Chapter Text
Rocky came to his senses, and immediately something was wrong. It wasn't just that the air was filled with a biting smell that made him nauseous — none of which were sensations he was supposed to feel. It wasn't that he could feel wetness on him and inside him for no reason.
No, the worst part was that he could perceive darkness. Not the lack of auditory input — the ship equipment was still making noise, and Mary was complaining about something he couldn't decipher — but none of that translated to perception.
He felt cold under him; strange, but welcome nonetheless. Still, the surface he was laying on wasn't the angular, cool texture of his xenonite ball or tunnels.
He tried tapping on the floor for better reception — nothing. But he could move his hand, so he would take the small victory. He moved his right hand (since when has he had a right and left? Since when has he had two???) And felt his welding tool under it, scolding hot and switched into reverse gear.
The evidence was conclusive; he'd pried himself out of the xenonite enclosure. He was in Grace's atmosphere.
He was alive.
He was beginning to dislike this situation more and more.
If he was right, he knew what was obscuring his vision. He just had to move it. That should be intuitive, no?
Oh stars above.
The amount of input was overwhelming, and made him want to shut his eyes again. Because they must have been eyes. He was seeing. Light bounced off every item in all kinds of frequencies. He absent-mindedly wondered which one was blue, Grace's favourite colour.
Grace.
Fuck's sake, where is that guy when you need him? Rocky could really use some help getting his bearings. Mainly standing up, that would be an issue to solve. He could tell he had two legs for walking and two for grabbing things, but that's where his knowledge ended. Bipedal balance and motion were an absurd concept to him.
Okay. No reason to panic. He was in the atmosphere correct for his impossible anatomy. Was he injured? If this body was anything like Grace's, he was now incredibly fragile. He could feel sharp pain in the hand that hovered above the welding tool. Erid's temperature was absurdly hot for humans, so that was understandable. Somehow, he'd avoided other burns altogether, despite how scorched Grace's arm was after saving Rocky above planet Adrian.
Adrian. Oh, shit shit shit, was Rocky stuck like this forever? This couldn't be a dream, Eridian's didn't dream like humans did, this was one hundred percent real and he was physically unable to touch his mate if he ever sees them again. Okay, in this case he could allow a degree of panic.
His newfound vision blurred, and Rocky realised he was leaking crying. It was exhausting and uncomfortable, and left him short of breath that he already had to remember how to control. How did Grace do this on a daily basis?
He heard footsteps behind him. Having a front and back would take some getting used to. His hearing range was way off, and by the time he heard the steps, Grace was practically in his field of vision.
‘What…’ Grace's face hovered above Rocky's. Admittedly, with light-based vision he looked much better. Rocky could no longer hear his every organ, and for some reason the lack of his everpresent heartbeat upset him.
‘...Rocky?’
Okay, time for words. He instinctively hummed a note of confirmation, but it came out so broken and flat he felt tears trickle down his face again. He nodded shakily, though with how hard he moved his head he quickly felt dizzy. Humans were a lot lighter than Eridians. Less force required to move.
‘Hrrrase,’ he managed, hating how his voice came out. If he stayed like this, he'd never be able to thrum again. Never be able to sing along with his family back on Erid. Never so much as greet his mate. Shit, he missed Adrian so much right now. He missed Erid.
‘Oh, God.’ Grace helped him sit up, concern mixing with relief both on his face and in his voice. ‘It's really you.’
They looked at each other for a moment, and then, both at once, muttered something close to “fuck”.
Okay. There was a human on his ship. A human that had very recently been an Eridian, and now looked exactly like a human. That's normal. That's nothing to freak out about. That's absolutely fine.
He looked like Rocky, still. Just… human, if that made sense. Tan skin, muscles worthy of an olympic athlete, a wave of salt-and-pepper hair that seemed to defy the laws of gravity. Tattoos on his skin mimicked his carvings from back when he had a carapace. He looked slightly older than Grace, but perhaps it was just stress that marked additional wrinkles on his face.
This must have been so confusing for Rocky. To wake up with a whole new primary sense, a squishy alien body, and three prehensile limbs fewer. Grace would probably cry on the spot. Then again, he was already half-crying, so that's not saying much.
‘Are you hurt?’ This felt like the most important question to ask. The matter of how this happened could wait.
Rocky raised his right palm a bit too fast, used to having a much heavier body. The hand was red and already swollen, severely burned from — most likely — trying to free himself from the now ill-fitting atmosphere. Luckily he was in his ball at the time, and didn't release a half the ship's worth of heat and ammonia into the human side of the Hail Mary.
Okay. Priority one: fix Rocky's hand. The guy had probably never felt this much pain in his life, considering how much sturdier he claimed Eridians were.
‘Okay, we need to get you to the dormitory. Can you stand?’
Rocky shot him a glare. So he was getting the hang of expressions, at least that was good news. Grace helped him up to his legs, and half-dragged, half-carried the much heavier man through the ship and down the ladder to the sleeping unit.
Rocky managed to lay down on Yao's bed, and in an instant the robotic hands were all over his injury. Before long, it was disinfected — Rocky seemed to hate that part, Grace didn't blame him — and bandaged. In the meantime, Grace dug up one of his spare uniforms and advised Rocky on how to put it on, since, yes, the man was completely naked. Apparently magical species transformations didn't come with free clothing.
Even with all the explaining in the world, Grace still had to help Rocky get into his uniform, which was harder than it sounds, actually.
Once that was done, Grace sat down at the edge of the bed.
‘Are you… okay?’
Rocky hesitated. Then, he moved his head from side to side.
‘Iiiz ah lot,’ he muttered in broken English. Grace got an idea.
‘Wait here, I'll be right back,’ he said. Rocky immediately grabbed him by the wrist, indicating that Grace was not going to go anywhere, actually, but Grace didn't relent.
‘Trust me, this is going to help. I'll be back in less than a minute.’
With that, he left the room and shuffled through the layers of stuff in the lab, finally finding what he was looking for: the laptop. When he came back, Rocky was busy touching his hair curiously.
Grace turned on a text-to-speech program, and for old times’ sake switched the voice to “James”. He passed it to Rocky, who struggled with finding the right amount of force he should apply when holding it.
‘You know the English alphabet, right? You should be able to communicate this way for a bit, at least until you learn to speak.’
Rocky went quiet for a while, then slowly typed out a few words and hit enter. The familiar voice read aloud:
Now I'm finally taller.
Grace couldn't help but snort at that. Yup, this was definitely his Rocky, alright. He also noticed the correct grammatical structure of the sentence. The translator didn't limit Rocky's expression anymore, and he surely remembered all the rules from what Grace was saying. It would make communication much easier, but also somehow sounded wrong to Grace. He felt stupid for doing so, but for a moment he thought it took away some of Rocky's charm.
‘Alright,’ Grace said. ‘What happened? How…’
Rocky typed the next sentence a lot faster. It seems even as a human he had a good memory.
Don't know. Woke up outside of the ball, no memory of before. I don't even remember getting out.
Rocky tapped two fingers on the bed repeatedly, more of a stim than a conscious action. Old habits die hard, it seemed.
Never mind that now. I need to learn how to move on my own, and talk. If you insist. We can leave theories for later. For now, you’re not a science human. You’re a teacher human. He seemed to get the hang of the keyboard very quickly — he’d probably learned the controls by observing Grace, and now his engineering-focused mind was applying all the gathered knowledge. Grace thought with a snicker that, soon enough, Rocky would definitely be better at using the computer than he was.
‘Teacher human, huh? I can do that. Class, welcome to our first lesson, today we’ll be starting a new topic: standing 101.’