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Ryland had declared it a "boys night in," when he'd pitched it to Rocky, grinning and rubbing his hands together. He had to find ways to make the time pass, to make certain days special or noteworthy when there was no "weekend" or even a "week." This was one of his many, many attempts at generating a feeling of festivity for himself. The biodome team was doing an incredible job, but sometimes he had to be responsible for putting enrichment in his own giant vivarium, and his excitement for the occasion was only a little forced.
Rocky was not as enthused.
"Not boy plural. Only one boy, and is you."
After this many years, Ryland could not be deflated that easily.
"It's the spirit of the thing Rock, we hang out, we shoot the shiz, we play games, we watch movies — y'know, like a sleepover!"
"How different from normal night, question? Always hang out, Grace always playing game and watching movie. Always watch sleep."
Rocky was making something while Ryland puttered around his house, his nimble claws fiddling with micro-xenonite panels as they slotted together like chainmail. Rocky had said it was going to be the most seamless and flexible suit yet, and Ryland was, selfishly, very eager to see it finished.
He liked the thought of Rocky having fewer limitations in his home. He liked pretending that there was nothing separating them. He'd gotten really good at imagining the wall between them was plain air, and years of practice hadn't improved his opinion of the exercise. It stunk.
"It's special because we make it special! Statement!" Ryland added at the end for emphasis.
Rocky did a little sarcastic trill that wasn't so much a word as it was a sigh.
"It's a human thing," he said, which Rocky shuffled around in irritation at. 'Cultural differences' and 'it's just a human thing' were good excuses when you were building the first bridge of understanding across lightyears of spacetime to establish communication and connection with an alien lifeform. It didn't fly so much now that Rocky had intimate knowledge of basically everything about Grace, and every one of his personal and social foibles. Rocky knew plenty about humans, and expressed his displeasure with that fact regularly.
"Human thing stupid," Rocky hummed flatly.
Just like that.
"Yes, and we're doing it anyway," Ryland stated confidently.
"Grace stupid," Rocky griped, and Ryland grinned.
"I'm rubber and you're glue bud, what are we watching?"
"Words also stupid, mean nothing." Rocky stated emphatically. A pause, then, "I pick first."
Rocky, despite his reluctance, had been quite vocal in his opinions on the appropriate choice of movie for the occasion. Ryland's proposal of Cats the Musical had been shot down almost before it had left his mouth, and his second offering of one of the many nature documentaries on file had Rocky making grumbled noises of displeasure.
"Flying predator friendship movie," he whistled, and Ryland groaned.
"C'mon bud not again."
"Grace ask what we watch for pretend boy plural night, Rocky tell you. Watch flying predator friendship movie."
Grace groaned even as his hands moved to queue up the movie. His mouth ticked in the corner with a hidden smile. He could never really complain.
One wall of his home had been left flat, white and unadorned for the express purpose of serving as a screen for a makeshift projector Ryland had managed to assemble. It did far better in the Eridian gravity than the monitors from aboard the Hail Mary, and it meant he could make the movies as big and bright as he wanted. It was easier for Rocky's visual translator to pick up on that way.
The opening title to 'How to Train Your Dragon' scrolled across his wall and he fussed around the couch, assembling the pillows and blankets to ease the ever-present ache in his joints. Rocky bounced and jittered in his suit, far too pleased at getting his own way for a grown-ass Eridian.
"Yeah, yeah, get over here," Ryland fussed, and Rocky climbed excitedly onto the reinforced furniture.
He was lucky that the biodome team took eridian biology into consideration as a default, and that therefore all of his things could probably tolerate a large car being dropped on top of them without taking a dent. Any normal couch would have buckled under Rocky's weight, but even with the added mass of the articulated Xenonite suit, the plush of the couch only indented slightly as his friend clambered up next to him.
Ryland held his arm out, and Rocky carefully situated himself into Ryland's personal space.
This whole….this had gotten even more out of hand recently.
It was the new suit's fault, Ryland was pretty sure. That and years of being directly on the other side of an inflexible barrier permanently separating him from his best friend and favorite person in the world. No matter the coping mechanisms at play, that wore on a person.
Armando had been good for some things, and Grace could approximate many others, but nothing could quash the basic biologic need to touch and be touched.
Ryland didn't really want to examine why he needed to touch Rocky especially, but he figured it was only the natural evolution of their already intense codependency.
The new suit had meant quite a few new developments in quelling this longing for him. Rocky seemed pretty pleased with the updates too, make no mistake. There had been a distinct tremble in his vocalizations as they had finally really truly hugged for the first time. It had been so intense Grace hadn't been able to stop crying for about an hour after, and every time the sensation had returned to him he'd broken into helpless little hiccups again.
They hadn't really stopped touching since then - at least not when they could help it. Watching a movie was just their easiest and most favorite excuse to get away with more blatant cuddling.
Moving oh so carefully, Rocky's limbs picked their way around Ryland's body, one coming to rest over his thigh and settle in the space between his legs, several of them loafing under his body as he pulled himself close, and the final one coming to rest in the crook of Ryland's arm, threading through the space to slot his claw into Ryland's waiting hand.
Rocky, ever the fidgeter and handyman, enjoyed fiddling around with Ryland's hands. He'd asked him why once, and had received only the ominous reply, "Like web, web made of bones and squishy meat, weird, gross, interesting."
He'd chuckled nervously at the time, reminding Rocky that human hands were deceptively fragile.
Rocky chittered, annoyed, focused in on the play of Ryland's tendons across the back of his hand. "Rocky know tensile strength of human bone. Rocky not stupid."
Ryland had — smartly, he thought — not pursued the point any further, but neither had he stopped Rocky from messing with his hands every time they sat down to do this.
As he settled, Rocky's carapace came to rest gingerly against Grace's ribs, tucked under the circle of his arm, and Ryland couldn't resist giving him an affectionate pat.
"Stop stroking, not pet," Rocky teased, and Ryland stuck his tongue out at him.
Even resting lightly against him, Rocky's limbs were so heavy they pressed him into the couch. The hard edges of the xenonite suit couldn't dim the pleasure of the feeling, it was heavenly. He felt his nervous system slowly unclenching, his body relaxing almost immediately under the pressure.
As he relaxed, he leaned more and more of his body weight on Rocky, and let the gentle, almost ticklish sensation of Rocky's claws trailing across his knucklebones carry him away to the sound of John Powell's soundtrack swelling in the background.
There was a subtle but ever present buzzing under his skin that went away when they did this. It was a new drug in many ways, something addictive and irreplaceable in his life. He tried to be, y'know, normal about it.
He didn't think he succeeded.
Rocky was devilishly perceptive, as he was in most things, and despite his grumbling he never put up any real resistance to Ryland's many contrived reasons to be close to him. In fact, he thought up ideas himself plenty of times; trips to the beach, lazy mornings where he encouraged Grace to stretch and relax in bed, sleepy afternoons on the couch chatting about anything and everything with Rocky inserted into the negative space around him.
Grace was indescribably grateful for it, even when it made some great and unnamed mass of emotions writhe around inside of him every time.
It felt somewhat like gratitude, sure, but it felt like grief too. A grief for human touch, but a grief that echoed in the scar on his forearm too. A wish for true contact that could never truly be fulfilled, not without far too great a cost.
If he was being honest with himself though — which he sometimes was when the biodome illumination team let the false sun sink low and the "night" crept in through his windows — it also felt like love.
It wasn't a word he threw around for fun, and to be fair it wasn't one he'd used much in his life in the Before times either. It simply wasn't a sentiment that entered his relationships very often, as awful as that might sound to anyone else. And even when it did, it was more often than not a knee-jerk reaction chasing out of his mouth, hard on the heels of a similar confession. Nothing more than a desperate attempt to catch up. It didn't come naturally, is what he meant.
Nothing about his current situation should have been natural. There was no "natural" that could encompass what he was doing now; nature had never intended anything quite this strange. Two completely divergent evolutions had labored to produce the pinnacle of optimized biology for their ecosystems, and all of that had somehow led to both of them cuddling on the couch and watching movies together.
And yet…and yet.
Rocky shifted a little, humming a small warning as he did so Grace wouldn't startle. As he settled, he pulled Grace a little closer by the thigh, settling him more firmly onto Rocky's carapace. He chuckled under his breath, and, without really thinking the action through, pressed a soft kiss to the top of Rocky's suit.
That wasn't something he did often either, but it had happened before. Usually during pretty emotional moments. The first he could remember had been during that time when he was very slowly starving to death. He'd been bedridden for a few months, and he was pretty sure Rocky had never left his line of sight the entire time. One of those anxious nights, sore from being a medical guinea pig and chilled from weight loss, Ryland had focused in on Rocky's hovering presence.
It had been just the two of them, finally, and Rocky was speaking to him in hushed, chirring tones. He didn't need the translator by that time, and it let him really listen to Rocky in ways he couldn't before. The rises and falls of his music, the tones and subtleties of Eridian speech washing over him as he lay on his side, facing his best friend and taking in every harmonic he produced.
The underlying note of Rocky's voice then had been worry, and it rang in his bones as he lay and trilled nonsense at Grace, distracting him to the best of his abilities. Eventually, Grace hadn't been able to take that soft concern rolling off of his friend in waves, and he'd leaned forward to buss a kiss to the front of his xenonite ball.
Rocky had recoiled only slightly, shuddering.
"Why make my ball wet question… human mucus on Rocky ball now, wet wet wet," he chittered, not distressed so much as playing the part for Ryland's sake. Anything to pretend he was acting normally and in his own right mind.
"Human thing," he'd slurred, before falling back to his pillows. "Deal with it."
Rocky didn't exactly enjoy the practice, but he hadn't stopped Ryland from doing it. And it wasn't like Ryland did it a lot anyway. Just when the situation called for it.
And boys night with Rocky absolutely counted.
"Grace comfortable, question?" Rocky asked quietly.
"Yeah buddy, why?" he answered automatically.
"Shifting weight. Joints stiff, in pain, question?" Rocky persisted.
Ryland sighed and consciously relaxed his body, which had slowly tightened again as he'd pondered the machinations of his own brain. Or rather, his heart.
"No pain, just thinking," he explained.
"Explains everything, Grace not used to thinking," Rocky replied immediately, and Grace laughed even as he shook his hand free of Rocky's claws.
"I'll get you for that one."
"Already got Rocky. Rocky right here, statement. Not going anywhere."
Tears sprung rudely and unbidden to his eyes, his voice suddenly getting stuck in the back of his throat.
"Yeah, bud," he managed.
Rocky, sensing that Grace was once again being a soft and leaky space blob, brought one of his claws to rest on Ryland's arm. Nearly exactly where the edge of his scar began.
"Rocky right here," he said again, and Ryland gave up on dignity to fully turn away from the screen and wrap his arms around his friend.
Rocky was used to him by now, and had learned what he needed in moments like this. His carapace shifted and his vents shuddered as he shuffled under Grace's weight, before finally settling on wrapping his arms around Ryland in return.
God, Ryland loved him. He really did, and it was scary and weird and the best thing he'd ever felt in his life.
One of Rocky's limbs slipped along his ribs and wrapped around to his back, rubbing a gentle and geometrically precise circle centered on his spine.
Rather than complaining about the sudden change, Rocky just shifted until they were nearly horizontal on the couch, their limbs tangled around each other snugly. Somewhere behind the shadow of Rocky's carapace, Toothless and Hiccup were learning how to fly together.
Ryland closed his eyes and let himself feel the warmth of Rocky near him, the ebb and flow of his hums and vocalizations.
"♪♫♪ Grace, sleep now?" Rocky said softly.
Grace blinked his eyes against the progression of notes, muddled brain trying to translate.
"Word…?" he asked, knowing that Rocky would know what he was asking for.
The claws on one of Rocky's hands tapped together, fiddling with the give of the flexible xenonite.
He hummed, then said carefully, "Means taken care of," he tried first, then wiggled as he tried again, "No, no, means… close to me. One of mine." Rocky squirmed again in frustration, needing to find a definition for something that must have been so obvious to him. "Means needed and wanted, cared for. What human word for this feeling?" Rocky asked.
Ryland wasn't often left speechless anymore, but that did the trick. He tried three times to wet his throat before managing, "That's a lot of things to fit into one word, pal."
"Find human word," Rocky said, neatly side-stepping his evasion.
Ryland took a deep breath, and then offered, "Loved."
Rocky shuddered in satisfaction, and tightened his grip on Ryland, pulling him in closer.
"Yes, yes. Loved Grace, is title."
He couldn't argue the grammar of it, not when his eyes were pricking again.
"Yeah… yeah," he managed, before clearing his throat.
"I'd like to stay here for a while," he offered, a response to an almost forgotten question.
"Can sleep here, Rocky watch," his friend said, his trilling colored something warm and golden as it hit Ryland's senses. That roiling, scary, overwhelming mess of love and emotion churned higher in his chest, but never quite spilled over. It was okay, if he loved like this. Of course, as his other half and equal in all things, Rocky would beat him to the punch of saying it out loud.
"Okay," he said, allowing his body to relax into the state of torpor it so badly wanted to be in. Rocky's hand traced over the burn mark on his forearm, and Grace shivered.
"I watch," Rocky said again, like a vow.
"Okay," he said again. And it was.