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Adrian’s not jealous.
What’s there to be jealous of, anyway? A weak, sickly, squishy alien that would die the moment it set one of its inefficient feet on Erid’s surface? An alien that has only managed to stay alive thanks to luck and the technological achievements of its species, and that emerged from the vast nothingness of space in a poorly constructed ship to save them all? An alien that Adrian’s mate now spends almost every waking moment with?
Adrian is not jealous at all. Being jealous would be ungrateful and selfish and ridiculous, and Adrian is none of those things. He knows exactly how lucky they all are; and, especially, how lucky he is. Of course he’s grateful.
He is also, admittedly, just a tiny bit less enthusiastic than he should be when Rocky steers their conversation back to the alien. (Again.)
“Grace says he’s feeling much better,” it says, pitifully failing to sound casual. Its concern is so obvious it almost hurts to listen to it: Adrian can hear it in the way Rocky lowers its carapace, in the way it taps two of its hands together, in every note of its voice, and that’s ... he’s still not used to that, to this new version of his mate who has forgotten how to hide its emotions.
“That’s great,” he says absent-mindedly, his attention fixed on the endless diagrams and charts covering most of the ground in their living space. All of them are needed for the construction of the alien’s biodome; these days, Adrian rarely works on anything else.
(It is, quite frankly, astonishing that the alien’s species has survived long enough to evolve into more or less intelligent beings, let alone venture into space.)
“I still think he should take it more slowly. I keep telling him to be careful ‘cause he clearly needs more time to heal and get his strength back, but he doesn’t want to listen to me. And I understand, but ...”
Rocky lifts its arms right where they protrude from its carapace and lets them drop again; for a moment, it sounds disturbingly like it’s trying to rip itself apart. It does that now, sometimes – moving in a way no other Eridian does, changing its pitch of voice for no reason at all, resorting to a simpler grammar when it’s exhausted. Adrian doesn’t mind; he just hopes that the others won’t, either, once Rocky is ready to leave the alien’s side and the safety of their home. He really doesn’t want to have to waste his precious time killing their neighbours.
“I showed him your work, by the way,” Rocky says. “He says everything ♪♫ great.”
“Tell him I welcome criticism. If there’s anything he doesn’t like, he can tell you, and I’ll find a solution.”
Adrian’s entirely serious, even allows himself the tiniest spark of satisfaction – until he realises his mistake. He has just given Rocky the perfect excuse to ask him the one question Adrian would rather never hear again; and Rocky, brave, faithful Rocky, immediately seizes the opportunity, even though its carapace wriggles in discomfort.
“Or he could just tell you himself? He’d love to meet you.”
Oh, beloved, Adrian thinks.
He knows why Rocky keeps asking; and he can only hope it understands why he keeps refusing.
The alien scares Adrian. That’s the ugly truth, or at least the part of it that he can admit to himself. He came to visit it only once, when the alien was still too sick to do anything but lie curled up in its nest and twitch occasionally, and the memory still makes him want to throw his arms around Rocky and never let go again. Rocky was so kind to it; and the alien, not even registering Adrian’s presence, only reacted when the pain in Rocky’s voice became almost too much to bear. Only the knowledge that his mate would never forgive him had stopped Adrian from dragging it out of the alien’s ship there and then.
The alien is so weak and so helpless, its life a feeble flame that, even if it burns at full strength, will snuff out too quickly. Getting attached to it would be foolish. The wounds that Rocky, through no fault of its own, tore into the very core of Adrian’s being when it left haven’t thoroughly healed yet; the last thing he needs is reason for fresh grief. Besides, he has to be able to be there for Rocky when the alien’s life eventually fades away.
So instead of giving his mate the answer it so desperately wants to hear, Adrian, who was never as brave as Rocky, says, “Is that wise? You said it yourself – he’s still so sick. We probably shouldn’t overwhelm him. Maybe it’s better if we limit contact to the doctors and the scientists for now?”
And that, of course, is an excuse. Adrian knows it, Rocky knows it, the alien knows it, the whole planet knows it, every single being in the galaxy knows it.
Before the mission, Rocky would have argued, and that would have been a relief because it would have forced them to finally have the conversation they need to have if they want to continue healing. Now, though, it just hums a couple of low, longing notes, probably not even meant for Adrian – spending so much time in the company of an alien with astonishingly inefficient hearing has caused Rocky to lose some of its filters –, tilts its carapace and says, “Of course. I understand.”
“Okay.”
Neither of them was ever too good at expressing their feelings, but until now, that was okay. They didn’t really need to talk; they just understood each other. But ever since Rocky returned ... They’re still recovering, Adrian reminds himself, both of them. It’ll take time, but they’ll be fine. Rocky came back to him.
Rocky picks up one of the small rocks that Adrian likes to collect on the beach because he knows his mate loves them. This particular rock is especially smooth, and it’s one of the rocks Adrian found while Rocky was away – back when he wasn’t sure if the rocks and the memories weren’t all that would be left of his mate. Rocky fiddles with it for a while before putting it down again.
“I’ll need to sleep in a while,” it says.
Adrian immediately focuses all his attention on Rocky. He should know its sleep cycle just as well as his own; better, even. So why hadn’t he known that Rocky’s time was so close?
“I’ll watch.”
Rocky picks up the rock once more – and then just drops it. Adrian can’t quite hide his flinch. He waits for Rocky to say something, anything, but Rocky remains eerily silent until Adrian finally asks, “What’s wrong, beloved?”
“I told Grace I’d stay with him this time,” it says, shifting closer to Adrian until they’re almost touching. Adrian hopes that Rocky will close the remaining distance between them, but it doesn’t, and neither does Adrian.
“Oh.”
“It’s just ... He watched me so often, and I don’t want him to think that he’s not important anymore now that we’re here. I think he thinks he’s a burden, and I want to show him I still need him.”
“Oh,” Adrian says. “Of course.”
Silence falls between them, the same silence Adrian had to live with for so long while Rocky was away. He curses himself and the universe, and reaches out a hand to touch Rocky. “You are very kind.”
Rocky makes that distressing, longing sound again, but it quickly covers Adrian’s hand with its own. “I’ll come back later to watch you.”
And then Rocky leaves, and Adrian listens to it until he can no longer make out its presence amid all the busy sounds of life outside their home; and then, instead of doing the smart thing and continuing his work, he just turns the rock that Rocky had fiddled with over and over in his hands until Rocky returns.
Everything repeats itself in an endless circle of longing and regret, framed by the miracle that is Rocky’s return. Rocky takes care of the alien, and Adrian tries to take care of Rocky, and Adrian loves Rocky and Rocky loves Adrian, there’s never any doubt about that, but when they try to talk, it ... doesn’t work.
Time has changed them. That’s only natural. You can’t go through all the grief and loneliness and anger and hope and remain the same, and that’s nobody’s fault. Adrian can’t be blamed for moving on with his life while Rocky was away, for forming new connections and learning to laugh again; Rocky can’t be blamed for being the only survivor of its crew and latching onto the one sentient being that came along and wanted to be its friend; and the alien can’t be blamed for being an alien, for surviving against all odds, and for getting to be there for Adrian’s mate when Adrian couldn’t.
Still, some days Adrian has bad thoughts.
Maybe he should just go and meet the alien, properly this time. He could get to know it, hear its side of the story and make it a real part of his life instead of letting it remain the ominously advancing avalanche it is now. Rocky would be happy; that alone would make up for all the doubts.
But Adrian doesn’t go. It’s not that he thinks he can’t; he just doesn’t. Whenever Rocky leaves their home with determination in its hearts and sorrow in its steps, Adrian stays behind, works on his charts and does his best not to think about his mate and the alien he can’t bring himself to despise no matter how much he wants to.
Ignoring the alien’s presence above their planet and in their lives turns out to be difficult, though, when everybody else is talking about it all the time.
“Isn’t he funny?” says Sandy from the biodome illumination team as they work side by side on some more charts. Apparently, she’s only come over to gossip about the alien; but her disappointment upon realising that Adrian has nothing to contribute to the conversation doesn’t last long.
“He told me a joke about a human and a ♬♫♪ – that’s some sort of mythical creature that apparently eats nothing but blood, can you believe it – and they walk into a ♫♩ – that’s some sort of meeting place for humans where they enjoy each other’s company and consume food and liquids, together, can you believe it –”
“He’s really smart,” says Uhura from the linguistics team. “He hardly needs his thinking machine anymore, even when you use proper grammar. And he promised to show me a few poems by famous human writers! I can’t wait to tell Spark – just imagine, our pebbles will be the first to hear alien poetry, it’s going to be amazing –”
“I like him,” says Bones from the biology team, who has never in their entire life admitted to harbouring even the slightest positive feelings for anyone. “He’s a good listener. And he never gets angry, no matter how many times you ask him the same question. I wish people down here were less stupid and more like him.”
“I think this is a waste of time and resources,” says Ash, who only joined Adrian’s environmental control team because she’s been hoping for ages that he would take an interest in her. Unfortunately, she’s very good at her job.
Adrian hums noncommittally, too busy thinking about Rocky – and the fact that it decided to sleep on the alien’s ship again – to really pay attention to her words. Only when she continues talking does he realise that something about this conversation is different.
“I mean – why do we even bother? I’m grateful that it brought your mate home, of course, and that it brought us news from the rest of the crew, but I do think people are overdoing it just a bit, you know? I mean – shouldn’t we rather care about our own people instead of going to all these lengths for an alien that’s probably going to die soon anyway?”
When he was young, Adrian’s parents would tell him old stories about giants that once lived in the mountains and could make them crumble with just a single word. Adrian hasn’t thought about those stories in a long time; now, as ridiculous as it is, he suddenly remembers them. One of the giants must have escaped into reality and closed its fist around Adrian. He can almost feel the first cracks forming in his carapace.
“He will die soon?”
Ash points vaguely at the biodome diagrams. “Probably. I mean, have you ever listened to it? I didn’t even get that close to it and that was more than enough for me. It’s obvious that its entire species is just an evolutionary by-product. Honestly, it’s a miracle that it’s survived this long.”
“Oh,” Adrian says.
“I am grateful,” Ash repeats. “But I still think what we’re doing here is wrong. Is one weak alien creature really worth all this trouble? We should rather try to build a secure future for our pebbles, or repair the damage that this insane Astrophage production has done to the ocean, or start building defences in case more aliens come here and try to take what’s ours –”
The calculator Adrian had been holding clatters to the ground loud enough to make Ash flinch, and promptly breaks into two neat pieces. Adrian couldn’t care less.
“You will never speak about Grace and his people like that again!”
He’s surprised to find himself yelling, and feels an unforgivable sense of pleasure as she flinches again.
“But ... Adrian! You don’t even like the alien!”
He slowly walks towards her. She doesn’t try to move away from him. “And what do you know about that?”
“We all know!” She’s starting to get angry herself, hurling her words at him with the vehemence of someone who knows that they have exactly one chance to wound the enemy. “Come on, Adrian. Everybody knows you would have preferred it if your mate had just let it die – which, by the way, would have been the merciful thing to do!”
The giant’s grip tightens. Adrian can feel the heat rising from his radiator, and he knows that Ash feels it, too. Losing his composure like this should be embarrassing, but somehow it isn’t. The anger inside him leaves no room for embarrassment. He can’t remember the last time he was so angry; it’s a wonderful feeling.
“If I ever hear you talking about Saviour Grace with less respect than he deserves, I will personally make sure that you not only lose your job, but never find work again,” he hisses.
And now, to his eternal satisfaction, she shrinks back against the wall. “I really don’t understand you, Adrian. Come on, you can stop pretending. I know you feel exactly the same as I and the others.”
“Which others?”
She squirms, clenching and unclenching her fists, but doesn’t dare to move towards him and the freedom behind the door. “Well ... some of the others.”
“I want names!”
“Leave me alone, you lunatic!” she screams. “I thought you were on my side, but you’re just as bad as your pathetic excuse for a mate! Even worse!”
Adrian backs off, just a little, but not so far that she could escape yet, and not so far that he can’t hear the rapid clicking of her radiator vibrating through his carapace like a victory song.
“You’ll never set foot in the biodome again,” he tells her, very quietly now. “You will never go near it again. You will not even think about going near it. And if I hear you utter even a single disrespectful word about Grace again, I will rip your arms off one by one so you know what it feels like to be an inefficient life-form, and then I will bring you onto Grace’s ship and into his atmosphere, and then I will listen as you burn, and then I will throw what’s left of you into the ocean so the nekrahs can eat it. And after that, I’ll do the same to every single member of your family. Do I make myself clear?”
With a shriek, she lunges at him, shoves him aside and runs for the door. By the time Adrian regains his balance, she’s long gone, leaving him by himself in a room filled with hard work and anger and shame. Adrian slams his fist against the wall where Ash had been cowering, and is disappointed when it barely hurts.
Nobody stops him from rushing into the elevator and, after an excruciatingly long wait that does absolutely nothing to calm him down, onto the Hail Mary; in fact, the security guards are suspiciously eager to get out of his way. A new wave of dread threatens to drown out the last scattered remains of rational thought: What if they know that something’s wrong? What if Ash and her friends have somehow managed to turn their resentment against Grace into action, spurred on by Adrian himself?
Or – what if the guards are working for Ash? What if Adrian is running straight into a trap?
But no, he’s being silly. (Again). These guards were chosen because they are the best. They wouldn’t just betray everything they ever were. Adrian didn’t ruin everything.
(Grace is so weak, though. Killing him would hardly take any effort. And Rocky is probably still sleeping and can’t protect anyone ...
It might already be too late. Adrian might never get the chance to correct his mistakes.)
He moves faster.
When he visited the Hail Mary for the first and only time, he was amazed at how small the ship is, how alien, full of curved surfaces and lacking even the most rudimentary soundproofing. Now he barely notices it. Not even zero-g bothers him; he’s far too busy focusing on the two presences he can finally hear near the back of the ship, one of them very familiar, the other very strange. They’re in some sort of bedroom, and they’re alive.
Rocky is sleeping, blissfully free of any worries for the moment. Grace is lying on his nest, but he moves the upper part of his long body into an upright position as Adrian bursts out of Rocky’s tunnels, barely avoids crashing into Rocky, and instead slams against the barrier that separates their atmosphere from Grace’s toxic one. He manages to grab a handhold to keep from floating away again.
“I don’t think you’re a waste of time and resources!” he yells loud enough for half the planet to hear, and then has to make a conscious effort to lower his voice as Grace flinches despite his poor hearing. “I never thought that! And I’m going to make sure no one ever thinks that way about you again! I’ll –”
He falls silent. Reality catches up with him, and it sounds like this: he’s just stormed into Grace’s bedroom completely uninvited and started screaming at him – again, completely unprovoked – and now Grace will not only think he’s deranged, he also knows more about Adrian’s feelings towards him than Adrian ever intended.
Maybe Rocky isn’t the only one who’s lost a few social skills.
“Uh,” Adrian says.
Grace turns his light sensing organs towards Rocky and then back towards Adrian, and then he opens his mouth. Although he knows what’s coming, Adrian can’t help but recoil.
“ɜː ... həˈləʊ. ɑː juː ˈeɪdɹiən?”
Oh, Adrian thinks. Grace is speaking in his own language. Of course he’s speaking in his own language, and of course Adrian doesn’t understand a single word. It’s amazing that Rocky can – but then again, Rocky has always been amazing.
Grace still has his eyes fixed on him in a way that’s probably perfectly normal for humans but unnerves Adrian anyway, and just as he starts to feel very ridiculous, Grace curls the corners of his mouth upward. A smile, Adrian recalls, Rocky told him about that, Grace is smiling – and that has to mean he’s neither offended by Adrian’s rude intrusion into his ship and his life, nor does he consider him a complete idiot. He doesn’t despise Adrian, even though he’d have every right to.
“weɪt,” Grace tells him, reaches out with a fleshy hand and picks up a thinking machine from somewhere next to his nest. Half interested, half sceptical, Adrian listens as Grace presses a few buttons, lets go of the machine again and turns back to him.
“You’re Adrian?”
Before he can contain himself, Adrian lets out a delighted trill. Whatever Uhura did with the thinking machine, it worked – the Eridian translation it spits out sounds flat and mechanical, but it’s easy enough to understand.
“Yes!” he squeals. “And you are Saviour Grace!”
For the first time, he realises why Rocky loves saying Grace’s name so much. It really sounds beautiful, a reminder and a promise at the same time.
“Just Grace is fine. Did you need Rocky for anything? Everything okay at home?”
“No! Yes!”
Adrian grabs another handhold. As much fun as it is to bounce around in zero-g (and who’d have thought?), it’s time to make a slightly better impression. He’s wasted too much time by being scared and insecure and maybe just a tiny bit jealous; he won’t waste any more because he doesn’t know to act like a respectable adult.
“Everything’s fine. I just wanted to visit you,” he says more calmly. It might not exactly be easy, but ... this, here, is a beginning, at least. It’s a chance.
He can’t interpret the way Grace’s face shifts yet, but he thinks that maybe, behind his endearingly obvious confusion, Grace feels the same way.
“Rocky can’t stop talking about you,” Grace says. “It’s great to finally meet you.”
The verbal suffix he adds implies insecurity and is normally used by young Eridians when addressing their elders, but that’s probably a bug in the translation programme because Grace is smiling again, and very open in his body language. Adrian makes a mental note to talk to Uhura about the translation: surely there must be better solutions. If Grace’s Eridian has improved as much as Uhura claims, he shouldn’t have any trouble with a device that lets him imitate Eridian words himself.
And there’s one more thing Adrian can do.
“I’m glad to be here,” he replies truthfully. “And ... I’ll learn your language. I promise.”
Learning languages never came as easily to him as it does to Rocky, but he’ll manage. It has just become one of his top priorities.
Grace hesitates. “It’s okay, you don’t have to. I think this works fine.”
“I will,” Adrian repeats, and is rewarded with another smile. “And. Uh. Sorry about the yelling.”
“No problem.”
Still smiling, Grace pulls away the blanket that covers his lower body, gets down from his nest, and floats over to the barrier until he comes to a stop directly next to Adrian. Adrian isn’t quite sure why; it’s probably a human thing. He doesn’t mind, even though it’s a little disturbing to be so close to Grace’s soft, wet, loud body, and a lot more disturbing to realise that his heart probably shouldn’t be beating this fast after so little exertion.
“Are you okay?” Adrian asks, trying to push aside the unwelcome thoughts of a near future in which Rocky wakes up and Adrian has to tell it that Grace has died because he wanted to be polite and left his nest far too soon for a human who clearly needs more rest. “Do you need anything? I can –”
But Grace is already moving his head from side to side. Rocky told Adrian about this strange habit, too – it means yes. (Or does it mean no?)
“I have everything I need, but thanks.”
So shaking the head means no. Adrian won’t forget again, and he won’t forget the way Grace “looks” at Rocky. You don’t have to be an expert on humans to recognise the kindness and love that flow through every cell of his body.
“I’m sorry I didn’t visit you earlier,” Adrian says, moving closer to Rocky until they’re touching. “I ...”
He’s still so bad at this. When he stormed onto the Hail Mary like a clueless pebble on their first day out of the nest, he said too much, and now he can’t find the right words. It’s a pity that Rocky can’t help him right now, and a mercy that it doesn’t have to witness Adrian’s failure.
Grace shakes his head again. “It’s fine, I understand.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
“Rocky loves you very much, you know?”
Adrian snuggles closer to his mate. “Yes. And I love Rocky very much. And it loves you very much, so now I love you, too.”
Grace opens his mouth, and then he closes it again, and then he laughs, and then some liquid starts to leak from his eyes, which is incredibly alarming at first but soon fills Adrian with the warmth he usually only feels when he finds a particularly interesting rock that he knows Rocky will love, and when he curls up in their nest with Rocky in his arms.
And after that, everything’s so easy. Grace is lovely, speaking with him is lovely, and by the time Rocky wakes up, they’ve already made plans for a glorious future in which the biodome is finished and too beautiful for words to describe, and in which Rocky and Adrian will visit Grace every day and take him on all sorts of adventures; a future in which they’ll be happy.
The sound of pure joy Rocky makes as it hears them both is the most wonderful thing Adrian has heard in a very long time.