Chapter Text
If Grace never had to watch The Notebook again, it would be too soon. Throw it out of the airlock, chuck it in a black hole, melt it in the Eridian atmosphere. Blegh. Gosh, he hated this movie. Always had.
It was his own fault, really. He was just a teensy bit bored as he cleaned the dormitory of the Hail Mary (only at Rocky’s behest because “Rocky not allow Grace to live in mess for next four straight years, statement!”) and started asking a few questions about Adrian. But Rocky, just as inquisitive, fired back with double the questions about human relationships on Earth: hold hands, question? Watch other sleep, question? Do what things together, question?
But the concept of kissing had to come up eventually. Grace had almost rubbed his hands together with glee at the thought of Rocky’s guaranteed disgust. Rocky hated mouth sounds. Sometimes Grace would chew with his mouth wide open right in front of Rocky’s ball just to squick him out and watch him frantically scramble all five of his limbs against the xenonite in a panic to roll away. Disgust! Grace disgust! Rocky never sit with Grace while eating again, statement!
Hey, he never claimed to be a nice roommate.
He got sidetracked before he could get to that, though, as he usually did. Back on Earth, his students would indulge in his tangents (usually to avoid a pop quiz). Rocky wasn’t much different.
“I mean, a lot of what I know about relationships comes from movies, which aren’t exactly realistic—my longest relationship lasted what, like, eight months and it was a total mess so I’m no expert—”
Rocky had already interrupted, “Movies? Movies about human courtship, question?”
“Uh… yeah. Romance movies. There’s Titanic—wait, that might be a disaster movie, not romance—there’s The Notebook, there’s 500 Days of Summer…”
Grace had the habit of throwing around phrases while knowing full well Rocky couldn’t understand half of them, mainly because he sometimes found it hard to stop his thoughts from tumbling out of his mouth. But a smaller part of him sort of wanted an excuse for Rocky to ask his never-ending questions. He liked answering them. It was the teacher gene in him.
This time though, he really should have kept his trap shut.
“How human mating related to notebook, question?”
Rocky knew what a notebook was—there were quite a few packed away on the Hail Mary, which Grace came to remember was Dubois’ request because he “couldn’t calculate shit without some good old fashioned pen and paper.” Grace wasn’t quite sure what Eridian word Rocky was using in place of “notebook.” From what he understood, the written word wasn’t a big thing on Erid, given their near photographic memory.
“Not really important, it’s just that the woman gets dementia—that’s a sickness where you lose your memory—and she writes down her entire life in a notebook so her husband can read it to her once she forgets everything. The movie is about the events of their lives as they fall in love.”
“Sound sad.”
“Yeahh… when I put it like that, I guess.”
“Rocky want to hear notebook movie, statement.”
“Haha. Absolutely not, bud.”
“Why not, question?”
“It’s a bad movie! It’s not a good example of a good relationship! There has to be a better movie out there, I just have to think of one.”
They’d been watching mostly science documentaries the past few months, not movies. It reminded Grace of Earth, and Rocky loved learning about his home planet. Grace didn’t really watch movies in his spare time back on Earth in the first place, so his cinema trivia knowledge had kind of atrophied.
“While Grace think, Rocky listen notebook movie.”
Grace grabbed fistfuls of his hair. “No! Why!”
“For science!” Rocky held up a limb cheerfully. “Compare good human relationship with bad.”
Grace had no interest in watching the movie. It would in fact be his second time watching, which was two too many. Three months into his eight month disaster of a relationship, his then girlfriend wheedled him into watching what she proclaimed was her favorite movie of all time. She was sobbing by the end of the movie. Grace decidedly was not, and his criticisms of the movie had triggered one of the worst arguments they’d ever had. In hindsight, that was when he should have gotten out.
Or maybe he didn’t just get relationships. His ex told him that a lot.
But Rocky won with sheer stubbornness, as usual. And he refused to watch without Grace, of course, because he needed Grace to explain every concept before moving on to the next scene. Grace didn’t mind so much when it was for documentaries, but he did mind when he had to spend an hour explaining the carnival scene where Noah threatened suicide in order to make Allie go out with him — yes, it’s bad bad bad behavior, no, Allie shouldn’t put up with someone like that, yes, the Ferris Wheel is something people go on for fun, “going out” means… Hmm, that one’s tough.
By the time they got to the concept of getting run over by cars by lying in the middle of the street, Grace was sprawled out on the floor in exhaustion feeling like he had been run over by a car and they weren’t even twenty minutes into the movie yet. He was hoping Rocky’s evident and growing disgust toward Noah would deter him from wanting to finish it, but alas, Rocky was in it for the science.
“Noah look like Grace,” Rocky said almost begrudgingly, examining the character during a close-up shot as Grace threw a hand over his eyes tiredly.
“Very funny, Rock.”
“What funny? Noah face beautiful, Grace beautiful,” Rocky replied—Grace flushed a little—and could not be dissuaded from this position even after a detailed explanation of why Ryan Gosling was a near-perfect human specimen and why Ryland Grace was not.
What happened to ‘leaky space blob?’ Grace thought fondly, when Rocky suddenly shrieked.
“Grace! What Noah and Allie doing, question? Put mouths together! Disgust!”
Grace chuckled evilly as he sat up.
“Yeah bud, that’s what people in relationships do to express affection. They go like this—” Grace pursed his own lips “—and they smooch!”
Grace leaned in toward Rocky making obnoxious kissy noises, from which Rocky rolled back in horror. He grinned at his accomplishment. Making Rocky squeamish was always fun.
Explaining human reproduction practices to an alien as an explanation of a steamy cinematic sex scene, however, was decidedly not fun. Grace always left the facts of life up to the P.E. teacher back on Earth and could not have been happier about it, although once or twice he had to dodge a rogue question about the birds and the bees from a daring class clown as he futilely attempted to exert damage control over a class of sixth graders gone wild. Rocky on the other hand was a model biology student, almost clinically so, and could not understand why Grace was so squeamish about it aside from the obvious general grossness of humans leaking (which Grace did wholeheartedly agree with). But as the credits finally rolled, Grace resolved to black out the whole conversation from his brain as best as he could. Would’ve been nice if Ilyukhina had packed some more vodka, if that were even possible.
Rocky didn’t have eyes, of course, but as Grace closed the laptop, he thought he could feel Rocky perceiving him closer than usual. After one and a half years of sharing the same limited square footage as they hurtled toward Erid, Grace felt he had picked up a sort of spidey sense for these things.
“Grace say he had mate,” Rocky said as Grace stowed the laptop away. “Why mess, question?”
The air that escaped his lips was half air getting knocked out of him, half pathetic recovery chuckle.
“Boy, you don’t miss a thing, do you. Uhh… it just was,” he said, knowing Rocky wouldn’t be satisfied with this answer. “It wasn’t a super serious relationship, anyway. Sometimes stuff doesn’t work out and you want different things.”
“What different things you want?”
Grace shrugged. “I just wasn’t cut out for a relationship.”
“Not understand phrase.”
“It wasn’t meant for me, pal!” Grace threw up his hands. “All the lovey dovey good feelings you’re supposed to get in a relationship and, um, attraction, I guess? I never felt any of that. And that messed a lot of things up."
He sighed, then gave Rocky a lopsided smile. "I think I’m just broken somewhere.”
Rocky didn’t seem amused. “Grace not broken. Sounds perfectly normal to Rocky.”
Grace, not sure how to react to this, scoffed and turned away.
“Yeah? You’d be the first, then.”