Work Text:
It’s not until he watches me plop down on the mattress that it really hits me.
I spent the last five minutes or so painstakingly relieving my bed of everything but its frame, dropping my mattress, pillow and covers on the floor beside it. Rocky would probably break the bed just by getting on it, not to mention the damage that the fall would do to me, seeing as both he and I are much heavier than we ever were in space. That felt fine. I’ve gone through the motions before, back on Earth, gathering bedding for a friend at sleepovers or simply carrying my blanket over to my couch for movie nights.
But now I’m on the floor, and Rocky stands in front of me. He’s worked his protective suit almost to perfection, each version getting more and more snug until I can hardly even tell he’s wearing anything.
He stands before me in his near-authentic glory, and my breath tumbles out of me.
“You are ready, question?” Rocky asks, and I think: of course I am. I think: it’s not my first time, why the heck am I so nervous? I think: if I chicken out now, we’ll never speak of it again—but I’ll also be left wondering for the rest of my life.
The truth is, this isn’t really about science. We both say it is—and even so, Rocky’s assured me that Adrian doesn’t mind, that Eridians aren’t all that possessive of their partners. That, and that Adrian, in their incredible patience and understanding, has just kind of accepted that there are things Rocky and I have shared that they will never fully grasp, and that their spouse can no longer imagine a life without the weird alien they brought home. Experiment or not, I’m not gonna be some homewrecker tearing apart a two-century relationship for my own selfish gain.
Still, that almost makes it worse. I take another breath, forcing myself to hold it, and now that I’m down here waiting for him I’m meddling with the fact that I want this. Not for any knowledge I have to gain, nor for some non-human form of bonding I didn’t know existed.
I want this. I want it so bad it’s choking me silent, sitting thick and cloying in the back of my throat.
“Grace,” says Rocky, and it’s not a question. I explained briefly how humans go about this, way back when; I mentioned it was done for pleasure at times, or intimacy. He understands that this is more than laying an egg in the ground. I suppose for him it is a bit of an experiment, considering he won’t get all that much out of it.
But he knows. He’s been very insistent about doing this only for as long as I’m enjoying it, and that adds to my giddiness. Absurdly, impossibly, Rocky’s the most attentive partner I’ve ever had, and he’s not even a partner. He’s a friend I love very much, but who is, at the end of the day, doing this for me, because he wants good things for me after the world was unkind to me.
Rocky would, by his own admission, do anything for me.
“Yeah,” I croak. I clear my throat and try again, because I know Rocky’s not gonna take that for an answer. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
He comes closer. He’s given me space until now, making sure I wouldn’t feel crowded. I never even told him that that’s what I need when I get antsy. It’s crazy how countless life-or-death situations over the course of a few months can cause someone to know you blind like that.
I expect him to be forward, as he always is. I expect him to tell me to take my clothes off right away, and I set aside words to explain that most humans like a slower approach.
But I don’t need to. I’m leaning back on the heels of my hands, and he sits on the mattress beside me, his back limbs folded. “I am very happy we are here,” he says, and I feel my throat close up more. Oh. “Alive. Healthy again.” I give a threadbare laugh. It has, indeed, been a difficult couple of months of recovering from malnutrition. I’m certainly skinnier than I was, and every so often I’ll find an ache where some part of me expected to be dead by now and has to get used to needing to get back to work. “Is better than imagined.”
He can be so darn sweet when he wants to. He doesn’t want to often, so I make sure to appreciate the moments when he does.
“Yeah,” I say, running my hand over his carapace. The xenonite is so close to his skin now that I’m sure he can feel it, and it’s flexible enough for him to lean into the touch, his suit molding to my hand. “I’m really happy we’re here too, bud. I never expected to make it this far.”
He chirrups his agreement. I would need both hands to count the reasons why I should be dead, and Rocky’s hands on top if I wanted to count the sheer amount of miracles we’ve encountered on the way. It’s unreal.
Rocky climbs up farther, and I make an endeared little sound as he nudges against me, laying one arm across my lap. I lay down flat to hold him better, and he follows me up the length of the mattress, settling beside my head.
He’s so gentle with me. He’s pinned down the exact pressure that’ll put a pleasant weight on me without crushing anything important, and he makes sure to use it every time we touch now, squeezing just tight enough, letting just enough of his weight go to let me feel him. I feel lighter, I notice. The weight of his arm over me is enough to feel like a blanket full of gravel, and as my chest lifts that arm with every breath, I find that some of my nerves have subsided.
“I’m ready,” I say again, with more conviction now. It occurs to me that he didn’t believe me the first time. Having him watch me from afar might’ve actually set me on edge a bit. And also, sometimes I do need a reminder that we’ve made it. Every breath I take is a testament to it, but it’s hard to get it into my head sometimes, to keep a hold of it when a great many things feel more real than the simple fact of living.
Rocky rises from where he’s burrowed into my shoulder. It also occurs to me that our conversations never went as far as to describe how humans have sex for pleasure, but there’s something even more thrilling about letting him figure it out himself.
And so, as if on cue, he runs the backs of his claws down my neck. It’s far from methodical; it’s just the most available part of me in this position, and one he hasn’t touched often.
It works, though. My next breath comes sharp and shallow, and I tip my head back to give him more room.
“You will need to guide,” Rocky says, amusement lacing his notes. “You say if good.”
“Yeah,” I say, unable to help my smile. “That’s good.”
He traces the tendons of my neck, gently testing their tension, feeling the way they connect. I briefly have the morbid thought that Eridians won’t truly understand human anatomy until I die and they get to dissect me. But Rocky will certainly try to gather as much information as he can until then. His hands move with more purpose now, feeling his way across flesh and sinew, the jut of my thyroid, the place where my neck meets my shoulder.
And then he stops. He lingers on one side, right next to my throat.
“Your skin moves here,” he says, and my breath trips over itself. We’re still going slower than I expected. I’ve never had someone take their time like this, looking closely enough to watch my pulse twitch against my neck.
“Yeah,” I say thinly. “C-Carotid. It connects directly to the brain, so the—the pulse is usually strongest there.”
I laugh at the absurdity of giving an alien an anatomy lesson while I’m actively firming up in my pants. Then again, we’re both scientists. I mean, Rocky isn’t, but he’s just as good as one, and he shares my curiosity for anything that comes my way. Of course I’m gonna explain stuff to him as he goes. Even if I sound really darn stupid while doing it.
“Important,” Rocky says, and he traces that line again, touching me with a gentleness I didn’t know he was capable of. One tiny nick would have me bleeding out. Rocky understands that. He’s running his claw down my neck like I’m something precious, something he wants to treat kindly, and I try not to tear up at the fact that he’s the first person to do so.
My hands lay helpless on either side of my head, fingers picking at themselves. One of Rocky’s hands comes to rest over my pulse while another traces the edge of my jaw, up around my cheek. He presses into that too, making a quiet noise of fascination. He knew I was softer than him, but I guess his echolocation isn’t quite detailed enough to let him guess how soft. He slides the skin of my cheek around, which feels objectively silly, but I know for a fact he’s tracking every sensation, every reaction I give. I really don’t want to make him feel like his exploration is something to be laughed at.
Not that I can hold that thought for long, because the next thing I know is that that same hand is opening my mouth. It’s more medical than a human lover might do it, but that might be attributed to the fact that I let my jaw drop the moment his teardrop-fingers pressed down on my lips. He was probably just trying to get a feel for that, too, the way my weird human orifices work, but now I’m here with my mouth open, and Rocky readily takes the invitation.
I expect a metallic taste, seeing as xenonite is an alloy of pretty much half the periodic table, but there’s nothing. It’s tasteless and near sensationless, shifting to near perfect smoothness as Rocky presses lightly down on my tongue, runs a finger along the backs of my teeth, probes along the roof of my mouth until my palate goes soft and—
“Okay,” I say, trying and failing to power through the indignity of choking on his fingers. I push his hand back, and he gets the message.
“Unpleasant,” he says, and—sure, let’s go with that. My very confused half-chub begs to differ, but yes, I would prefer not to throw up.
“Yeah,” I say. And then, because I know he’s gonna ask: “Humans have a gag reflex. Helps to prevent choking on food when we get too greedy with it. It’s meant to feel like an emergency.”
Rocky makes a wordless noise of understanding. “Apology.”
“It’s alright, bud.”
That seems to be enough for him, and I smile. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s struck me as someone who doesn’t hold grudges; he gets real pissed for five minutes, and then he’s back to normal. But when it comes to himself, he can stay sour for a long time. He’s been getting better at that. Or maybe it’s just that smaller missteps pale in comparison to my entire left side bearing the marks of the manoeuvre that saved my life, but progress is progress. Guilt doesn’t cling to him as fiercely as it used to, and it’s a good look on him.
He follows the stretch of my neck down, and my chest gives a little tug as we realize at the same time that this is all the skin that’s available to him right now. He’ll need to start moving clothes out of the way.
Which is what I knew was gonna happen, but still. Gosh.
Rocky tugs on my collar, examining it. He’s used to me wearing regular t-shirts, so this is new to him: it’s a striped button down, a step-up from my usual clothes. He’s not gonna be able to tug it over my head like he’s seen me do on the ship.
I don’t even know why this kind of thing was packed for me. This thing isn’t best-man-at-a-wedding fancy, but it’s the fanciest thing I own, and would certainly limit my movement during all the exercise that comes with a space mission. Maybe there was some kind of expectation that my crewmates and I would want to celebrate before inevitably killing ourselves.
Why did I dress up nice for this, you may ask? I don’t know. It’s not like I was expecting to keep my clothes on anyway. Besides, it’s just Rocky. Just Rocky being his big old self as he feels the texture of my shirt, dipping one hand into the collar once more, tugging on the first button with another.
“You gotta—” I begin, but he figures it out right then, pulling away from my neck to work the button open with both hands. He struggles somewhat, but he gets it done. I can just imagine the focused look he’d have on his face right now, if he, you know, had a face.
“Complicated,” he says, which is fair. Having thinner fingers definitely makes buttons a lot easier to handle—besides also having five instead of three. I’m about to reach down to help, intent on unbuttoning from the bottom to meet Rocky halfway, but he gently smacks my hands away. “What this called, question?”
I put my hands back up, shuddering briefly at the idea that he wants to undress me himself. It’s not like he’s never seen me naked; at some point I realized that modesty was nonsensical when he could see me through walls anyway, and I granted him a few scientific peeks whenever I changed clothes. But this is different. This is so very different.
“Buttons,” I tell him, and he perks up.
“Buttons are controls of ship.”
“Yeah.” I nod, trying very hard to be normal about the sight of him down there, working his diligent way down my shirt. It’s such a rollercoaster with him, jumping back and forth between innocent discovery and this. “Sometimes words have multiple meanings.”
“Confusing.”
He gets the buttons open and pushes the shirt out of the way with two hands. He’s placed himself on top of me, hovering closely over my stomach; I can’t really lift myself up to pull the shirt out from under me, so my arms remain in it, fabric tossed to either side.
“You have more hair,” Rocky notices, and I raise my head as much as I can to look at him.
“Yeah,” I say. “You couldn’t see that?”
“Clothes make harder to see.”
I’ve known him long enough to be able to follow his gaze down, where he’s focused mainly on my stomach. He runs a finger up and down the line of hair beneath my navel, and I turn away slightly, giggling. “That tickles, Rock.”
“Hurts, question?”
“No, no.” Right. There was never a reason for him to learn the word tickle. “It’s… it doesn’t hurt, but it’s a little uncomfortable. The stomach is sensitive to touch. Among other areas—armpits, feet, all that. Just a bit too much.”
“Understand,” Rocky says, tilting slightly. It’s not just mere acknowledgement; I can tell he’s chewing on it. “Humans have many tender areas.”
Such a simple and objectively true observation shouldn’t make me shudder like that. There’s something so visceral about being analysed by an alien, being the sole representative for all of humanity; humans are, in fact, one giant nerve exposed to the elements when compared to the sturdy build of an Eridian. I feel it even more profoundly now, being in the position I’m in: pinned helplessly beneath him, kept safe only by the trust and affection Rocky holds for me.
Whatever Rocky learns about me, he will apply to humans as a whole—but at the same time, he’s friends with me, and so everything he learns will be tucked away into a corner of his mind that’s for me alone.
He crawls higher up the mattress to take in the rest of me, his hands trailing where his ears—or whatever otic organ he has—lead him. He skips over my stomach, steering clear of anything ticklish, but becomes all the more interested in my chest to compensate.
My tangential encounter with starvation has left me thinner than before; laying on my back like this reveals my ribs all the way to the collarbones, a set of stark lines wrapped in skin. Rocky traces them with something more than mere fascination now. A touch of melancholy, maybe, that it had to come to this—and a good helping of relief that this is all it came to, that I get to lie alive and breathing beneath him with only a little less meat on my bones to show for the agony I went through.
Knowing Rocky, he’ll have me back to a regular weight in no time, anyway. He dotes on me so much that it’s genuinely a miracle that Adrian hasn’t grown tired of it yet. Then again, they’re as eager to make me comfortable as he is.
Weird thing to think about right now, but I let my head drop back into the pillow and realize for the umpteenth time how incredibly, ludicrously lucky I am.
And then that thought is snapped out of existence when Rocky’s fingers, in their exploration, brush over my nipples. It wasn’t intentional; I’ve gathered that Eridians can tune their attention to certain frequencies, so to speak, so he was probably paying less attention to whatever’s on the top layer of skin and more to the bones underneath. Still, that brief touch shocks a sound out of me, scarcely more than an airy little whine, but enough to give Rocky pause.
“Good,” I blurt out. “That’s good, Rock, that—do that.” I’m not usually all that verbose in pleasure, but the idea of having Rocky stop for fear of doing something wrong is far worse than the mortification of voicing my enjoyment at every step.
Besides, Rocky makes a noise of pure delight every time I do, which is reason enough to keep trying.
He adjusts his legs where they’re arranged around me, one on either side of me and another between my legs for balance. I feel his gaze on me. Heck, I feel him listen to my heartbeat, pinpointing the exact moment he notices that it’s jumped up in speed.
While Rocky gently tweaks at a nipple with one hand, another joins in slightly lower. I lift my head to see what he’s doing, and some of my brain cells return to me, just enough to be amused. His claw is circling the mole just under my right pectoral. Without color to aid him, I guess a slightly raised bundle of flesh could feel similar to a nipple.
“Not the same thing,” I tell him. My face is glowing, and I feel my pulse in my temples, in my throat, in the very spot Rocky is straddling, dangerously close to the shin of his hind leg. I aim for an even tone and succeed only in cracking my voice like a dying twig. “That’s a mole.”
He looks up from my chest, and I remember that he knows practically nothing about my body save for the absolute basics.
“Not bad,” I add. I force myself to take a deep breath. “Neutral. It’s just pigment in the skin.”
Rocky shakes a free hand at me and goes right back to my nipples. My breath locks in my throat as I curl against him, clasping a hand around his wrist.
It’s a blessing that he doesn’t ask me why it feels good. He’s kind beyond measure for not teasing me for it, this thing he can’t possibly understand, a feeling I can never describe to him no matter how I word it. Maybe that’s part of why he wants this. To see. To watch it happen in front of him, so that, though he may not know exactly what certain touches bring out in me, he will at least know which ones do.
My other hand clasps over my mouth as Rocky experiments. He rolls my nipples gently between his fingers with varying degrees of pressure, testing whether pulling them will yield an even greater reaction, and I’m helpless to do anything but squirm under him and muffle my sounds in my hand. I remember being young and stupid and almost letting myself be talked into getting my nipples pierced at the end of a night that mainly consisted of me trying to steer others away from bad decisions. Gosh, I’ve never hated my excessive restraint more than I do now.
It feels both like an eternity and like nothing at all that Rocky spends just on that. Every so often he’ll leave one nipple alone and watch it bounce back from where he’s tugged on it, hardened from his ministrations. I’m about ninety percent sure I’m leaving a wet spot in my underwear, and just as I realize that, Rocky seems to remember that there is more to explore.
Could be the fact that I’ve been trying and failing not to buck up into his underside. Or it could be anything else, who knows?
He shuffles farther down, straddling my thighs instead, and I feel even more exposed, though it hardly makes a difference. He doesn’t see like I do; nothing new has been revealed to him. Still, I feel a little sheepish as he directs his attention to the place where I’m tenting in my pants, where I twitch unwillingly just from his regard.
He reaches for me without hesitation, and I draw in a sharp breath, tensing under his touch, fighting to remain silent—until I realize he’s after the button of my pants, rather than anything inside them.
“Why buttons are so common, question?!” he demands, and I’m once again laughing up at the ceiling because of how bizarre this all is. I doubt we’ll ever truly be done learning about each other. Even now we’re brushing up against new things, and I can’t even be annoyed with him for stopping to ask questions every now and then, because I know I’d probably be even worse if the roles were reversed.
My mind trips over the thought. Maybe one day I can touch him like this. Maybe he’ll finally figure out a life support that lets me survive in his atmosphere.
“Reliability, I guess,” I tell him, though my head is very much not on the convenience of clothing anymore. “Once you button something, it stays put.”
Rocky makes a triumphant noise as he works the button open. The zipper is easier; it feels like an eternity ago that he used my spacesuit to keep himself sane on the journey back, toying with the opening at the back, reassuring himself that he could put it on me in a pinch, should anything at all go wrong when I was too weak to get in myself.
He realizes he can’t just open my pants and be done with it like he did with my shirt, and I take a deep breath before lifting my hips to assist. I notice how much his weight dips the mattress, how every point of contact causes my limbs to fold inward against him. Once he’s worked my pants and underwear over my legs and tossed them aside, he gently nudges them apart to make space for himself, causing a shiver to run through me. It’s far from cold in my dome, but being exposed like this is a lot. And of course Rocky notices that, too. He makes a wordless noise and runs a hand down the outside of my thigh, where the skin has gone prickly with goosebumps. He knows that one, though he hasn’t seen it in this context before. I can see him connecting the dots.
“Is alright,” he says, and I nod in agreement. “Will take good care of you.”
It takes me by surprise, and I make a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a gasp. “I know, Rock. You always do.”
There’s an unexpected weight to the words, an unintentional evocation of all the times I was forced to depend on him, when I was small and weak and helpless and at the mercy of his capable hands. He brought me home. He fed me when even that was too much effort for me. He leapt into what he thought was certain death to save my life, and then he forgave me without hesitation for nearly killing him in turn.
Rocky feels it too, and he rumbles softly at me, leaning forward and letting his weight go just a little bit to let me feel the pressure of him above me. I run my hands over his carapace, thumbs tracking the bumps and ridges of them. He allows it for a long moment, trilling his enjoyment in a way that will never stop reminding me of a cat’s purr.
And then he’s had enough, and he gently pushes my hands back, gesturing for me to place them back above my head.
He takes a moment to drink me in—and I know it’s a drinking just by how attentively he holds himself. He can see all of me without moving at all, can make out the tiniest sound waves bouncing off of me, but he still turns himself this way and that, getting the sharpest image of every hill and valley of my body. His thumb is still rubbing little tracks along my thigh, which I imagine messes with his hearing, fine-tuned as it is. But he’s not stopping.
“Is not always this shape,” he points out, and I realize his attention has fallen to my dick where it lays in the crease of my thigh. I huff out a weak laugh.
“Yeah. It gets hard when—” I pause. I’ve told him this before; it’s kind of a key component of giving an alien the talk. I lift my head to glare at him. “You’re messing with me, you prick.”
Rocky gives a gleeful chitter. “You become stupid,” he says, a contrast to the reverence with which he’s been taking me in. As a member of a complex, intelligent species, he contains multitudes.
“Hey!”
“Is interesting,” Rocky says, placating. “Stupid when tired, when hungry, when scared. Less stupid now, but still different from normal. Wanted to see if you remembered.”
“Mean,” I mumble, and now that I know he’s teasing, it’s like I can see his body language in the tone of his voice, even as my head drops back against the pillow.
“Not mean,” Rocky says. “I make you feel good. Correct, question?”
That jerk. I can’t say no, because I’d be risking him putting an end to it. It’s no secret that making me feel good is the point of all this, but admitting it so plainly is a different matter. I run my hands down my face, shrinking slightly. It’s been so long since I’ve been seen this way, read so intimately that mild teasing could cut to the quick like that.
“Yeah,” I concede, flushing darker just from the admission. Rocky makes an approving noise as his hands drift along my hips, tracing the jutting bones.
“Say thank.”
My head shoots up again. “What?”
Rocky’s hands stop. He looks at me with his featureless face, and I see in the way he carries himself that he’s doing that with intent, too, feigning innocence when he knows exactly what he’s doing. “Is polite,” he says. “You told me so. Is nice to say thank when someone does good things for you.”
I know he’s being annoying on purpose, I know. That’s also a part of his end of the deal: getting to wind me up when my defenses are at an all-time low, getting to stroke his ego with how well he’s taking to this foreign practice. He may not get the same out of it as me, but he can certainly feel the satisfaction of a well-placed jab.
He just looks at me, unmoving, like he thinks I’m buying that he’s just a clueless alien trying to be nice to me during all this. Or maybe he knows that I know and is making me play along anyway.
Gosh.
“Thank you, Rocky,” I bite out, feeling just a little filthy for saying it. “Thank you for—for making me feel good.”
“Good good,” Rocky says. I twitch against my stomach with a whimper. “I will continue.”
With that, he reaches for my dick, all uncertainty or fears of hurting me forgotten. A tiny, distant part of me is pleased that he trusts me enough to tell him when it’s too much, that he, too, can let go in this.
The rest of me is, of course, busy sinking into that feeling, gasping like I’ve been tossed into cold water. Rocky holds me in his hand, squeezing very gently, dragging his thumb in circular little motions over the side. He repeats the motion with varying degrees of pressure, and it takes a few moments until I realize he's playing with the foreskin.
“Amaze,” he says. “Many layers of skin. And wet.”
He’s not looking for answers anymore, or at least he doesn’t expect me to respond. He just adjusts to run a claw over the head of my dick, sending my skull back into the pillow. He's so gentle with me, using the smoothest of his five hands, but it's still so much. His words, his touch, his warmth, it’s so much. I moan, low and longing, my eyes fluttering shut.
“These are good sounds, question?” Rocky asks, and I can’t even be bothered by the fact that he’s goading.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice tipping up toward the end. “Yeah, that’s good, Rocky. Gosh…”
This isn’t gonna take long. I know Rocky has no point of reference, but I swear he’s smiling down at me for how wound-up I am, even though he has neither eyes nor a mouth. “Pretty pretty sounds,” he says, which draws another one out of me. I can’t shake the feeling that he knows what he’s doing, and the thought stirs something in me in more ways than one. Rocky has seen me in every nuance of pain and despair; he knows every fear and insecurity I have, every strange quirk that comes with living alone for the majority of my life, and in the short time that we’ve known each other, he’s burrowed himself deeper than anyone ever has before him. He knows me.
And now he’s turning it against me like this. Except it’s not even that, because the twinge of embarrassment that comes with being seen is nothing compared to the heat it brings, the way that one feeling takes two separate shapes inside me: one of them in my chest, where it settles warm and comfortable and slightly melancholy between my ribs and sinks right down to the marrow, and another in my groin, where the slow but steady gush is only worsened by Rocky’s words.
He’s not using it against me. He’s doing everything right. He’s doing everything so much better than I thought possible, and I feel a lump form in my throat, tinting my whines a different color.
“I have idea,” Rocky says, as if he can tell that a small portion of the noises he’s coaxing out of me are tinged with grief. “You say if good idea.”
I search my head for a response, but when I feel him move, I realize he’s not looking for one. I have enough words to tell him to stop if I need to, and that’s enough for now.
Rocky keeps a hand on me as he shifts. It’s not always the same one, but there’s always a point of contact as he arranges himself over my hips, as if to keep me grounded. He’s good at that. He’s guided me through enough nightmares and moments of panic to know when I need him as a tether, and just how firmly I need it. His touch is a pleasant weight on my hip, then my lower abdomen, then my sternum, rising and falling with my breath.
Another hand wraps around my dick, slowly, tentatively, and then he stops. Waiting. I lift my head to look at him, having allowed my impending tears to fade away instead of deliberately blinking them down.
And then I nearly choke on my saliva.
Rocky stands above me just like he’s been doing this entire time, but it’s not with passive interest anymore. I stop breathing as my gaze finds the place where his carapace has opened, tanned rock parting to reveal soft, silvery flesh beneath.
“Oh,” I say, because there is no other reaction.
It’s obscene in a way that has no human equivalent. I think seeing human genitals on him would’ve shocked me less, because at least that’s something you might reasonably show to another person. But this, the place that is both mouth and everything else to him, that I’ve seen exactly once and then never again because it’s viewed as so private and intimate that even an Eridian’s mate does not get to see—that’s something else. The only time he would reveal himself like this to someone else would be to lay an egg, and even then it would be something you don't draw attention to, something necessary but shameful.
And now he’s showing me.
Not only that, he’s offering.
For a moment I just stare, wide-eyed. I think I might pass out. Rocky notices, because of course he does, and he straightens.
“Bad idea,” he decides, and I’ve never forced words from my brain to my mouth faster.
“No!” I reach for whichever one of his arms is nearest to me, looking at where I think his hearing is best. “Good idea, Rocky. Good good good. I—” I shudder at the mere thought of it, my eyes dropping down again. “I want that. Shoot, I really want that.”
He hesitates for a moment longer, and I can’t tell if it’s to consider whether he believes me or to make sure he’s down for what he’s suggesting.
“Please,” I add, just so he knows that the last thing I want is for him to be ashamed, that I share none of the notions of Eridian decency and would be honored to receive whatever he wants to give me, anything at all. “If you want that, I’d—I’m really—I’m picking up what you’re putting down. And yes.” I force myself to breathe, another wave of chills chasing down my body. “Definitely a yes.”
Though his body language still spells some amount of caution, he makes an endeared little noise.
And then, sufficiently assured, he’s guiding my dick to his open orifice, where his xenonite suit shifts against the pressure. There’s a brief second where I wonder if I should’ve brought lube—that is, if I should’ve requested to have lube made in the lab, which is in and of itself a no—but then I realize that there’s plenty to ease the way. Guess some things you’re embarrassed about in college turn out to be pretty useful when you’re messing around with an alien.
Rocky adjusts slightly, and then I’m slipping in. I saw it coming, but it still shocks me enough to cause me to choke on my breath. I go boneless and brainless as the hot pinch of him travels up my dick, as I learn what he feels like from the inside, separated only by the sheath of his suit, wonderfully wet from both sides.
It’s heavenly. Rocky’s just on the right side of hot, and as he lowers himself down I feel everything I wasn’t able to see when I watched him eat. The newest version of his life support suit is so thin and stretchy that it might as well be nothing at all, and it lets me feel every muscle, every flutter and twitch around me. He’s probably not used to having anything inside him, and somehow the thought is fuel to the fire.
“Good idea,” I say again, little more than breath. “You okay, Rock?”
“Yes,” he says. He gives a little bounce that he always does when he’s happy, not even noticing that it sends him up and down my dick by a few inches. I make a sound that’s embarrassingly close to a whimpering dog. “Unusual, but not unpleasant. I move now, question?”
I run a hand through my hair, like that’s gonna make it all feel any less surreal. “Yes, please.”
Rocky gives a pleased trill, and then he’s rising. I half-expected him to start frantically riding me like in some bad porno—lord knows what’s on the laptop I gave him, seeing as it has access to pretty much the entirety of the internet. But that’s not what happens. He lifts himself slowly, going as far as to make sure I don’t slip back out of him on the way up, and he gives a little roll of his carapace as he sinks back down.
I can’t help the responding twitch of my hips. Rocky makes a sound that’s surprised but not uncomfortable, and I swear it feels like our first days all over again, working out a pace we can both work with. Just like that, we’re starting over once more, learning about each other from scratch. I hope it never stops. I hope there are a million more things to learn, a million more facets of Rocky that will shift my image of him when I encounter them.
Consider my image shifted. I lay on my back and feel like I’m seeing him for the first time again, wonder and curiosity and excitement all meshed together in an overwhelming heap. Rocky is not tight—I know that much from watching him eat that one time—but he makes an effort to be, clenching around me on the upstroke. I feel what has to be a dozen different muscles all moving against me in waves, massaging me all around, and I don’t even try to stop myself from meeting him halfway for every thrust. He’d tell me if I was hurting him. I’ve done the same this entire time, guiding him through his explorations; I have to believe that he’d tell me.
In time, Rocky finds a rhythm that feels distinctly inhuman—I can’t explain it, it just does. His movements are unnatural to me, unlike what a human would do, but I respond all the more to it for how every stroke is unexpected. I feel like I’m burning up. My freaking knees feel warm, my chest and ears and knuckles. My hands grasp the pillow behind me, balled to trembling fists.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, eyes rolling behind my closed lids. “Rocky, oh my God.”
“No understand last word.”
“Later!” I tell him, my words sharpened by urgency. “God, please don’t stop.”
“Understand,” he says, which is so freaking him that I can’t keep the smile off my face, even as it’s distorted against my will. Rocky keeps his pace, though he rolls his carapace just a little differently. It shifts the angle just so, pressing me up against his upper wall, and the sensation is so fierce that my back arches, bending against two times the gravity I’m used to to curl me up into Rocky.
I’m past the point of hiding my moans. This is the best thing I’ve felt in a long time; it would probably be good no matter what, seeing as it’s also the first sexual contact in, like, a decade or so, but it’s Rocky. He’s so warm around me, his boiling heat muffled just enough to border on the right side of pleasure, and he’s unrelenting in his motions, his attention tuned so finely that he picks up on every little cue. He’s focused entirely on me, which is a foreign, slightly uncomfortable experience, but I’d also be lying if I said it’s not making me dizzy in the best way.
One of my hands releases the pillow to reach for him. It’d be impossible to move him against his will, but he rolls with the motion, letting me guide his movements, letting me hold on for dear life.
I’m working with him in earnest now. I’d be content to lay back and let it happen, surrendering to the first kind touch I’ve felt in ages, but now that it’s there I can’t bring myself to hold still. I give a trembling little sound every time I thrust up into him, and my muscles strain as I work against Eridian gravity, but it’s too good to stop. I pull him down at the same time as I buck my hips up, pushing myself just that little bit deeper in a way the angle wouldn’t otherwise have allowed.
My vision is kind of messed up. My position has caused my glasses to slide up my nose, and there’s a stain on either side where my eyebrows have pressed into the inside of the lenses. Everything’s distorted and just a little farther away, but I can’t keep my eyes open for long anyway.
“Please,” I say again, tipping up an octave toward the end. I don’t even know what I want. More of this, forever and ever. A way for Rocky to lean over and kiss me, just for the occasion. To last longer, definitely, so I can live in that warm, fuzzy feeling for just a few more moments. I tilt my head to the side to tuck my face into the crook of my arm. That latter one is so not happening.
“No hide!” Rocky chides, cruelly, terribly, catastrophically stopping. I whine high in my throat, and he places a soothing hand on my chest, even as his words are merciless. “Show pretty face, now.”
I do. I’d do just about anything right now for him to keep going, and it’s only when he does that his words make contact with my brain, slipping by with only the surface-level meaning getting in.
I bite my lip so hard I’m worried Rocky’ll stop again to examine the damage. My hand finds purchase in the ridges of his carapace, his suit molding to my despair as he rides me with renewed vigor. My breath trips, choked-off little gasps rising in pitch.
“Rocky,” I say, no meaning other than pure need. He sings my name in response, bearing all the devotion of an artist titling their favorite piece. “Rocky, I—oh, fuck.”
I cry out as my world narrows down to the feeling of his xenonite-clad body sliding up and down my dick, as the sensation of him chases white-hot across every fiber and cell of me, setting them all alight. I let go of Rocky just in time to avoid cutting myself on his skin, clawing both hands into my pillow so hard that my knuckles crack. Rocky puts just enough weight behind his hand on my chest that I feel, in a weird, distant part of my monkey brain, claimed and kept and loved.
A sob shoots out of me, more blissful overwhelm than real tears. My back connects with the mattress again. Rocky rides me through the aftershocks, gradually slowing down as if he knows exactly where thrilling sensitivity blends into discomfort.
When he comes to a stop at just the right time, I lay there with my eyes half-shut, breathing through the tilting of the room. I release the pillow with aching fingers and lay a hand over Rocky’s, rubbing my thumb over the curves and divots.
“We are done, question?” he asks, and I can’t manage much more than a stupid smile and an uh-huh.
Rocky doesn’t dismount right away. He stays there, holding himself up to avoid crushing me, his steady breath a contrast to my panting. I feel him twitch around me every so often; he has no lungs that expand as he breathes, and it’s like his entire being moves to accommodate it.
“You, uh…” I begin, trying to reel my thoughts in. “You didn’t—do Eridians, uh, orgasm? Or is it just—whoop, there’s the egg, we’re done now?”
He laughs, a sound that never gets any less endearing. “Is latter,” he says. “Reproduction is enjoyable, but not same way as humans.” He climbs off of me carefully, and my dick plops soft and wet onto my stomach. With that, Rocky seems to connect the dots that his suit is dirty from the outside. He grabs the corner of my blanket and wipes it clean.
“Gross, Rocky,” I say, though I don’t have the energy to be genuinely bothered. My alien friend just rode me silly. There aren’t many thoughts a guy can have after that.
“Humans like to be close after coupling, question?”
I laugh, a little delirious. “Yeah, bud. Usually we do.”
“Yes,” Rocky says, more celebration than acknowledgement. “Eridians also.”
And my brain, because it never shuts the heck up, clears up just enough to find space for some curiosity of my own. “Yeah?” I ask. “Doesn’t it, I don’t know, feel weird that there’s no egg now?”
“Egg comes first,” Rocky says. “And comes out, not in. This was more like eating. Very intense meal.”
I make a noise between disgust and amusement, and Rocky chimes a light, teasing tone.
“You asked. And you leaked everywhere.”
“You knew what you were signing up for,” I say, shoving him lightly. It’s just with my fingers, so he doesn’t move whatsoever, but it gets the message across. “And I’m not the only one, pal.”
I cock my head at him, and he shoots up like he’s just seen a spider. Of course, he kind of is a spider, which makes the image even funnier to my lust-drunk head. His gaze follows mine to the place where all five legs meet, where a puddle of shining silver has accumulated in the narrow space between his body and his suit. He makes a noise I’ve never heard from him before, visceral disgust that’s not put on for show.
“Oh, don’t be a baby,” I tease. My own body can be gross to me at times, but it’s like Rocky would do anything to avoid acknowledging that he, too, is liquid on the inside.
And also, it was his idea to put my dick in him, where he is, in fact, wet.
Still, quirks are quirks. They’re right up there with culture on the list of things we just kind of accept without much argument. I reach up to blindly find my nightstand, where I pull a handful of tissues from a box. I hold them out to him, and he takes a few more moments to stew in his tantrum before taking them.
The xenonite shimmers as it parts, covering him so perfectly that not a single molecule can escape from either of our atmospheres. I can’t even begin to understand it. Within seconds, he’s brought the tissues inside of his suit, and neither of us keels over. He wipes himself down as best he can, pulling the xenonite taut with one arm so another can work easier within the suit, like pulling your arms out of the sleeves of a jacket. I watch with a mix of horror and fascination as pure mercury soaks into the paper, showing me flashes of his underside as it reflects. It’s incredible how much trust I’m putting in his engineering. The tiniest crack or tear in his suit could’ve won me a Darwin Award, or at the very least caused pain that no human has ever had the misfortune of feeling, but all this time it held fast.
Rocky hands me the dirty tissues, and I grab another handful from the box to receive them from him. They’re heavy. I have a handful of alien matter in my hand, something I probably would’ve rushed to the lab within milliseconds if I’d still been on the Hail Mary. As it is now, though, I have bigger problems to worry about.
Namely, eight hundred pounds of alien coming over to cuddle. It feels just a little strange to lay on top of the sheets, but Rocky is warm enough to keep me comfortable. I toss the silver tissues to the floor, pluck another one from the box to wipe down my stomach and groin, and then I’m opening my arms to let Rocky settle between them. I should probably change the sheets; I’ll never hear the end of it if Rocky learns that humans aren’t just leaky, but that their fluids can go hard and dry.
But I’m also way too comfortable, way too loose-limbed, and way too stupidly happy to move now.
“I might fall asleep,” I tell Rocky, partly as a warning and partly as an expression of just how well he’s done, mixing my brains around my head so thoroughly that I’m not long for this world.
“I will watch,” is all he says in turn, and just like that, we’re back to familiar terrain again. This, too, used to be unusual, and it took me a good week or two before it stopped being creepy and started being comforting, but it’s second nature now. I can’t imagine sleeping alone anymore. More specifically, I can’t imagine sleeping without Rocky.
It’s slightly different now, seeing as he’s not just watching. I roll over on my side, and he takes the hint to join me like this, an arm thrown around my waist, another tucked between my legs. I sigh contentedly as I settle into this blend of old and new: we’ve shared a bed before, but never in the nude, and we’ve seen each other naked before, but never let each other touch.
But as I lay there and feel sleep shimmering on the horizon, I can’t help but think that this was just another boundary that was bound to fall eventually. What’s a layer of clothes to two people who’ve been through what we have? What’s another level of exploration to us when all we’ve ever done together was search for knowledge like two starving hounds?
“I love you,” I mumble into the narrow space between us, squeezing Rocky as tight as I can. It feels insufficient, too small and simple for what my chest really wants to say, but it will have to do for now. Until Rocky teaches me a more accurate equivalent, this is what we’re working with.
“I love you,” Rocky echoes, joy riding on the backs of his notes. “Sleep now.”
And I do. There is nothing more important, after all, now that we’re living in the wake of our mission. It’s over. It’s done. We can rest easy in the knowledge that we’ve made it, and I, for one, can think of no better way to celebrate than to do whatever the heck we want.
Today, it was this.
Tomorrow, who knows?