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I try to pull away for what must be the third or fourth time now, and this time Rocky dignifies it with a response beyond a squeeze and a grumble.
“Grace,” he says, with precisely the same tone with which one might scold a pet for knocking a glass off the counter. “Quit squirming. This good for you. Thinking machine says so.”
I should never have given him that thing. At least when we still had a job to do, Rocky’s curiosity was filtered through the time I had to explain things to him and the limits I deemed appropriate. Now that he has his own laptop—and pretty much unlimited time to use it—he’s been looking up pretty much all there is to know about humans.
Most recently, the fact that physical closeness boosts their mood. It’s not like I was ever particularly secretive about it, hugging him through his ball back when that was as close as I could get to him, but it’s one thing to imply it through actions and quite another for Rocky to read about four and a half thousand words about it in a paper he found on his laptop, detailing things like cortisol levels, sleep quality, and overall mood. He even showed me a meme comparing Your Brain and Your Brain On Hugs.
The natural consequence is, of course, that I am now kept on a tight, alien-enforced schedule of eight hugs per day at the minimum.
Which is nice. It really is. The flexible xenonite suit might be the greatest of his inventions yet, and I say that with half a dozen tanks full of star-healing Taumoeba stored in the back of the ship.
It’s just that I can’t help but think of how he reacted when I first tried to hug him. When he saw me come closer without warning and recoiled, standing frozen in his shock, because it’s just not something Eridians do. It might be the ever-increasing threat of Taumoeba porridge, or it might be the severe lack of sunlight I’ve been getting, or it could just be that my brain is in overdrive now that I have someone I’m afraid of losing for the first time in a while, but today, after about a week of sticking to Rocky’s schedule, I look down at him where he’s hovering in my lap with just the right pressure, and I tell him what’s been on my mind since we started doing this.
“Rock, you know you don’t need to… You know you can say no, right?”
He shifts at that. He doesn’t actually need to angle his front toward me to hear me better, especially not at such close proximity, but he’s picked up the habit of doing just that. To make me feel better, maybe, about the fact that I need to look at him to actually see him.
“Say no why, question?” he asks, the bumpy crown of his carapace glaring at me accusingly.
“I’m just saying, bud. I know you wouldn’t really do this if not for me. And I appreciate it, I really do, I just—”
Even that chokes me up: the fact that I have to spell it out, that I need to find words for the muddled, vaguely terrifying feeling that I would trade whatever comfort is necessary for his sense of safety. If this makes him feel crowded, or if it reads as a threat because Eridians are vocal creatures rather than tactile ones, I need him to know that I would stop. These cuddle sessions have been nice, but they’re not so crucial that I wouldn’t give them up.
“I just don’t wanna be too much,” I manage, forcing the end through my cinched-tight throat.
And Rocky, ever the drama queen, lifts himself so quickly that he nearly bonks his carapace into my chin. In a matter of seconds, his limbs unravel their hold around me and find the mattress of my bed to push Rocky up, and then he’s truly glaring at me, his featureless face level with mine.
“Too much,” he says, and it’s not a question. His notes carry a lilt that blends disbelief and mockery in a mix that I know is unique to him alone, even without knowing any other Eridians. “You are stupid again, question?”
I shrink slightly, my shame changing direction. Rocky’s never been one to suffer in silence. If he hated this, he’d tell me. He’d still do it for my sake, but he’d complain about it every step of the way.
“Okay,” I say, but Rocky presses closer. I feel the muffled heat of his body through the suit.
“You are crazy,” he says. “Crazy and stupid stupid stupid. Not same Grace I saved planets with.”
“Alright, Rock, I get—”
“Is not too much,” Rocky says firmly, leaning in until he’s nearly met my forehead, until my eyes go blurry with the task of adjusting to how close he is. I couldn’t even fit my glasses between us to put them on. “Hugs and cuddles through xenonite suit, only touch through many layers. Is not enough. Better to be under you skin, between you ribs. Hear you heart right up close, noisy, alive. I would prefer.”
And that…
Huh.
It’s something I was taught to do with kids when they’re in their head, be it tantrums or panic attacks or just plain old overwhelm. A bit of absurdity can shake you right out of a spiral. The amount of kids I’ve gotten out of a rough time just by asking them what color their tail would be if they were a mermaid is—well, greater than it should be, considering how stupid it sounds on paper.
Thing is, though, that I’m pretty sure that’s not what Rocky is doing.
“What?” I say, because what is there to say, really, and Rocky doesn’t tilt in that way he does when he’s waiting for an answer. Instead, he straightens from his uneven position, then lowers himself as much as my crossed legs allow. He makes a noise that I’ve learned is the Eridian equivalent of an uh, and then he’s climbing off my lap and down to the floor, dropping the small distance between my bed and the ground.
“What, question?” he says, standing small and hunched before me. I lean my forearms on my knees, raising an eyebrow down at him.
“You want to be under my skin,” I say, and Rocky shakes himself so vehemently it reminds me of a dog shaking off water.
“What, question?! You misunderstand. I no say that.”
I shoot a look over at my laptop where it’s propped up on the foot of my bed. I hardly need it to translate anymore, but I keep it on regardless, just in case we run into something new. It’s become a game of sorts, leading each other into conversations that might yield new linguistic treasures.
This, though, is nothing new to me. Not a single part of it reads as unknown to the computer, only confirming what I was maybe ninety-eight percent sure of.
It really is a testament to how much we have left to learn about each other that I can’t tell if he overshot his attempt at reassurance or if he’s genuinely weirder than I thought.
“Yeah, no,” I say, looking back at Rocky. “You kind of did, bud. The program doesn’t lie.”
“Delusion,” Rocky says. One of his claws scrapes lightly at the floor like a bull about to charge. “You have delusion. See and hear things that are not real. You take time to recover, then we continue. I eat now. We hug again when I sleep. Goodbye.”
And with that, he’s scurrying away. He climbs into the airlock of his tunnel, lets himself be pushed through to the other side, hurries along his handholds to get to his bags, and then flees the dormitory with his box of food.
I look after him, stunned. Had he used any other excuse, I would’ve gone after him and demanded answers, half-teasing and half-genuinely curious. Maybe this is a practice he hasn’t yet told me about. Maybe Eridians don’t bury their dead, so sitting in a loved one’s chest is entirely feasible. Maybe using such visceral language is considered incredibly poetic, seeing as Eridians are hard and unyielding in their build.
But since Rocky’s off to eat, I’m forced to stay where I am, equal parts amused and puzzled.
I guess when your best friend is an alien, life’s full of surprises.