Work Text:
Note to self: when Rocky gets quiet, assume the worst.
This afternoon started out pleasant, as most of them do these days. As soon as Rocky’s reading became somewhat fluent, he’s been bringing his laptop over every chance he gets, and we’ve been having what we call Science Time. In the wake of everything—the mission, of course, but also the settling dust afterward, featuring near-starvation, overwhelming celebrity, and the fine-tuning of my biodome until it was just right—there’s a surprising amount of time to just… read.
I forgot how much I love reading. Having quiet time with Rocky, each of us on our own respective laptops, sharing little tidbits from whatever grabbed our attention, has brought back a piece of me that I didn’t even remember losing, but certainly felt the absence of now that it was back.
More often than not, I’ll sit at my desk draped in my quilt and sipping something specifically engineered to taste like hot chocolate, and Rocky will sit nestled somewhere beneath the desk, tugging at the leg of my pants whenever he wants me to listen to him read out his favorite passages.
Now, that part is fine. That part is great, it’s genuinely become my favorite time of the day to just sit with my friend in companionable silence when so much of our journey has been constant talk, either out of necessity or because there was so much to say and say again that not talking was not an option. It’s soothing to let evening roll in over some article or another, or maybe even some mindless video game as Rocky reads aloud in that strange accent that comes with reading English and mentally translating it to Eridian so he can say it aloud. His notes sound just a little different when he’s reading from his laptop, and it’s healed something aching in me to learn new things about him that aren’t relevant to both of our survival.
But then, it was only a matter of time until something cracked. I guess I was naive to think that Rocky could sit still for long, even if he’s been doing it daily for the past couple of weeks.
It’s a day like any other, and Rocky sits under my desk like a cat, warming my socked feet where they’re tucked under him. He holds up just enough of his weight to form a pleasant pressure, just enough not to crush my bones.
When he lifts himself, I think nothing of it. I pull my feet back to give him space to adjust, because Eridians, just like humans, need to move sometimes for no other reason than that their previous position became uncomfortable.
Then he whacks my knee with the back of his hand, and I jolt so hard I nearly fall back in my chair.
Within milliseconds, I’ve banged my leg against the underside of the desk, cried out in both pain and surprise, and beaten the heel of my other foot down on Rocky’s carapace like a child throwing a tantrum, sending him fleeing from under my desk with a dissonant noise of complaint. There’s no way for me to hurt him harmlessly, the way feuding siblings do, so it’s become second nature to mess with his senses whenever I feel the urge to do something akin to punching someone’s shoulder.
I rub my knee and turn around to find Rocky swaying somewhat, temporarily blinded—or deafened, rather—by my maneuver. He has the nerve to look offended.
“The fuck was that for?” he asks, and I genuinely splutter for a few moments before the words come to me.
“What do you mean, what was that for?! I should be asking you that!”
“Can a guy not do experiments on his alien friend?”
I glare, still rubbing the ache from my leg. He hit me harder than necessary, I just know it. We’ve spent enough time together for him to know exactly which touches and pressures are comfortable. It’s beyond me how he can still look ashamed every time he catches a glimpse of the scars on my left side but then go on to be an absolute nuisance to me every chance he gets.
“You’re not a guy,” I tell him, “and no, hitting me is not an experiment.”
Rocky props two hands against the bottom of his carapace, the way he’s seen me do with my hips. “You don't know that,” he protests. “I could be a guy. You said gender isn’t tied to sex.”
Which is super not the point, and he knows it.
“Okay, you little imp. What’s the experiment? There better be a darn good reason you’re beating me up in the comfort of my own home.”
“I would’ve read my findings to you if you hadn’t kicked me like the football,” Rocky says. “Dick.” He looks at me skeptically, as if to ask me if I’m gonna kick him again if he gets back under my desk where his laptop is. As if I’m the danger here. As if I started it, disturbing a perfectly good afternoon with my violent urges. I cross my legs in my chair, ensuring safety for us both, and Rocky warily walks back to his spot with what I swear is the Eridian equivalent of a side-eye.
He points his swirling crystal of a camera at the screen, making a bunch of nonsense noises that might be equivalent to a human muttering under their breath while skimming a text. “The patellar reflex,” he reads out, “is a stretch reflex that occurs when the patellar tendon is struck just below the patella, triggering a sudden contraction of the quadriceps femoris muscle.”
I’m not even surprised to hear it, honestly. There will always be things about me that I’ll forget to tell him, simply because it’s so natural to me—and vice versa. I had no reason to tell him that hitting a human’s knee will cause them to kick. Now that he has every bit of information ever recorded at his tear-shaped fingertips, he peruses for anything I haven’t yet taught him.
Still, there was no need for a hands-on demonstration.
“You didn’t have to test that,” I tell him. “It’s a well-documented phenomenon.”
“But I’ve never seen it, have I?”
“There’s videos.”
“Not of you.”
“All humans have it. Even dogs have it.”
“I’m a tactile learner.”
“A freaking menace is what you are, pal.” I give a shove of my foot with all my might. He’s eight hundred pounds of solid rock, so of course he doesn’t move an inch. “One of these days my bones are gonna turn to dust when you pull this stuff, and you won’t be laughing then.”
“I so would.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see about that.”
He leaves it at that, content to let me have the last word. If push ever comes to shove, he knows he’ll get to remind me of this conversation—and if it doesn’t, or if things happen in a way that puts me in the right, he knows I’ll have forgotten by then.
Besides, there’s a comfort in joking about the future. I’ll probably be less fond of my presence in Eridian gravity when my body actually starts failing me, but for now, there’s a deep, solemn joy in knowing that Rocky will be there to watch it happen, knowing he’ll laugh at me when my knees start acting up but will help me walk anyway. I let my legs drop again, trusting that his thirst for knowledge at my expense is quenched for now. Rocky, sensing the slight shift, presses himself gently against my calf with a loving trill. I run my hand along the top of his carapace.
He’s tougher than any child I’ve ever taught, any fellow scientist I’ve debated back in the day.
He can be a pain in the ass sometimes, and also everywhere else, but he’s my pain in the ass.