in its rightful place. The beakers and lab glassware are all a cluttered mess next to the taumoeba farms. The big pile of Rocky’s spare scrap metals sits unassumingly next to the mill. The chairs are all bolted down in the right places next to the big central lab table-
I stop.
The scrap metal pile is exactly what it sounds like. Sheets of xenonite, aluminum, and other alloys that Rocky had lying around. We keep them handy for any emergency repairs that might be needed on the way to Erid (and with the luck we’ve had in space so far, we’ll likely need them).
The pile’s been moved recently. Did Rocky craft a weapon of some kind?
I frown. That doesn’t sound right. I have no doubts that Rocky can make practically anything, including some sort of Eridian spear, but that wouldn’t be true to the exercise. I doubt very early Eridians were already using complex tools and weaponry. The few times I’ve seen Rocky eat, he’s always used his claws to tear apart his food into digestible pieces.
My knuckles whiten on the handle of the broom. I prepare to head into the next hallway-
The shine of metal catches my eye again. Almost like it moved.
That’s it. I’m going insane in space, like all the sci-fi movies warned me I would.
And then I think of animals again. Mantises that look like flowers, snakes with patterns like fallen leaves, snow leopards crouched and near-invisible against a mountain landscape.
My jaw drops as Rocky rises slowly, letting me get a good look at his shiny metal disguise. It is completely encompassing. He doesn’t need any opening to see out of, because he can already hear his entire surroundings through the metal sheets. The camouflage is absolutely faultless. No wonder they became the best land predator of their ecology.
And then, in one quick move, he shakes off his armor and lunges at me.
I’m not proud of how loud and high-pitched I scream. Thankfully, in space, no one can hear you scream. Except Rocky.
Within seconds, he has me within his grasp. Any attempts to wriggle away are easily squashed by him caging me in with his five legs.
“The mighty Eridian pounces on his prey,” Rocky declares, in his best David Attenborough impression (We binge-watched a couple of nature documentaries about a week ago. Rocky's favorite earth animal is, of course, the crab.). “His choice in ♫♫ -♩♫ was successful, and fooled the unsuspecting human.”
“Oh yeah? Well, this prey is not going down so easy, buddy!”
I swat him with the broom. He has no face, but I can tell he’s unimpressed with me.
“The mighty Eridian will now tap on the prey’s carapace, echolocating for vulnerable areas to pierce with his claws.”
The little bugger pokes me in the side. Not hard, but just enough that I start giggling and wiggling around.
“No! My fleshy body’s only weakness!”
Normally, I would be more embarrassed about getting into an elaborate tickle fight with my best friend. But I think Rocky and I shot past embarrassment about a solar system ago.
“Admit it,” Rocky demands, poking me in the stomach mercilessly. “Rocky win. Eridians superior hunters.”
“Never.” In a last-ditch attempt, I stick out my tongue and try to lick him.
Rocky instantly recoils, rearing like a five-legged horse. It gives me just enough room to wriggle out from under him.
“DISGUST DISGUST DISGUST-” he screeches, as I scramble to my feet.
“Hah! Who’s the superior hunter now, Rocky?”
I dash for the lab table, intending to scramble around it and fake him out so I can head for the cockpit and lock myself in. But before I can even try, Rocky catches up with me. Man, that guy can move when he wants to.
He pulls me down in a controlled fall, catching me and pushing me to the ground in one solid motion. Despite his compensating for my squishy body, the fall is still hard enough to knock the wind out of me.
This time, he doesn’t give me the chance to offend him with my gross wet human mouth. He turns me over prone onto my stomach, which squirms, suddenly nauseous.
He spreads one claw on the middle of my back, and another grabs my shoulder. I feel out of breath.
“Rocky win. Rocky win hunting game. Admit Rocky win!”
“Um,” I say, my tongue not cooperating.
I see what the problem is. I really don’t like it, but there it is.
I’ve known for a while now that Rocky weighs more than a hundred kilograms. I felt it when I carried him all the way up the ship to his airlock during that mess that was our trip to Adrian. But even then, I was never truly scared of him. It was hard to be intimidated by Rocky, after the first week mark. He was a brilliantly talented engineer who piloted a spacecraft alone for decades, he was shorter than most dogs, and he was my best friend.
Now, I know, with a gnawing certainty, that Rocky isn’t even trying to hold me down right now. He doesn’t need to. He’s just letting his body weight do most of the work for him. I could kick, I could thrash, I could scream, and it would be nothing to him. He could easily ignore my struggling, use his claws to tap along my body, locate that delicate network of veins and nerves in my neck, and just… reach in there and-
“Grace?”
“Y-yeah bud, you won. Good job.” I heave in desperate, hot breaths as cold waves of goosebumps run down my body. This is ridiculous.
Rocky’s in front of me now, not holding me at all, chirping something that I can’t make out. Somehow I still feel his hands on me. They’re between my shoulder blades, wrapped around my wrist, twisting my arm behind my back, pulling tight on my hair.
I sit up, scooting away from him until my back hits something solid. I flinch at the contact, and scoff in annoyance at my own reaction. Rocky’s volume is increasing. I think he’s trying to ask me something. I don’t think I could say a single word to him right now if my life depended on it.
The shame hides underneath my tongue, disgusting and bitter. I don't dare open my mouth.
Instead, I try to be the reasonable scientist that I am, and logic my way out of this, like me and Rocky have done a hundred times before.
Come on, brain, I try to tell myself. You’re not seriously still hung up on this, right? That was ages ago. It’s research time right now. Rocky just gave us an absolutely fascinating demonstration. It seems Eridians evolved to use complex camouflage to mimic their environment’s texture and disguise themselves from their prey. I wonder if this need to create incredibly intricate disguises for blending into their environment contributed to their eventual development of complex material and tool use?
YOU’RE DYING WE’RE DYING HE’S MURDERING US WE’RE GOING TO DIE, my brain helpfully supplies.
Gee. Thanks, brain.
Rocky is really going at it now. He sounds like someone trying to perform a heavy metal guitar riff on a flute. I think I catch “Armando” and “Injured”. I like to think I’m pretty good at understanding Eridian by now, but I’m breathing hard enough that it’s starting to block out every other noise. The world shrinks, breath by terrified breath.
There’s a hand on my wrist. I jerk back and twist out of its grip.
I regret it just a second later.
“Rocky-” I gasp around what would have been my apology; I don’t have the breath for it.
Rocky pulls his claw back from where he tried to grab me. He taps on the ground repeatedly.
“Sorry, sorry,” he warbles in this horrible guilty tone. “Rocky will not do that again. Calm, Grace calm. Grace can wait here. Rocky be back soon, promise promise promise. Grace wait please.”
With that, he scuttles off, as fast as he can.
I reach half-heartedly after him. My chest feels like a wet rag being wrung dry. My stomach feels like it’s digesting itself. I pull the offending hand to my chest and curl against the wall.
At Grover Cleveland, we had to attend a couple of seminars on how to deescalate situations in the classroom. Among those boring slideshows-slash-lectures were tips on how to calm down a student who was experiencing an anxiety and/or a panic attack.
I remember fragments of it now. I count my breathing, carefully. It hitches and bucks against my hold, but eventually, I manage to get it to a consistent four seconds in, four seconds out.
Next, I put my hands out and start feeling around.
“The floor is smooth and cold,” I tell myself.
I sound stupid and very hoarse. I swallow a couple of times to fix one of those problems.
The hallway is dim. The metal plates Rocky had been using as armor are scattered across the floor, abandoned. There's something soft lining the inside, almost like fabric. I assume to muffle sound, so prey doesn't echolocate the Eridian within. There are various banging sounds coming from somewhere, slowly getting louder.
Oh, that’s Rocky.
In one claw, he has a first aid kit. In another, a bunch of pill bottles we had stocked next to Armando. He sets both down roughly before me, and warbles a few notes that definitely sound like curse words as he struggles to open the bottles. He keeps trying to twist them right instead of left.
During the first month or so of our journey, I put together a brief lesson for Rocky on the basics of human health. It seemed a good idea, given that I was going to be facing a decent amount of malnutrition on this trip, and Rocky was an alien with no reference on what a healthy human looked like.
Rocky had been surprisingly invested in the lesson. He was especially interested in first aid, and insisted on practicing everything on me, from putting a Band-Aid on to resetting a dislocated shoulder (Yeouch! We did not do a real-life demo of that one, but I did explain where the shoulder joint was, and what it would look like if it was out of place). I looked like a car crash victim for about a week.
We, unfortunately, did not cover... whatever this is.
“Grace tell Rocky which medicine he needs.” He clicks open the first aid kit. “What Grace need, question? What will fix?”
There’s still a buzzing underneath my skin, but it’s dimmer now. I can think clearly enough to realize that Rocky is freaking out right now, and that it's mostly my fault.
“Rocky, I’m good, buddy. Really-”
“Grace is not fine. Grace’s heart rate went above average for long time, experience hyperventilation, tension in muscles, moved like injured and scared. Stupid lie. Rocky hurt, Rocky will fix. Which medicine?”
He holds up pill bottles in front of me, bandages, even some burn cream.
I shake my head. “Rocky, you didn’t hurt me. I’m fine-”
“Which fucking medicine, Grace?!?”
My eyes widen. I haven’t heard him swear at me like that in a while.
Rocky seems to realize it at the same time as me. Everything he's holding suddenly falls out of his claws as he stills. I can see the air above his vents distort from how hot it is. There’s a growing sound coming from all five of his air bladders. It sounds way too much like crying for comfort.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “Look, Rocky, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. You didn’t hurt me. I’m fine, see- er, hear? Can you listen to me, buddy? Can I show you that I'm okay?”
Rocky hesitates, raising one claw up in the air slowly, before placing it on the ground, a little closer to me.
Painstakingly slow, he inches closer, tapping the ground repeatedly as he approaches me. He finally gets close enough to touch me, and does.
This is a bad sign; Rocky is very disgusted by my gross weird human organs, and physical contact gives him a high-resolution peek at them. I’m pretty sure he only puts up with it because I mentioned one time how important physical contact is for humans, and now he thinks I’ll go insane if I don’t get at least a fist bump every week.
I probably would.
“Grace breathing back to normal speed. Heart rate still elevated. Muscles still tense.” He lets go, and makes a show of brushing off his claw on his xenonite suit. “What happened, question?”
Oh boy.
“Uh, well...”
I suck in a deep breath and let it out again. I adjust my glasses, run my fingers through my hair to get rid of the feeling of hands gripping and tearing out the roots, and I put on my best teacher voice:
“So, you know how the human brain is bad at remembering long formulas and facts?” Rocky makes an affirmative sound. “Well, it’s really good at remembering times and places, especially if they’re attached to some strong memories. Sometimes, after a particular stressful or life-threatening event, humans will have, um… when they see, hear, or experience something similar to the event, they’ll experience stress, as if they’re going through it again. Even if it's been weeks, or months, or years.”
Even if you’ve forgotten. Even if you were someone else entirely.
Rocky seems to consider this, a few thoughtful warbles coming from his vents. I think I’ve successfully convinced him that I’m not dying. Good. I don’t want to talk much more about any of this.
“Understand. Reaction was not symptom of injury, reaction was symptom of stress. Eridian plural have similar symptom.” His body lowers, carapace grazing the floor. “Rocky singular have similar symptom.”
“Oh, Rock-”
He stomps on the ground, emphatically interrupting me. “Not point. Not talking about Rocky right now. Grace experienced symptom of stress. Understandable: We have done stressful things. What did Rocky do to cause stress symptom?”
“Rocky, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, you didn’t hurt me-”
“Did not harm Grace. Understand. What action did Rocky do that was similar to stressful event, question? Need to know to avoid in future.”
I can’t. I can’t do it. If I open my mouth right now, it’s gonna come out. He’ll know. He’ll know me, and he’ll hate me. I’ll die in this ship, starving, losing my mind, knowing he hates me, and I just can't do that.
“… So, you’ve successfully fooled, caught, and killed your prey,” I say, ungracefully. “What happens next?”
Rocky has no eyes, but I swear he is giving me a look right now. It’s not judgmental, it’s just… well, I’m not sure what it is. I don’t know if I want to know.
“After kill prey, bring back home to thrum-group.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Then lay eggs inside.”
“WHAT?”
Rocky makes a high-pitched, ringing sound. It takes me a while to realize he’s laughing.
“Ugh. I should have never shown you Alien.”
“Is good movie. Rocky like alien from movie. Cooler than real-life alien.”
“Hey!”
I laugh. It comes out a little more unsteady than I’d like.
Carefully, Rocky crawls closer again. I hold my breath. I’m not sure why.
He settles carefully around me, making sure not to put too much of his weight on my body. A single leg on my chest, another across my lap, almost like a seat belt.
“Heart rate fast again. Stress symptom, question? Should I stop?”
I realize he’s just going to let me get away with it. With changing the subject.
I look over his carapace, at the mess of first aid supplies he brought me. Now that I’m thinking about it, he probably only grabbed me because he was trying to drag me over to Armando, because Armando would know how to treat me better than he ever would. He watched my lungs expand and contract, faster and faster. He listened to the thunder of my heartbeat get louder. He brought virtually every vaguely medical-related item Mary has on her with him, and ran back to me, as fast as he could.
He probably assumed the worst.
“I-I, uh-” My tongue tastes like sandpaper, and scrapes against my mouth the same. “The- uh. The pressure. You- when you jumped on me, it- I couldn’t- it was hard to breathe, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything, you know? So, I panicked.”
Rocky makes a sound like wind chimes. The nostalgia hits me hard, watering my eyes. I suddenly remember what the breeze felt like on the front porch of the house I grew up in. I remember the mosquitoes, the cicadas, the locusts all singing alongside the glass wind chimes my mother hung up on the porch overhang. I still don’t remember her face. I’m scared I never will.
“Memory was of…” He hesitates. “Of fishing over Adrian? Pressure of Rocky remind Grace of pressure of gravity?”
I blink. Oh yeah, that did happen. Probably made it all the worse, honestly.
I look down at Rocky, who is doing his best impression of an oversized house cat on my lap.
“It’s complicated,” I say, without really thinking about it.
“It is?”
“I mean- Rocky.” I run my fingers through my hair, tent them above my face, and breathe into the darkness of them. “Look, I… It’s, um-”
Rocky exhales a bunch of air out of his vents like a deflating accordion.
“Grace promise it is not dying this very moment?” I think he’s aiming for sarcastic, but his notes end up a little uneven towards the end.
“Yes, I promise.”
“Not promise like before, when Grace made Rocky think that Grace go home, and then later went surprise, Rocky! I am going to starve in space, actually, question?”
I take my hands off my face to brace either side of Rocky’s carapace.
“No, no, I promise. Promise promise promise, Rocky, I’m not dying. This is just what happens to humans under stress. They get a lot of weird symptoms.”
“Okay. Then I will wait for Grace.”
“Wait for what?”
The claw on my chest taps gently, sensing the galloping tubes of my heart. He could easily punch through the soft skin there, stop its beating with as little effort as it takes to flick my finger. But I know that Rocky would never do that. I know it with more certainty than I know myself.
“It’s okay. I can wait for Grace to be ready to talk. When ready, I will listen. We have time.”
The guilt and relief boil in my stomach at the same fever pitch. I lean my head over him until my forehead is resting on the xenonite above his vents. My tears stream down the bridge of my nose and dampen the surface. He says nothing about my gross human fluids.
“Okay. Okay. Thank you.”
Rocky shifts in my grasp, claws tapping away. “Grace? Rocky has favor to ask.”
“Sure. Shoot.” Anything to ease the pit in my stomach, Rock. What can I do for you?
“Can Grace sing to Rocky, question?”
“Oh. Do you need to sleep soon?”
“… No.”
The longer I stay quiet, the more he starts squirming around, almost like he’s nervous. I have a feeling that singing for Eridians, like touch for humans, is one of those things that’s pretty darn important, and yet painfully embarrassing to ask for directly.
Good thing we shot past embarrassing a while ago.
“Yeah bud, I’ll sing to you.”
He trills with relief and leans closer to me, towards my chest and neck, where the sound comes out. It’s not enough to hurt, but it's a lot more weight than he was pressing before, and I can feel my lungs push against him when they expand. It's kind of nice. He's like a very angular weighted blanket.
I clear my throat and begin to sing.
I suck, obviously. Most of my singing experience has been karaoke at bars while drunk out of my mind with some university friends I ended up falling out of touch with. I’m probably hopelessly inadequate compared to a five-bladdered, perfectly pitched Eridian, which is probably what Rocky needs right now.
But he still joins me, adjusting his tone to harmonize with my poor rendition of David Bowie’s Starman.