Chapter Text
It was a strange thing, seeing the fluid dynamic of comfortable back and forth and so many shared mannerisms between your mate and an alien.
The three of them were sitting around the table in Grace’s living room, playing a game of Uno together with the health robot Armando. This was a scenario Adrian wouldn’t have been able to conjure up in their wildest imagination several years ago. Playing an alien game with a squishy sentient alien, an alien machine and their long lost mate inside of a dome filled with a highly explosive gas.
Nowadays, this was a weekly occurrence.
Grace sat with their standing-arms crossed on their chair, softly rocking back and forth as one of their standing-hands and the useful-hand not currently holding any cards bobbed up and down to the tune of the human music playing in the background.
Rocky was sitting across from Grace on a special version of a human chair they had made for themself as to reach across the table better, one of their hands periodically moving up and down the side of one of the chair’s textured standing-arms as they hummed along to every other note of the music.
Adrian remembered their early relationship, where they’d caught Rocky “stimming”, as Grace called it, and their mate would quickly suppress the movements. It had taken years of assurances that they truly didn’t mind for Rocky to slowly let themself move the way they felt comfortable inside their home.
These days, Rocky openly stimmed in public, in meetings with dozens of people in some of the highest ranking positions on the planet, because they didn’t give a shit anymore.
As far as positive outcomes of the space mission went, this was a very close second to saving their sun.
Adrian put a medium-smooth skip card on the pile. Rocky whistled a few indignant notes at them as Armando dutifully placed a medium-smooth λ on top. With a wide grin, Grace put down their final card, a medium-rough λ, and raised their useful-hands in victory.
“Second win!” they exclaimed, and Armando, ever supportive, moved its arms in a wiggly motion of celebration. Rocky however threw down their cards, pointing accusatorially at Grace.
“You cheated, exclamation!” they said, steam puffing out of their vents and hitting the xenonite suit right above. “You cheat with your light-organs!”
“For the last time, I am not able to light-hear through the cards, statement,” Grace shot back with amused exasperation. “If anyone is cheating, it is you or Adrian. You have cameras for your cards, you can hear each other’s texture tablets!”
“Then why did you win twice, question?!” Rocky followed up.
“Skill,” Grace said easily, leaning back in their chair. “You are just a sore loser, statement.”
Adrian let out a fond trill of laughter as Rocky launched themself out of their chair with a screech, Grace scrambling out of theirs just a second too late and ending up on the floor being attacked in the sensitive parts of their body that made them involuntarily squeal and squirm and laugh.
“Sto-o-op,” Grace wheezed out between giggles as Rocky kept poking their fingers against the side of Grace’s stomach area.
“Admit you cheat, command,” Rocky said, close to laughter themself now.
“Nev-nev-er, exclama-ma-tion!” they yelped while continuing to be mercilessly prodded.
That was another thing: the language.
Rocky had come back speaking a strange combination of heavily simplified Common Eridian and English syntax. Within days this had polarised into speaking this simplified language with – a then very very sick – Grace, and a blend of their old manner of speaking and this simplified language, particularly using a lot of indicator words like “question” or “statement”, with Adrian and others. At first they’d thought that Rocky just needed some more time to get used to speaking with other people again, and while their frequency of indicators had slightly decreased over time when talking to Adrian, it had however stayed the same when speaking publicly.
Because Rocky had a hard time expressing themself to people they didn’t know well. Keeping the indicators was an active choice that Rocky didn’t feel ashamed for making, because they didn’t give a shit anymore.
Adrian was willing to bet that Rocky and Grace didn’t really need the indicators either at this point – hell, sometimes Adrian was sure they didn’t even need words to communicate, random noises and vibes were enough – they just kept them because they felt pleasant to use.
Adrian even found themself adding the word “question” to the end of one instead of doing the double tap, and not just when Rocky was overwhelmed and had a harder time distinguishing tones of voice. They also included “statement” sometimes as a contrast, and every time they did, Rocky’s carapace lifted just that tiny bit higher.
“Rocky, let them breathe,” Adrian reminded their mate with an amused trill. A couple more pokes later, Rocky stepped back, holding out a hand to help a still giggly and heavily breathing Grace to their standing-arms.
“The cheater deserved it, statement,” Rocky said, sneaking in one final poke before trodding back over to their own chair.
“Sore [phonetic euphemism for fucking] loser,” Grace huffed out once they had caught their breath.
“Maybe we shouldn’t play another game then, statement,” Adrian said. After a moment of silence, both Rocky and Grace burst out into a brief fit of giggles.
“Children,” Adrian mumbled, which only made them laugh harder.
“Okay, okay, let us do something else,” Grace conceded, still grinning widely, as they gathered all the cards. Adrian was about to make some suggestions when Rocky perked up.
“Oh, Grace, tell me and Adrian about the model idea you had,” they said. “You wanted to tell me earlier but got distracted, stupid.”
In the beginning, Adrian had admonished Rocky for calling Grace so many rude words, but they had quickly learned that for one, Grace found it funny, and for another, Grace often insulted Rocky right back, who found that equally funny.
At the mention of this model idea, Grace perked up even more than Rocky had, light-organs open wide and their useful-hands shaking up and down a few times.
“Yes, yes, thank you for reminding me!” Grace said excitedly. “Since I got approval to include astrophysics in my lesson plans, I have been thinking on how to best teach without only using the texture screen. Lots of human astrophysics is explained with light-captures because practical experiments are not very feasible.”
“You want me to make a model, question?” Rocky asked, standing up in their chair on enthusiastic arms.
“A complicated model,” Grace confirmed, “of a ˌsupərˈnoʊvə!”
Rocky chimed in thrilled understanding, carapace bobbing up and down in sync with Grace’s useful-hands.
“New word,” Adrian said quickly before Grace could plow on.
“Ah, yes, this is not common Eridian knowledge,” Grace said to themself before they launched into an animated explanation about the explosive death of certain stars – how it depended on the star’s mass and potential companion stars whether or not they would explode so violently, how the different elements present lead to different observable light curves and how iron was the threshold element for the star’s collapse. Adrian wasn’t particularly invested in astrophysics, but having anything explained to them with this much passion automatically captured their full attention.
“So for the classroom model,” Grace continued, turning their front to Rocky, “I was thinking of physically recreating the standard core collapse model. We would need a fixed core and a few movable layers of shell material to imitate the rebound, the standing shock, maybe some kənˈvɛkʃən, and then the ɪˈdʒɛktə acceleration of the explosion itself.”
As Grace and Rocky delved deeper into the details of the contraption, Adrian was content just sitting and listening.
It used to take Adrian multiple “you aren’t talking too much, I enjoy listening to you, please continue” to get Rocky through a single topic. Just before the Astrophage crisis, they barely apologised anymore when they did talk, but Adrian knew they sometimes still chose to keep their excitement to themself as not to “bother” them.
Not anymore. Grace and Rocky could talk at each other for hours, interrupting only with genuinely curious questions that kept the flow going. Rocky now only stopped themself around Adrian when they’d been speaking for an incredibly long time and had reached a point where a little break was indeed necessary, both for Rocky’s and Adrian’s sake. The few times Adrian had witnessed Rocky “infodumping” in public, they’d finished their entire train of thought without omitting details Adrian knew Rocky wouldn’t have dared to include before the mission.
Because Rocky did not give a shit anymore.
And despite all the fear of abandonment, the separation anxiety and codependency with Grace, the panic attacks and all the other layers upon layers of trauma that had resulted from their journey, they had also come out healthy and happy in a way Adrian would never have expected.
They knew it was partially due to the years upon years of horrifying loneliness Rocky had experienced, but also, for a much larger part, due to Grace. Going through their harrowing journey together meant that they had become intertwined to a point where not caring about oneself equalled distressing the other. It was this dynamic with the alien that had transformed their mate.
The alien who made little self-soothing motions and noises, who got overwhelmed by too much input or unexpected changes, who preferred direct and clear communication, who was so intensely passionate about their interests.
The alien who reminded Adrian so much of their mate.
Adrian watched as Grace and Rocky gestured in tandem, correcting each other on their respective understanding of the physics and the engineering of the problem, all bouncing carapaces and big smiles.
Not for the first time and definitely not for the last time, Adrian was filled with an insurmountable sense of joy and gratitude that these two had found each other and, together, had made it home.
Their Rocky and their Grace.