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It was a strange thing to contend with.
On Erid, the human word for his home planet, sounding strange coming out of the human’s ever-full mouth, it wasn’t like he’d ever had to contend with something like this. His training was highly specialized, and technical, and his life was simple. He found comfort in stability. There was comfort in a finality he could look forward to, in living a normal, productive life.
When they had first noticed the red streak blazing across the night sky, there was confusion, anger and fear that shook the foundation of his colony on Erid. There was suddenly a need that undermined the finality of his own life, of his own projected plans and dreams.
They’d begged him not to go, and Rocky still had regrets about that final night, even after all their years apart. He could still hear the ringing of Adrian’s voice before he’d left, the panicked shrill that had escaped his mate. How could you do this to your mate?
For greater good. They need me, he’d said, and he could tell that his tone wasn’t convincing in the slightest.
I need you, Adrian had wailed- we need you, here. They have enough- they’ve always had enough of you.
He’d hoped the distance would temper Adrian’s anger about his insistence, his stubbornness in their last moments together. Or, in the worst case scenario, that his legacy, if he were to die in the vastness of space, would sweeten her memories of him, for the sake of their colony, or for their life they’d built together.
Maybe it was his pride that had gotten in the way of him admitting that the prospect of adventure thrilled him. Maybe it was his poorly-concealed desire to join the scientists, the other engineers, his peers to solve a problem they only half-knew about that had made him so insistent. Maybe it was a buried feeling that greatness would sever the finality of his life that had been put in jeopardy. Better to ruin it himself than have it pulled out from him and live in fear, in confusion.
He heard Adrian’s frustrated huffs of breath in his isolation, in his sorrow, drifting alone in space for all those years. They’d been right, he’d resigned himself to believing, the hope of his peers long drained with their life forces around him. It was his pride, his foolish pride, that had consigned him to this fate. It was deserved, and it could have even been expected, if he had thought about anyone but himself.
But this? This had been unaccounted for.
Of course, on Erid, the hatchlings always had murmured of aliens and strange creatures that lived in the stars and would eventually come to visit. In their tall tales, the ones that shaped Eridian cultures and stories and art, the aliens of old would be intelligent, and savvy, and cunning, not to be trusted- or they’d be kind, and would share their knowledge willingly, and would pose no threat, only visiting for the sake of culture. They would value culture just as much as Eridians did. They would be intelligent, and caring, and would help the Eridians grow.
Instead, Rocky had found, they were limp and wet and loud. Extremely loud. He'd tried to think back to any stories or tall tales of aliens looking like this, acting like this, but any fairytales he’d ever been told as a hatchling seemed to fall short in his presence.
His presence. Grace, Grace clunking around in his small ship that tripped and clanked and jerked around in his vision like a sparkle. Or like a vision that the elders had in their ancient years, the ones that the rest of the colony usually dismissed as a lost mind. Rocky made a resolution, that if they ever did make it back to Erid, to apologize to those elders he’d dismissed, because-
“Agh- shoot, m’sorry buddy.” Rocky jolted out of the way as a stray petri dish that clanked to the ground in front of him, fear spiking for that fraction of a second. Grace ducked down, and hissed in pain as he clanked the front of his face against the xenonite of Rocky’s transportation device- his hamster ball, Grace had called it, and Rocky scuttled back to fully absorb the sight of Grace clutching his glasses- glasses, accessory used for diminished vision-
Grace dropped to his knees, pressing a palm to his nose with a groan of pain. That one was new.
“Clumsy,” Rocky intended to hiss back, but the vocoder translated the words rather matter-of-factly. Grace adjusted his glasses, letting out a breath of pain before sliding his hand back down to his chin.
Rocky could see, now, the hot, wet liquid slipping down Grace’s face from his nose in thin little rivulets.
“Ugh- nosebleed,” Grace breathed out to himself, the sound strained, and Rocky felt his entire body clench at the sight, the dark liquid now staining Grace's long, slender fingers. There was a smudge of the liquid that stained the glassy panels of his own xenonite, and Rocky felt something inside him shift.
He let out a whistle of air himself, grumbling as his vents fluttered, and Grace, now facing him with two paper towels stuffed up his nostrils- nostrils, human breathing and smelling apparatuses- perked up. “Need a word?”
No word needed, Rocky thought- disgustdisgustdisgust. Simple enough.
It was a hard thing to contend with, and even harder to explain his feelings on the matter to the wet, snotty blob that followed him around as frequently as he did. Rocky was ashamed in himself that he kept the thoughts inside for as long as he did, blaming fatigue or other cultural differences that kept them apart for his own complacency in their setup.
Grace couldn’t solve a problem he didn’t know about. Rocky was starting to doubt his ability to solve known problems in the first place, so his silence was justified, in his own mind.
It was disgusting. Rocky couldn’t ever say he was hiding behind any sort of denial- it was abhorrent, in his mind, catching glimpses of Grace eating and drinking and spitting and drooling, on occasion. The man seemed to have a limitless amount of fluid stored inside him somewhere, and it had been explained to Rocky early on in their friendship- observership? Agreement? He didn’t know what to call it anymore- that fluid was a human body’s defense against disease and infection, and often, when the body didn’t know what to do, fluid was its first defense.
Rocky could understand this. His specialty was engineering, working with solids and metal and heat, but fluids were not foreign to Eridians. Basic biological functions were not foreign to Eridians. On the contrary, Rocky had started to explain in kind, it was quite commonplace, but he had always cut himself off before he went any further.
Fluid and moisture was a necessity for life on Erid, and it wasn’t something he’d ever deny. He'd pored over Grace's theorems, listened to his ramblings about water and oxygen and hydrogen, and the lack thereof on other planets. Grace had sulked for nearly three human-days when Rocky had explained to him that yes, Eridians need fluid to survive, and he’d almost felt bad about bursting that metaphorical bubble of his.
What he hadn’t explained in that moment, partially due to the vibes being off, as Grace would have said, and partially due to the strange feeling settled in his carapace at the notion, was that fluid played a larger role in Eridian culture than he felt the need to elaborate on.
It was… taboo, in a sense. Sultry. Blatantly perverse, in most cases, and Rocky had a hard time knitting together these two little… quirks of their respective cultures.
More specifically, sex, or the finer aspects of it. Sensuality. Eroticism, a concept he was uncertain Grace would be able to grasp, or, if he could, there even was a human equivalent strong enough to emphasize the issue he was facing.
He often thought of the happy vibrations from Adrian on dark nights, when they’d collided in celebration, or, most recently, in sorrow.
“Mmph, mate so wet for me,” Rocky would murmur against them, claws fluttering against stone, and he’d whisper sweet nothings against them when they rutted against each other, about how ideal it was, about how wet their clutch would be if it took, how successful they’d be after being being suspended in so much fluid for their incubation period.
How was he supposed to break the news that the everyday leakiness Grace exhibited was so foreign, so alien that it was considered horrifically kinky to most commonplace, well-adjusted Eridians? That it was considered something middle-aged hatchlings thought about far too much in the privacy of their hollows when that awkward season of becoming was upon them? That the other Eridians he had been with in his years weren’t brave enough to even delve into it during their flings, before Adrian?
That the wetness, that softness that covered Grace’s small, squishy organs and his seventy percent water content was horribly, unbelievably revolting and just as doubly alluring?
Rocky was snapped out of thought as Grace let out a horrific noise next to him, freezing up and dropping the xenonite chisel he’d fashioned with a clatter. He swiveled to face the man, shivering with a lecture already preloaded, and-
“Sorry, sorry,” Grace grumbled, and fumbled for something on his work station. Rocky watched him scramble through the storage boxes, voice sounding thicker, and let out another horrible noise into a thin, white tissue. Rocky only then realized-
“Gah,” Grace shivered before tossing the used Kleenex into a nearby waste bin, and missed the rim by nearly a foot. Rocky watched it bounce onto the tin floors, and tried to muster up any sort of disgust or secondhand embarrassment in lieu of acknowledging himself growing extremely hot at the sight.
Grace merely sighed. “Sorry. I know you’re weird about mucus, or whatever. ”
Understatement of the human century, Rocky wanted to retort, but only picked up his chisel again with shaking claws and an acknowledging flutter of his vents. It had gotten easier to hold his tongue, as Grace would say.
It was getting harder to ignore, the more they occupied each other’s personal space. Rocky was starting to think Grace flaunted his moisture for all to see as some bizarre display of dominance. In any case, it was not a fight Grace was going to win.
Or, there was the more likely explanation- Rocky had still not explained the nature of his grievances. It was quite foolish, he knew deep down. He was a grown Eridian- he could explain himself, even if it was to this leaky space blob, as he’d described him.
Grace had only laughed when he’d first called him by the words, and maybe the disdain hadn’t translated well over the vocoder, but it was a tinkling, pleasant noise that made Rocky chitter with satisfaction regardless.
And, Rocky realized, when he made Grace laugh hard enough, on occasion, he was even rewarded with little pinpricks of salted, clear teardrops in the corners of his crinkled eyes. How disgusting. How… titillating.
No. He had to focus. It was becoming an issue. It wasn't like there was any sort of relief in sight, with Grace’s sleep cycles being so easily disturbed- it wasn’t like Rocky could stimulate himself in any sense that wouldn’t send Grace skittering for cover. It would have been easier if Grace was an Eridian, any other Eridian, if he was Adrian or anyone else, hell, even any of Rocky's other one-off flings he’d forgotten about in his isolation.
Then again, they wouldn’t be having this issue in that case, would they?
Rocky rolled up to where Grace was perched on the side of his bunk, nestled deep in a book he was certain he’d already read. It wasn't time for him to sleep- at least, Rocky didn’t think it was. Grace often flopped over at the brink of exhaustion, unpredictable and inconvenient, to say the least. It's called a nap, Grace had grumbled to him when he’d prodded him awake the first time. On their way back to Erid, Rocky had only figured that it was a way to chip away at the time. Humans were hard to entertain.
“What’s up?” Grace murmured, not taking his eyes off the crinkled pages of the book.
“Need to talk,” Rocky chirped, and was only half-pleased with how it translated. He really should fine tune the tones that his human-assigned voice seemed to assign randomly. This time, he sounded more nonchalant instead of the stern voice he was aiming for.
“We talk all the time,” Grace responded in a sing-songy voice as he flipped a page, and Rocky bit back his frustration. Playfulness. Cute, horribly cute, to his dismay.
“Serious,” Rocky grumbled, and Grace let his book drop down to his sheets. Rocky almost felt bad for instilling anxiety in the human- he could hear the blood rush to his head, his face, a tell-tale sign of Grace’s heart speeding up.
“What? Is something wrong?” Grace stood abruptly, and Rocky clinked back in his ball. “S’the ship-”
“No,” Rocky spat out, and Grace flopped back onto his bunk with a hefty sigh of relief.
“Oh- thank goodness,” Grace breathed out, and reached back for his book before Rocky let out a low of annoyance.
“Rocky has some… things to explain.” He clicked the tips of his claws together for emphasis, and if he said he hadn’t been dreading the conversation, he’d be lying to the both of them. The way Grace perked up with the words made him only that much more hesitant.
“M’listening.” Grace was a captive audience, now, and Rocky let his air vents flutter- the Eridian equivalent of a shaky sigh, he supposed.
“Grace is a… leaky space blob. We all know this, correct?”
“…yes,” Grace responded, sounding inquisitive, now, and scratched the back of his head. There was that twinge of anxiety in him again, and Rocky figured Grace had a hormonal spike that often was correlated with emotion. Maybe he was afraid- afraid that he’d done something, or said something-
“Not angry with Grace.” Rocky couldn’t deal with the suspense, claws clicking in frustration. “Rocky has simply not fully explained Eridian culture.”
“Also yes,” Grace retorted. He leaned forward on his knees, his anxiety quelled. It provided little comfort to Rocky. “Would this benefit from a-”
“No puppet show.”
“C’mon, you know my attention span-”
“Not Rocky’s problem. Focus.”
“Okay, okay. M’sorry.” In a surprising turn of events, accompanied by a huff of amusement, Grace sank to his knees in front of the bunk, and Rocky stiffened with their newfound proximity. The man eyed him over, curious and voice softened. “What’s up, buddy?”
“Uhm,” and it wasn’t often that Rocky ‘clammed up’, as Grace put it. He was certain if he was human, he’d be glowing reddish with embarrassment. Then he’d have to deal with all those fluids, coursing and pumping through his veins- blood vessels, transportation for deoxygenated fluid to the beating heart only to repeat the process over and over again- and how horrible that would be.
Or, he’d never be able to take his own hands off himself. More likely scenario. Plus, it would make the current conversation null and void. If only.
“What?” Grace’s voice was breathless, smile dropping, now, and Rocky only stiffened further.
“Uhm-” Rocky clicked his claws together again, and he could see the saliva pooling in Grace's slightly agape mouth, the sound deafening. He felt himself clench around nothing.
“Try to- ‘tone down’ the leakiness. For Rocky's sake.”
“That's what this is about?” Grace whined in confusion, and Rocky felt the overwhelming urge to nestle back into his tunnel and hibernate for the remaining duration of their journey. “Rock, you know it’s not like I can-”
“Okay. Okay.” Rocky slumped against the glass of his ball, and he could tell this was a fight he was not going to win. He held up a claw. “…a moment.”
In the end, as with most complex ideas they breached together, it devolved into a puppet show.
“Is necessary,” Rocky continued as he rutted two xenonite minifigures of Eridians he’d whipped up, hole-to-hole, and Grace sat across from him with his knees tucked, simply enraptured. “For reproduction.”
“So your clutch-” and Rocky ignored the flutter in his stomach at the wonder in Grace's words- “It needs to be suspended in fluid to survive. Like, uh- frogs!”
Frogs. Rocky racked his memory- yes. Amphibian creatures that laid tadpoles. Okay, they were getting somewhere. He nodded.
“Oh, okay!” Grace seemed pleased with himself at the realization, and Rocky felt as if he needed to keep a tally of how many of Grace's ‘bubbles’ he was going to have to burst before they touched down on Erid. “That makes sense. That's pretty common, I'd say. Why were you being so weird about it, then?”
“Grace knows little about the culture surrounding mating.” Rocky's voice was less stable than he had intended for it to come out, and he set down the makeshift puppets, trying to keep his hands steady. His life, his craft was dependent on having steady hands. Why was this so different from everything else? Why was it so jarring? “Fluid production has… 🎵🎶♪… connotation when it comes to reproductive process. Statement.”
“Wait, hold on-” Grace pulled away to pull over the laptop, and Rocky was as patient as he could be. “Didn’t catch that one. What, uh-”
Rocky clicked his claws together nervously again. “🎵🎶♪? Ah. Uhm-”
“Connotations?” Grace thrummed his fingers against the keyboard in thought. “Like- bad? Negative connotations?”
“No. Opposite.” Rocky could feel himself clench again, frustration and embarrassment a swirl deep inside him watching Grace struggle to connect the dots.
“…oh.” Grace's fingers stilled, and the itch to burrow into something to hide himself came back. “Good connotations. Hm. Lemme think.”
“Can arouse Eridians.” There. It was out, in the open, for all to see and marinate in and balk at. Grace merely blinked back at him with those wide, glassy eyes.
“…taboo?” Grace's voice was softer. “Uh… sexually improper?” Rocky ferociously nodded, but the satisfaction of a successful translation was short-lived.
“Oh my gosh.” Grace broke out into a massive grin. Rocky stiffened in confusion. “…You’re saying it turns you on?”
He wasn’t sure why he thought it would end there. He wasn't exactly sure what he’d hoped the outcome of their conversation would be. As Grace had said, it wasn’t like he’d ever be able to control his fluid output, as much as it seemed to bowl Rocky over at the most inopportune moments.
As he should’ve guessed, it only caused Grace's curiosity to grow to unbearable levels, and his ego to swell like a human balloon.
It wasn’t the worst possible outcome. Grace could’ve shirked away, cursed him as the real disgusting alien-thing, could’ve ignored him for the rest of their flight. Rocky figured he should be grateful that he took the news with as much interest as he did.
He shuddered when Grace's fingers tapped the glass panes of xenonite that separated them one afternoon, or as afternoon as their journey home would ever allow. His tone was playful, and Rocky braced himself from where he was meshing two panes of xenonite together. They really did have more important things to focus on. “Hypothetical: When we get back to Erid-”
“If Grace and Rocky ever get back to Erid-”
“-you’re saying I’m basically gonna be a walking porno for your race?”
Rocky placed down his soldering iron. “Doesn't Grace have taumoeba tanks to check temperatures for?”
Grace snorted, fists balled on his hips, a common stance of defiance, as Rocky had learned. “I need to know what I'm gettin’ myself into, Rock.”
“Yes, extremely graphic pornography. Not exactly Eridian beauty standard. Should turn down fluid production.” Grace gasped at the flat words, and Rocky let out a noise of frustration, whipping around to wave a soldering iron in his direction. “You ask Rocky’s opinion-”
“Okay, on Earth-”
“Grace Rocky not on on Earth-”
“-that is called slut-shaming, and it’s generally frowned upon.”
Rocky wanted so badly to retort that his vents fluttered, but he kept his thoughts to himself. For now. Grace crossed his arms, and he was flushed despite the sarcastic lilt to his words. “And besides, I'm not the one in denial here, pal.”
Rocky threw up two arms in defeat, claws spread, and Grace leaned back against the door frame. He was smiling. Why was he always smiling? Why did he have to flash teeth and spit so often, directly aimed at Rocky? it made it hard to process the actual spit-soaked words that came from that smart mouth.
Denial.
It only got worse from that point. Rocky had determined a new goal for their trip- develop an Eridian-safe version of human acetylsalicylic acid- aspirin.
It had started to grow more and more blatant. Rocky was familiar with the small, cramped, on-board bathroom that Grace so often inhabited. Grace had designated it his safe room very early on, when their boundaries had started to grow more and more blurred.
Rocky was confused by the terminology. They had the don’t-go-crazy room, now a safe room was necessary? He had half the mind to start designating random sections of the ship and naming them using Eridian gibberish words, to see how Grace liked his space chunked up into sections.
The door was closed in his most critical moments, which wasn’t usually an issue. However, Grace had started keeping the door flung open during more mundane moments, Rocky had started to notice.
Particularly, when he was ‘brushing his teeth’.
It was a foreign (if not fascinating) concept Rocky had taken his time getting used to. He had grown used to the methodical sounds of bristles on Grace’s teeth, in his mouth. Now, it seemed to be an elongated, drawn-out process each night, the light from the bathroom making his squirm like clockwork.
On more than one occasion, when Grace leaned over the squat sink after the process was over, Rocky caught him looking over his glasses at him while a thick line of mint-flavored spit fell from his mouth to the sink, falling slower and slower as the days trudged on, making Rocky's joints feel weaker and weaker.
Grace had also started to take on more of the physically demanding tasks around the ship. It couldn’t have been a coincidence- Grace was quick to break a sweat, and Rocky was even quicker to notice the drops of hot moisture beading on his forehead or staining the crevices of his tee shirt or the dip of his lower back whenever he had to shove something from one end of the room to the other, or had to spend an hour with his head stuck in a box of wires.
He’d even go as far as to use a towel to wipe the dampness from himself, sighing in relief as he tousled his own wet hair, and Rocky turned away in these instances to allow him some privacy, all too flustered to muster any sort of quips in annoyance. Grace only let out those huffs of arrogant, stupid laughter that he was so fond of when he noticed Rocky's silence.
It was frustrating. It was disgusting. It should have been far more distasteful than Rocky found. More than anything, Rocky was starting to get used to Grace’s teasing, and flaunting of his bodily fluids and-
The worst part was the fact that something that had once been a quiet, shameful little treat for himself to mull over during Grace’s periods of rest had turned into a hedonistic display of Grace’s simple ability to rattle him.
“Y’know,” Grace had said to him one night, as night as their journey would allow, knees tucked underneath himself while loudly slurping his human food, “S’not anything to be ashamed of.”
“Not ashamed,” Rocky had shot back quickly, quickly turning his attention away from his computer- he waved his electromagnetic vision enhancer at Grace accusingly. “If anything, Grace should be the one who feels shame-”
“C’mon, we talked about this-”
“-for disrespecting Eridian customs.” That finally got Grace to devolve into somewhat of a pout. His shoulders slumped, and he clicked his chopsticks that had been submerged in a salted broth, cooked in plastic, towards Rocky. A mannerism of many that he had picked up from him.
“No, I mean- you like what you like. M’not here to judge you, or any other Eridian for that matter. You think I can control what turns me on?”
That made Rocky perk up. So rarely Grace ever turned the conversation on himself that it seemed like a real olive branch of a statement. Rocky chittered in tentative amusement.
“What exactly turns Grace ‘on’, question?”
Grace's heart rate sped up incrementally, and suddenly, that cockiness that had flowered over the last few weeks seemed to come crashing down around him in silence when he realized what he'd said. Rocky would feel a sense of victory if his own attention hadn’t been so raptly glued to the blood now thrumming to Grace's face, his cheeks, his ears.
“Well, mine aren’t exactly representative of the entire human race.”
“Oh, does not matter.” Rocky rapidly scuttled himself over the where Grace was curled, and the pleasure was coursing through him now, a twisted Roman holiday- a pleasure derived from watching someone else’s discomfort- of sorts. He could hear Grace’s heart speed up with their newfound proximity.
“I, uh…” Grace rolled his shoulders in a shrug, his voice much softer, and his eyes much more averted than they had been. “I don’t know. It's never really been my scene.”
“Human reproduction not Grace’s scene, question?” Funny, Rocky wanted to retort, with the blatant displays Grace had been putting on. He should have done his thesis on Eridian sexual proclivities, if that was the case.
“I don’t know.” There was that beautiful flash of teeth again and a nervous chuckle, and Rocky let his vents flutter at the next words, noting how the blood in Grace’s body, thick and churning, was rapidly moving down, and how his knees nudged together to try and hide it, as if he was aware of it. How peculiar. “M’not super experienced. I like… talking. D- Dirty talk, I guess it’s called that.”
Rocky's claws clicked against the xenonite panes in thought. Interesting. He was surprised they hadn’t breached this, yet. There was so much potential, here. Before he could even scuttle back to his computer to type in ‘dirty talk’ to the Wikipedia search bar-
“And I guess I like being submissive, to paint broad strokes. Told what to do. I dunno if that’s common.” Grace fidgeted again, and Rocky stilled, the admission… doing something to him. Grace's tone was low, and nervous in a way that made Rocky clench, the same as when Grace was particularly wet in any form. There was saliva pooled in the corners of his mouth, and Rocky felt the undeniable urge to dig claws into him, joints and hole simply aching. “I like a strong partner. Mate. Someone rough, and smart, who is confident in what they’re doing. Evolutionarily, it makes sense, I guess, but-”
“Like Rocky?” Rocky was happy with the way his words came out, quiet and curious, a small victory in an era of flat tones and misconstrued meanings and complications. Grace squirmed further, and Rocky nudged the ball that much closer.
Grace's knees clenched together tighter. “I guess… like Rocky, yeah, if that’s how you want to look at it.”
That’s how they ended up here, he supposed.
Maybe it was the logical conclusion to the line they’d toed for the last few months. Maybe it was vaulted forward by Grace’s rambunctious human displays of arrogance.
Or maybe it was Grace’s inability to understand that a grown Eridian could only deal with so much tomfoolery.
“Aah,” Grace’s huffs of breath were hot, and they came in rough little pants, fogging up the glassy panels of xenonite that left pink little patches on his soft human skin from the packed heat within. Rocky could see the flush left against the stubble of his face, could make it out with an unbelievable clarity. Each prickle of hair on his jaw, on his throat, on his head was distinct, fluttering whenever he swallowed thickly or bucked his hips.
The man’s voice was raw, and there were little smudges of sweat against the xenonite from where he shoved himself up against, as close as they could ever get. “Rock, fuh- mmph-"
“Good boy,” Rocky purred out, and Grace shivered with the words. Absolutely fascinating. His gaze wandered down, down past Grace's slim throat to the wet heat of his chest pressed against the xenonite from where he scrabbled up against the ball. His belly was flat, and smooth, peppered with thinner hairs the lower his torso got.
Everything about him was so soft, so pliable. Rocky felt himself quiver at the sight. “Are you a good boy, Doctor Grace?”
“M’a good boy,” Grace gasped out, eyelashes fluttering, and Rocky leaned back to take in the sight. Down below the jut of his hip bones, Grace's loose pajama pants were shoved down to his shivering knees from where they were braced against the floor.
Rocky ground himself down against the panels beneath him as he watched Grace's engorged member pressed up against the glass, pressed into his soft belly, hot and wet at the tip, dragging across smooth xenonite and leaving streaky, pearlescent smears with each hump against the ball. “M’such a good boy-”
“No, Grace is slut,” Rocky hissed- it was a new word, hard to fully translate or incorporate into daily usage without Grace nearly biting through his own bottom lip- and Grace's fingers scrabbled at glass helplessly. Rocky's voice sunk deeper, and he watched Grace's crooked glasses clink against the panes. “Desperate, wet, slut- leaking so much for Rocky, so filthy, hm?”
Rocky was rewarded with a high-pitched noise, practically girlish, and another smear of precum against the once-pristine panes of xenonite. Rocky could tell he was close- it was a good distraction from how his own voice was starting to waver, and how his legs had given out from underneath him.
“Grace is going to cum, make such a mess,” Rocky chirped in faux disapproval, and Grace panted frantically against the glass. “Will have to clean it up, you know.”
“I'm so close,” were Grace’s choppy words, pressed into the panes separating them, and Rocky's vents clicked together in morbid excitement as Grace tried to cling up against him. “Baby, I’m so fucking close-”
Baby. That one was new. Rocky felt himself heat to a previously unreachable temperature, hissing, words coming out just as choppy. “🎶- mpmph- 🎵🎶🎵- cum for Rocky, baby, 🎵🎶, be a good boy, Doctor Grace.”
There was no flinch or recoil on Rocky’s part when Grace let out a broken noise, throat bobbing deliciously and wet stomach muscles pulling taut as he bucked his hips a final time, body tensing then shivering as he came, hot and wet, in jagged spurts pressed flush against the xenonite. Rocky felt himself start to give, the feeling of raw disgust masked almost entirely by burning hot want, accompanied by unintelligible sing-song chirrups of happiness at the sight.
Grace slid down the ball to fully slump onto his knees when he’d regained control of his lungs, chest still heaving in heaps, glasses smudged with sweat and looking more beautiful, more ragged than Rocky had ever seen him, wet and hot and absolutely disheveled. All for him, for him, for him, Rocky repeated in his head, and then-
Grace's hooded eyes wandered back over to where Rocky was trembling in awe.
“🎵🎶?” Rocky had given up on trying to find any suitable English equivalent for expressing himself. They’d both devolved, or evolved into something much baser than themselves since the quiet admission, since the dots had connected for the both of them. His air vents fluttered against each other, clicking and crackling as he frantically splayed out his claws. “🎵🎶, G- Grace- 🎵-“
Grace only grinned in response, letting his jaw splay open to let his tongue loll out, hot and dripping with an inhumane amount of drool, spit, fogging the pane of xenonite where his cum was smeared.
The long, wet line of spit landed with an uneventful, organic plop against the panel above Rocky’s vents, slipping down to mix with the smears of sweat, and cum, and the last thing Rocky remembered was the jolt of sheer pleasure that overtook him as he let out a series of ecstatic chirps and beeps and buzzes and grunts, joints tightening and then releasing before his vision sputtered and went dark.
When he woke up, it could have been several moments, hours, or even Eridian years with the grogginess that seemed to be making his vision swim.
He let out a strained grunt, flexing his claws from where they were tucked underneath him. Okay- still mobile, to an extent.
There was also a vague pressure pressed up against his chamber- something heavy, and sturdy, and-
“Grace?” Rocky croaked out, and the other flopped his head back, glasses still skewed on his face, but-
There were tissues shoved up his nostrils, for some reason, and his voice sounded just as strained. He had clothes on again. Why was he so clothed? It was the only collected thought Rocky could muster in his grogginess.
“Hey there,” Grace breathed out, nose pressed against the now-clean panels of his ball. Rocky let himself gently bump up against Grace’s body heat with a shuddering sigh of relief. Not dead. Human mating rituals had no toxic side effects. What a relief.
Grace pressed a hand up against the panels, humor lilting his tone and ears still flushed with what Rocky could only guess was a bright shade of pink. “Never seen an Eridian… uh… cum so hard. At least, I think that’s what that was. I was worried about’chu. Stayed here to watch you sleep.”
“Rocky is the only Eridian-“
Grace snickered. Rocky slumped against the xenonite. “Yes. Okay, joke.”
Grace traced lazy circles against the glass separating them, and Rocky took an equally lazy delight watching the swirl of his fingertips. It took him a moment to fully realize his own panic that was as delayed as his thoughts were.
“Grace hurt?” Rocky scrambled back, frantically tapping and motioning towards the pale tissues shoved up his nostrils. “What happened? Did something-“
“No, no, hey, calm down,” Grace breathed, voice still rough with exhaustion. Rocky felt himself shiver- if he did something, something that had hurt him, that had bruised his fragile, leaky human thing, he’d never forgive himself-
“You got excited, alright? Bumped up against the glass when you-“ Grace flushed, even with the humor in his voice, “-when you came. Just donked my nose a bit. Just a nosebleed- I’m okay, okay?”
Rocky let his air vents slow from a frantic flutter to a slow rhythmic clicking. Grace rubbed mindless circles into the glass, and Rocky found the gesture strangely soothing, even with the lack of physical touch they could realistically have. That they’d never have.
It wasn’t something he wanted to fixate on, knew it would ruin the moment. All that they did have was the subdued heat, flowing between them, and this, the sights and sounds of their shared afterglow.
Still, his gaze was still fixated on the tissues up Grace's nostrils, a strange sense of guilt and renewed heat making his croaky voice come out rougher.
“Grace?”
“Mhm?” Grace was still slumped against the ball, eyelashes fluttering. Rocky tentatively rubbed his claws together, voice quieter.
“…let Rocky see ‘nosebleed’, question?”
Grace let out a stunned breath of genuine laughter after a too-long moment, and pressed close enough to the panes of xenonite for Rocky to see that fog again. “I’ve created a monster.”