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In an entirely unforeseen but aptly insufferable maneuver, Ryland Grace’s period decides to make its reemerging debut for the first time aboard the Hail Mary on a Tuesday morning approximately six months into their pilgrimage to Erid.
Crap.
He hasn’t felt that telltale twinge of pain in a long time, but the moment it hits he groans in primal recognition. The deep ache is unmistakable, albeit slightly unmooring with its terrible familiarity, and he has to resist the urge to immediately scramble to the bathroom Scooby-Doo style and stuff his briefs with astronaut toilet paper.
“Oh Jiminy friggin’ Christmas,” Ryland moans aloud, pressing a hand against his abdomen as he hunches over a lab table and thunks his head on the aluminum. “Didn’t think good old Aunt Flo would be coming to town anytime soon, but of course, wonderful—this is just my glamorous so-called life on the final frontier now.”
Over in a xenonite tunnel where he’s been occupied at his workbench, Rocky swivels around in a display of full-body consternation, rapidly clicking to dial in on Grace’s distressed form. “Who is Aunt Flo, question?” he asks with a sharp, wary sound. “And why is Grace shrimping harder than normal?”
“Sorry—weird earthling euphemism,” Grace grunts, squeezing his eyes shut in embarrassment. “Aunt Flo coming to visit just means that your menstrual cycle is starting, hence the play on words with ‘Flo’ and ‘flow.’ AKA, it looks like I’m gonna be bleeding out of my orifice for the next three to five business days.”
If Grace had a period during the three-year coma he was forced into, well—he doesn’t really want to think about it. Whatever happened between his nether bits and Armando during that prolonged nap is, quite frankly, none of his business. But the monthly cycle simply wasn’t there when he woke up and got rolling on a critical mission after coming to grips with reality, and Ryland didn’t have the free time to remember where it’d gone. When you’re busy meeting aliens and saving stars, it’s pretty easy to forget about the finer nuances of hormonal cycles and super fun things like menstruation. Bigger fish to fry and all that jazz. Could you really blame a guy?
“Bleeding!?” Rocky blurts, abruptly pressing up against the xenonite to get a clearer picture of Ryland’s insides. “Grace hurt bad?”
“It’s not urgent or lethal, pal, don’t worry,” Ryland mumbles, finally sitting up straighter to face Rocky. He pulls his glasses off his face and wrinkles his nose, trying to focus on the crotch of his underwear to sense if there’s any sticky wetness there. “Just the standard monthly egg cycle we briefly covered in biology 101 for humans with a functional uterus. Happens to basically half the earthling population from the time they’re 12 to 50, give or take a few years.”
“Grace has never had a menstrual egg cycle any month of astrophage mission before now,” Rocky argues. “Why start now, question? This is abnormal—no good!”
Ryland shrugs and lets his upturned palms go limp against his thighs. “I think I was too stressed to have one before,” he murmurs. “Sometimes the human body does that in times of crisis, like illness or famine. I dunno. Clearly my uterus decided the last several months of our deadly mission was a hard-knock time to try and have kids.”
This gives Rocky significant pause. “But Grace is ready to have hatchlings now…?” he warbles. There’s something in his tone under the translator, something Ryland can’t quite put his finger on, that makes his stomach twist up in a warm, syrupy knot under his ribs. Oh jeez. Better not analyze that too much right now.
“I didn’t—mean it like that, Rock,” Graze gently wheezes. His face is hot and he really needs to go to the bathroom to assess the state of affairs in his briefs. “There’s never a good time to have kids in deep space on a suicide mission, or on a four year trip to Erid with only two years of edible rations. I was just trying to explain that my body was too physically stressed before now to successfully maintain a menstrual cycle.”
“Oh, Rocky understands now,” Rocky says, turning to lay his tools down on the workbench with care. Does he sound vaguely disappointed, or is Grace finally losing his last few vestiges of sanity? And then Rocky comes back to the xenonite barrier and gently raps on the clear material. “Grace come here, please, and press close so Rocky can see a very clear picture of internal organs.”
“You really don’t need to do that, I’ve had hundreds of these cycles before—”
“Grace come anyway, command.” Rocky lightly stomps for emphasis and they stare at each other for a beat that seems to last an eternity, wherein Ryland considers blowing him off and storming away to the dormitory bathroom to hide, and also deeply ponder how his heart felt like it was shocked into a faster rhythm when Rocky told him to come. Right. That’s not weird at all.
“If it’ll get you to lighten up and get off my butt, dude, then sure I guess,” Grace snorts, going over to drape his front against the xenonite tunnel. He suddenly feels hyper-aware of every biological process his body is doing on autopilot without him—breathing, swallowing, heart beating, stomach gurgling, intestines digesting, blood circulating, face burning, uterine lining shedding…all right there on lewd display for his alien roommate to see from a front-row seat.
Rocky clicks agreeably without further remark now that Grace is being compliant and makes a few silent assessments. His inspection is brief but thorough, and then he leans back ever so slightly to signify that he’s finished. “Grace’s uterine muscles are spasming,” he says. “This is normal for monthly egg cycle, question?”
“Uhm, yeah,” Ryland mumbles, pushing a hand back through his hair. “The uterus contracts to push the old blood and tissue lining out when there isn’t a manifested pregnancy.”
“Yes, Rocky can see,” Rocky trills, clicking again and making a soft cooing sound. “Cervix is dilated a few more millimeters than usual to accommodate passage of waste material.”
“Than usual?” Grace sputters, leaping backward from the tunnel. “How often have you been—looking inside me? At that!?”
Rocky stands there, gone quite still in guilt-affirming silence. “Not often,” he says, fidgeting with his claws. “Only…sometimes.”
“That’s a fib if I’ve ever heard one, Rock, so don’t even try it,” Grace says. A delirious sort of laugh bubbles up in his throat for too many overstimulating reasons he doesn’t feel like parsing out at the moment, and in a fit of hot-headed despair he finally allows the scared animal inside his body to flee to the dormitory bathroom.
He can hear Rocky belatedly scuttling after him in the xenonite tunnel, calling out a jumbled mess of vocalizations—and then the Eridian has to come to an abrupt stop by no choice of his own, because one of their instated boundaries on the ship excludes the bathroom from being connected to Rocky’s atmosphere via tunnel. It’s the one place other than the beetle bay where Grace can go sit behind a closed door and be alone.
As soon as he yanks his sweats over his thighs and sits ass-down on the commode, Ryland looks into the crotch of his briefs with his lower lip snared between his teeth and confirms all prior suspicions: he’s passed about two tablespoons of dark red blood into the thin cotton in just the small margin of time between the initial pain he felt and his wayward flight into the water closet. Figures that this encore of a period is gonna be one heck of a doozy.
But the sight of the blood is also bizarrely grounding, and once some of the hysteria is exorcised out of his corporeal form Grace suddenly realizes how silly he’s being. What’s the point in making anything about this into a big deal? It’s just another bodily function Rocky has to bear witness to in a sea of other alien bodily functions Ryland has exposed him to since the day they met. They’ve had weirder conversations before and come out stronger on the other side.
It’s just the particular strange new vulnerability of it all, Grace decides. He wasn’t remotely expecting his menstrual cycle to come back, and certainly not with a hearty vengeance judging by the fisted cramp already setting up camp in his lower belly. Catching a guy off guard and with his pants down—metaphorically and also quite literally, in this instance—is prime recipe material for some social friction. He and Rocky didn’t even really argue about anything, but he’s already prepared to leave the bathroom and apologize for overreacting after he finds something to catch the blood flow.
Ilyukhina, God rest her ingenious soul, had the foresight to pack washable cloth pads instead of disposables before she got sent on their one-way trip to Tau Ceti. Grace found those pretty early on after he woke up from stasis, neatly tucked in a bundle beside her lingerie and underwear in the personal storage bins. He just never expected to need them or much less use them, and therefore never brought the pads out into an immediately accessible place on the ship. They’re packed away again with whatever articles of the engineer’s clothing he couldn’t fit into or use for scrap fabric.
Ryland begrudgingly finishes his business in the washroom, stuffs a wad of toilet paper into his briefs, and yanks his sweats back up before pulling the drawstring tight. He emerges from behind the door with a one-track mind to relocate Ilyukhina’s personal items and is immediately greeted by the woeful sight of Rocky visibly pouting in his overhang tunnel above Grace’s bunk. Admirably, he’s kept up their boundary about the bathroom and hasn’t changed into his more ergonomic xenonite suit to follow more closely.
“Apology for looking at Grace’s cervix too much without informed consent,” he says in a mournful tone. “Did not mean to offend, statement.”
Grace stumbles out of the water closet and then deflates where he stands with a long sigh. “Don’t worry about it, pal,” he says. “We’re living in close quarters and it’s kinda inevitable with your super sonic x-ray vision. I just freaked out for a second because I wasn’t expecting this period stuff to happen, is all. Nothing about that is your fault—so if anybody here owes an apology, it’s probably me.”
“No hard feelings, we consider it a truce,” Rocky says, perking up a little. He watches Grace quickly move over to the personal item storage and undo the bungee cords holding them in place. “What is Grace looking for now, question?”
“I gotta find Ilyukhina’s cloth pads so I stop bleeding through my dang shorts,” Ryland answers, already yanking her bin down and undoing a zipper. “Humans don’t typically just free bleed all over the place because it makes a mess, so we have to collect the blood with sanitary products and dispose of it later. Ilyukhina brought the washable kind that can be sanitized in soap and hot water and used again multiple times, I just need to—oh! Here we go, now we’re talking.”
He holds up the bundle of washable cotton pads with snap-button wings for Rocky to inspect. “Huh, I forgot they were in rainbow tie dye print. This black one even has little moons and stars all over it.”
“Stars are a very beloved symbol by humans,” Rocky observes, although he can’t see the pattern on the pads. “Even used when collecting uterine waste products.”
“Yeah,” Grace chuckles, shrugging a little. “Go figure. I guess Ilyukhina enjoyed a theme.”
Rocky crouches down on his forelegs to stretch and then slightly turns in his tunnel. “Grace go tidy up in bathroom with sanitary pad, then we get back to our tasks in the lab,” he says. “Rocky will be waiting. Maybe we can cut the work day short if Grace needs to rest.”
“Sounds like a plan, bud,” Ryland says, nodding. “Uhm—I’ll be back in a few minutes. Thanks for cutting me some slack on being a gross space blob again.”
Rocky is already spidering his way through the tunnel that leads into the lab but pauses to tip his carapace from side to side. “Not gross, just Grace,” he says. “And Rocky loves everything about my Grace, statement.”
Ryland feels the capillaries in face and chest bloom hot and rosy. To top it off, another spurt of menstrual blood dribbles out of him, and he truly wishes he could melt through the ship floor and die because there’s no way Rocky didn’t notice that and his accompanying full-body shiver.
“Love you too, Rock,” Grace squeaks. He takes his fist full of pads and runs to the bathroom, forgetting to breathe until he’s sitting on the toilet again and his head thumps back against the wall, shocking the oxygen back into his lungs.
This is gonna be a long three to five business days of bleeding out of his orifice, Ryland decides. There’s simply no other way around it.
One hour working in the taumoeba lab turns into two, and then somewhere in the third hour Rocky makes the executive call to throw in the towel. Grace is silently grateful, because the pressure in his pelvis is becoming difficult to ignore and he’s got half the mind to go bum some basic painkillers off Armando to knock back with his dinner.
“Grace is noticeably fatigued and needs to rest now,” Rocky says, going over to the airlock portion of his tunnel where the ergonomic suit is waiting for him to meticulously fold himself into like a hermit crab. The exosuit is a more recent brilliant innovation of his, but incredibly needed and vital when it comes to getting around the ship unencumbered—or doing other extremely important things, like spooning Grace from behind. “You eat evening meal and then we watch television on laptop together, please?”
Ryland blows out a loaded breath and stands up from the lab table to stretch, grunting when one of his hip sockets obscenely pops. “Yeah, I’m thinking dinner and a show sounds pretty good right about now. What d’you wanna watch?”
Rocky doesn’t even hesitate. “Flavor of Love episode 7,” he says. “Rocky needs to know about cryptically foreshadowed intense conflict between Pumkin and New York.”
“Oh boy,” Grace snorts. Rocky’s affinity toward Flavor Flav was definitely not on his alien-media-introduction bingo sheet but maybe it makes sense, considering their own personal clock bros lore. “Well, there’s nothing some trash TV can’t fix, so we might as well. I think it’s pizza night to boot—and thank God, because I need to inhale some shelf stable cheese and carbs before I Hulk out and turn into a werewolf.”
“Incredible Hulk or werewolf? Grace cannot be both at the same time.”
“Right now? I’m kinda leaning more werewolf, with the menstrual moon lore and all.”
“Grace is a very handsome werewolf,” Rocky chitters, still busy knitting himself into his exosuit. “Not too hairy—just hairy enough to make nice sounds. Rocky approves.”
Ryland blinks at this and promptly claps his hands together for lack of anything else. “Alrighty,” he announces in a slightly strangled voice. “I’m off to the dormitory to wash up and get settled, catch you in five.”
After begging off some extra strength acetaminophen from the nannybot, Grace drags himself into the bathroom with a change of underwear. The bleeding has gotten exponentially heavier in just a handful of hours, and he’s nearly saturated the cloth pad to the point of leaking. Were his periods on Earth ever this bad? He honestly can’t remember. It’s like the culminating wrath of three and a half years of missed cycles decided to throttle him all at once, and he groans in misery as blood drips into the toilet even while he’s sitting there. Welp, nothing to do now but batten down the hatches with a fresh pad and tough it out.
Back in the dormitory Rocky is already waiting with the movie-viewing laptop, the translator laptop, and the piping hot pizza-bread thing Ryland still needs to consume. There’s a pouch of some beverage on the side, and Grace clambers into their makeshift blanket fort and immediately starts guzzling it to occupy his mouth and hands with something other than fidgeting with his overgrown hair or chewing his cuticles. He’s pleasantly surprised to find that the drink is fizzy red grape juice with a satisfying amount of carbonation.
“Flavor of Love is ready to roll whenever Grace is settled,” Rocky confirms, chirping happily. He hunkers down in the blankets like a spider patiently waiting in their web, albeit a little cuter with his chunky limbs and distinct lack of eight creepy eyes. “Mary let Rocky order Grace’s pizza with slightly burned cheese on top.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Rock,” Grace says, and genuinely means it as he looks over at the bubbling brown cheese on his allotted toasted pizza rectangle. “Go ahead and crank up the show, I can watch while I eat. Human multitasking is a beautiful thing.”
When the dorm lights are dimmed and they’re snuggled into their pile of blankets and cushions on the floor, it’s easy to forget the cold vastness of space that exists just outside the Hail Mary’s hull. Even though he and Rocky can’t technically touch without a barrier between them, the shape of Rocky’s carapace and the weight of his carefully placed limbs is a comforting balm along with the muted heat coming off his body through the exosuit. God bless the miracle of xenonite, truly.
Ryland finishes his meal with only a few spare crumbs dusted off his fingers and hunkers down further into the nest. He’s not super invested in the ups and downs of Flavor Flav’s televised dating life, having already seen this show twenty-odd years prior, but he loves cataloguing Rocky’s unique sounds and reactions to the TV program. They’ve been mixing things up lately—some reality shows, some old black and white films from the golden age of Hollywood, some niche indie flicks. Rocky seems to drink them all down in rapt fascination, even if he claims to dislike something. He’s definitely not one to deny himself the novelty of a new experience.
They’re about five minutes into the next episode post-Pumkin elimination, pressed back to front with Rocky taking up the mantle as the little spoon so Grace can feel the heat from his carapace radiate into his abdomen. It helps the dull ache without soothing it entirely, but Ryland feels himself lightly dozing nonetheless. His lashes keep dipping behind his glasses, and he thinks he’s about to nod off with Rocky’s trills and whirring sounds of intrigue sending him off to dreamland when there’s a tight cramp in his uterus that makes his eyes shoot open.
“Ouugh, that’s a gnarly one,” he laments, waiting for the pain to dwindle and pass. And then, with horror dousing over him like a bucket of ice water, Grace feels something slip out of him in a wet, spongy gush. Whatever it is, it’s big enough to feel where it’s still nestled between the lips of his nether bits, caught there by the fabric pad.
“Uhm,” Ryland croaks.
Rocky immediately freezes and stops vocalizing. There’s nothing but the quiet sound of the ship’s inner machinery workings and Tiffany Pollard’s dulcet tones echoing through the cramped dormitory.
“Grace…lay egg?” Rocky says. He’s so stunned he doesn’t even manage to use his speech modifier to indicate that it was a question of utmost awe. He warbles again, low and deep, and clicks his claws to try and get a better view much to Ryland’s mortification. “Inside underwear. Grace lay egg!”
Ryland covers his burning face with his hands. “It’s not an egg, bud, it’s a clot of old blood and uterine lining,” he mumbles. “Part of the waste products the body passes to cleanse the organ.”
Rocky reaches out to hit the space bar on the laptop with his gloved pincher so the television program pauses. Now they’re in the white noise of relative silence. “Show Rocky,” he says. “Please. Rocky show Grace Eridian eating and waste voiding processes, now Grace needs to show Rocky menstruation.”
This just keeps careening further and further off the rails. “You wanna see my dirty underwear?” Grace manages, voice an octave or two higher than usual. “Rock, listen to me—this isn’t pretty. It’s a messy process and the blood gets everywhere if you aren’t careful.”
“Rocky doesn’t care, still needs to witness finer nuances of human biological function to understand what you’re going through,” Rocky says. “According to Grace’s estimate from earlier today, still have several more days of discomfort and bleeding to weather. Will only get worse from here, question?”
“Uh, yeah—the second day is usually the most intense with the heaviest flow,” Ryland says. He finally lets his hands fall away from his face and gazes listlessly up at the ceiling, somewhat at a loss that this is a conversation he’s being forced into via the Mexican standoff he’s having with his own rogue uterus and his well-meaning but unnaturally determined alien bestie. “It can get pretty painful sometimes but usually tapers off by the fourth day.”
“What pain management is most successful for Grace?” Rocky asks. “For bad menstrual cycle discomfort.”
“Well, I got some Tylenol from Armando an hour or so ago,” Grace confesses, trying to rack his brain for answers. “The heat definitely helps—back on Earth, I had an electric blanket in my apartment that I loved. But you’re kinda putting that old girl to shame these days.”
“Good, Grace will never need electric blanket again while Rocky is here,” Rocky croons. “Anything else help with diminishing pains, question?”
There is one more thing, Grace realizes. But he’s not entirely sure he’s ready to spill the beans about how stuffing a hand down his shorts and rubbing one out always helped take the edge off his cramps and help excess blood pass more seamlessly. Or, even more humiliating—having to lay out an old bath towel and gently working himself open with a toy until his cunt would sweetly clench as his tightened core muscles gratefully unfurled and eventually relaxed.
“Okay, so this is a hear me out type of thing,” Ryland says, swallowing as he tries to work up his nerve. “But orgasms. Uhm. Help—with the cramping.”
“Very interesting,” Rocky warbles. “Humans mate with partners to ease menstruation symptoms? Seems like mammal heat cycles Rocky read about on Wikipedia dot org.”
“Er…sometimes?” Grace says. “Some people have partnered sex during their period, which is great, but most folks tend to operate alone since the blood gets so messy and some humans are grossed out by it. It’s just easier to take care of business on your own and get the orgasm over and done with so you can relax or go to bed. And—I’m typically one of those people who’s a one-man band, if you catch my drift.”
“Understand,” Rocky hums. “Grace masturbates with self-stimulating practices to decrease pain levels. Very good, very good! Rocky have an idea.”
But Ryland isn’t fully listening to him, still lost in the sauce of his own private suffering. “To be totally honest with you right now, sometimes I wish I could kinda just…sneeze really hard and have everything come out in one big chunk? Even if it was painful. Because two minutes of Red Wedding-tier massacre is definitely preferable to having it feel like my cervix is being turned inside out for the better part of a week. Huge oversight in human biological evolution, if you ask me. Whoever decided periods gotta hurt like a son of a gun needs to be taken to task and ripped apart by the homo sapiens ethics committee sometime.”
“Grace listen. Rocky have a new idea to help with bad menstrual cycle.”
“What was that?” Ryland asks, blinking at him. “Sorry, I swear I’m tuned in.”
“Good. Grace promise not to freak out?”
“I promise, pal. Go ahead and lay it on me.”
“Let Rocky help stimulate Grace with orgasms so bad period will end much faster,” Rocky says tactfully. “Comforting sound waves from carapace and ovipositor organ will be very efficient at removing residual blood from womb. Rocky just finished engineering xenonite sleeve for ovipositor last week—wonderful big surprise!”
Ryland’s teeth click as his mouth closes quickly and then drops back open again. “You,” he starts before words briefly fail him. “You’re gonna have to run that one by me again, boss. I mean—hold on a sec. Wait. What even are we?”
His mind reels as he thinks back to their first mutual masturbation session a couple months into the trip, back before Rocky even had the prototype for his exosuit in development. They’d both agreed it was for scientific research and understanding, hadn’t they? And every session thereafter, infrequent as they were thus far…what had those been? Ryland suddenly doesn’t know. Or does he?
“Rocky can be whatever Grace needs,” Rocky clarifies, like it’s the simplest fact in the universe. “Peer, confidant, friend, lover. Physical therapist, if Grace wants. Psychological one, too. Just say word and Rocky will give anything.”
“Stop that,” Grace blurts out, sitting up so quickly the heel of his hand slips on the empty grape juice pouch and he almost thunks down and bangs his elbow. “You’re married, Rocky. You have a mate! What are we even talking about right now?”
“Grace already knows that Eridians don’t conform to social monogamy,” Rocky says, and if he had eyes they’d be rolling into parts unknown. “Mate Adrian would understand the perils of a long journey. And Grace does not have any mate on Earth. So metaphorical playing field is open real estate, as far as Rocky is concerned.”
“Open real estate!” Grace squawks, letting out an incredulous laugh. “This is crazy. Cut the cameras—I’m too old and celibate for this banana stand hoopla, and I’ve gotta pee like a racehorse.” He struggles in the blankets to find his footing, grimacing as he finally climbs to his feet and staggers in the direction of the bathroom. He doesn’t even bother with shutting the door this time and merely yanks his sweats and briefs down to forlornly collapse on the space toilet. Probably a bad idea, because there’s a gelatinous mess still sitting in the crotch of his underwear and Rocky has promptly invited himself over for a more thorough investigation.
“Grace lie,” he says in the doorway, clicking away. “Does look like an egg.”
“It’s not an egg!” Grace snaps, waving his hand ineffectually before glancing down at the abnormally large clot on the pad again. “Well, maybe it’s vaguely ovoid…? Huh. But that doesn’t mean it’s actually an egg! That’s just some weird coincidence.”
Rocky lets out a sad sort of whistle and doesn’t budge. “Rocky wishes was egg,” he says. “Can I touch, question…?”
Ryland sits there with his pants around his ankles, thrown for an interstellar loop in every feasible way, and figures he may as well take a leak while he’s sitting here in the midst of a silent crisis. What has he got to lose? Certainly not his dwindling dignity. The sound of tinkling in the aluminum bowl is a humbling backdrop to Grace hearing his own voice say, “Sure. Why not? Knock yourself out, dude.”
Rocky eagerly trills and moves closer to tilt his carapace in interest, whirring and clicking as he plucks the blood clot up with painstaking carefulness. There’s a strong smell of iron hanging in the air that Grace tries not to think about. The clot immediately smears a wet sheen of menstrual fluid on his xenonite glove but Rocky seems unbothered by this, holding it with unexpected reverence. “Very soft and squishy,” he assesses, poking it again for good measure. “But with enough structural integrity to not immediately disintegrate. Gross but fascinating piece of tissue—Grace makes very pretty blood clots.”
Ryland coughs to cover the strangled sound in his throat and immediately regrets it as more blood drips out of him. The humiliation ritual will seemingly never end, especially when Rocky extends the clot back out in his claw and he has to pluck it from his outstretched pincher with a piece of toilet tissue so he can flush it away to who only knows where.
“Nobody’s ever complimented my shed uterine lining before,” Grace croaks, oddly endeared by Rocky’s declaration. “Let’s just say today is a first in more ways than one.”
“Yes, we have many new explorations together,” Rocky chirps happily, reaching to wipe at his claw with a perfectly torn square of toilet paper. “Grace and Rocky can do more big sexy science, if Grace wants. Offer still on table for pain relief.”
Ryland presses his bare knees together and grips them where he sits on his aluminum throne, gazing down at his beloved knight in shining armour. “You’re serious about that?” he asks. Just to be sure he heard right before. Just to be totally certain he’s not imagining things in this endless spiral of delirium.
“Rocky would not offer if I wasn’t being serious, statement,” Rocky says. He sounds both sincere and hopeful, and reaches out to gently touch one side of Ryland’s ankle—the contact between them thrumming like an electric current even through the xenonite barrier. “Want to take care of my Grace in every single way. Offering pain relief just one way Rocky can help with monthly egg cycle.”
“I know you want to help, bud, and thank you for offering. But you do realize—I mean. We’ve kinda jerked off in front of each other before with solo stimulation, and that was great, but if we do this…we’d be going all the way, right? Like. Full penetrative intercourse. Having sex. Statement.”
Ryland Grace would be a dirty liar to say he doesn’t want that with Rocky, exactly, if anybody were to cut the bull and outright ask. If the swift and steep swoop of his stomach is any indicator, maybe he’s secretly wanted it for a while even if he didn’t fully realize as much. But saying this out loud without direct confirmation that Rocky feels the same way might as well be the last straw on the camel’s back that kills him.
“Depends on how Grace wants to frame experience,” Rocky says slowly. “Could be benevolent medical assistance or could be sex. Which one do you prefer?”
Ryland narrows his eyes and decides he’s going to take the spineless route this time. “Not so fast—which one do you prefer?”
“Rocky asked Grace first.”
“This is all your bright idea, pal. So go ahead and spill your guts.”
“Grace wants all Rocky guts, or only modified amount of guts?”
“All of them. The whole kitten caboodle, so let ‘em rip.”
“Selfishly speaking, Rocky wants to keep Grace all for myself. Make Grace feel good all over, make Grace orgasm on Rocky’s claw and ovipositor organ until stupid with pleasure and good human hormones. Want to hear and feel Grace’s heart beating from the inside, kiss hidden secret parts of Grace not even light has touched before. Be Grace’s first and only for many things—as many as I can have, forever.”
“Right,” Ryland rasps, mouth gone dry. He thinks tiny cartoon songbirds might be fluttering around his head in a dazed halo. “So having sex it is, then.”
“Not just having sex if we do this,” Rocky insists, painfully earnest. “Grace and Rocky will make love together.”
“Oh brother,” Grace chokes out. He suddenly feels like he’s going to start crying, the kind of crying that starts on a hair trigger but never stops, and here he’s still sitting on the flippin’ toilet with his glutes going numb from poor circulation. “Hold on a second, Rock—let me hop off the john and pull myself together. We gotta continue this conversation on level ground and not in the romantic ambiance of an astronaut bathroom.”
With his pants yanked up, hands washed, and a few steadying deep breaths later, they reconvene together in their abandoned blanket nest. Grace gently closes the media laptop and lowers the screen on the translator so only the dimmed yellow night lights offer any illumination for him to see by. It all feels very intimate, in a strange way. Cupped here in this sterile, yet softened darkness with the one person in the entire universe he’d trust with his life. His skin prickles with some previously unknown frisson and Rocky coos when he notices the hairs on Ryland’s arms standing on end with gooseflesh.
“Grace scared…?” Rocky asks. His primary frame of reference for the human phenomenon known as ‘goosebumps’ is fear from the media they’ve consumed together.
“No, buddy, not scared. Just—feeling something profound, I guess. Good feelings. But they’re kinda unfamiliar and sorta different.”
“Tell Rocky about good feelings,” Rocky implores, settling down in a loaf close beside Ryland. “Tell me what Grace is feeling right now.”
“Well,” Grace starts, swallowing thickly. His heart rate kicks like a rabbit foot in his chest and he feels the capillaries on his face bloom open with heat—all perfectly discernible and obvious to Rocky. “I feel really safe and happy here with you, Rock. Things are pretty cozy. Which seems kinda counterintuitive considering we’re zooming through the deepest trenches of outer space at the speed of light inside a fancy tin can. but. Yeah. Like my kids back on Earth used to say—the vibes are pretty immaculate.”
Rocky coos and hums at this, obviously pleased. “Tell me more,” he says softly. “Apology for intrusion, but...can hear Grace’s vocal chords twitching with more words you yearn to say.”
“Oh,” Ryland says, blushing harder as he absently touches his own throat. “Right, uhm. Here goes nothing—may as well drop the big one, right? So I really like the idea of having sex. With you, in your nifty new exosuit. Any way for us to be closer to each other is…” He pauses to suck in a shaky sort of breath before blowing it back out again. “Yeah, it’s good. It’s more than good, Rock.”
“I’m kinda nervous about the whole period thing, but if you’re down to ride the red tide then I’m down, too,” Grace rambles on, briefly waving a hand through the air to mark his point. “To—be intimate together. Tonight. If that’s what you wanna do.”
“Rocky has already told Grace what I want to do with you, and to you,” the Eridian warbles, gently flexing his pinchers against one forearm. “Without hiding any words.”
Oh. He’s been caught red-handed, then—trying to conceal his tender underbelly from the guy who can watch his guts quiver in real time. And why? There’s nobody here to judge them but themselves and Grace’s perpetual bad habit of building stone walls around his heart that he should’ve left behind in a different galaxy far, far away. But maybe it takes a rock to break through stone when it’s all said and done.
“Look,” he starts to say, feeling a lot like a goldfish who jumped out of its bowl, haplessly gulping in the open air. “Listen.”
“Rocky has been listening very closely this whole time.”
Ryland closes his eyes behind his glasses and imagines he’s safer there in the darkness beneath his lids. Nothing is going to hurt him. Rocky could, if he wanted to—but that’s the thing, isn’t it? He won’t. He would never. He’d give his life if it offered Ryland five more minutes of breath in his lungs and they both have the scars to prove it.
“I,” Grace says, rubbing a hand over his mouth before he can find the right words. “I care a lot about you and our relationship, Rocky. And I don’t want to be the guy to ruin a good thing when we’ve got such a great chemistry going between us as it is. Because I—think-I-love-you-more-than-I-realized-and-if-I-mess-this-up-for-us-I’ll-never-forgive-myself.”
Rocky makes a soft sound and reaches out to stroke Grace’s hair with a reverence he’s not sure he deserves. “Nothing to mess up or forgive when it comes to love,” he says. “Only things tangential to love itself.”
“Okay, Mr. Miyagi,” Grace snorts, though some of the tension has bled from his body. “That really solved my neurotic anxiety about relationships. Wow, I think I’m cured.”
“Sassy mouth gets so much worse when Grace is anxious,” Rocky grumbles, even though he still busies himself with the tender claw in Ryland’s hair. “Rocky understands fears. But shared intimacy and orgasms don’t improve interpersonal rapport and situation, question? I thought humans bonded through these experiences.”
Grace opens his mouth to argue and then decides against it. “I’m actually not sure,” he admits. “I’ve had sex with a small handful of partners before but I don’t think I’ve ever let my guard down enough to be truly intimate with them. At least—well.”
“Not like Grace and Rocky are intimate,” Rocky finishes for him. “Not like how Grace and Rocky would make love together, statement.”
“Yeah,” Ryland croaks. His eyes burn just a little but he refuses to cry, willing himself to keep steady and hold the line. “Makes sense when you put it that way.”
“Then why fight feelings and potential for good things?” Rocky says. “We are not on Earth and Rocky is not a human partner. Nothing is the same—could be different, but could also be better than before. Only one way to find out.”
Grace can’t help but muster up a wobbly smile. “You’ve got a fair point,” he concedes. “When it comes to the scientific process, there’s only one way to find out.”
Rocky hums in agreement. “Grace trust Rocky?”
“With my life, bud. You know that.”
“Good, Rocky feels the same way,” Rocky says, limbs trembling almost imperceptibly in Grace’s peripherals. “We do big sexy science with menstruation pain relief now?”
“Big science is a go,” Ryland answers, snapping his fingers. It’s now or never and he’s tired of shying away from the unknown. “Just let me find a towel or something and then we’ll get down to business.”
A towel winds up being one of the nannybot’s medical gowns, like the one he was wearing when he woke up in the terrible Time Go Fishing aftermath. Grace spreads it out in their nest and smooths his hands over the thin cotton, needlessly tugging the wrinkles away. Why does he feel like a blushing virgin all of a sudden? He’s had sex before, with a variety of people with a variety of genders—but none of those partners were an alien.
And more importantly: none of those people were Rocky.
Rocky has seen him naked more than a few times by now, near the sponge bath station and during their so-called ‘mutual stimulation’ science lessons. It’s not even really a thing that bothers Grace anymore, but the period blood complicates things a bit. He can’t control how his body releases the flow, how much comes out of him at once, or what it will look like. He’s not ashamed of the biological process, per se, only irritated at the sheer inconvenience of it all feeding directly into a deeper tributary of vulnerability.
So getting naked isn’t the difficult part, Ryland figures, as he strips his clothes away piece by piece. It’s getting naked and having to see the crimson smeared on his inner thighs, then feeling the cool air hit the wet heat on his cunt that makes him shiver and grimace. There’s coagulated blood stuck in his pubic hair and it feels grotesque and embarrassingly unclean, but Rocky remains entirely unperturbed, cooing away.
“Grace’s bush is sticky with fluids,” he observes, crowding in closer to rapidly click and reach out a tentative claw. “Rocky has permission to touch here?”
“Yeah, Dr. Rock, permission granted,” Ryland rasps, sitting there on the medical gown with his thighs open and his heart thundering in his ears. “Tell me a little about your pain management game plan here, if you don’t mind.”
Rocky hums with pleasure at this. “Very straightforward process,” he answers straight away. “Have calculated a variety of possible approaches and coordinating outcomes, and Rocky decided this method was best: first use sonic waves to relax Grace’s cervix and uterus in order to release loose blood and tissue, then probe deeper to manually stimulate smooth muscle and remove excess menstrual lining. If Grace has less byproduct to shed, pain will be reduced and cycle will be shortened. Ideal outcome!”
God help him and every hole in his body, Ryland can’t even pretend to hide it when his belly and cunt clench at the same time. “Of course,” he mutters, wetting his lower lip. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”
“Minor preparation first,” Rocky announces, chittering with excitement as he scuttles across the dorm to approach the nannybot with his left claw raised like a battle weapon. “Armando, please apply two hundred milliliters of medical lubricant to Rocky’s left arm, please.”
“Two HUNDRED ccs of lube?” Grace chokes out, shocked to the gills when Armando does precisely as Rocky asked and the nannybot arm digs around in the medical supply storage before coming back with a large tube of lubricating gel. “Wait a minute, buddy.” Ryland’s head spins a little, like he just got off a fast tilt-a-whirl and the room is a smeared wash of color. “I don’t know if that’s gonna fit—”
“Two hundred plus fifty millimeters better for Grace’s comfort, question?” Rocky asks, turning as his claw gets doused in a generous helping of gel. “It will fit, trust me. Rocky has already taken all the mathematical measurements of Grace’s vaginal canal and checked them two dozen times for accuracy. This is not accounting for additional natural stretch, of course.”
“Oh my god,” Grace says to nobody in particular. “You’re planning one heck of a puppet show, Rock.”
“This is not a rudimentary puppet demonstration, this is full hands-on application.”
“Different kind of puppet—listen, never mind. Get over here before I change my mind.”
Rocky promptly returns with this lubed exosuit sleeve faintly sparkling even in the dim lighting. He crowds up between Grace’s open thighs and clicks a few times, gathering his bearings at close range. “Rocky can open vulva to look inside?” he asks sweetly.
“Go ahead,” Ryland rasps, leaning back. “Sorry in advance for the mess.”
“No apology from Grace about natural bodily function, egg cycle is perfectly normal,” Rocky tuts, and when his claw reverently brushes the dampened bush and strokes around his clit Ryland can’t stop the tiny sound that escapes past his lips. There’s a rush of blood southward and his prick throbs, beginning to stand at attention.
“Oh, Grace is already aroused,” Rocky warbles appreciatively. “This will help aid in penetration. Very good, very good.”
“Quit yapping and do something already, Rock,” Ryland wheezes. “Please, for the love of Pete!”
“Who is Pete?” Rocky asks at the same exact moment he takes either side of Grace’s labia in his claws and spreads him open wide for further inspection. There’s a thick dribble of blood down Ryland’s taint, hot and obscene, and he whimpers in a mixture of horror and arousal at the dual sensations.
“Figure of s-speech,” Grace manages, trying to focus on breathing and relaxing his core. “What are you searching for down there?”
Rocky makes a few soft vocalizations that sound like quiet assessments. “Grace’s cervix is very low during menstrual cycle,” he says. “Gorgeous, smooth. Slightly dilated and tender—but with gentle sound we can open more. Don’t worry, Rocky will be very careful.”
“It’s not exactly meant to open up anymore, unless it’s getting ready to let a baby pass through,” Ryland says. “And trust me, no babies have ever passed through that dusty one-horse town. Otherwise anything hitting the cervix tends to be, uh—pretty uncomfortable.”
“Will be more pleasure than pain, trust Rocky,” the Eridian coos, using his third arm to stroke one of Ryland’s thighs. “Sonic music so sweet womb will cry excess blood, then Grace will feel better when empty. Very cathartic!”
Grace groans and brings a hand up to his mouth. “That’s definitely one way of putting it,” he says, blowing out a shuddering sigh. “Jesus. Okay, I—think I’m ready? Which is probably a huge overstatement, but do your worst. We’re diving all in on a wing and a prayer…uhm, no pun intended on the diving part.”
“Rocky has been a competent mechanical engineer for two Earthling centuries longer than Grace has been alive,” Rocky honks. “And far from being an inexperienced virgin. Will only do best for my Grace, and never anything less. Now take big deep breath and exhale slowly, no more sassy boy talk. Rocky will not keep asking Grace twice.”
A resonant cramp ripples through his uterus and Ryland groans but dutifully sucks in a deep lungful of air, face flooding with redness as he follows Rocky’s command. As soon as he starts slowly blowing the air out through pursed lips, there’s a sudden shift and stretching pressure as Rocky pushes his claw up into his hole with a wet squelch, smooth and svelte like it was always made to fit nestled there at the entrance.
“Holy cow,” Ryland croaks, bearing down around the intrusion out of pure instinct. Only Rocky’s clenched fist is inside thus far, but it’s absolutely, undeniably popped past the rim of Grace’s cunt. “How’d you already get inside me like that?”
“Keep breathing and relax pelvic muscles,” Rocky instructs without answering the question, reaching out with a claw to tap a place low under Grace’s navel, as if gauging some measure of distance. “Must go deeper before sonic waves take effect.”
Ryland breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth, trying not to squirm amidst the foreign stretch. He wants to reach down and touch his dick, roll it between his fingers to try and distract some from the oddness of what he’s feeling, anything to counterbalance the solid heat lodged inside him and the cramp still lodged low in his pelvis.
“Can hear how wet Grace is,” Rocky coos, flexing his claw before pushing deeper. The sound of his lubricated arm slipping past blood and tissue is insane, like a stake being slowly driven into muddy, water-logged ground. “Can hear all the heavy blood in Grace’s womb.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Grace hears himself say, legs beginning to faintly tremble. “It’s a lot. It’s—so much, Rock.” And then Rocky’s pincher curls up against something inside that makes him cry out in a gasp, stoking the sort of molten heat that’s so good and sweet it’s almost painful.
“Grace can do it,” Rocky warbles, splaying his other claw near Ryland’s navel, gently stroking through the soft trail of hair there. “Grace takes Rocky so beautifully, body hugging my claw on the inside like a glove—perfect, perfect. Not hurting, question?”
The answer to that feels a little more complex than Ryland would like. He tries to still the tremor in his voice, gripping the blankets and medical gown underneath his hands for support. “It’s a good sort of hurt, I think,” he decides, nodding as sweat begins to prickle at his hairline and between his shoulder blades. The stretch and pressure is already so steep he can’t even fathom what comes next, but Grace’s hips are mindlessly beginning to rock up into the fist inside him, seeking more friction, trying to draw Rocky’s fist ever deeper. “Mmmph, yeah…oh boy, oh my gosh,” he adds shakily. “Y-yeah, you can keep going.”
“Rocky is going to begin stimulating Grace’s uterus with sonic frequencies soon,” Rocky says, still giving Ryland time to adjust around him now that he’s pressed inside his cunt up to the middling part of one forearm. “Remember to keep up regular breathing pattern. If Grace passes out then fun sexy science time will be over too soon, very bad and unfortunate.”
“Regular breathing,” Ryland pants, squeezing his eyes shut. “Right, there’s nothing irregular about this. I’m feeling super duper regular about it all, as a matter of f—aahhhh, SHIT!”
The abrupt wave of silent sound resonates up through his core and hits every g-spot and erogenous zone along the way, ringing his central nervous system like a tuning fork. Grace makes a wordless sort of animal noise in the back of his throat, a ragged squeal he’d vehemently deny until his dying day, and then comes with a shallow shout and tears beading at the corners of his eyes. His hole bears down on the thickness of Rocky’s forearm and then just keeps weakly fluttering as the sound continues and intensifies, slowly but surely, forcibly pulling him through climax like he’s collared and chained.
“Rocky,” Grace cries out, thrashing some in the nest as a fresh cramp rips through him. “Oh my God, please please please—I can’t, I can’t!”
“Grace can’t what?” Rocky coos, his voice clear over the silent sound waves Ryland’s human ears can’t detect. “Use your words, Dr. Grace.”
He considers asking Rocky to stop, to call this whole thing off, but that’s the coward’s way out. The pain is a fine penumbra rimmed around the edge of pleasure, sharp and bright but cut through with the rightness of being so utterly full and used. Pressure is building and Grace is nothing but a hapless creature that needs to chase it even if he thrashes himself to death along the way. The fox pursued through an unknown thicket, torn to ribbons by brambles on the desperate dash to liberation.
“You gotta talk me through this, Rock,” Ryland begs as tears finally gather enough to fall back into his temples. Shame is gone, a distant entity he can’t make out the shape of anymore. “Tell me I’m good,” he sobs. “Tell me I’m doing good, honey. Please, anything, I just wanna hear you.”
The risk of overstimulation is there and Rocky takes pity on his human, dialing back the vibrating sound to a gentler thrum, sending shallow pulses that make Grace pant out tiny gasps as he stays speared open. Blood is slowly beginning to dribble out around Rocky’s forearm, smearing over the clear xenonite and gathering on the fabric of the medical gown in dark, wet spots.
“Grace’s cervix is so sweet, so good for Rocky,” he croons. “Slowly dilating with tender kisses and song, so pliant and soft. Grace’s body was made to open up like Earthing flower under Rocky’s touch, wants to be good, wants to bleed for me.” He visibly trembles before he utters the next part, momentarily consumed by something visceral. “Imagine how wonderful Grace’s womb would take Rocky’s eggs, how lovely Grace would be round and full of hatchlings. Beautiful—so good, my gorgeous Grace. Always been good, always been Rocky’s handsome prince since you were born, as precious as the stars you saved. Grace was made by universe to hold everything Rocky has to give.”
A low sort of guttural howl gathers in Ryland’s chest and pours out of him like water. His uterus contracts and he knows the moment Rocky touches his core, stroking the divot of his cervix with one doting claw. There’s a minor flare of dull pain but it’s nothing compared to the jolt of electricity that shoots up his spinal cord, nothing compared to how he can’t feel anything but being fisted open, slave to whatever Rocky wants to do to him now that he’s speared apart. His cunt clenches again and the promise of another orgasm is just out of reach, a maddening sort of insurmountable gap until Rocky presses down on Grace’s belly and audibly hums from the center of his carapace.
Ryland pisses himself almost instantly. It comes out in weak spurts of searing hot urine because his bladder control is gone, caput, gave up the big ghost as he wails and shakes apart. Grace can’t speak now that human speech is a vague concept beyond his pay grade. Rocky, the bastard, simply rotates his arm forty-five degrees and then begins thrusting it in, slow and steady, gently bullying more blood and tissue out through Ryland’s softened cervix with sound and song.
“Grace is so wet, doing so well, so pretty like this,” Rocky coos. “Almost finished with sonic frequencies, and then Rocky will go deeper to clean out uterine byproducts. Pain will decrease, bad menstrual cycle will be much better, promise you. Rocky will take the best care of my Grace, always.”
Another round of silent vibration has him sweating and shaking with residual tremors but the intensity is slowly beginning to subside, or at least become bearable enough to allow flowing thought again. Ryland reaches down and presses against his lower belly, stunned to find he can feel the firmness of Rocky’s solid arm through his abdominal wall. A slug of dizziness begins to wash over him and for a long, terrible moment he thinks he may faint, but then a familiar claw in its xenonite glove is reaching over his mound to tangle his fingers with three little pinchers.
“Stay here with Rocky,” the Eridian softly chants, resting their clasped hands just below Grace’s navel above his womb. “Grace safe with me, cherished and loved, forever protected. Will never be alone or taken for granted ever again. Rocky will always be here for whatever you need—Grace ask for anything in the universe and I will find a way to give.”
He could say many things, but Ryland is only really capable of three particular words at the present moment. “I love you,” he rasps, opening his bleary eyes, lashes clumped with tears. “I love you, Rock. So much. Oh God, I love you.”
“Rocky loves Grace more,” Rocky trills softly, and then slowly, achingly begins to withdraw his claw from the depths of Grace’s body. “We wait too long to do this. Stupid, stupid—should have been making love months ago. Could have been this close all this time.”
The moment his arm slips free, Grace’s gaping hole twitches and there’s a small outpouring of blood and dark, clotted tissue. He can’t see it, but he feels it—gushing out in thin rivulets with each residual clench of muscle inside. Rocky marvels and clicks at this, clearly impressed, and inspects the mess gathered between his human’s shaking thighs.
“We had to wait…for the suit,” Ryland wearily croaks, tipping his head back to expose the long line of his throat. He lays there and simply breathes in a labored rhythm, wrecked and bloodied between his legs in the makeshift nest. “None of this would be possible without your platinum tier engineering genius, Rock. Holy smokes.”
Rocky doesn’t seem convinced but the mention of the suit sparks a new thought in his crystalline brain. “Oh, Rocky needs to attach new ovipositor sleeve with exosuit!” he remarks, scuttling over to somewhere near Armando’s station. “Here it is,” he preens, holding up a carefully folded bundle of finely woven, mesh-like xenonite like a prize. Had it been hiding there in plain sight all along? “Now we get down to real sexy science business.”
“You mean that was just the appetizer round?” Grace blurts, blinking behind his askew glasses. How they’re even still on his face is a cosmic miracle. “Holy heck, dude. You’re gonna have me well and truly toasted on both sides.”
“Necessary preparation before true cleansing can commence,” Rocky says, busy coupling the sleeve to the lower quadrant of his suit where his ventral seam is usually obscured from view. “Now that Grace’s uterus is relaxed, will be much more receptive to benevolent intrusion.”
Ryland feels some of the blood drain out of his face at this. “Don’t you think this has the potential to hurt—really friggin’ badly, considering normal human anatomy?”
“Will only feel pressure and slight discomfort briefly, but Rocky will be very gentle,” Rocky assures him, presenting the silly spectacle of the long mesh attachment hanging beneath him like a limp windsock. He clicks curiously, advancing between Grace’s thighs again so he can place his two claws on each knee. “Isn’t Grace curious about alien ovipositor function…?”
Oh, this delightful little shit. “You know I’m curious about it, dude. But that’s not the point! Neither one of us has had bountiful amounts of kinky alien sex before to test out pain and heat tolerances between our species.”
Rocky goes still at this and then slowly leans in over Grace’s torso. “Grace and Rocky can be the first to find out,” he says softly. He must send out another silent sound frequency because Grace gasps as his insides quiver deliciously, head wrought empty and full of a pleasant static.
“Stop—doin’ that sexy sonic sound stuff without warning me first, you weirdo,” Ryland slurs, weakly grasping at Rocky’s arms as his cunt abruptly comes back online and clenches around nothing, pitiful and empty and wanting. “Oh my God. I need to come again, Rock, it hurts.”
“Rocky knows just how to fix,” Rocky sings happily. “Perfect solution to all Grace’s pain and troubles. Kissing cervix will make everything better, yes yes!”
The flare of fire in his pelvis swiftly eclipses every logical thing Grace knows about human anatomy. “Put that thing inside me right now,” he hisses, uncaring about the blood smeared on both of them, the iron-scented mess and the potential for unimaginable pain as an alien pierces him open at the core. “Rocky, I need you.”
“Shh, Rocky right here, not going anywhere,” Rocky warbles, lovingly stroking Ryland’s inner thighs as he presses them wider again. Beneath his carapace there’s the faint crackling sound of his ventral seam opening. “Going to take such good care of my Grace. Nobody else in the universe can love Grace like Rocky can.”
Ryland chokes out a tiny hiccup of a sob. “Nobody,” he echoes, watching in pure awe as Rocky’s ovipositor begins to descend down into the mesh xenonite, prehensile and glowing. “I don’t want anybody else but you, sweetheart.”
Rocky’s vents let out twin puffs of steam, boiling ammonia condensing on the inside of his exosuit. “Grace say that again,” he pleads, vocalization trembling as his vents flutter like organ pipes. “Call Rocky sweet name again.”
“Sweetheart,” Ryland murmurs, leaning forward to press a kiss against Rocky’s forearm. He’s crying his heart out, heavy tears that stream down his face and roll over his throat into the dips of each collarbone. “Oh, my sweetheart.”
“Rocky will be Grace’s sweetheart forever,” Rocky trills, humming all over as he nuzzles into Ryland’s arms. “Forever, forever, forever.”
“Forever and ever, yeah,” Grace agrees, laughing through his tears. He’s exhausted and sore and yet he’s never felt better, never felt more at peace in the truest sense of the word. “Now c’mon, sweetheart, you gotta show me what you’re working with.”
By now Rocky’s cock has filled out the mesh sleeve, a gorgeous, vivid periwinkle. The sight of it being coated in another generous helping of medical lubricant makes saliva flood Grace’s mouth, which wasn’t a biological response he was remotely expecting on top of his cathartic weeping, but very interesting to note down for later analysis.
“Rocky promise to be extra special tender,” Rocky repeats again, slowly wrapping the length of his ovipositor around Ryland’s wrist so the tip can touch the heart of his palm, almost like a kiss in itself. “Have permission to proceed with penetration now, question?”
“Permission granted, statement,” Grace says, struck some by the surreal intimacy of Rocky crouching over him like this, carapace just barely brushing his belly, almost like they’re in a modified missionary position. Is this what making love is like? he wonders. It has to be.
Another dribble of blood leaks out of him when Rocky’s cock strokes between his folds, searching for the entrance. He trills out a soft sound, then presses the tip up into the waiting heat of Grace’s cunt and plunges in without much fanfare. The thickness is nowhere near the width of his arm but the prehensile movement as it wriggles toward its destination makes stars bloom behind Grace’s eyelids. He’s never felt anything like it, especially not the tender stroke from an alien appendage across the smooth divot at the entrance of his womb.
“Cervix so-ooo low and open, just waiting for Rocky’s kisses,” Rocky warbles. “Grace can feel kisses? So precious, so perfect. Rocky wants to stay inside my Grace forever.”
“I’d let you, honey, I’d let you do anything you wanted,” Grace rasps, gulping down air as he wills his animal hindbrain not to brace and seize up in physical fear. “D-do that again, Rock. Please, God, kiss me again.”
The tip of Rocky’s cock circles his cervix a second time, slow and reverent, and then slowly prods into the dilated opening until it pops through into his uterus with barely any resistance at all. Grace’s vision goes white. He thinks he screams out something wordless and inane, but reality flutters away in a foggy haze and there is nothing but the sensation of his entire body contracting with searing pleasure. The rolling climax is strong, it would fold him in half if Rocky wasn’t suddenly pressing down against his shoulders to keep him flat in their nest.
“Be still my beloved Grace, my beautiful savior,” Rocky chants, sounding strained himself. “Oh, Grace sounds so wet and fertile inside womb—gorgeous, plush and soft and cool. Rocky wishes I could taste…”
Grace can only wretchedly mewl at this, panting as Rocky’s ovipositor probes deeper. Part of his body wants to vomit, having something alive and wriggling bored down into the very core of his body, and the other part is still reeling from an orgasm that has his cunt desperately trying to milk an alien cock for all it’s worth. He settles for sobbing instead, overwhelmed by sheer feeling with no direct comparison in his lexicon of experiences from the 37 years he spent on Earth. Rocky is ruining him and building him anew in the same breath, destroying everything Ryland thought he believed and opening a door into the realm of unknown possibility. One thing he knows for sure: he’s going to be a changed man after this.
But neither of them speak anymore. It seems sacrilegious, uttering plain words in the presence of raw divinity.
When the cleansing starts and he feels the lining being meticulously sloughed away from the inner hull of his uterus by tender strokes of Rocky’s ovipositor, Grace cries harder, shaking from head to toe as the engineer coaxes out blood and tissue with a sort of expertise that frankly shouldn’t be possible. But on and on it goes, the cramping catharsis, Ryland’s endless tears falling in the face of something sacred and Rocky’s soft songs lulling him into calming breaths. He eventually begins to drowse along the edge of sleep despite the gentle ministrations taking place inside his womb, sinking into the quilt like it’s made of downy clouds and angel feathers.
For a time, Grace floats. And then when he comes back to himself, slowly and sluggishly, he finds one of Rocky’s claws tracing the contour of his cheek and then touching his mouth. “Grace wake up now,” Rocky murmurs. “Cleansing is mostly finished. You did so good for Rocky, so strong and good. How do you feel, question?”
Ryland blinks behind his glasses, eyes gritty with dried salt and tears. “Feeling…a lot better than I thought I would, I gotta say,” he admits. “Kinda emptied out? But in a good way.”
He slowly rises up on his elbows and notices with a pang of disappointment that Rocky has already tucked his ovipositor away again and closed up his ventral seam. But the evidence of their lovemaking is smeared all over both of them and most notably the medical gown—irrevocably ruined with at least two pints of menstrual blood and clots and strips of lining, splashed there like a gruesome Jackson Pollock.
“Good grief, it looks like we had a rogue run-in with a chestburster in here,” Grace croaks, letting out a nervous laugh. “Jiminy Christmas. All that came out of me!?”
“Yes, all came out of Grace,” Rocky coos, reaching down to touch the medical gown with a peculiar reverence. “Messy, wet, dirty. But Rocky thinks is very beautiful.”
That steals the echo of laughter from Ryland’s lungs. His expression crumples and he sits up with some aching effort, holding his arms open for a hug that Rocky doesn’t hesitate to fold himself into. They hold each other in the softened silence of the dormitory for a while, six hearts altogether beating in shared rhythm. Even with the period blood and xenonite between them, it’s the closest thing to perfect Grace thinks he’s ever known.
“Love you, bud,” he says again, planting a soft kiss over the mesh on Rocky’s carapace. “This was some pretty successful sexy science. You really outdid yourself—but what’s new there?”
“Rocky very happy, very very very pleased!” Rocky whistles. “Would like to do this all the time with Grace, with many different variables and configurations. Many more sexy science experiments to conduct together.”
“Oh jeez,” Grace laughs. “We’ve opened Pandora’s box now. You’re not gonna give me a moment’s rest, are you?”
“Grace can rest whenever Rocky is finished having my way with you,” Rocky tuts. “Three years and 5.7 months left before we reach Erid—not a moment to waste in sexual exploration.”
“Would you say that’s a threat or a promise?”
“Both, if Grace plays his cards right.”
Grace snorts and raises two fingers to his temple to give a mock salute. “Sounds like a plan, captain.” He lets out a low whistle and slumps back to survey the carnage surrounding them. “Man. What are we gonna do with this huge mess we’ve made in the meantime?”
“Oh, Rocky wants to keep this,” Rocky says without hesitation, carefully pulling back to possessively pluck at the soiled fabric. “Sentimental value.”
“Uhm, okay,” Grace says, gnawing his lower lip. “If you feel that strongly about it. Y’know, the organic material on there will eventually start to decompose, right? I know you can’t smell it, but my human olfactory sensors are still working as far as I know, and. Uhm.”
“Rocky will not let any of it go to waste,” the Eridian says firmly, the implications of which leave no room for argument. “Grace not worry about it.”
“Oh,” Ryland says faintly. “No, of course not.” His ruined cunt clenches again, the absolute traitor, but there’s no accompanying cramp in his uterus at least. Who would’ve thought getting dicked down by an alien could solve all his problems? Perhaps this is a running theme in his life now.
“You definitely don’t mind some gnarly period sex, then,” Grace adds with a smirk. “That officially makes you the coolest partner I’ve ever had.”
Rocky lets out a jubilant hoot. “Grace boyfriend and girlfriend now, question?!”
“Er,” Grace says, grinning for all he’s worth. “Something like that, yeah. Do you wanna be the boyfriend or the girlfriend in this equation?”
“Does not matter, can pick and choose whichever one we want,” Rocky says diplomatically. “Today I can be girlfriend, since Grace is handsome prince charming boyfriend.”
“Deal,” Grace says, holding out his hand for Rocky to take. “Thanks for all your help with pain management, Dr. Rock. I do feel a lot better now.”
“Good good good,” Rocky trills, bobbing up and down on his legs. “Getting laid does big wonders for Grace, just as Rocky predicted.”
“You’ve been banking on us going to pound town?” Grace snorts. “For how long?”
Rocky whistles and gives a tiny shrug. “Long time. Hard to pinpoint exact time frame.”
“Rockkkk,” Grace says in his best teacher voice. “With your megamind Crash Bandicoot crystal brain? We both know that’s not true.”
“Okay,” Rocky sighs, slumping down in their nest. “Rocky been thinking about being intimate with Grace since night you tell me about human dreams. This is when I start conceptualizing plans for exosuit.”
Ryland blinks in surprise as his heart skips a beat. “But we’d only been together for a few weeks at that point,” he croaks. “We were planning to solve the astrophage crisis and then part ways again…”
“Rocky knows. Did not care because I already loved Grace.”
“Oh God,” Ryland croaks out, head reeling again. “Oh Jesus, Rock. We almost died. I almost lost you—”
“Don’t think about that,” Rocky gently scolds, reaching out to lay his claw over the scar on Ryland’s arm. “Did not come to pass. Rocky and Grace both still here, still together. Love can bloom now, just grow bigger and stronger.”
Ryland clears his throat to ward away the burning ache of any returning tears. “Yeah,” he says, vaguely nodding. “You’re right. We have each other and I couldn’t ask for anything more. Just us, statement.”
“Just us,” Rocky agrees. “Rocky and Grace's love goes on forever.”
They sit together in easy quiet, letting the truth of everything they’ve shared with one another sink in. Ryland marvels at the peacefulness of it, how he isn’t afraid or battling the terror-filled urge to bolt in the face of such raw intimacy between two souls. It’s easy to talk to Rocky. It’s the simplest thing in the world to exist near him and share his every waking moment with this incredible person he traveled across the universe to find.
“Another thing Rocky knows for certain,” Rocky says, breaking into the companionable silence with a wheezy little giggle. “Good friend Aunt Flo needs to come to town more often.”
Grace groans and drops his forehead into his palm. So much for all his romantic navel-gazing. “Once a month, chief,” he says. “Bank on it.”
“Rocky will ask Mary to put Grace’s menstrual cycle prediction window on the ship calendar,” Rocky says. “That way we always have a day to celebrate. To boost crew morale!”
“To this freaky crew of two,” Ryland says, raising an invisible glass. “And Armando and Mary on the assist, of course.”
Rocky raises his own invisible glass and mimes clinking them together, letting out a chime that sounds remarkably like the tinkle of leaded crystal. “Freaky crew of two!” he squeaks. “Best duo in the universe.”
A bond forged in fire and now blood, Ryland Grace thinks to himself. What else is there to say? “Cheers to that,” he toasts, laughing as Rocky bowls him over in the nest to beg for more kisses, two bound souls wrapped around each other as the stars wheel all around them in every endless direction.