Chapter Text
Okay, just give me a chance to defend myself before you cast judgment, alright?
Engineers deal with a lot of crap. Sometimes literally. Clients want elegant, flawless solutions in a fourth of the time it takes to do things right, and then, when you can't change the laws of physics, suddenly you're a garbage engineer and 'they knew they should've gone with ♫♪♪♫♩ firm'.
So, perhaps it's understandable that people in my field are a little… off. Amorphous—aka, your brain's crystalline structure is fucked—if you want to be an asshole about it, which most of us are.
By eridian standards, Grace is… well, putting it delicately, Grace is fucking sickening. I'd been observing their progress toward the Tau Ceti system for over a year (ugh, and I'm just permanently stuck thinking in Earth numbers these days because of Grace's inability to do basic math) and had spent whole days imagining what my potential saviors might look like. Giant mountains with unfathomable technologies. Perfect spheres of the smoothest crystal that spoke only via vibration. What I got was a clumsy bag of fluid.
Where eridian bodies regulate themselves via temperature control, Humans use liquid. You wanna talk about inefficient? Look no further than a being that's primarily comprised of water (and Grace's stated sixty-percent water my ass—ninety-percent is far more likely). I'm half-shocked that Humans aren't amphibious with the sheer reliance they have on fluid-based sustenance.
And it gets everywhere. Grace's entire body literally oozes saline in the pursuit of heat regulation when they exert themselves. They use fluid to catch and expel contaminants from their orifices. They're constantly drinking and excreting and drinking again, round and round in a perpetual cycle of open-system nightmares. Whoever the fuck allowed this malformed abomination to evolve to the peak species of its planet, please raise your hand—I just want to talk.
So, really, I shouldn't have been shocked to learn Human reproduction involves an… inordinate amount of leaking. We'd been over the basic biology, sure, but perceiving it in action was another thing entirely. Hearing Grace's sex organ fill with blood during their sleep on one indiscriminate day had definitely been alarming. Swelling usually meant injury. It's the Human body's horrifically liquid response to literally anything and everything.
They had wanted me to be pleased that their organ (the injector noodle, as I secretly referred to it) was functioning normally again, but jeez, this is normal?! Then, for the love of xenon, what the fuck could be abnormal for this thing? It was disgusting. Even Grace themselves referred to these functions as 'weird'. The understatement of the millennia.
But fine, their organ now randomly swelled during their sleep, and the steady, wet throb of blood working to continuously circulate the engorged tissues beneath that thin, malleable version of a carapace definitely didn't draw my attention. Its pulse of tumescence definitely didn't beat against my auricles like an unceasing metronome.
And I was totally, and completely, unfazed when Grace had their first unconscious expulsion of reproductive fluid.
It's been a quiet night. The kind I loved with my mate, was indifferent to with my crewmates, came to loathe as their bodies decayed around me, and slowly have come to enjoy once more with Grace. They sleep a few feet away from me, mostly silent but for the occasional hum or strange vibrating snort as their breaths catch in the back of their throat. It's funny; the snoring—as Grace referred to it—is probably the closest they can get to speaking Eridian, and they're not even conscious.
I've been tinkering with the beginnings of a new xenonite suit design. Something sleeker—more form-fitting than the stupid ball I've been clambering around in, like an idiot, for months. Grace's ship is rife with technologies my engineer's brain is practically coming itself over. Stuff that's far beyond my species' current capabilities, and the fact that I can't touch any of it has been eating me alive.
I'm sitting at my makeshift workbench, mumbling a quiet curse as I drop one of the hundred tiny xenon shards I've synthesized for the more delicate, snug glove portions of my suit, when I notice a change in the ambiance around me. Grace's sex organ has been engorged for some minutes now, but it's a mild annoyance. One I've gotten used to ignoring over the past days. Except, now it's combined with the barest twitching of Grace's hips beneath the blanket. Hmm, interesting.
Another trait unique to Humans—the random involuntary motor functions during stasis. Grace might shift their body, puff out unexpectedly large gusts of air, mumble indecipherable nonsense, or the absolute fucking worst: drool. I'll never get over how Humans are literally overflowing with liquid, eugh.
But this motion is new. Is… rhythmic.
Grace still seems unconscious, but their lower regions have apparently woken up, and they're going to town. Grace thrusts into the tangle of blanket where they lay on their side, hips increasing from a slow grind into short and steady rolls. I can't deny my interest is certainly piqued, but I do my best to continue soldering with a quiet focus. Grace said a swollen sex organ was healthy for Humans, so I resolve to believe them.
… My resolve vaporizes two seconds later at Grace's first barely audible vocalization.
I wince at the clatter of the xenon shards falling to the floor as I bump my workbench in my haste to close the distance between us, skidding to a halt against the nearest partition wall. Grace sighs again, a low hum. I debate whether this could be described as a pain response considering that, with only a singular set of vocal cords, identifying similar Human sounds often relies on context. (I mean, we seriously would've been so fucked in the communication department if I didn't possess an eidetic memory.)
I consider waking them. Grace tends to act extra grumpy and stupid when they don't get enough rest, and sometimes, if they wake earlier than their body needs, they can't go back to sleep (oh Human evolution, you complicated beast, you). On the other hand, if Grace is in pain, then I'm passively letting them suffer. And, of course, there's a third reason. The one I'm trying to pretend doesn't exist, like hiding behind a sheet of aluminum.
Plain and simple: this is turning me on. Grace hasn't really made noises like this before. Their notes—low and gravely with a hint of uncontrolled desperation—hit my auricles at just the right angle to turn my stomach upside down. The throb of blood keeping their organ rigid sings to me in saccharine tones of debauchery. The thick slosh of liquid pooling within their groin is obscene, like an eridian whore house laying all its eggs in one messy orgy of sex and fluid.
I still have a week until my next lay cycle begins, but that doesn't mean I'm not squirming a bit as my body temperature rises. Shit, okay, so I've officially lost it then. Cool. Great. I'm getting aroused observing this alien—this… thing—humping a blanket in its sleep, maybe in pain, maybe pleasure, maybe neither. I have no idea, which means I should really jump in before Grace hurts themselves.
Fuck, are my auricles really so desperate for a little stimulation that I'm willing to let this happen?
The answer is yes. Yes, they are, because I fucking sit there like a bad fucking friend while I observe Grace do some mysterious new bodily function for a solid ten minutes. Ten minutes of them bucking and breathing harshly while I listen to the thrum of their blood, the slow seep of a mystery fluid from the tip of their organ, and wait, in trembling anticipation, for their occasional involuntary grunts to slip out. It's like the worst kind of edging, Grace's voice too high to actually feel like pleasure but low enough to serve as the lightest of feathered caresses along my body.
I shudder and tremble beneath their unconscious ministrations and my own crushing desire for sex. I ignore my rational mind as it desperately pleads for me to wake Grace. I remain silent, observing with rapt attention like I'm on the edge of a cliff that I can't hear beyond.
And then, after so much squirming, Grace's body goes terrifyingly rigid, their voice catching on the barest of whimpers. I can't move. Can't think. Can't do anything except listen to their lungs exhale sharply as their sex organ suddenly bursts into a flurry of muscular contractions, rhythmically spitting out fluid at an impressive speed.
It breaks the hold of shameful lust over me, and I'm immediately screaming at them to wake up. I'm bombarded with memories of my dead crewmates. Of Grace pinned to the console of their ship, slowly being asphyxiated by centrifugal force. I fucked up. Grace is sick or in pain, and I was just observing like a pervert. They're probably dying. Maybe something with the new Taumoeba concoction they'd tried earlier that day.
I so royally fucked up.
Addendum: I'm not a pervert, did not fuck up, and Grace is fine, thank every deity in the pantheon of eridian and Human legend. Well, no, scratch that—I am definitely a pervert. All that humping and fluid expulsion was apparently related to Human reproduction, and I try to believe I subconsciously understood that because otherwise I'm an absolute piece of shit for not stepping in.
Of course, this new revelation about Human biology definitely doesn't affect me at all. Grace's nasty liquid-loving body literally hallucinating about mating during their rest until they release their reproductive material is just another aspect of their foreign physiology to make note of for the scientists back home. When it comes to my opinion on the matter, I'm indifferent.
Completely neutral about the whole thing.
As Grace would say: cool as a cucumber… whatever a 'cucumber' is.
Because I care so little about Grace's reproductive processes, I wake to a fun realization a couple of days later: my eggs are early. In my two hundred and ninety-one years of life, my cycle has been inconsistent all of three times. The first was the week after I met my mate. The second was the day before our enjoining. And the third was today… nine-point-seven light years away from Erid and my mate.
And two days after I observed Grace self-mate. Not that the two are related.
I mean, my suppressants went bad almost a year ago! Then I ended up missing five consecutive cycles because, like Grace, I'd been occupied with finally solving the fucking problem that had trapped me in this living death for so long. So yeah, inconsistencies were probably not out of the realm of possibility… right?
I cling to that pathetic joke of an excuse like a tether keeping me attached to Grace's ship among the endless nothingness of space as I untuck my limbs and shake out my joints, ignoring the heaviness of expectancy pressing against my closed seam. Usually, eridians have a few days of fertility during their cycle when eggs are ready to be released but not so urgent as to be immediate. Well, unless you're my dumb ass apparently. While I was sleeping, my body, in all its infinite wisdom, decided it was the perfect time to drop my egg-filled ovipositor riiight against my opening. You know, as a helpful reminder for when I woke up that I was about to fucking burst.
I scan the room for Grace, praying for the first time since we met that they didn't observe my sleep for once. Nope, that courteous dingus is where they often are during my rest—directly beneath me, wrapped in a blanket with a cup of noodle-y food morsels in broth, and a thinking machine in their lap. They don't seem to notice I'm awake yet, loudly slurping at the noodle bits. Of course they had to be eating now. Love that for me.
My seam shifts in excitement, and I feverishly clamp my inner muscles down.
/Spock, parted from me and never parted. Never and always touching and touched. We meet at the appointed place./
I'm going crazy. Grace is making me crazy, or maybe they're fucking with me. Are they fucking with me? I mean, of all seventy-nine episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (look, I'm aware I'm a massive nerd—I'm an engineer on my planet's first interstellar voyage, okay? Of course I was going to become obsessed with this dorky show, give me a break) my friend could be hearing, it's seriously the one where Spock—the alien from my solar system, who is actually good at math and has an eidetic memory—experiences an involuntary mating prerogative and goes into a heat. You have to be fucking shitting me.
Oh, but don't worry! Spock's heat is magically resolved through a very overzealous, borderline sensual, fist fight with their captain—whom they are totally not in love with! And guess who's the captain of the Hail Mary?!
I feel the first hairline crack split my seam. No no no no—not in front of Grace. I'm not fucking laying in front of Grace because I couldn't make it to a private area and, crap, they're directly below me and if they look up they're going to perceive that I'm already leaking shitshitshit!
I turn my attention to the ladder leading up to the safety of the laboratory. Just getting my ball up that thing is a bitch and a half when I'm not about to absolutely bust. I refocus on Grace—all cozy and adorable in their nook. I imagine a morning where I'm not in this state and we can Star Trek together. They'd lean against my ball—a pillow between their head and the xenon panels and sigh contentedly in a way that definitely doesn't make my insides go syrupy. It sounds nice.
Sorry about this, Grace.
"Grace need go to lab," I bark out harshly, scrambling down my xenon tunnel to their bedside in an attempt to hide my actively parting seam from view. They jump, broth sloshing onto their shirt and thinking machine.
"Fudge-sickles!" Grace yelps before quickly looking around for something to absorb the mess. For some unfathomable reason to me, Earth technologies are incompatible with liquid. It seems pretty counterintuitive, considering how much the users of said technologies rely on the stuff, but whatever.
"—scared me half to death, Rock," Grace is grumbling as they pull their soiled shirt off to wipe the keyboard. "What's got your ✨🌟🌟 in a twist?"
I feel a bead of mercury start to trickle down a leg. My muscles begin to ache where I'm desperately holding my seam shut. I don't have time for this.
"Grace need go to lab now, statement!" I pound my claw against the hull.
Grace turns to me, their light sensing organs opening wider than normal. "Is everything okay? Why do you need me in the lab? You sick or—"
"Grace," I plead, "please go to lab. I am fine but—but need eat now now now!" A crappy excuse, and I feel like a real prick for lying to my friend, but they can't know the truth, and this is the only surefire way to get them to leave. Because Grace is kind. Grace, despite their stubbornness, respects my boundaries. Grace is—save me, Grace needs to get out of here now.
"Oh!" They notably relax, the flesh of their mouth parts bisecting to reveal the sickeningly slimy enamel bones within—a 'smile'. The crack in my seam shifts again, suddenly even more eager to open. I beat back a whine as the muscles holding it closed cramp in anger.
"I mean, I can just grab my headphones and stay over here, Rock. I won't look, promise!" They wink a nictitating flesh covering over one of their light-sensing organs. It's a playful gesture. I am not in the mood for playful gestures.
"For fucks sake, you idiot, I need to be alone!" I bark, smacking a claw on the xenon in my frustration.
Grace jolts away from the panel and throws their hands up in a Human display of supplication.
"Oh, for the love of-! Okay, I'm going." They close the thinking machine, stand, and move to grab the first rung of the ladder. I'm practically shaking in relief before they are turning back toward me, and I swear I am about to fucking shriek so loud I pop Grace's sensitive little tympanic membranes like soap bubbles.
"But!" They jab a finger toward me, turned full teacher-mode with a disapproving expression and everything. "We are discussing this afterward."
"Fine! Fine, we discuss later. We write a fucking treatise and give speech at many eridian science convention. Whatever Grace want, just go!"
They're not even through the upper hatch before I'm scrambling to cobble together a pitiable imitation of a nest. I won't die without it, but my stupid hind-brain gets very upset with me for not lovingly preparing a bed for my gross, unfertilized offspring. I snatch a handful of shirts from the closest duffel bag—unwilling, or maybe just unable now, to look for the sealable trays I typically lay in—and try to ignore who the clothes might've once belonged to.
With the fabrics piled into a mound beneath my carapace, I recenter myself and finally unclench my muscles. The euphoric hum that rakes through me is mortifying, as my seam slips open perhaps faster than ever before. My slick splatters out onto the clothing in a fucking deluge, and the guilt that I've irreparably soiled one of my dead crewmates' belongings with something so debauched is acute.
My first egg is already at the end of my ovipositor where its tip peeks from my opening. I whine at the slight discomfort, the pressure of the hard sphere squishing into a non-existent space between my organs as it makes its way out of me. Ugh, my mate would be laughing were they here. They'd find this lack of control pathetically erotic, tapping with just the right amount of pressure along my joints to make my legs give, degrading me all the while. That fucking sadist—I miss them so much that my gas bladders hitch with a sob as the egg squelches from my body, plopping down with a wet thud.
One down, four to go.
I've had five cycles since my suppressants went bad. None of them were a walk in the park by any means, but for two of them I at least had recordings of my mate to get me through. They weren't those kinds of recordings (pervert) but snippets of our enjoining day, audios we'd taken on vacations, and one they'd given me before I left. I couldn't listen to that one too much—too full of love and hope and now tinged with an ineffable sadness.
I clench my internal muscles around my second egg, pushing it toward the forefront of my ovipositor.
Of course, I couldn't bring those treasured recordings with me when I moved onto Grace's ship. My people's technological capabilities don't yet have the portability of Humans', and it's made my last three cycles that much harder. I mean, not only am I so fucking horny that I fear my body's heat exchange will simply fail under the pressure of my insane, unaddressed arousal, but, being unable to distract my brain with outside stimuli, my plausible deniability regarding my feelings toward a certain friend is beginning to run increasingly thin.
Okay. So. Remember when I mentioned me being a little… 'off' as an engineer? Well, I know this will come as a great big shocker, but yes, I'm into Grace's disgusting body. Sexually. I have been for a while. A long while.
When my desire for my goopy friend first reared its ugly head about a month into our acquaintance, I brushed it off as 'hey, you've been lost in space for forty-six years, you're allowed to be a little fucked upstairs'. But it was a bad excuse, because I know I've always been a kinky little shit. Sometimes I like when my mate treats me like a sound-drunk idiot, and sometimes I like to sing to them just out of the egg song's frequency and revel in their pitiful, desperate squirming. And I've always had a thing for the depraved sounds of liquid.
The second egg drops from me with a final push, and I sigh in brief catharsis. Three left.
The point is, I've known Grace for around six non-consecutive months, and I may have perfect recollection, but jeez it’s hard to focus on memories of my mate when Grace is just a room away. I can sense them now, if I concentrate. The soft curve of their face, plump with subcutaneous fat and all those squishy sensory organs. So susceptible to anything, like being slammed into the surface of a console while their ship careens out of control. I think of how easily they bleed and the sound of their muscles contracting around their throat tube as it works to swallow the endless flow of liquid they consume to live.
I think of Grace's organ, engorged and throbbing. I think of their wrecked voice, whimpering in pitiable supplication as I run a claw along their fragile body, never touching the spot they beg for.
Another egg unexpectedly falls out of me—I didn't even feel it descending. Shit. I shiver and take a moment to collect myself.
I can't think about Grace like this. It's not just my inclination toward the more freaky and perverse; it's that it's a violation of multiple orders. Grace is my best friend, and while the occasional dirty thought about a platonic pal is one thing, it's another to be thinking about them (and maybe spying on them) while three eggs deep with slick pooling around your feet. And, of course, there's the fact that I'm enjoined to an eridian that I love very, very, very much.
I try to focus on my mate, pushing away the icy shards of guilt piercing my internal organs with a fundamental shame. My mate with their easy laughter and melodious voice. Large and graceful and so well-respected in their field. My smoothed and polished piece of carapace I'd chipped from a molted exoskeleton embedded in their arm, mirrored to their mark on me. We enjoined so young, well over half of my life now, and I've never once regretted it.
But it's only when my traitorous thoughts drift back to Grace that my body relaxes enough to push my fourth egg down the channel. Grace with their dorky sense of humor and strange monotone voice. Grace, whose given name has no translation in my language, so is known by their family title despite the irony of being, perhaps, the least graceful entity I have ever met. Grace, with their fascinating, inquisitive scientific genius, and burns from my claw and atmosphere seared along their arm right where a mating mark would be placed.
I'm hit with an abrupt sob as the egg reaches the end of my ovipositor. Suddenly forty-six years of loneliness is bearing down on me with a suffocating fury. Space is so cold and empty and horribly, nauseatingly isolating. I struggle through a strangled attempt at composure, barely suppressing a scream of agonized rage as I push out my fourth fucking egg.
My auricles ache with the strain of listening for an egg song they can't hear. They throb in silent want for the tapping of a mate that I might not even have anymore. Fuck, I would give a limb—maybe two, who fucking cares anymore—just for the opportunity for someone to make me feel good again. Someone to touch. To hum at just the right pitch. To beg for my eggs until they slide from my body as easily as a blade through water.
I want my mate. I want Grace. I want. I want. I want.
With another shuddering sob, I push out the fifth egg and collapse into my own mess, physically and emotionally drained. It's repulsive, but I can't bring myself to care. I weakly tap the hull to try and gauge where Grace is, whether they've heard all of this pathetic shit going down in the dormitory. They're still in the lab, tinkering with the Astrophage breeder tanks and oblivious to my suffering, thank fuck.
I lay atop my eggs as my seam slowly knits itself shut and just… wallow in my own self-pity for a bit. It's nice. Like walking through a rainstorm—ammonia hydroxide running little rivulets down my body and washing away the day's grime. When I finally stand and begin cleaning away the evidence of my biology, I feel cleansed.
Cleansed and resolute in my new decision.
I am not alone anymore, and I refuse to allow myself to experience a lay this miserable again. I can't. Not for the next three years of my life stuck in the same three-room tube. Not when there's someone here to help. I might not have brought porn recordings to space (a tragic missed opportunity, apparently), but I'm a good fucking engineer with an alien friend that has some seriously nimble fingers.
I miss getting off for shits sake, and if I have to hear Grace doing it, I'm not going to stand idle while they have all the fun. Besides, they love a good opportunity for scientific observation, and who am I to deny that? After all, that's all these feelings are. Just our shared basal horniness and scientific intrigue. Nothing more.
Rocky doesn't say anything the next time I go to jerk off, which I am both endlessly grateful for and a bit terrified about. Apart from that one morning when he kicked me out of my own bed to eat (which, the resultant conversation about that went literally nowhere and I gave up after fifteen minutes), it's been business as usual aboard the Hail Mary. I did try to ask him about that day a few more times, but he just wouldn't budge beyond 'needed to eat', and considering the… scientific demonstration I gave him recently, I decided to let it go. Best to just let sleeping dogs lie.
In any case, a week of mild anxiety creeps by in which Rocky and I begin making our way through Star Trek: the Next Generation (he still doesn’t believe that Riker growing a beard saves the whole show but he will), I read through a few scientific journals I’d been too cheap to subscribe to back on Earth (thank you Stratt and your horrifying ways of ‘borrowing’ the world’s collective data), and I eat my one daily non-slurry meal with ever-growing veneration. A few more months (if I can't figure out a Taumoeba solution) and it’ll be coma paste and medical problems I don’t want to think about right now.
The point is, with enough routine, I’m back aboard the USS Hornyprise a week after doing the most socially uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something when you’re a middle school teacher. I wake up with morning wood (almost giddy with the realization I can actually take Captain Picard to warp again), mumble something to Rocky about using the facilities, and slither out from beneath the covers with an embarrassingly stupid smile plastered to my face.
It's wicked awkward to start, and I almost give up from the sheer ignominy of the situation. Behind the pitiable, makeshift aluminum sheeting I call a 'wall' that hides the toilet from the rest of my dormitory, I know Rocky can hear everything. Since he can sense me anywhere within the Mary, I didn't even bother asking him to leave his workbench only twelve-ish feet away. I cover my eyes with one hand while I begin to pump myself with the other, the incandescence of shame and pleasure a tight, superheated coil sitting low in my stomach.
Maybe I should've asked for more privacy, because if I listen hard enough (and I do, God I do) I can hear the muted clatter of Rocky's tools as he works. It drives a sharp breath from my lungs. He can sense exactly what I'm doing right now. How fast my hand is moving. Hear the ebb and flow of my blood through my body where it thunders in my ears and floods the erection filling my palm. The little puffs of air and vocalizations when I breathe out too fast on each downswing of my hand as it increases in speed have got to be as clear as if he were sitting right in front of me aaaand I come.
I choke on my next breath as I’m suddenly painting the metal rim of the toilet with messy ropes that I didn’t expect to be shooting quite just yet.
Well, crud.
I vehemently choose not to think about the implications of what just happened as I guiltily wipe up the bits of… me that didn't end up in the bowl. Just a coincidence, I tell myself. I'm pent up, and that's why the last two times I orgasmed, I just so happened to have my sentient rock pal on my mind when I did. It could happen to anyone that'd been through what I had. I tuck myself back into my pants and quietly move on with my day.
Except the thing is… once is a fluke, twice a coincidence, but three times? Yeah, that's what we in the scientific community refer to as a big, big problem.
The next time I touch myself, I specifically order my mind to keep far away from Rocky. I ask him to go all the way up to the control room, grab a laptop to occupy my mind with boobs and butts and the whole nine, but… I can't finish. I hiss out a livid: "What the heck?" as I crest minute fifteen, stroking myself with no sign of peaking, like running on a darn hamster wheel. The question of whether Rocky can hear my struggle bubbles up before I can catch it, and my stomach swoops with the knowledge that he most certainly can.
I shake my head, bite my lip, and vainly attempt to refocus my thoughts. Except all I can hear is the call of temptation on the horizon. The understanding I've forbidden myself to indulge in begins to close about me, garroting my mind until there is nothing but the impudent Pandora's box awaiting my curious hand.
I finish that particular day with blue balls.
But, as bodies and brains tend to do, I get impatient. Knowledge that I can intermixes with a nauseating question of whether I should. Questions I refuse to acknowledge gnaw at my frontal lobe, begging for attention. My leg bounces uncontrollably any time I'm seated. Rocky's snorts, honks, and hums raise the hair on my arms, even when he's being extra annoying about my perceived laziness or grotesqueness.
Am I really lonely enough to jack it to a rock? Or is this some darker, twisted depravity within me? An animalistic desire to lay claim on this most foreign of sentient life—just to know I can. Rocky's somatic components entice me, all those squishy bits hidden beneath literal stone. And the way he spoke to me that day I took care of business in front of him, gosh, what I wouldn't give to hear that concert of rib-rattling tones again.
I don't know what I'm doing—big surprise. My brain chemistry is still probably all over the place from the coma and amnesia drugs—maybe always will be—and no human is supposed to exist in space for this long. Every day I feel like I'm a glass brimming with water, sitting on the edge of a countertop during an earthquake. One tremor too many and I'll shatter.
And a few weeks after my last successful… bodily maintenance, I sure do.
Rocky's carapace is rough beneath my fingertips as I draw them down one of his flanks in a feather-light caress. His exoskeleton may be tough, but the nerves that run along his body are horribly, irresistibly sensitive. I feel a full-body vibration tear through him, his radiator vents hissing in delight.
I press the heel of my palm into him, my fingers hovering over where he wants them most, like the dangling of a carrot. He trills in sweet anticipation before I bring them down in a steady drumming pattern. He squeals, two of his joints buckling in pleasure, and my face breaks into a self-satisfied grin.
"See, I pay attention," I hum smugly. "Who's acting stupid now, question?" I punctuate with two hard thumps to the edge of his ventral seam. There's mercury all over my lap where he hovers over me. It seeps from his underside like a melted mirror, semifluid globules of silver falling into the growing mess with audible plaps.
"So pretty," I murmur, dragging out the words in a long exhale. He whines out a series of garbled noises I can't make out, but I'm pretty sure I hear 'Grace' and 'please'. My fingers ghost over his dilating seam, tips dipping into the fleshy wetness beneath severe rock. "Do you want to give me your eggs?"
He opens for me even more, another cascade of viscid mercury dribbling out to coat my hand.
"God, you're perfect," I breathe, drumming my other fingers along his straining vents. Then I'm suddenly speaking in Eridian, my voice a symphony of layered vocals, both mine and not.
{That's right, show me how much you want me.} He whines—high and reedy like a gale blowing through a bamboo forest. {I'm going to come all over your eggs, Rock.}
My erection is suddenly pressing up into his seam, stemming the flow of mercury. {You're doing so good. Such a good mate for me.} I breach him slow and worshipfully, savoring the plush heat of his body and the squealing pleasure of his song. I'm already so close to coming; I don't think I'm even going to bottom out before I orgasm.
{I love you, Rocky. I love you so—}
I'm conscious, panting and sweating. I think I was mid-moan when I woke. My entire body is on the brink, the very precipice of orgasm, and, in the grips of my morning brain fog and lust, I don't even open my eyes to check where Rocky is before I shove my hand down my boxers and spill onto my navel in two rough strokes.
I at least try to keep my noises at bay, but still, the post-nut clarity is… pretty freaking clear when I hazard opening my eyes to find Rocky exactly where I prayed he wouldn't be. That is—directly above me with all his limbs tucked beneath his carapace like a li'l over-baked loaf of bread. Not that I find it adorable or anything. I mean, especially not now as my stomach breaks through Mary’s hull and sails into the vacuum of space.
I wish I could’ve accompanied it.
I swallow a thick wad of spit and crack an embarrassed smile. “Oh… uh—hi, Ro—”
“Apology. Have work to do.”
Scuttling away like a roach caught in the kitchen light, he's gone, into his ball and clanging loudly up to the lab with his magnets, and I can’t chase after him because my underwear is filled with semen and my chest with terror. Stupid penis! Stupid hormones! I have years to go with Rocky. Nothing separating us but cultural differences and perpetual cosmic dread. Yet, I’ve managed to turn sexual deviant only a few months into our combined journey.
I resolve to fix this. I have to fix this. Even if we weren’t stuck on the world’s worst road trip, I can’t bear the thought of my friend—my best friend—being uncomfortable around me. We already have literal walls between us for science's sake; I don’t need social ones.
I clean up (another pair of underwear down, yay…), steel my frayed nerves, and head for the lab.
I was really hoping Grace would've been feeling too awkward to confront me immediately after making such a mess of themselves. There would've been two messes were I closer to my egg cycle, so thank fuck for that at least. I was already being a degenerate just sitting there observing with undivided attention as they spilled all over themselves, not even feigning working at my bench. They'd just been so flippin' noisy. The loudest I'd ever heard to date. It made me ache with want.
Even though the majority of my workshop is in the dormitory, I figure I can hole up here, tinkering with whatever crap I can get my hands on until Grace comes to check on the Taumoeba farms and we can swap places. My real project—the one I hope will cure me of my inescapable horniness—is trapped downstairs. Grace keeps poking me about it, but I can't seem to find it within myself to bring it up. Instead I'll let my request for their help fester in the sea of unknown 'what ifs' that comprise my life. As nature intended.
"Rocky?" Their monotonous voice echoes through the tiny ship. I catch myself wishing, not for the first time, that we'd been able to take my significantly larger ship home. At least I could've hid a little better. "Hey, Rocky, can I—uh, can we talk?"
Their head pops out of the hatch, and I scramble to look busy rather than the reality of sitting and brooding in aroused irritability. I find a half-finished repair project and, in my haste, grab the wrong tool for it from my bandolier. Luckily, Grace is an absolute doofus when it comes to engineering. I doubt they'll notice.
“Hey, I’m just—I need to apologize," Grace says, sheepishly approaching the barrier. They sit on the ship's floor, bending and tucking their legs into a complicated cross in front of their hips. I continue to feign immense interest in my repair work. When it appears clear I'm not going to respond, Grace scratches the back of their head and clears their throat.
“I wasn’t really thinking when I woke up and… ya know... but it wasn’t cool of me just to whip it out like that. I was awake enough to have asked you to leave or, I dunno. Something.”
“Grace did not 'whip' anything. And I will hear no matter where you are on ship.” My response is clipped. They probably think I’m angry at them. Well fuck it; I am angry at them. I’m angry at what they're doing to me, waving around their ability to self-pleasure their stupid injector noodle like a fucking weapon.
Grace exhales sharper than usual. They're probably frustrated with me, too. Good.
“You know what I mean, pal. I’m trying to apologize because I know it makes you uncomfortable, and I didn’t respect that.”
“Is okay," I soothe, partially because it's true—it should be okay—but also I just don't have this conversation in me right now. "Grace Human brain stupid when wake up. Act on instinct. I forgive.”
“Okay." They flash their mouth bones in that horrifying way that's supposed to indicate happiness, and the muscles around their shoulders turn lax. A beat of silence passes and I’m about to ask for privacy but then they're fucking talking again. I grind my back claw into the hull in suppressed aggravation.
“Well, actually… not okay. It’s not just today. I feel like we need to talk about the last few weeks.”
“Unnecessary. Understand your biological need to simulate mating.”
I want to bellow at them to leave. I want to beg them to stay. I’m a mess of conflicting feelings and desires, and wow, my brain’s crystalline framework is probably fucked beyond repair. Half a century of isolation will do that, I guess. I wonder if they'll give me an award for 'most measurable amorphous brain structure in eridian history' when we make it home.
“No, it’s not—argh!” Grace tips their head back, a frustrated noise raking up their elongated esophagus. “It’s—I’ve made things weird! You’ve gotten all cagey around me about what you've been working on, and this is the second time you’ve randomly run away or made me leave without an explanation! I can’t help but think that the cause is me, you know—” they pump their hand in the air, fingers curled around a phantom cylinder.
I can sense the remnants of their dried spend where it clings to the shaft of their softened sex organ. They must’ve been in too much of a rush to talk to me to clean it properly. I hear the desperate flutter of their heart pounding against its fragile cage of bone—deafening in its power, and I’m suddenly struck stupid by the obvious understanding that Grace loves me.
I know it by the way they patiently answer every one of my questions. The way they'll listen, in rapt attention, as I drone on about some ongoing engineering issue that their silly science mind over-complicates to the umpteenth degree. I observe the physical manifestation of their devotion where it’s been permanently emblazoned along the left half of their body—the fucking idiot. I hear it now in the tremble of their voice and agitated thrum of their insides. They're terrified that they've damaged our relationship.
I can’t lie to them.
“… your observation is not… incorrect.”
Grace throws their head into their hands before I can continue. "⭐✨. ⭐✨! I knew it," they whine. "I'm sorry, Rock. I'm such a 🌟⭐. I should've just done it while you were asleep or just… I could've been fine not. I—"
"No!" I blurt. I'm still struggling to find the words I need to say, but Grace fucking loves carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, and I'm not going to stand for it now. "No. Grace listen. Self-mate good for your body. Healthy stress relief mechanism. Trip to Erid will only get worse when your solid food gone. Is good to have something that makes you happy, statement." I punctuate the words with two hard stomps.
They look up from their hands, features contorting into a conflicted expression. "But—but you're uncomfortable…"
I hesitate, and find myself tapping my front claws together as I always do when I'm nervous. If I had mouth bones like Grace, I'd probably be grinding them into dust right about now. I can volunteer for an interstellar mission with an infinitesimal chance of success, leaving behind my life and mate of one-hundred and eighty-six-point-three years, but I can't tell this giant ball of ooze that I have sexual needs.
Here goes.
"I am... not uncomfortable in way Grace think."
They open their mouth only to shut it, instead opting to tilt their head in cautious curiosity.
"Grace make me feel uncomfortable during self-mate because I want—" I cut myself off with an exacerbated huff. I've gotten used to re-orienting and simplifying my speech patterns to comply with Grace's alien syntax—it's pretty much unconscious these days—and look, I understand they're working toward fluency in Eridian; I swear I get that… But I'm also really sick of sounding like a friggin' moron during conversations like 'hey I'm really depressed and need you to fuck me'.
I push the frustration down and barrel over the finish line before I can overthink it.
"I want feel good too. Long long long time since pleasure during an egg cycle. Laying is… very hard alone. Especially when Rocky alone for so so so long. But you are here and trip to Erid will take many years, and I was hoping…" I sink down to the hull, embarrassment cresting. "I want Grace help." I finish in a tiny voice.
There. It's all out in the open. I'm just a horny, lonely engineer that's light-years from my mate and definitely does not have any feelings beyond platonic and maybe a little-lot sexual for this sentient ball of waxy flesh I share my life with. Sex can just be sex. Friends are friends. And maybe, if Grace doesn't find me too repulsive for asking this, maybe we can have a little of both.
They gape at me, and I'm pretty sure they just drooled onto their shirt (again with the fucking drool, fuck me, I want to die, and why is it hot?!). I wait, the self-soothing tap of the tips of my claws functioning as metronomical sonic booms in the stretching silence. Finally, Grace croaks out a series of noises in the back of their throat before shaping the vocalizations into something coherent.
"I don't know what to—wait, so you've been producing eggs since I came back for you? Why didn't you say anything?"
If I had light-sensing organs, I would be rolling them so hard I would be able to perceive the inside of my body.
"Why Grace not want to say anything when begin release gametes in sleep, question? Is same fear. Do not want to be weird, gross alien." I pause. "Well, no, you are the weird, gross alien, but I do not want be dragged down to Grace level. Did not think I would be out here so long. Suppressants could only work so many year before they went bad. So my cycle restarted, but been alone so long I… cannot lay by self anymore. Make me much much much sad. I observe Grace self-pleasure and… need word. To want what someone has."
"Jealous. You're jealous that you can't masturbate like me."
Their facial features go through a series of muscular contractions, emotional signifiers I don't have the energy to interpret. I can hear the dreaded pooling of saline around their light-sensing organs and cringe. An omen of even more leaking to come. Yay…
"Yes, am… jealous," I admit.
I'm immediately pissed off again when Grace has the gall to laugh. It's tinged with a sticky wetness that makes me both physically recoil and heat up by a few degrees with a dim arousal. What the actual fuck is wrong with me?
"Sorry, Rock." They wipe away the excess moisture with the sleeve of their fuzzy outer-layer clothing. I hate how I fixate on the now moist patch of fabric as they lower their arm. "That's just… a lot to take in. I'm sorry you've been having such a tough time. I shouldn't laugh, but it's just funny that you're always going on about how inefficient my body usually is. Apparently, the only thing I outrank you in is sex."
Ummm… no. Absolutely the fuck not.
"Wrong! Human body very inefficient. Very very very!" I stomp around like a petulant pebble and could give less of a shit. "Open system. Leak everywhere and have to replenish water all the time. Can perceive light frequency, but if no light, Grace is helpless. Four appendages but two used only for mobility. Illogical design! Humans squishy, easily damaged, and have no natural defense other than large, fragile brain. Inefficient creatures!"
More of Grace's choking, hiccuped laughter. The saline is trailing down their face now, and I loathe how turned on I am by this display.
They raise their hands in a mollifying gesture. "Alright, alright. Jeez, bud, give me an itemized list while you're at it." Again, they wipe their face. "Gosh, I don't even know why I'm crying. I guess I'm just relieved. Relieved and sad you can't be with your mate. I can't imagine how hard your cycle has been without them. I'm sorry you've been going through this, Rock. I wish I could be what you needed. I wish—" they freeze for a moment, a look of horror flashing across their features before they instantly wipe away.
"Anyway," they sniffle and gulp down a shaky breath, "this dumb Human wants to help you despite being so inferior, so what can I do?"
I'm hit with an unctuous feeling, like a warm goo seeping from my heart, and my anger simmers away into the ether. Grace and their fucking boundless kindness and perfect leaky, sludgy body. Who knew a strange alien scientist could make me act even more insane than forty-six years of isolation.
"Apology," I reassure. "Grace not inferior. Been hard for me, but did not mean to take out on you. Grace amaze amaze amaze."
They hiccup another faltering breath. "Thanks. You're amazing too, pal."
We sit in mutually appreciative silence for a long moment before I tentatively raise my voice again.
"I am… working on egg solution. Need time to work. Next cycle will start in about a week."
"Okay, uh… what do you need? Is there anything I should do to prepare?"
"Grace no ask too many questions now. Is… social discomfort. Will explain when tool complete." I falter. Take a moment. Continue. "Will be very disgust. Is biological. Grace still want help, question?"
"Pssh," Grace waves a dismissive hand, "please, Rock. I literally got ✨ on your ball when I masturbated for you; I can handle whatever you throw at me."
"Fuck, Grace really need bring that up right now, question?"
Grace freezes in place, and I can hear their blood simultaneously rushing toward their head and sex organ. This fucking alien is going to kill me.
"I-I-I—" they stammer, "fudge, sorry. I'm just gonna—yeah, I'm gonna let you work. Bye!"
And they're gone, scuttling down the ladder toward the dormitory before I can recover from the sudden onslaught of disgusted lust at the memory of Grace's fluids dripping down the panels of my ball. In the aftermath I'd even struggled with the pull to demand that Grace clean their release with their mouth—wiping away the mess with that wet, ovipositor-shaped muscle sitting just behind their mouth bones.
Fuck, I really need to finish this project before my next cycle. If I keep being subjected to my roommate's sexual urges while I remain unsated, I might just blast myself out of the airlock somewhere around the Teegarden Star system. I do my best to shake off all of the ugly emotions dredged up by this conversation.
Time to get to work.