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Grace got a call in the middle of the night and in a second he was up. His heart was still racing as he answered the phone. He already knew who it was, and why he was calling.
Rocky, on the other end of the line, was speaking so quickly and at such a high pitch that Grace struggled to make out his words. Before he even heard what he was saying he started getting out of bed and throwing on his glasses, putting him on speaker as he sprung up and started getting dressed. “Grace!” Rocky shouted over the line, “Is happening, is happening, come to Rocky den now or going to miss it, come quick now now now now now now now-”
“It’s starting right now?” he asked excitedly.
“Yes, is movement! Come, not miss it, not miss it! Grace come fast fast fast fast-”
“I’m moving as fast as I can, Rock,” he answered urgently, tripping over a pair of jeans as he spoke.
In less than fifteen minutes he was in Rocky and Adrian’s den - A staggeringly impressive feat considering he had to get into the xenonite suit first and then catch the tram over. His neighbors were getting used to having an alien next door, but he definitely still startled some people when he, a near six foot tall lanky alien, burst onto the tram just as the doors were closing. Now, though, things were still. A little hot and uncomfortable in the xenonite suit, he was bent over with his hands on his knees staring at the perfectly still transparent enclosure. Inside it were eight little grey eggs. They were deflated and crinkled, more bags than eggs really, and through them Grace could make out the edges of teeny-tiny little Eridians, about the size of his palm. A little carapace here, a leg there. Rocky stood next to him, watching even more eagerly than he was.
“Was false alarm,” Rocky said. He spoke softly around the eggs - They were developed enough that they could hear now, and he didn’t want to scare them. “But will happen today. Was too much movement for it to not start soon.”
Grace nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I’m glad I’m not gonna miss it. I’ll hang around ‘til it starts.” He got down a little lower and took a closer look. Even since he’d last been here, they’d developed - Where before he could only catch little traces of outline, now they looked shrink-wrapped, as if the soft shell of the egg was barely containing them. Rocky had made their enclosure transparent especially for him, a gesture he had been grateful for.
As a matter of fact, Grace had been very actively involved with his transition into parenthood. He was the first person Rocky told when he found out he was carrying fertilized eggs, the sort of Eridian version of being pregnant, and after that it was a long year and few months of bizarre alien pregnancy before he laid them. Grace, of course, was there for that too. It didn’t seem as bad as human childbirth (Rocky was rather horrified when Grace described that process to him, in fact) but it still involved a lot of work and a not insignificant amount of pain, so Grace was eager to stand by him and bring whatever motivation and comfort he could. Since then it had been another three months waiting for the eggs to finish developing and then hatch, meaning a full year and a half of anticipation and waiting. By now the tension was palpable. The house had been the Eridian version of baby-proofed (which mostly involved a lot of covering of small nooks and crannies to keep them from falling behind the stove or something) and Rocky had talked to Grace about little else for the past several weeks.
Adrian was a little wary, understandably, of Grace being around the eggs at first, or around the children once they hatched. They insisted that it wasn’t from any place of disliking him, and Grace believed them, since he’d gotten pretty close to Adrian over the past few years and come to really enjoy their company. They insisted, though, that an alien just wasn’t equipped to know about the young of another species. “Eggs fragile. Babies fragile,” they’d told him. “Grace very big, very strong. Is just not safe.” Since then, they’d softened on it a little bit - In part because they’d seen him interacting with Eridian children in his lectures, some of whom were on the smaller side. But they still weren’t thrilled about the idea of him being alone with them. Grace had never pushed it. Even though Rocky, who was already easily annoyed before whatever version of Eridian pregnancy hormones had taken over his brain, clearly couldn’t stand it when his mate implied that Grace would ever hurt his children.
Now, after a year and a half of waiting, they were about to be here. Grace had been so involved they felt half like his. He wasn’t sure how to feel as he watched the motionless eggs. He wasn’t their father, certainly. But uncle felt too remote. Something in between. A Godfather, sort of… Whatever it was, he was feeling the excitement and anxiety nearly as potently as his best friend standing beside him. “Which one was moving?” he asked excitedly.
Rocky pointed through the glass at the one on the far right. “Was that one,” he said, “Near front.”
Grace smiled. That was one of the bigger ones. “Oh, they’re gonna be a mover,” he said eagerly. Rocky didn’t answer. He had been very still since he came over, all the excitement he’d heard in the phone call now gone from his frame. Grace looked him over carefully. “How you doing?” he asked softly.
“Mm…” Rocky hummed gently.
“Nerves setting in?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, then reached a hand out and gently rubbed his back. Or, rather, he sort of dragged the hand-part of his suit along his back. Physical contact wasn’t a huge part of his life anymore, all things considered, but he tried. “Where’s Adrian?”
“Is sleeping. Adrian-sister watch them.”
“Mm…” Again, he looked over his friend, “Have you been sleeping?”
“Have been watching clutch…” he answered tensely.
“Yeah, but you gotta sleep too, Rock.”
Again, his little finger pointed at the glass, this time at the smallest egg tucked into the middle of the clutch. “Am worried about small center egg,” he admitted.
“Have you seen any movement from it at all”
“No.”
Grace winced, his chest going tight. The two started worrying a few weeks ago when it stopped growing on track with the others that it might have been a dud egg, or a non-viable infant that would die before it hatched. It wasn’t uncommon on Erid, but Grace got the impression that didn’t make it any less painful to the parents. Desperate for a human metaphor, he compared it to a sort of miscarriage, only much much later in the process. Ever a fixer, Rocky had been doing everything he could think of to perfect the enclosure since he found out it wasn’t growing properly. But there were some things that couldn’t be fixed.
“Is there any way a doctor can come in and tell you if it’s gonna make it or not?” Grace asked him.
“Have already brought in doctor. Said egg is alive, but weak. Nutrient lining was insufficient inside egg-shell - Common when laying parent has sustained internal injury. Is likely my reproductive organ was damaged when thrown around Grace ship when leaving Adrian.” Then, he clarified, “Planet-Adrian.”
Grace sighed, rubbing his hands together. He hadn’t known that.
“Rocky should have been more careful,” Rocky said.
“Hey now, don’t talk like that,” Grace told him gently, “Don’t do that to yourself, there was nothing you could have done. You’ve got a beautiful, healthy clutch here and whatever happens, you’re gonna do great. I’m with you a hundred percent, and I know Adrian is too.” He smiled at him, but Rocky gave no joyful movements back. He stayed perfectly still, focused only on the eggs in the enclosure. Grace’s smile faltered. “If I can be honest, Rock, I think there’s been so much leading up to this moment that you’ve gotten way too in your head about it. I think when it’s actually a reality, you’re gonna feel a lot better.”
Rocky let out something like a sigh, a sound like a weak bagpipe. “Yes yes yes. Grace right,” he said, twiddling his fingers. “Oh, was not even this nervous before mission to Tau Ceti. And I thought I die on that mission…”
Grace sighed sympathetically. “Parenthood, man. It humbles the best of us.”
“Grace have children, question?”
“I don’t, no. But, you know, you work at a school, you talk to a lot of parents, so… I’ve got some inkling, at least.”
He hummed softly at that.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Grace asked in a whisper, “I can watch you.”
“No no no, Grace not know signs of hatching, Grace not watch clutch alone,” he said assertively. Grace nodded at that. It wasn’t his place to argue with him.
“Alright. Can I get you anything?”
“No, am fine.”
Grace placed a hand on his back again. “Hey,” he said, cracking a smile, “Getting them here was the hard part. This is the fun part. You get to meet your babies.”
At last, Grace heard some joy and excitement come back into his voice. “Meet babies. Yes yes yes,” he said, getting a little closer to the glass, “Has been longest year and one half of Rocky’s life.”
“I bet,” Grace said, laughing softly, “And that’s coming from a guy who spent forty-two years alone in-” He stopped abruptly, both of them falling silent as the far right egg rocked gently back and forth.
Grace looked at Rocky, who was holding perfectly still. Was that normal movement or hatching movement? He’d done some research, but from what he understood it was famously hard to tell, possibly impossible for humans with no echolocation. The parents were the experts. Evolution gave them something of a sixth sense about it. Which was why, when Rocky immediately told him, “Wake Adrian,” he sprung up without a moment’s hesitation.
He bolted into the bedroom, where Adrian’s sister jumped to her feet when she saw him. He didn’t need to say a thing - Fortunate, since she didn’t speak English and Rocky didn’t have his translator out since neither he nor Adrian needed it anymore. Right away she woke Adrian from her sleep and Adrian bolted back into the living room. In an instant they were all crowded around the enclosure, and this time it wasn’t a false alarm. The largest of the clutch, the same one as before, was rocking back and forth over and over again, trying to work its way out. Once one hatched, it would release pheromonal signals that would trigger the rest to hatch along with it. It was, in Rocky’s words, ‘time go’.
“Ohh, is happen, is happen,” Rocky clicked excitedly.
“Amaze amaze amaze,” Adrian squealed beside him.
Grace’s heart was beating out of his chest. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, hypnotized by the movement of the little egg, back and forth, back and forth. He sucked in a sharp gasp as a tiny, pale pink hand popped through the papery surface. Rocky pressed a hand against the glass, his other hand interlocking with Adrian’s. And then, slowly, the baby emerged. Grace knew that Eridians were born without their carapace and grew it in the first few weeks, but even still, he was unprepared for the softness of the creature, the tenderness, the gentle edges. Without the hard shell it might have passed for something on Earth, its pink flesh reminding him of a baby rodent of some kind. Its arms were short, the ventilators on top of it moving slowly up and down. It was so fantastically alive, so small and precious. Then slowly it began to emit a sound as gentle as the first falling drops of rain - Its first clicks. A baby opening its eyes.
Grace breathed out and found that somewhere along the line he’d already started crying. “Oh, wow…” he whispered.
“Is beautiful!” Adrian squeaked. Eridians didn’t cry, but their voice was shivering with emotion, which was about as close as they got. Rocky’s was too.
“Is first child, first child is born. Rocky and Adrian have child!” he said, voice breaking as he got up into the higher pitches. “Adrian, help open tank please, open open open.”
“Yes yes.”
The two of them went to the top of it and removed it quickly, throwing it aside. Then, standing up taller, Rocky reached in and withdrew the tiny baby, placing it on his upper arm where it clung on like a barnacle. The two of them marveled at it for several seconds, but by then the other eggs had already started rocking.
The rest of the hatching was somewhat frantic. Grace knew from his research that it was dangerous to leave the babies in the enclosure for too long after they hatched, that the best thing for them was the body of their parent. That meant that once they started hatching, the thing to do was to get them all out as quickly as you could and onto their parent’s bodies. In a staggeringly quick ten or so minutes all of the babies were on the upper limbs of their parents - All but one.
They waited in eager silence for another five minutes, only these five were agonizingly slow. The last egg, the one Rocky had feared was a dud, had not moved at all. The air was slowly sucked out of the room as the realization came over them. Grace, at last, turned to them expectantly, waiting to see if they would call it. Rocky’s form shrank. Adrian chirped out in pain and pressed themself into him. With their terrible cry of grief, it was decided. Grace’s eyes fell shut. “I’m so sorry,” he said, turning to them.
At last, his voice strong and stoic, Rocky announced. “We care for the babies we do have.” And the two of them, with some difficulty, managed to pull themselves away from the enclosure.
The next several minutes involved Adrian and Rocky meticulously looking over each of the babies, looking for any damage they might have sustained while hatching. Fortunately for them, the clutch was very healthy, with hardly so much as a cut between the seven of them. They worked with intensity and focus, all the joy and excitement having been replaced by a deep, evolutionary sense of protection, a deeply-engrained need to care for the children that overrode everything else. Grace could not take his eyes off the babies. He had wondered going into this if he would find them gross and have to pretend he didn’t for his friend’s sake - If he was being honest, there was a lot of that involved with the pregnancy and the laying stages - But now that they were born he was already obsessed with them. They were adorable. They looked like little pink jellybeans. Freshly born, it seemed like all they could really do was click softly and wrap around anything they were placed on like little baby monkeys. Precious. Perfect. Grace already knew he was going to be begging them for excuses to babysit.
Then he looked at his friend. He wouldn’t have admitted it to you if you asked, but the pregnancy had been hard for him. Rocky didn’t like things looming in the future, he liked to deal with them now, to fix them, to make any stressors in his life go away with some clever machine or scientific theory. But when it came to children there was simply nothing to do but wait, and all of his anxieties would either happen or they wouldn’t. The waiting had been driving him crazy. He had been present for more than a few anxiety spirals, long nights of pointlessly working on the den and building new xenonite fixtures to make absolutely certain the children would be safe. The occasional breakdown. Reticently confessed fears that he would not be patient with children like Grace was, that he would be a bad father. Though of course, Grace couldn’t have been less concerned about that notion.
Now that the waiting was over, as Grace predicted, Rocky was completely in his element. He tended to his children with the same gentle, meticulous hands which were so talented with a xenonite printer. He was loving and precise. He cooed to them under his breath, telling them they had nothing to fear.
Yet even with all that joy, Grace could not take his eyes off the last egg in the enclosure. It was hard to just leave it there. What was the protocol for getting rid of it? he wondered. A funeral? A burial? It seemed inappropriate to just throw it away… It was hard to have something souring the moment like this. At least on Earth, miscarriages didn’t generally happen on the same day as the birth. There was some distance between them. But on Erid, all the feelings came at once.
Then, while he was lost in thought, he saw it move. His eyes went wide. A trick of the light? He stared at it like a hawk.
It rocked again.
Grace sprung to his feet. “Rocky Rocky Rocky!” he exclaimed. He couldn’t string his words together, but he pointed to the enclosure and blathered, “Egg- egg move, I saw-”
“Last egg is moving question?!” he cried out loudly, and he and his mate were already skittering back to the enclosure. Grace fell to his knees in front of it. The three of them watched, perfectly still, as the egg rocked back and forth, back and forth, agonizingly slow.
“Come on,” Rocky whispered to himself, “Come on come on come on, can do it.”
“Baby is alive…” Adrian whispered in turn.
“Grace. Give words of encouragement,” Rocky commanded him.
Grace nodded. “You got this, little guy. Come on.”
It felt like it took five years, but finally, finally, a tiny little hand emerged from the leathery casing. Grace laughed with relief. When the final child pulled itself out of the egg, it was half the size of the rest of them, hardly an inch long. It moved slowly, but quietly, slowly, it had started clicking.
“Oh, whole clutch healthy!” Rocky cried out, “Happy happy happy!”
“I take out,” Adrian said.
“Yes yes yes.”
Adrian ever-so-carefully withdrew it from its enclosure. They began checking it out before even placing it on their arm, eagerly making sure it had not sustained any visible damage from the hatching. Thank Goodness, it hadn’t. Then, they sighed, and spoke in low tones to their mate. “Still want do what talked about?” they asked.
“Is safe question?”
“Is safe. Is moving normally. But need do soon.”
A sudden urgency in his voice, Rocky said, “Grace, put hand under heating light!”
“I- me?!”
“Yes yes yes!” He moved to turn up the heating lamp, turning it to full blast. Grace winced at the brightness of it, though of course that didn’t affect the rest of the room. The last year had been a lot of him obeying urgent orders he didn’t entirely understand, so a little dazed, he did as Rocky asked, placing his right hand palm up under the heating lamp. “Good good good. Stay like that twenty-two seconds, will be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“First touch with baby. Need be warm like Eridian,” Rocky explained tersely.
Grace shot a confused look at both of them. “Wh- but I thought the first thing they had to cling to was their parents, I thought that was how it worked.”
“In some cases, parent can choose other Eridian to be first touch for last of clutch. Is way of showing deepest love and thanks for service to the family,” Adrian explained, softly and evenly. The baby was still between their hands, still squirming, not yet having clung for the first time to something warm. “Rocky and Adrian agree if last of clutch hatches, will have first touch with you, Grace.”
Grace looked between them both. He felt like he’d done nothing but cry for the past thirty minutes, yet even still, he was welling up again. First touch was essential, it was the moment that parents bonded with their children for their first time. It was a cultural staple of parenthood. It was reserved only for family, usually only for parents. Grace’s voice cracked as he said, “Seriously?”
“Grace only reason Rocky still alive to have babies,” Rocky said firmly, “Rocky owe Grace everything.”
Grace’s lip trembled. He couldn’t find the words. “Rock…”
“Is enough time, move hand move hand move hand!”
“Oh, okay…”
He pulled his hand out from under the light and held it out in front of him, slightly cupped. His heart pounded, eyes wide as Adrian, very slowly and carefully, passed the pink little baby into his hand. The second it was there, the floodgates opened - Grace started sobbing. He didn’t know whether it was the honor of being chosen to hold their baby for the first time or the sight of the tiny little thing itself, but either way, he couldn’t get himself under control and he couldn’t get through the xenonite to wipe his tears. He looked at the child through blurred vision as it contentedly spread out flat onto the part of the suit around the base of his thumb and latched there.
He sucked in a shuddering breath. “Oh, wow…” he managed out. Then, he pulled his hand in closer, looking as closely as he could. As he pulled the baby closer, its clicking increased slightly in speed. It could see him, he realized. Incredible. “Hey, little guy,” he said to it gently, then sniffed. “I know, I sound a little different, huh?” The baby went on clicking gently up at him. Grace smiled, “But it’s okay, ‘cause in a few years, you’ll get to tell all the kids at school that you have an alien uncle. And that your… your parent saved the world!” His breath shivered again as he struggled to get the sentence out. A few years ago he was so sure he’d die alone in space. And now he held new life - His best friend’s baby. Suddenly everything he and Rocky had done for each other, every sacrifice, felt like it was leading up to this moment. After a long while of just staring at it and crying, he laughed at himself weakly and said, “You guys are gonna have to tell me when to give it back, or else I’ll just carry it around all day.”
Rocky chittered with laughter. He stood up higher to look over Grace’s shoulder at the baby. “Is perfect, yes?”
“Yeah…”
“Grace is crying crying crying,” Rocky said, a loving tone of amusement in his voice.
Grace laughed back. “I know, I know. Maybe it’s good I never had my own kids, I would have been inconsolable.” He chuckled at his own expense and then, welling up again, he turned to Rocky. “Thank you,” he whispered, “This is such an honor.”
Rocky hummed thoughtfully. “Is my honor,” he answered. Then, he clicked towards his new child, and said, “Baby is comfortable on Grace hand now. Not want to move if not have to. Grace can stay a while question?”
“Are you kidding? With these precious little jellybeans around, you’re gonna have to kick me out.”
“What jellybean question?”
“It’s like a…” He paused, considering the ethics of comparing his best friend’s children to a piece of candy. Maybe not. “It’s a nickname for a baby, on Earth,” he said at last, lying for his own benefit. Now he wouldn’t have to stop calling them his little jellybeans.
“Ah. Understand. Rocky not kick you out, Grace. Stay.”
Grace nodded, and looked back down at the baby in his hand. They stayed in for the rest of the day, and the babies slept, and all was calm.