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For the tenth time in a few minutes, I shoved the hair away from my face. It was undeniable now, it was getting long. Long enough that it was starting to annoy me. I didn't especially care about how it looked per say, as I often avoided looking in mirrors anyway. At first, it had been because it had been terrifying to look at myself and not know the person looking back. And now, it was more habit. And also to avoid witnessing my own slow decline. I knew I had already lost a lot of weight, cheeks becoming gaunt. I knew it would be easy enough to cut the hair all off again just as I had let Armando do two weeks after waking up on the Hail Mary. But a big part of me didn't want to--I had kind of grown attached to the length.
Even despite the amnesia, there remained a lot of ingrained ideas about masculinity. Back on earth there had been all kinds of social norms and rules, stereotypes and roles. Despite being a scientist, I hadn't spent a ton of time thinking about gender and had generally just gone along with whatever I was expected to do and be. It had always been easier to be a cisgender male, a man. It was simpler to just accept the labels given to me than it was to try and pick apart the intricacies of how I felt in my heart. Such a thing would have meant being brave enough to change, to speak up, to become more than I already was…and I hadn't been brave enough. Nor had I had the time to think on it. I'd purposefully filled my life to the brim with work, with the kids so that I couldn't think too deeply about the things that made me feel existentially anxious.
And then, well. Then they'd discovered the Petrova line and everything had changed.
Now that they'd solved the problem, there was nothing but time and space to think. And it did not help that I had a literal living rock for a room mate whose gender was unpronounceable by human vocal chords and the actual meaning of which had flown way over my head. From our conversations, I had learned that Eridians didn't have a gender binary. It sounded more like a gender scale. The thought was confusing but also vaguely familiar and it made me feel like something in his chest was unlocking, loosening.
It was just hair, I knew logically. But, somehow it meant more in my heart to have it longer. So, I hadn't cut it. And I kept pushing it out of my face.
"Grace okay? Question." Rocky asked from across the room. The laptop picked up on his musical notes but, honestly I was starting to need it less and less. It was very rare now a days when a new word came up that needed translating.
"Hmm?" I wondered. "What do you mean?"
"Grace keep touching face. Face okay? Question." The Eridian repeated for my slow brain.
I waved away the concern. "Face is fine. It's my hair that's bugging me. It keeps getting in the way of my vision."
"How do you fix? Question." Rocky wondered.
I put down my pipet, deciding that I wasn't going to get any real work done when Rocky wanted to talk. Besides Rocky was always more interesting and entertaining than anything I could try to come up with by myself. "Lots of ways. Could tie it up. But that tends to give me a headache."
Rocky has no facial expressions but humans are masters of applying emotions to anything and everything, so it is very easy for me to read bewilderment in his body language. Body language which has become much more animated in the time we've known each other, he uses more gestures, many of which I know he picked up from me. But, I know I've started picking up on the complexities of his voice, the way different notes and registers meant so much more than just simple noise. I find myself trying to mimic the ways his voice falls or rises. I wonder if he's adapting to me or if I'm adapting to him? Probably a mix of both.
"Hair tied up equals headache? Question. Thought hair mostly dead cell? Question."
I shrug, "Dead cells, keratin, but it is all connected to a follicle which is living and connected to the skin of my scalp. If enough tension is put on it, it can lead to nerve pain and then a headache."
Rocky warbled. "Understand. Humans weird."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Could also cut my hair. But, I don't want to."
"Why not want it cut, question? Had short hair when we met." The engineer's hands were busy with whatever he was working on, but I knew his attention was on me.
I thought about my answer carefully before saying simply, "I like it like this. I never got to keep it long on earth."
Rocky made a curious noise. "Why not? Question."
"Oh boy. Uh. Okay, so just so you know we're venturing into some complex territory and I am not a sociologist. But uh. In my culture, there was a lot of rules for people depending on what sex they were assigned at birth. So like because I have a uh, a penis, I've been assigned the social category, 'male'. Or a man."
Rocky was quiet as he thought about that. "Seems…limiting? Question."
I laughed, a bit roughly. "Yeah. Lots of people think that."
"So, long hair, short hair based on sex? Question." Rocky asked.
"Not inherently. It's definitely a social construct. Because other cultures don't care about hair length. But, yeah."
Rocky hummed. "I understand. Grace not want to be man? Question."
And wasn't that a loaded question? I shrugged helplessly. "I don't even know if it matters anymore. All those rules rely on other humans to maintain them. Meeting you…learning about Erid. It helped me think a lot about myself. But, I think I'm just…Grace. Just me." I don't know why my throat tightened but it did. My eyes felt hot. I was NOT going to cry about this, gosh darn it.
Rocky made a happy noise, "Grace-gender good, good, good!"
I tried not to blush, even as my heart felt like it was glowing in my chest, full of golden emotion up to my eyeballs. And oh no there I went; hot tears filling my eyes. I scrubbed them away, knowing that he already thought of me as a leaky space blob. "Thanks, bud." I choked.
"Come." Rocky demanded, gesturing me to him. I was helpless to do anything but obey, sitting beside him. The barrier between them had seen many upgrades and updates via Rocky's restlessness. Now it had become much more 'flexible'--enough that Rocky could stretch the xenonite barrier out into my side, able to manipulate my tools, the laptop (or a chess piece) with a impressive amount of dexterity. It wasn't perfect by any means, but Rocky was a genius for having gotten this far.
"Turn." Rocky commanded again.
"Huh?" I asked. I'd instinctively sat facing him because I wanted to see him.
Rocky made a turning motion with his claws. "Show Rocky, Grace back."
Back when we had first met, I would have hesitated to turn my back on an alien, on a stranger. Now however I did so without thinking. I trusted Rocky with everything in my soul. When he began messing with my hair, I stiffened from the new and unexpected sensation. The feeling of his claws running through the strands reminding me of something from my childhood…perhaps my mother? I had no solid memory to hold onto, just the sensation of being cared for by someone I loved. As the moment drew on, I began to relax into the attention. More than that, I began to lean back into the feeling of my friend carefully drawing the strands together, over and over again.
"Okay. Done. Statement." Rocky said, what could have been minutes or hours later for all that I had noticed. I blinked, raising my hand to feel his work. Just as I had suspected, the strands had been neatly and carefully drawn into a single fine weave, the end carefully looped off with a thin bit of xenonite wiring.
"You braided my hair." I stated the obvious, thunderstruck for reasons I couldn't comprehend right then.
Rocky did jazz hands. "Grace like?"
My heart was pounding in my chest, playing a song of adoration; the braid was perfect, more intricate than any I had ever seen before. My fingers couldn't stop running over the texture. God, Rocky was a genius. The golden glowing emotion in my chest sloshed over, spilling out of my eyes in the form of tears. Without thinking I reached for Rocky, pressing myself up against the barrier between us. I planted a kiss there, imagining Rocky could sense the sound.
Rocky hummed gleefully, pressing his claws to mine where the barrier was thinnest. Our fingers didn't quite intertwine but it was close enough. I didn't try to stop smiling. It stretched my facial muscles so wide it almost hurt. "Grace love."