Work Text:
Draw me like one of your Eridian girls
They were around one year into their journey to Erid. Life had become routine as the days drew on. A cycle of sleeping, waking, eating, repairing and talking science. There was comfort in the repetition, a kind of ritual that helped to settle the nerves. But sometimes the monotony caught up with him and he had to seek out novelty.
Discovering that they had a games console onboard with the capability to play Mario Kart had been a saving grace (ha). He enjoyed absolutely destroying Rocky on the Rainbow Road, but then quickly ate his celebratory words when Rocky somehow mastered the controls. It was terribly humbling to have a creature with no eyes wipe the floor with him. A phrase his friend found both alarming and amusing. ‘Grace would make terrible floor cleaner. Too leaky. Would make more mess.’
But after a few weeks that could also grow a bit stale. In a particularly restless mood, Grace lay on the floor with his feet propped up on the chair. A position Rocky had mocked him for, asking if he had forgotten how to sit down with his bad human memory, the little menace. He tilted his head to peer at his friend. Rocky appeared upside down from this angle.
“Hey, Rock wanna do something?” Grace asked.
“What do, question?” Rocky said tweaking some xenonite contraption. Grace would ask about it later.
“I dunno,” Grace sighed “How about we draw each other?”
“Need word,” Rocky said, placing his project down.
Looking up at Rocky like this was starting to give him a crick in his neck. Grace sat up properly and swivelled around to face Rocky’s hamster ball. “It’s uh, like when you create pictures by hand. Sorta like the carving you have on your arms.”
Rocky braced his arms together to form the full picture of his name, clan and purpose. “Oh, is called ♪♫♭♩ in Eridian. Most carvings done on carapace but sometimes done on walls. Used for storytelling.”
“Oh we had cave paintings too!” Grace said with an excitable grin.
“Amaze. Amaze.” Rocky said with a touch of jazz hands “Is drawing each other typical human activity question?”
“It’s not like an everyday thing,” Grace mused, “Though it can be fun to do with your friends and family.”
Not that he had much experience with either. He’d mostly seen couples painting each other online, with one tending to have drastically more skill than the other. They made him laugh and he secretly wished to do the same with someone else. Though there had never really been anyone he could do it with.
He briefly imagined the look on Stratt’s face if he had ever asked her for anything so ridiculous. Pressed lips, a deep crease in her brow, a look of severe disappointment. She would have probably had him sectioned on grounds of insanity. A knot of discomfort formed in his stomach at the thought of Stratt. He still wasn’t ready to unpack any of those tightly bound emotions.
“Fun to do with friends, and Grace Rocky best, best, best friends. Understand,” Rocky said.
The knot in his stomach unwound at Rocky’s confession, replaced by a bloom of warmth. “That’s right bud. Best friends.”
“Best, best, best,” Rocky clarified with a stomp, making Grace smile. “Though Rocky better at sculpting than carving.”
“I’m sure whatever you make will be amazing, because you’re the one doing it.”
Rocky wiggled his carapace from side to side. “Okay, let us do! I will need different equipment. Must go get. Be back in 360 seconds.”
Then Rocky was rolling towards his xenonite tunnel, climbing through the airlock and scuttling into a different room. He looked even more like a spider when he was excited, legs skittering faster. By the time he came back, carrying one of the old hexagons of xenonite he’d used when first constructing the tunnel, Grace was nearly done setting himself up. He’d found a tablet hidden amongst his collection of laptops a little while back, there were at least 5 different art apps downloaded onto it. Probably intended for planning of some description, if people didn’t like using whiteboards. Or to keep the astronauts from going insane. In any case it was now being used to draw a funky little rock spider. A much better use, if you asked him.
Rocky rolled his ball to rest back in front of him. He showed Grace the purpose of this particular piece of xenonite. Less solid than its other counterparts. A touch of pressure and you could carve grooves into its surface. Rocky demonstrated with a small pointed stick. It reminded Grace of wax tablets used by the Romans. A fact he repeated to an ecstatic Rocky. He enjoyed discovering parts of their culture that aligned.
“Right,” Grace said, feeling a tad self-conscious. He propped the tablet onto his blanket-covered knees. “Should I count down?”
“Count down silly. Just start,” Rocky stated.
“Ugh fine, Mr Impatient,” Grace said, without heat. Then with a grin, he rushed “3,2,1, go!”
Rocky was off like a shot carving lines into his softened xenonite. Laying out patterns in quick, efficient strokes. In a hurry to follow, Grace turned to his own tablet. The app he’d chosen was unfamiliar. More complicated than MS Paint that’s for sure. Designed for professional digital artists most likely. It took a few tries before he successfully produced even a single line, and he started to regret his choice in art medium. Probably would have been easier to just rip the whiteboard off the wall and use that.
But Grace was determined to make it work and experimented with a number of different brushes.
It…wasn’t going great. Obviously, he was no artist, stickmen were his usual forte, but he thought a rock with legs would at least be easy enough to replicate. Maybe he was trying too hard to be accurate. Sometimes simplicity was best. He erased his fourth attempt with an over enthusiastic swipe, ready to start fresh.
“Grace make erratic movements. This normal, question?” Rocky tilted his head away from his own etching.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. Just concentrate on your own,” Grace waved him off.
Right, he needed to stop over complicating this. Go back to his roots. He flexed his fingers around the digital pen, psyching himself up for another round. Then he dove back in, determined to get it right this time. A line here, a swoop there. The body, then the legs, filled in with an approximate brown colour. Yeah, that wasn’t too bad. Grace nodded to himself, he would be able to recognise Rocky in that picture.
“Grace finished, question?” Rocky asked when Grace placed his pen down.
He gave it one more cursory glance before agreeing, he probably wouldn’t get much better than that. “Yeah, I think so, buddy.”
“Excitement!” Rocky trilled, going up an octave “Show, show, show!”
“Okay, okay,” Grace grinned, then he flipped the tablet around. “Here.”
Rocky aimed his light gun at the tablet, thankfully, Grace was no longer filled with dread when he pointed it towards his face, then he glanced over to his textured screen. Silence stretched for several seconds, Rocky had stopped moving altogether.
“Who the 𝇓𝇐𝅘𝅥𝅲♫♩𝇒 is that question?”
“Whoa, language…I think,” Grace blinked “It’s you, Rock.”
“Is not Rocky! Is blob!” Rocky stamped for emphasis “Rocky is straight lines. Very sleek. Much chiselled.”
“You have some rounded edges,” Grace muttered trying to defend himself.
Rocky jabbed forward with a claw. “Only four legs! Rocky have five!”
He glanced back down to the tablet. “Oh shoot, you’re right.”
With a dramatic flick of the pen, Grace added an extra line. “There, all five legs accounted for,” he said with a smirk “I think it’s a perfect likeness.”
It was crazy how a faceless being could look so profoundly unimpressed. Less a seeing and more of a knowing. An aura of pure unadulterated displeasure.
“Grace is not Art Human. Grace should stay Science Human,” Rocky stated, as flatly as he was able.
Wow. It had been a good while since someone had told him to stick to his day job. Last time was when he had been loudly singing a mnemonic for his middle school class and they told him not to sing again. Kids man, they could be harsh critics.
“Well, show me what you did,” Grace said, turning the tablet away from Rocky, if he wasn’t going to appreciate it.
Rocky nimbly flipped his canvas around. Carved neatly into the light grey surface of the xenonite was an almost lifelike sketch of Grace he had ever laid his eyes upon. As in if you put him and the picture side by side it might take you a second to realise which was which.
His mouth dropped open in disbelief “How the fudge did you do that?”
“I look at Grace. I copy down. Is easy.”
Grace deflated, lips pitching into a glum line. “Maybe for you. I’m not so great with my right hand,” he muttered, massaging said hand with a thumb.
“Why does hand matter, question? Hand is hand,” Rocky said, giving two of his a wiggle.
“Most humans have a dominant hand,” he explained “Do Eridian’s not have a claw that they use more?”
Rocky pondered that, spinning around and lifting each claw up in sequence, then he settled on the arm with his mate patch attached to it, lofting it in the air and giving the claw a couple of snaps. “Eridian’s sometimes have preferred claw, but it does not stop 𝄭♭♬♪♩ in others.”
“What was that one?”
“Need word. Ability with small movements.”
“Oh, dexterity,” he clarified. “Some humans are ambidextrous, where they can use both hands in the same way. But most humans are only really competent with their dominant hand. Their other one can do stuff, just not as well.”
“Human’s inefficient. Can’t use lower limbs to grab, now can’t use both upper ones.”
Grace levelled Rocky with a flat look. “You can stop with the sass whenever.”
Rocky nodded with his carapace, not a natural movement, but one he’d started doing for Grace. “Yes, I choose later to stop.”
Grace sighed heavily. “Anyway, I used to be left-handed, now I have to compensate.”
The skin of his left hand was a map of raised scar tissue and chemical burns. It travelled most of the way up his shoulder and caught some of his side. Courtesy of a solid blast of Rocky’s atmosphere. Skin, and ammonia heated to 400° F, don’t tend to mix well. He had lost some of his grip strength because of it, holding anything for an extended period of time ached fiercely, and his fingers weren’t as nimble as they once were. Even so he had been lucky–incredibly lucky–to come out with any kind of function in the limb.
Rocky sagged, with a sad wordless trill, then added “Grace hurt because of Rocky, and Rocky mock him. Apology, apology.”
“Don’t apologise, Rock it’s fine,” Grace was quick to say. A sad Rocky was always an upsetting sight. “But even if it wasn’t, I still wouldn’t regret it. Not if it meant I saved my best, best, best friend.”
Rocky perked up with a delightful chirrup. “Yes, Rocky Grace best, best, best friends! Though please do not repeat action. Much sad if Grace hurt again.”
He stretched an invisible ache out of his left hand before dropping it onto the soft material of the quilt. “I can’t promise I won’t if I need to, buddy. I can’t just sit by if you need me, but I will do my best.”
Rocky let out the Eridian version of a huff. Certainly a lot more musical than a human’s. “Fine, but Rocky promise same.”
His gut twisted at the prospect. Memories of Rocky igniting in his atmosphere, collapsed in a paralysed heap, flickered through his mind. The thought of his friend sacrificing himself that way once more cut keen as knife. He wanted to tell Rocky no, ask him to take back his promise, only he realised, that was exactly how Rocky must have felt for him.
He did not want to be a hypocrite.
“Okay, Rock,” Grace sniffed, eyes stinging slightly “I can agree to that.”
“Good,” Rocky said, then after a beat added. “Grace picture is great. Best carving ever.”
Grace scoffed “No need to be nice to me, we both know it was pretty bad.”
“Yes, is bad,” Rocky conceded incredibly fast. “But is long while to Erid. Plenty of time to practice. Perhaps in two years you will make something almost recognisable.”
“Almost? Wow. Thanks for the vouch in confidence, bud.” Grace laughed “You’re on! By time we get to Erid I will be an artist!”
“We shall see.”
