Work Text:
Even best friends who have lived together in a spaceship get tired of their roommate at one point, right? And even Global Dictator's find it in their heart to give 5 different replacement phones to her friend's alien buddy, even if she's pretty sure the alien buddy is breaking them on purpose, right? It's not like she has other important things to do, like stopping food wars. She's not at the beck and call of an alien buddy and his co-dependent best friend. She. Is. Not.
Rocky is not saying he enjoys annoying his best friend's other friend (he does not speak the name in this house), but he certainly isn't opposed to making her life a little bit more difficult. It's not like she's doing anything important anyway, right? He's not keeping her from big events or emergencies. He can keep putting salt in her coffee. Yes, that sounds right.
Also, Dr. Grace is not the type of man who would try to make one best friend jealous of the other. There is no point to it because Eva Stratt would probably exorcise the feeling from her heart if--she would find the emotion to be a frivolous waste of her time. And Rocky is already jealous without Dr. Grace having to do anything, so. He mostly just tries to keep the friendships separate.
He's not above making his friend/lady who shot him into space/partner a little jealous by lying about having someone over in his house. It's not embarrassing. It's just he mostly hung out with teenagers before he hung out with psycho scientists, and then he only hung out with a rock who was jealous of Armando, the robot. Dr. Grace is working through some stuff. Eva Stratt is just trying to make him happy. Also she is not picking up any of the clues Dr. Grace is putting down.
Dr. Grace was not trying to turn these fortunate turn of events into more than a paperwork emergency. He just thinks it would be nice if they hung out and maybe sat in the couch and she would enjoy his body heat and he would enjoy her body heat. He's not touch-starved. He's not! It's Eva who needs constant reassurance that his body is still there. Still, how do you tell your platonic situationship that you want to hold hands?
You don't, that's how.
Rocky knows when someone has him beat. He doesn't have the ability to hug his friend like Eva can. It doesn't mean he has to be left out. They three of them can be best friends! And he knows just the thing to sway Eva over. It's such a shame he forgot about all the things he was doing when he still hated her.
Eva thinks she's finally gotten somewhere with Rocky. It's not very fun having to stop a meeting and borrow someone else's reading glasses because your best friend's best friend is a kleptomaniac who refuses to address the problem. She just has to accept that they're both co-dependent and that it comes with issues. She also has to be careful not to fall into the trap of also becoming co-dependent with an alien and his best friend. She can do that. She can.