Chapter Text
***
The gentle cacophony of Grace’s home washed over Rocky as he cycled through the airlock. After a long day of knocking heads together at the engineering thrum, the sounds of Grace puttering around his kitchen, Adrian knitting in the living room, and the audioscreen playing low were balm to Rocky’s senses.
“I’m home, statement!” Rocky trilled as he came through. “Mail’s here.”
Rocky and Adrian still maintained their own home a short distance away—their xenosuits had only eighteen hours of ammonia per use, after all—but they spent so much time in Grace’s biodome that it might as well be their second home. Grace had told Rocky that wealthy humans often had multiple homes, and it delighted Rocky to think that he was living like a posh Earthling. He wasn’t sure summer and winter homes were usually in the same neighborhood, but the concept held.
“Hey, Rock!” came Grace’s cheerful call from the kitchen.
“How was your day, dearest?” Adrian asked from where they perched on the sofa, clever claws weaving together some new artwork.
To be honest, all of Adrian’s art looked the same to Rocky, but he always complimented each piece. Let the professional critics sort out the fine details of the historical allusions and sound textures his mate was such an expert at crafting together. Rocky was fine showing up at each of Adrian’s exhibitions and saying, “Yes, I’m so proud,” while remaining fuzzy on the details.
“The engineering thrum gets stupider by the day,” Rocky said, sliding a stack of Grace’s mail he’d picked up onto the coffee table. “You’d think they’d remember who did groundbreaking science innovation in space and who sat around Erid like a bunch of sadsack morons for a hundred years.”
“That’s not fair, Rocky,” Grace said, walking in with a plate and a glass in hand. “They can’t help that they were here and you were there. I’m sure they would have innovated interesting things if they’d ended up on the Hail Mary with me.”
“No,” Rocky said, a bit surprised at his own vehemence. “They would not have. They would have bored you to death with their tone-deaf nonsense and Erid and Earth would have frozen.”
Grace frowned at him, still standing in the middle of the room holding his supper.
“Well, you’re rid of them for the next cycle at least,” Adrian chimed in, diplomatic as always. “Put them out of your mind for now. And Grace, come sit.”
“Yes, Grace, come be disgust with your dinner, you need the calories,” Rocky said, situating himself comfortably on the sofa next to Adrian, leaving a Grace-sized space on his other side.
“Let me just turn up the audioscreen a bit so you don’t have to hear my eating quite so loudly,” Grace said, setting the plate and glass on the table.
“It’s the late-cycle news, isn’t it?” Rocky said. “I like that new reporter they’ve got, she’s not nearly as idiotic as the last one.”
“I think the results of the Arts Council funding vote will be on tonight, right, Adrian?” Grace asked, turning up the volume dial before joining them on the sofa.
“That’s what I hear,” Adrian said. “I hope so, my current grant runs out in two mega-cycles.”
Two hours—Earth hours, Rocky now thought in those terms as interchangeably as Eridian time—later, Grace was pleasantly sprawled next to him in his post-dinner haze while Adrian worked away contentedly. Rocky leaned forward to scoop up the mail he’d brought in.
“Let’s see what nonsense came in this week,” he said, thumbing through the stone sheets. “Two product endorsement requests, one invitation to the biology thrum—do you want to go to that, question?”
“I do, but let’s remind them again that although my xenosuit has twelve hours of oxygen, I have…other biological needs I have to attend to more frequently,” Grace said, capillaries flooding his face. Rocky gave a snorting chirp.
“Grace almost pissed himself last time because Grace was too polite to ask for a break,” Rocky corrected. Grace’s shoulders hitched up and more blood rose to his face.
“Rocky,” Adrian chided gently. “You know Grace is sensitive to asking for accommodations.”
“I do know, and it’s stupid. You’re the Savior of Erid, your entire life should be one giant accommodation to whatever you need or want,” Rocky said.
“Why, Rocky,” Grace said, shoulders lowering and lips turning up. “That was almost sweet.”
“I’ll tell the biology thrum that you need a break every two Earth hours, and the entire thrum must conclude within six. You’re to come straight home after that,” Rocky said.
“Yes, Mom,” Grace said, rolling his eyes. Rocky paid no attention to his exasperation.
“All right, two applications from prospective students,” Rocky said, sliding those stone sheets over to Grace immediately, who grabbed at them eagerly. “And what’s this? Ha! An invitation to appear on As Erid Turns.”
Adrian and Grace froze on either side of him.
“The producers of As Erid Turns wrote to me?” Grace said, awe in his voice.
“Yes,” Rocky said, bewildered at Grace’s seeming rapture.
“And they want me to be on an episode?” Grace said, eyes wide.
“The producers of As Erid Turns invite esteemed Savior Grace to join the cast for a Very Special Episode, featuring him in a Celebrity Guest Appearance,” Rocky read out.
“Adrian,” Grace breathed. “They want me on As Erid Turns.”
“Impressive,” Adrian said. “As Erid Turns beat both The Young and the Rockless and Cycles of Our Lives in the last audio media vote.”
“What do you care?” Rocky asked. “How do you know about all this?”
“What do you think we do every afternoon after Grace finishes teaching and before you get home from work, question?” Adrian asked. “We don’t sit here and listen to the wall.”
“We’re very invested,” Grace said earnestly. “I keep a plot threads whiteboard in my office, haven’t you seen it?”
Rocky didn’t want to admit that if he had heard it, he hadn’t paid any attention to it.
“Well, anyway, no need to respond to that,” he said, placing the stone sheet on the recycle pile.
Adrian stilled again, and Grace seemed to…diminish somehow.
“What? You’re not wanting to actually do this soap opera appearance, are you?” Rocky asked.
Grace’s ears pulsed with blood flow and he gave a twitch of a shrug.
“I mean…kinda?” he said. “I love As Erid Turns.”
Rocky turned to Adrian.
“Well?”
“Well, what? I think he should do it,” Adrian said placidly.
“Adrian! Grace is not some—cheap floozy of an entertainer! He’s a respected interstellar scientist!”
“For shame, Rocky,” Adrian said, still knitting away. “I never took you for a snob.”
“I’m not a snob! I grew up on the wrong side of the gorge, you know that,” Rocky sputtered. “I can’t believe you’re entertaining this absurd notion, Adrian! Grace doesn’t know any better, but you do!”
“Art comes in many forms, my love, and this is one of the forms Grace loves. Why should he not take the chance to express himself, just as I do in my exhibitions?”
Rocky turned to Grace. His shoulders were hunched inward and his head was down. This was his ‘embarrassed and slightly hurt’ posture, and Rocky couldn’t tolerate that.
Especially when it might be his fault, ridiculous as this whole situation was.
“You really want to do this?” Rocky demanded. “Put on your xenosuit and go be part of an audioscreen soap opera?”
Grace lifted his chin.
“I do,” he said simply.
Rocky studied Grace for a moment.
“Fine,” he sighed, setting the stone sheet aside into the ‘reply’ pile. “Finest scientific mind in two star systems and this is what he does with his time.”
Grace’s ears heated up again and he shoved at Rocky, who did not allow himself to be moved as he usually did when Grace expressed his feelings by physically pushing at Rocky. This human and his nonsense. Unaccountable.
***
“—but how are they going to reconcile Veronica with her long-lost twin hatchling if I’m there? We only just found out that Roger was their parent three episodes ago!”
Grace’s voice floated out to Rocky as he re-pressurized the airlock behind him.
“Well, don’t forget that Regina and Michael’s divorce case is about to go before the judge, and I’m betting that Melissa is going to show up at court to swear her love to Regina,” Adrian said.
Rocky walked into the living room to see Grace pacing before a whiteboard.
“You might be right, but—”
Grace stopped short as he saw Rocky, hands clenching around his marker.
“Oh, uh, hey, Rocky,” Grace stammered.
“Hi, Grace, Adrian,” Rocky said. “What are you working on?”
“Oh, nothing! Nothing at all!” Grace said, tripping over his own feet and barely catching himself as he hurriedly began pushing the whiteboard out of the living room back toward his office.
“Grace being secretive,” Rocky said, hearing his song land somewhere between teasing and suspicious.
“I’m not being secretive!” Grace’s voice echoed from his office.
“Grace met with the As Erid Turns producers today,” Adrian said as Grace walked back into the room.
“Oh? How did it go?” Rocky asked, making an effort to keep any judgment out of his voice.
“It was—it was good,” Grace said, a shy smile crossing his face. Adrian nudged Rocky with a claw, a spousal shortcut that Rocky knew meant ‘good job, keep going.’
“They have a good plan for Grace’s episode?” Rocky asked, settling on the couch next to Adrian.
“They’re still working it out, but if it all goes to schedule, I’ll come back to the studio and we’ll record next week,” Grace said, shoving his glasses up on his nose.
Grace sat with one knee pulled up in front of him on the couch, holding it in front of him like a shield. This was less guarded than both knees pulled up, the full ‘raise the barricade’ posture, so Rocky was confident he hadn’t pushed Grace all the way into crippling self-consciousness. Trying to read this creature’s complex and ever-shifting emotions from his strange, awkward body moving itself in incomprehensible ways was a full-time job sometimes.
And yet somehow Rocky never tired of it.
“Perhaps they could have Grace explain some of his discoveries on the show? The Taumoeba experiments or the Hail Mary trajectory calculations might be good,” Rocky said.
Grace and Adrian both stilled.
Rocky hated when they did that. It meant he’d screwed up, usually without understanding why.
“It’s not really that type of show, dearest,” Adrian said. “And Erid has access to Grace’s scientific brilliance from the biology and physics thrums recordings.”
Rocky harrumphed, and then deliberately relaxed his posture and blew a breath of air out of his vents. Grace was looking like he might pull both knees up in front of him.
“Just want Grace to be…appreciated properly,” Rocky said sullenly.
Grace lowered his knees to sit in the posture he nonsensically referred to ‘criss-cross applesauce,’ a smile breaking across his face. Victory.
“I’m appreciated, Rock,” Grace said. “I’m appreciated just fine.”
“See that you are,” Rocky said firmly. No need to let his silly human have the last word, after all.
***
“So, Rocky,” Steve said casually as Rocky packed up his workstation for the day. “I saw your second mate is trying his hand at acting. Interesting.”
Rocky froze.
“Second mate?” he demanded. “Grace isn’t my second mate!”
“Oh, he isn’t?” Steve said, faint confusion tilting his carapace. “I guess I just assumed…”
“Well, don’t assume,” Rocky snapped, slamming his locker shut with unnecessary force. “Grace is not my mate. He’s my—he’s my human.”
“Huh,” Steve said, closing his own locker at a much more reasonable volume.
“And how do you know he’s acting?” Rocky said as they made their way toward the thrum’s exit tunnel.
“Rocky, it’s all over audio media. They’re teasing the Very Special Episode next cycle and the wires have been humming about it for days. Michelle started a second account just to follow the updates,” Steve said.
Rocky was taken aback. Audio media had really taken off during the time he had been gone, and had skyrocketed when Erid integrated parts of Grace’s thinking machine technology into their mass communication systems. There were all kinds of different ‘platforms’ and people had ‘accounts’ and ‘posted’ things. Rocky didn’t have time for such foolishness, although he had heard Adrian mention something at one point about having a ‘burner account,’ whatever that meant. How did one make an audio media account combustible? It made no sense.
“Well, anyway, tell Savior Grace good luck,” Steve said as they reached the intersection where they would split off. “Michelle and the pebbles and I are looking forward to the episode. They’re even airing it during primetime so us working stiffs won’t miss it.”
“Okay, I will,” Rocky said weakly.
The ground felt slightly unstable under him as he made his way toward the biodome. A premonition of dread made his limbs feel stiff, like an alarm was about to go off on the Hail Mary.
Grace was all over audio media because he was going to be acting in a soap opera and Rocky’s colleagues were thinking of Grace as his second mate and Rocky felt—felt strange. And uncertain. And—and overwhelmed.
He didn’t like it. Not one bit. He never should have read out that stupid invitation to Grace. They should have stayed on the Hail Mary forever. Where—where no one had access to Grace except Rocky.
Rocky paused in the tunnel and then had to excuse himself when the person behind him hurrying home from work nearly plowed over him.
Where no one had access to Grace except Rocky—that couldn’t be right. Rocky might not have Adrian’s deep emotional acuity, but he knew that that kind of possessiveness was…not good.
Rocky kicked the tunnel wall in a fit of petulance he couldn’t quite hold back, and then continued on toward the biodome.
He would put this out of his mind. He would go home to Adrian and Grace and have a normal evening and everything would be fine.
It would be fine.
***