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Ryland Grace is three fingers deep past the open rim of Rocky’s ventral seam when the Eridian realizes—through his own initial layer of conscious pleasure and affection, and then beyond the complex symphony of emotive singing in multiple frequencies he’s warbling in ranges the human ear can’t discern—that he’s never been physically inside his Grace before.
It’s an abrupt and staggering sort of cerebral culmination to arrive at when Grace is presently massaging his empty egg pouch with enough heartfelt finesse to make Rocky’s legs tremble. And not to say he hasn’t pondered it before, because he most certainly has fantasized at length about living inside the wet, liquid warmth of Grace’s rib cage beside his steadily beating heart, but now the sudden reality of sexual penetration seems like a foregone conclusion. Grace has given him this wonderful experience, and now Rocky must extend it back to Grace in return. Fairness in the natural order of all things.
Rocky’s vents steam inside his ergonomic suit while he thinks, clouding up the xenonite with hot ammonia vapour. The flexible mesh sleeve below his ventral seam will stretch up inside him to accommodate the full length of Grace’s right hand, which is ever so slightly larger than the left one, with several generous millimeters to spare. But why did it take getting his hole finger-blasted—Urban Dictionary dot com terminology from the human thinking machine, nothing his good and demure Grace taught him—into oblivion before the genuine possibility of penetrating Ryland manifested itself in Rocky’s mind?
“Are you doing okay, baby?” Grace asks in a rough voice, and all Rocky’s focus dials back in on his cosmic soulmate. “You’re steaming up pretty good in there—heh, we should make soup dumplings sometime.”
Rocky wheezes with exertion and trills a sharp note. “Grace, Grace,” he tries, feeling his legs vaguely threaten to buckle. “Have—new idea. For sexual congress.”
“Right now?” Grace blurts, immediately pausing his finger movements inside Rocky’s carapace. “I thought you were getting close—”
“Yes,” Rocky insists. “Grace keep going, don’t stop.” Ryland resumes his clever stroking of Rocky’s egg pouch and then moves to his coiled ovipositor, slowly teasing it free with his beautiful fingers, and Rocky quickly rethinks his levels of conversational ambition for a moment and then decides that orgasm is the most pressing matter presently at hand, pun intended. “Correction: Rocky finish coming hard as ♩ ♬♩♪♩, and then we talk.”
“That’s what I thought, sweetheart,” Grace croons, now nearly wrist-deep in Rocky’s seam. “Tell me what you need, I’m right here.”
The egg pouch is the clincher, really, and also the catalyst for Rocky’s inner sexual awakenings for what may be possible with his Grace. His ovipositor finally slips free and curls around the base of Ryland’s hand, lazily coiling down his gloved wrist like a neon periwinkle serpent. It will be mostly useless today—he’s outside of his egg cycle, and has nothing substantial to give beyond the tip of his cock dripping fusion fluid.
“Woah,” Grace says, always admiring the ovipositor when he gets to see it unravel, even through the mesh xenonite. “You’re gorgeous, Rock.”
“Three fingers in egg pouch,” Rocky shakily instructs, venting out another puff of steam. “Please, Grace—very close now.”
“Inside it…?” Grace asks, sounding unsure. Up until now he’s merely been teasing the outer structure or entrance of it to great effect, but Rocky is feeling greedy. Eridians don’t mate in this way to procreate and never have—this is not standard breeding procedure in any shape or form, but Rocky doesn’t care. He wants his Grace inside his deepest part, where perhaps only Adrian has ever dared to venture before, and even then in a completely different way from this lewd act Rocky is doing with his beloved human. But he needs it. In a selfish burst of wanting, he surmises he may die without it.
“Inside…through soft barrier,” Rocky manages, vocalizations wavering all over the sonic map. “Feel, Grace. Feel where Rocky babies go.”
Grace groans like he’s been stabbed in the gut, but thankfully he doesn’t often need to be told something twice. One finger cautiously slips up into the searing heat of Rocky’s egg pouch—his empty womb—and then, making a tiny little sound of success, he pulls back and then pushes in with all three per Rocky’s request.
Rocky shrieks something wordless, using every ounce of strength he’s got to stay upright on his legs so his carapace doesn’t fall and crush Grace’s arm. There’s a great gush of fusion fluid that floods the xenonite sleeve and fills it up in a vulgar burst, but Grace doesn’t balk or shy away, he simply crooks his three fingers and strokes the inner egg pouch while Rocky reaches for his face and tips them together in the strange little huddle, forehead pressed to warm xenonite.
“There you go, honey, just like that,” Ryland breathes, sounding slightly labored himself. His pulse is loud and gorgeous in Rocky’s carapace, thrumming in his wrist and all around him. “Can you feel me inside you? Where your babies go. I’m right there, Rock. Oh man—I’m right there, sweetheart.”
His voice sounds broken in the hull of his throat, threatening tears that always come so easily, but Grace doesn’t cry. Rocky strokes a claw through his hair even while he continues to shudder and vent through his climax and solidifies his plans for what he wishes to do to his Grace when this beautiful thing is finished and they’ve reoriented themselves.
“Can feel Grace everywhere,” Rocky purrs, still subtly clenching inside his ventral seam. What he would give to keep a part of Grace inside himself all the time, forever, alive and full of so much biological music. A sixth heart to round out his existing five. But it’s not meant to be, at least not yet—and if Rocky gets his way, he’ll need full service of his bodily faculties and one Ryland Grace splayed out beneath him in short order. With a woeful sound, he asks his human to finally withdraw from inside him so he can close up his seam.
“Regret to part so soon, but need Grace to pull out now,” Rocky says, gently tugging at the roots of Ryland’s hair. “Grace did so wonderful for Rocky, such a good boy, so attentive and careful. Almost make me see the light—almost, ha-ha.”
“Don’t be a tease, dude,” Ryland mumbles, hot in the face and still sounding like he’s a razor’s edge away from sobbing, but he grins despite himself. “We had something really beautiful going on there for a minute.”
“Yes, was very beautiful,” Rocky croons, shuddering at the queer sensation of loss as Grace slowly, achingly pulls his fingers and hand free from his innards. He can lament the absence of eggs another time, but for now there’s something else at the forefront of his mind. “So wonderful that it makes Rocky want something very special with Grace,” he reminds him. “New sex idea!”
Ryland finally slumps back in their little makeshift nest and reaches for his water bottle to chug a deep gulp. The sound and sight of his esophagus accommodating the liquid is one of the most erotic things Rocky’s ever experienced, even though he just had an alien wrist-deep in his hole. He clicks his pinchers together and taps one leg to get a better view, wanting not to waste a single second of voyeuristic pleasure.
“Right, we got a little carried away before you could tell me,” Grace says, laughing softly. “Go ahead and lay it on me, bud. I’m all ears.”
Rocky briefly hums and clasps his claws together before settling down in a loaf at Ryland’s side, messy exosuit be damned. This is a new bridge in their relationship that hasn’t yet been crossed, but what better time than the present? “Now that Grace has been inside Rocky, I want to return the favor. Rocky touch inside of Grace’s seam to bring great pleasure—very intimate and special. Beautiful, like what we shared tonight.”
“Oh,” Grace says, blinking. He clears his throat and sets his water bottle to one side. His heart rate spikes and the capillaries in his face and chest rapidly dilate, so he’s either embarrassed or aroused. “Uhm, well. See, about that…”
It must be embarrassment or some other form of human upset, then. “You don’t like the idea,” Rocky says, whistling sadly as he tries not to visibly deflate too much when his hearts plummet. “Is okay, statement. Rocky just wanted to ask.”
The words feel hollow considering the depth of his private yearning and how much he desired this new connection between them with the recent advent of the ergonomic suit. But Rocky knows he can give Grace time, if he needs it. If there’s one thing Rocky has in spades it’s all the time in his Grace’s world.
Ryland wilts in the makeshift nest and blows out a long sigh. “Look, it's not that I'm ideologically against it or anything, Rock. It's just that—nothing has ever.” He abruptly pauses, wrinkling his nose to reconfigure his thought pattern while he stares at the ceiling of the ship and makes a vague hand gesture through the air. His blood capillaries are still dilated but not as obscenely as before. “Nobody has ever…y’know? Gosh, why is it so hard to talk about this right now?”
Simultaneous surprise and arousal hit Rocky like twin bolts of frenetic lightning. He would almost break out into joyous song if that didn’t feel slightly inappropriate in light of Grace’s burning bashfulness. “Oh, Rocky understand now,” he gently cuts in. “Grace is a virgin.”
Ryland makes a spectacularly impressive sound in his throat like something caught between a large animal passing wind and a combustion engine backfiring. “Hold on, time out,” he chokes. “How do you even know about the patriarchal-driven social construct of virginity?!”
“Immaterial at present junction. Is Rocky wrong, question?”
“I honestly can’t even deal with you sometimes.” Grace covers his face and moans in personal horror. “No, statement. Not technically wrong.”
Bingo.
“Then why Grace freaking out?” Rocky prods, letting out an encouraging trill. “Not a big deal.”
“It’s kind of a big deal to still be a vir—uhm. Be sexually inexperienced, that is, after a certain Earthling age,” Grace mumbles, still partially hidden behind one hand even though he’s now peering at Rocky between his spread fingers. “I’m supposed to be turning 40 soon….or I should be around 40, I guess, with all the weird time dilation crunching the years. I’d be a lot older than that if I was still back on Earth. But the main point is I’m past my prime and all that jazz. Not exactly a spring chicken anymore.”
“Rocky doesn’t care about jazz and chickens, Grace is rambling as a distraction tactic,” Rocky sighs, lovelorn as ever. “Fact: Grace not wholly sexually inexperienced, only never been penetrated by a partner before. Correct?”
Ryland grunts out something vague but then rolls his shoulders. “More or less the gist of it, yeah. Especially if what we do together counts toward sex.”
“Yes, definitely counts as sex! All sex is good sex in Rocky’s opinion. So Grace only half-virgin, maybe.”
“Half a virgin…” Ryland faintly echoes, staring at the ceiling again like he’s profoundly confused about how they ever reached this point. “Madonna wrote a song like that, I think.”
“Like a Virgin is Madonna song,” Rocky corrects. “Very good, Rocky like. But not relevant right now. Grace want to have penetrative sex together, question? So Rocky can take other half of virginity and keep forever.”
He can’t help but squeak when he realizes he blurted out his agenda so readily. Grace’s eyes widen as he partially sits up in the nest to level Rocky with a look. “Wait a second,” he says, eyes narrowing. “Are you—getting off on the idea of all this…?”
“No!” Rocky says, warbling guiltily. “Maybe. Okay, Rocky lie—yes, getting off. But don’t want to hurt Grace’s feelings or pressure too hard into something you’re not ready for yet. Two things can be true at once!”
“Huh,” Ryland breathes out, slowly relaxing back down in the nest again. He tucks an arm behind his head and gets more comfortable. “So tell me what makes you all hot in the saddle about it, boss.”
Rocky chirps as he bounces up on three legs at the opportunity to lay his desires so openly on the line. There’s still a mess of fusion fluid in his suit that needs cleaning but right now nothing could be further from the forefront of his mind. “Earthling peers may not fully understand Grace wanting to stay half-virgin for so long, but Rocky does,” he says, opening his defense with a confident whir. “Grace too special, too precious, needed to save purity for somebody worthy of sharing love and trust for forty Earthling years. Never anybody good come along, never the right fit—until Rocky. Rocky knows how to take care of Grace and treat right, knows just how to cherish the weight of tender heart.”
The capillaries in Ryland’s face bloom open a second time. He clears his throat and then somewhat sadly shakes his head. “I’m not really any of those things, sweetheart,” he says in a small voice. “Not special or precious, and definitely not pure. I just—never let myself be vulnerable enough with other people long enough to connect with them so I could find a good fit in terms of a partner. Kinda hard to have sex with your head stuck in the clouds, right?”
“Grace being stupid and wrong,” Rocky starts. “Grace is—”
“But you’re right about one thing,” Ryland gently interrupts him, smiling softly. “All that changed when you came along.”
“Yes, changed for the better! And Rocky is correct about all, everything, strong statement,” Rocky immediately counters, stomping one foot with a dull clang. “Grace is special and precious to me. Waited forty-six years to meet you so Rocky could be the one to pluck Grace’s flower with the love and reverence it deserves.”
Ryland chokes around a sharp inhale. “Pluck my flower, dude? What ancient bodice rippers have you been reading while I’m asleep at night?”
Rocky prepares to rattle off another round of personal defense when he notices that Grace’s blood is moving southward, and rapidly. His prick is beginning to throb gently alongside his pulse rate and his cunt clenches once in rousing interest. There’s wetness in the crotch of his briefs from their earlier activities, arousal by proxy—but Rocky doesn’t miss a single surge of blood presently traveling through Grace’s lower extremities.
“Grace is turned on,” he croons, leaning in ever so slightly. “Likes the idea of Rocky being first to touch inside your seam—first and only.”
“Jiminy fudgin’ Christmas,” Ryland croaks, fidgeting under Rocky’s unrelenting attention where he’s sprawled in the nest. “Look. I’d do anything with you, okay? But that’s because—it’s you. None of this stuff really mattered all that much to me until I met you, Rock.”
Rocky tips his carapace in the approximation of a nod. “Rocky knows,” he says with unnerving gentleness, reaching out to touch the shape of his own claw seared into Grace’s forearm through the mesh exosuit. “Grace waited forty years. Don’t have to wait any longer now that Rocky is here, if you don’t want to.”
Ryland’s breathing is faster, pitched more shallow than before. “I…I don’t want to,” he says, and then makes a broken sort of sound that seems to well up from deep in his chest. “Wait anymore, that is. There’s nothing left to wait for. You’re my golden ticket, buddy—you’re all I’ll ever need.”
Rocky would be a dirty liar if he said his hearts didn’t soar with pride and adoration in this moment. He crowds into Grace’s space, purring with pleasure, and pins him into the nest with his legs straddling the human’s arms and head. Grace’s pulse rate spikes again and he flushes all over, heart thudding faster, louder. Rocky simply leans in until his carapace is nearly flush with Ryland’s chest and then sweetly trills. “Rocky needs to go clean up before we proceed,” he says. “Request goodbye kiss—pretty please, question?”
“A goodbye kiss!” Grace squawks. “You’re walking fifteen feet over to the airlock to take a glorified bird bath and squeegee fusion fluid out of your exosuit and then coming right back to pillage and plunder me.”
“Need goodbye kiss,” Rocky wheedles, making a sad sound. “For safe passage.”
“Oh boy,” Ryland sighs, doing a decent show of rolling his eyes before he goes up on his elbows to press a kiss against the xenonite mesh. He reaches to wedge one palm in the crook between Rocky’s left arm and his carapace, where he knows one of his hearts beats, and then presses another kiss lower for good measure with a faint rasp of stubble on the exosuit. “There. How’s that, Romeo?”
“Perfect, now Rocky is cleared to go,” he chirps, humming all over with happiness. Things are really coming up roses for Rocky tonight, and he’s not going to squander a single moment of it. “Grace wait here, hydrate and eat snacks, relieve self in lavatory as needed. I will be right back!”
In all his haste and excitement Rocky’s still been carefully formulating an approach for this amorous expedition beneath his surface level bargaining with Grace. The exosuit will need cleansing regardless, but he thankfully had the foresight in recent months to design a second sleeve that better accommodates the length of his ovipositor. The other ‘finger condom’ piece smeared with fusion fluid can simply be detached and replaced with the second sleeve for time efficiency’s sake, so he needn’t bother cleaning it right away.
Over on the ammonia-friendly side of the airlock, Rocky’s arms move quickly but his mind moves faster. Even if Grace is already well-acquainted with Rocky’s anatomy, there’s no surefire guarantee he’ll want to engage in any penetrative sex with the ovipositor right now—it may be too much, too soon, and Rocky is more than happy to operate at his human’s comfort level. Grace’s ever-changing libido is an ethereal sort of thing that’s sometimes difficult to decipher without some degree of guesswork, but the more time goes on the more it’s beginning to feel like a possible science. Fingers and hands—or in his own case, pinchers and claws—are always a safe baseline in their amorous expeditions together, and that’s perfectly fine by Rocky. But if he can appeal to Grace’s emotions and tap into the vein of their shared vulnerability, anything could be possible, and he’s going to be duly prepared for whatever comes next.
Once the second xenonite sleeve is successfully coupled with his exosuit, Rocky checks his internal atmosphere and gets the figurative green light. He’s got several hours of fresh ammonia on his side and a one-way ticket to Pussytown, population 1: Ryland Grace, and if he could jump in the air he’d click his heels as he transitions from his side of the ship back over into the oxygenated atmosphere.
Grace is exactly where Rocky left him, more or less reclining at leisure in the nest even if he’s twirling something in his hands. At first Rocky thinks it’s Ilyukhina’s custom Rubik’s cube, but then realizes it’s the Magic 8 Ball instead. He has no idea why that confounded hunk of junk was packed on the Hail Mary with everything else needed to help save Earth, but it has both mystified and annoyed him from the moment he learned of its existence.
“Hey handsome,” Grace says sweetly by way of greeting, even if his heart rate is slightly elevated. “I see that true love’s kiss kept you safe on your journey.”
Rocky chirps happily and decides not to grumble about the Magic 8 Ball encroaching on the sanctity of their nest. “Yes, best protection in the universe!” He faintly clicks to get a better picture of Ryland’s refreshed attire for the occasion—just a t-shirt, a pair of briefs, and his omnipresent socks. “What is Grace’s fortune for the night?”
“That’s a good question,” Grace mutters, gently sloshing the ball around in his hand. “Let’s see,” he starts, exaggeratedly closing his eyes and holding the ball up into the air like a talisman. “Oh Magic 8 Ball, is this night everything I’ve waited the past forty years for?” He giggles after he asks the question and if Rocky had eyes he’d be rolling them into the next century.
“Anticlimactic,” Rocky snorts while Ryland lowers the ball and peers at the fortune window through his glasses. He reads the message and then turns the ball around for Rocky to inspect the engraving on the side of the die. Better not tell you now.
“Is rigged,” Rocky grumbles, feeling a flare of irritation rush through his carapace. “Magic 8 Ball at top of Rocky’s shit list just after astrophage and Mark.”
“C’mon, don’t be a sourpuss about it, let’s try again—”
“Ball says no more questions, special sex time now!” Rocky insists, snatching the orb from Ryland’s hand before rolling it away and out of immediate reach. “Grace can play with nonsensical advice ball later.”
Grace blows out a sigh but nods. “Sorry, I swear I wasn’t trying to stall. It’s just—all kinda strange. I’m not nervous because it’s you, Rock, I’m just…feeling a lot of things. Fear of the unknown is a big one. And, uh—pain is another.”
Rocky leans in and folds himself into a contemplative loaf beside his beloved, arms crossed over each other. “Has Rocky ever hurt Grace when we make love before, question?”
“No, sweetheart,” Ryland rasps. “Of course not. I would’ve told you if it had.”
“Then this time is no different,” Rocky says, reaching out to stroke Grace’s forearm. “Why would it be painful?”
Grace flushes again. “I dunno know how much you’ve managed to read about—the human reproductive systems as they’re typically designed at birth. I don’t think I delved into this during our biology lessons, but sometimes people with a uterus have something inside them called a ‘hymen.’ It’s like a fleshy barrier made of mucosal tissue at the opening of the vaginal canal that can tear and bleed at any point from all sorts of physical activities humans do, but sometimes they don’t fully break until somebody has sex with an inserted object or body part for the first time.”
Rocky was already aware of the hymen’s existence—more specifically, aware of the soft bit of Grace inside his body that he’s taken note of the past many months they’ve spent together since rerouting the Hail Mary toward Erid—but didn’t yet know it had a specific term assigned to it. “Does hymen grow back if broken?” he asks.
“It can, sometimes,” Grace says, sounding a little unsure. “The elasticity of the membrane changes as people reach puberty and go through hormonal shifts. I’m not even sure if I have one anymore, considering how freakin’ old I am now, but if I do—things are probably kinda dusty in there, if you catch my drift. It’d be like a petrified fossil by now.”
He tries to laugh at his own joke but it’s mostly a jagged rush of air from his lungs.
“Grace does have,” Rocky offers quietly. He tries to hide the claw he’s tapping on the floor of their nest to get a better view and wishes he could rest that hand above Grace’s womb to evoke a clearer picture. “Hymen. Inside. Not petrified—relatively thin, but still intact.”
“Oh,” Ryland says on a short exhale. And then, “You can see that—inside me!?”
“Rocky can see all organs and bones and circulatory system,” Rocky says. “Grace already knows this. Has known this for eleven months, sixteen days, five hours, and forty-seven—”
“Okay, point taken, geez!” Ryland says, play-swatting him. “I’m just. Whew, okay. That part feels more private for some reason? Like I didn’t even know it was in there.”
Rocky tips his carapace forward. “Understand,” he says. “Does hymen presence mean Grace is Ultra Mega Virgin, question? Sorry, correction: Ultra Mega Half-Virgin.”
Grace’s voice reaches a higher octave usually distinctive of elevated stress levels when he next speaks but otherwise nods. “Yup, I guess so,” he says. “Especially if we’re going by Earthling standards. Just an Ultra Mega Virgin at your service, entirely yours for the taking.”
A shuddering vibration moves through Rocky’s carapace and down each limb. “Yes,” he says in a low, resonant tone. “Rocky only one to touch, will be the only person to ever stroke soft barrier inside my Grace. So precious, so delicate, and all for Rocky to cherish.”
The effect his words have on Grace is instantaneous. There’s another southward rush of blood as Ryland’s clit twitches to attention in his underwear. He allows himself to groan, this time, now that they’ve gotten this far, and then tips his head back into the pillow waiting to cradle him. “You’re gonna kill me, Rock,” he croaks out. “That’s a figure of speech, by the way.”
Rocky breaks back out of his greedy reverie at this. “Pause horny time. Explain again why Grace is afraid of penetrative sex hurting, please.”
“If there’s a hymen there, it can rip and tear like any other living tissue in the human body when it undergoes physical trauma,” Ryland explains faintly. “And bleed. Like a wound.”
“Every human with a uterus bleeds during first sex time?” Rocky asks.
“Not every human, no,” Grace clarifies. “Some people break theirs without realizing it when they’re pretty young, doing something like gymnastics or horseback riding. But other times it remains intact until penetration, yeah. It can be uncomfortable and cause bleeding the first time you have vaginal sex. There’s a lot of…weird and slightly creepy cultural lore around the concept of virginity because of this—some people say something kinda lewd and irreverent about it, and call it ‘popping your cherry.’ Chalk it up to deeply-ingrained patriarchal toxicity. We could sit here and talk for ages about how the humanity we busted our butts to save is largely messed up depending on who you ask, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
Rocky ponders this for a few seconds and hums. “Understand complex feelings. Patriarchy now on Rocky’s shit list after Astrophage, but before Mark and Magic 8 Ball.”
“Mine too, bud,” Grace says, laughing softly. “Thankfully it seems like we don’t have to worry much about the patriarchy anymore. I left most of that behind on Earth when they slingshot us into space on a one-way trip to Tau Ceti.”
“Yes, yes, Grace much better off here with Rocky, never have to worry about weird Earthling rules ever again,” Rocky trills, clicking and crowding up closer to him in the nest again so he can stroke around the contour of Ryland’s jaw. “Do not want to celebrate blood or pain during first intercourse, unconscionable. Rocky will only breach with tender touch, like a kiss. Won’t hurt my Grace ever.”
“I know, honey,” Grace says. His voice is trembling a little in the hull of his throat, full of emotion again. “I trust you. Just you, Rock. There’s nobody else but you for me.”
“Good,” Rocky warbles, venting out a tiny puff of steam. “Grace doesn’t need anybody else for sex time anymore, Rocky will be first and only. We proceed now, question?”
Ryland nods and draws his heels up in the nest until his knees are in the air and his thighs are vaguely spread. “Yeah, I think I’ve waited long enough these past forty years,” he mumbles, hitching his thumbs in the waistband of his briefs and lifting his bottom to work them down over his hips. “Let’s see what you’ve got, hot shot.”
Rocky chirps as he nestles himself between Grace’s spread legs and fondly scritches through the coarse pubic hair on his mound. It makes a delectable sound and Grace indulges him by not doing much more than trimming it from time to time anymore.
“Rocky love Grace’s bush,” he purrs, still tracing the inner creases of Ryland’s thighs. “Sorry, distraction—always need to admire.”
Grace chuckles at that and reaches down to lovingly tap against Rocky’s carapace. “No big rush,” he says, even though Rocky can sense that he’s beginning to leak once again from between the inner lips of his vulva.
“Grace already wet, very good sign,” Rocky says, gently dipping a claw into the slick, forever slightly amazed by the slippery viscosity of it even through his exosuit. “Rocky have green light to touch and look deeper?”
“Go ahead,” Grace says in a throaty voice, opening his legs a bit wider. He’s still in his t-shirt and socks but Rocky doesn’t mind them since they aren’t impeding his explorations at all. Grace does willingly pull up the hem of his shirt, though, and exposes the muscled plane of his lower belly and the wispy trail of hair that leads south from his navel. “Just be gentle, I’ll be fine. I’ll tell you if anything gets uncomfortable.”
Rocky hums and clicks as he puts a claw on either side of Grace’s vulva and then carefully, slowly pulls the soft labia apart. There’s no bright examination light to see by—and if there was, he wouldn’t need it, but spreading Ryland open in his hands gives him a clearer image of the thin membrane nestled just within. It’s not a solid, seamless piece of tissue, and has a sort of oblong crescent shape perforated through the center that allows for passage of discharge and menstrual blood. Rocky takes several long moments to admire it and is uncertain if he’s ever visualized something so beautiful before. Another perfect marvel inside his Grace.
“You find the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow down there?” Ryland rasps from above, clearly trying to temper his own jittery nerves with humor, with only marginal success. He gives up on the wise guy shtick in the next beat and his voice takes on a more plaintive tone that makes Rocky’s hearts ache. “Talk to me, Rock. Please. I just—wanna hear your voice.”
Rocky purrs and uses his third arm to gently stroke one of Grace’s thighs. “Rocky right here with Grace, never going to leave,” he promises, freeing up one of the claws on the human’s vulva to snake it up over Ryland’s exposed belly. “Give hand, statement. We explore beauty together.”
Grace lets out a breathy, wordless sound, but then promptly offers his hand down into Rocky’s claw. Their trust is an unspoken thing, now—a pact between them that doesn’t need sound or language to define it. But because Grace wants to hear him speak, Rocky will talk until they careen over the frayed edge of the universe if need be. He takes the hand offered to him and draws it down between Grace’s thighs, opening him up again with one claw while he guides their linked fingers inside with the other. Tentative, gentle, like touching the pliable carapace of a newborn Eridian hatchling.
“Delicate barrier inside Grace is like Earthling flower, a pretty petal, so thin visible light could shine through membrane,” Rocky says. “Sweep finger gently, like this. Grace can feel?”
“Y-yeah…yeah,” Ryland breathes out, letting Rocky be the one to guide him. “It doesn’t hurt, just feels—kinda weird.”
“Pressure?” Rocky asks.
“Pressure, confirmed,” Grace answers in a quiet voice. “I’ve never, uhm. Gone any further than the outside of the entrance before? By myself, anyway.”
“Grace and Rocky go many wonderful places hand in hand,” Rocky trills out behind a wheezy giggle. It’s meant to be funny in a way, and yet he can’t deny the sincerity of his own words, the great open maw of intimacy cupped between them within the walls of this interstellar ship. “Wish Grace could see gorgeous insides, too. Deserve to know how special you are.”
There’s a long pause and then a hitch in Ryland’s breathing. “You could get Ilyukhina’s hand mirror from the water closet, Rock,” he says, slowly drawing his hand away. “The tortoiseshell one with the mother of pearl inlay on the back.”
Rocky pulls back and goes up on his tiptoes in reignited levels of intrigue. “Grace really want to see?”
“Might as well while I’ve got the chance, right?” Grace snorts. The surreal, crystalline intimacy of the moment pops like a soap bubble but none of their fondness and familiarity dissipates with it. Rocky can always count on their mutual curiosity in the natural world to steer them in untold directions together.
“Be right back!” Rocky whirs, and then is oinking with excitement as he trundles through the ship to find the hand mirror in precisely the place Grace described. He doesn’t move fast, exactly, but with a great efficiency that makes up for his lack of swiftness, so he’s back again with his claimed prize in just under a minute, holding Ilyukhina’s hand mirror aloft. “Ta-da!”
“Time for some freaky science off the books,” Grace says, sitting up in the nest to stuff some pillows behind his back before reaching to take the mirror. He runs a hand back through his cockatoo cowlick and adjusts the glasses on his nose with relaxed seriousness before opening his thighs. “D’you wanna do the honors again?”
“Delighted!” Rocky chirps, pushing his claws up the back of Ryland’s thighs with reverence before hitching them behind each knee. “Grace hold mirror from above, can catch light source from the ship’s walkway to see better with human eyes.”
“Right, got it,” Grace breathes out, cunt briefly clenching as Rocky carefully goes to expose his hymen again. He gnaws at his lower lip and tilts the mirror to and fro, adjusting it with the reflective surface poised between his legs. It takes a minute or so before their joint efforts coalesce into any payoff, but Rocky knows that Grace is seeing inside himself when his mouth drops open and he makes a soft, queer sound.
“Oh,” Ryland says. “There really is something right there. I had no idea.”
Rocky trills in satisfaction. “So pretty,” he says again, because he thinks it bears repeating. “Rocky has never seen a rose so sweet.”
“You’ve never seen a rose before, period, Shakespeare,” Grace murmurs, but when he laughs Rocky can’t help but notice how his belly clenches and tightens. “I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s a little lackluster from where I’m standing, but definitely interesting from a biological perspective.”
There’s a brief lull in their chatter while something visceral moves through Rocky’s carapace again, like magma beneath a planetary plate, and he hears himself speaking before he can rethink his wording. “Rocky wishes I could taste inside Grace,” he warbles in a tremulous tone.
Grace’s capillaries dilate again as he gently lays the hand mirror to one side with a deliberate calmness. “Can you even taste things?” he asks quietly. Not rebuking Rocky for his confession, merely following it up with a curious thread of his own.
“Not in same way as humans, no,” Rocky says, trailing his claws to Grace’s inner thighs to stroke the softer skin there. “Wish Rocky could. Ovipositor organ can detect mineral composition, test softness or hardness for optimal breeding conditions. Not true taste—but close enough.”
Grace whimpers in the back of his throat. “I’d let you,” he croaks. “If you wanted to.”
Rocky’s whole world abruptly spins on its axis. Why isn’t Grace clarifying what he meant by that? “Tell Rocky what Grace means,” he begs. His mind replays the words over and over, nearly three dozen times in the mere span of two seconds. “Clarifiaction, immediately. Please.”
“Taste my body,” Grace chokes out. “Whatever you wanted, Rock. You can do anything to me.”
A low, mournful vocalization rumbles through Rocky’s carapace when he remembers the thin layer of xenonite keeping them truly held apart. “Cannot give Grace what Rocky wants to give,” he cries, devastated by the unmooring truth of it. “Would burn Grace, would hurt Rocky—want to taste, want to give eggs, but can’t yet. One day, Rocky promise you, but not yet. Am sorry…so very sorry.”
Grace reaches out to lay a hand on his trembling limbs and shushes him. “Don’t be sorry, baby, you haven’t done anything wrong,” he says, soft and soothing. “It’s okay, Rock. We’re still us, we’re still together. We have plenty of time.”
“But Rocky wants it too,” he laments, thinking that if he could cry he would need to weep right now, to pour out the overwhelm of terrible emotion cresting inside him. “So much. Entire lifetime would not be enough to hold Grace, please Grace, take Grace apart and put back together again.”
Ryland makes a stricken sound and wraps his arms around Rocky’s carapace. “Don’t think about that stuff right now,” he whispers. “We’re supposed to be…Jesus, am I really crying again right now? Shit. Look, we need to focus on the present. Whatever we can do for each other right now, with whatever we’ve got, is good enough for me. It’s perfect, sweetheart. I don’t need anything else but you here by my side.”
Rocky sadly coos and touches one of the tears on Grace’s cheek. “Yes, can still make love to Grace,” he says, tracing the tear track to the human’s jawline, wishing it could soak into his stony claw and not run over the mesh xenonite, needlessly wasted. “Grace and Rocky have each other. Can be good just like this.”
“Exactly,” Ryland croaks, turning his face to press a kiss somewhere near the inner part of Rocky’s forearm. He draws in a shaky breath and seems to shrug away some of the emotion, sniffling and wiping at his eyes. “Alright then—c’mon, bud. Wallowing in existential despair hour has closed up shop for the night, we’re supposed to be having special sex time.”
“Agree, agree,” Rocky sighs, vents fluttering briefly as he reorients himself. “Grace get cozy in nest again, Rocky will assist with pressure point relief.” He quickly adjusts their motley arrangement of soft things and cushions, making sure to support one behind Ryland’s head in addition to his lower back and bottom. “Feel good, question?”
“Yeah, I feel great,” Grace says, voice gone soft and slightly smokey again, that way he gets when he’s feeling relaxed and sensual. “Ripe for the plucking, if we’re still rolling with that particular metaphor.”
Rocky trills sweetly and clambers over him again, bracing his weight in strategic places so their bodies can make contact through the xenonite without risk of crushing Grace’s bones or soft parts. “Have an idea,” he ventures, waiting to feel the concentrated focus of Ryland’s attention. “Rocky engineered new mesh sleeve for ovipositor—cannot taste Grace, but can still fill you, feel close. Claw would break hymen, but ovipositor organ is more dexterous and gentle.”
Grace nods. “I’m picking up what you’re putting down. You’re sure the heat wouldn’t be too much?”
“Made of same finely wrought xenonite material as finger condom—Grace’s hand feels hot, but will not burn. Rocky’s ovipositor will feel warm inside but not injure. Promise you this.” He pauses for a brief moment to clasp his pinchers together and then continues. “Thinking…Grace does not need to hurt to lose virginity. Does not need to bleed to feel Rocky’s love.”
“No,” Ryland breathes out, smiling. “But between you and me, I still think it’d be worth it if it did.”
“Dumb human,” Rocky chastises, pinning Grace’s arms above his hand in their nest. He uses his third arm to begin stroking his ventral seam back open, shuddering from the sensitivity lurking inside after their earlier activities. “This is why Rocky has to take care of Grace, because sometimes you think with your dick and not with your brain.”
“I thought you loved that about me?”
“Rocky loves everything about Grace.”
“I bet you say that to all the boys, hot stuff.”
“Rocky only love one boy in the universe, statement.”
They both wait and watch while Rocky opens himself up and gradually begins to fill out the xenonite sleeve. Fusion fluid drips inside his exosuit, steaming up the interior with a soft sizzling sound, but that’s fine—he can function at top performance without being bothered by the haze. His ovipositor unfurls to its furthest length, snaking to the very end of the exosuit’s coupled attachment. A perfect fit.
Rocky distributes his weight there between the spread of Grace’s open thighs and pets his labia with tender strokes of his cock. A shiver runs through Ryland’s body as he bites into his lower lip, staving off some pitiful sound in vain.
“Rocky,” Grace hisses, squirming underneath him. “Please.”
“No more waiting, Rocky give Grace everything you need,” Rocky says, lowering himself until his carapace is just barely flush with Ryland’s belly. “Open your eyes, command. Watch Rocky while I pluck pretty flower now.”
Grace’s eyes stay open behind his glasses, heavy-lidded but obedient and watchful. Rocky rewards him with a peck against his engorged clit, gently squeezing with the tip of his ovipositor. Ryland makes a choked sound and Rocky thinks he’s going to start complaining or begging—one or both—so he decides to head off any lip at the pass. Grace is sopping wet and it would be disgusting if Rocky wasn’t so entranced by everything that makes up this human he loves, every fluid and cell and biological process. Leaky and horrible but devastatingly beautiful. The abundant slick makes their fucking easier with the xenonite sleeve between them, and Rocky wastes no time with teasing the opening of Grace’s cunt before pressing the tip of his prehensile cock inside, an act that feels remarkably tender and curious despite the objective obscenity of it all.
Rocky traces the thin membrane and then clicks a few times, reacquainting himself with the crescent perforation in the middle of Grace’s hymen that will lead deeper into his body. He carefully presses past it, thrilled and aflame that he’s the first entity in the universe to do so, delighted when the membrane doesn’t break or tear, but simply lets him pass into his beloved without any resistance.
Grace sighs around a small gasp, reaching out to steady himself by gripping Rocky’s forelegs. “Is that…you inside me?” he asks in a shaky voice, tucking his chin to try and look down at the place they’re joined. “Oh my God, Rock. It feels—mmph. I feel—”
“Yes, Rocky is past hymen and inside vaginal canal, now,” Rocky warbles, gently stroking the inner walls with reverence, wanting to remember every millimeter, every ridge and divot of untouched living tissue inside Grace. “Does Grace feel Rocky’s kisses? Soft, soft. No pain, no bleeding.”
“Yeah,” Ryland blubbers, tears starting to gather at the corners of his eyes again. “Y-yeah, sweetheart. I adore your kisses.”
“Grace feel good, question?”
“I’m peachy keen,” Grace gasps. “Keep going, baby. You can have all of me.”
The greed in Rocky prickles with molten desire, pushing them both to a new limit. “Rocky go deeper now, find place in Grace not even light has touched before,” he croons, slowly feeding more of his cock into Ryland’s cunt with a lewd squelch, curling up into his depths with so much ease despite the mesh sleeve. He can’t help but click again, tapping his one free claw on the floor of the nest and then between the spread of Grace’s legs to visualize the smooth muscle waiting within. “Pretty virgin womb, so perfect for kissing. Rocky the only one to ever kiss my Grace like this. Nobody else allowed to touch—nobody on Earth ever good enough, did not deserve my gorgeous boy.”
When the tip of his ovipositor strokes the outer divot of Grace’s cervix, Ryland all but mewls underneath him, some high and reedy sound caught in his chest like a wild animal. He thrashes a little in place, still pinned under the insurmountable weight of Rocky’s carapace, and cries harder than before.
“Tell me what you need,” Rocky warbles. “Tell Rocky, sweet Grace. Use words.”
“Please, Rock, I want to come, I need to come with you as deep as you can go,” Grace rattles out, panting in high, shallow gasps as he clings to the edge of some raw desperation. “I’ve gotta know how it feels—I waited forever for this, I’ve waited my entire life for you.”
“Rocky waited for Grace, too,” Rocky answers, pushing his pinchers into the heart of Ryland’s palms until he feels familiar fingers wrap around his claws, clinging to each other. “From the moment Grace was born, Rocky waited. Would wait through another lifetime alone for you to find me.”
Ryland’s voice cracks open in something between a laugh and a sob, fat tears streaking behind his glasses and gathering down in the hollow of his throat. He nods through his grief and kisses the hinge between Rocky’s arm and carapace, right there above his first heart. They are alone together in the deepest trenches of space and yet he whispers when he speaks, so soft that Mary’s interface system can’t discern it, a sacred secret cupped between them. Only for Grace and Rocky to hear, not even the distant stars twinkling with their soft chimes.
“I wish we could live inside each other,” Ryland croaks. “Two souls in one body, so close we wouldn’t know where one of us started and the other ended. Just you and me, Rock. Just the two of us—forever.”
The answering cry of ecstasy that rises in Rocky arrives in fractured sound frequencies not even known to humankind. But whatever moves through him stirs Grace’s insides and the human jolts with a start, vagus nerve stimulated by Rocky’s song, mouth wrought open in wordless pleasure as he sucks in a gasp of air.
This is the first mating between two alien species in this nestled corner of the universe, on this tiny little ship where only an Earthling and an Eridian coexist, and yet Rocky finds his body already knows what to do. A surreal instinct overwhelms him, making a deep hum rattle through his carapace as he pushes up into the exquisite depths of his Grace and feels his heartbeat resonate through his core at the door to his womb. Loud, endless, intoxicating—Rocky chases it with the tip of his ovipositor, pressing up into the opening in that soft divot where the blood and the tissue is the prettiest, the most dense, the most fertile and alive.
He sings for Ryland again, soft and sweet, the song of lovers, kissing the music up against that untouched womb. It makes Grace cry harder, and Rocky can’t stop himself—pushing his vocalization as deep as it will go, in the rich garden where he knows it would grow if he planted each note there with love. Ryland spasms around his cock, again and again, virgin cunt clenching and milking Rocky’s ovipositor for anything it could possibly give him and earning nothing but a song.
Rocky carries him through it, cradled there between his five arms, safe and treasured beyond compare. It will never be enough, but it’s as close as they can get to being enough, and for this small mercy he’s grateful to the stars. Selfishly, Rocky reaches out to press his gloved fingers past Ryland’s lips, a reassuring weight on his tongue, bringing them both back down into the grounded sprawl of their nest.
For a while they don’t speak, simply relishing in the closeness, a luxury that exists on the back of borrowed time. Rocky’s atmosphere inches ever closer to running out inside the ergonomic suit with every passing minute. He refuses to think about it. He decides he’d rather die in Grace’s arms than pull out of him if he had to choose between his own life and preserving something so precious.
Rocky leaves one more tender kiss at Ryland’s cervix, cooing as he does. But it’s Grace who breaks into the easy silence, voice sounding scraped raw in his throat.
“I love you,” he whispers hoarsely. “More than I knew I could love anything."
“Rocky feels same way,” Rocky tells him, petting through the wild mess of hair on top of Grace’s head. “Love my Grace with all five hearts, so if one stops beating the others love harder.”
Ryland weakly laughs at this and nuzzles up against Rocky’s carapace, pressing another kiss of his own against the exosuit. “We’re both a friggin’ mess, dude. Total goners.”
“Gone off Grace’s pussy is exactly how Rocky wants to die,” Rocky says, wheezing with laughter as they shake against each other, giggling and chittering like two lovebirds. “Was special sex time good for you, question?”
“Special sex time blew my socks off, statement,” Ryland rasps, and then flexes one foot still comfortably nestled in his tube sock. “Well, metaphorically speaking. Needless to say I think you’ve ruined me for all other men.”
“Good, good!” Rocky preens. “Rocky not a man so they cannot compare anyway. Rocky is the best lay in the universe for Grace.”
“Best and only, seems like,” Grace says, flushing deeply again over his chest and throat. “Consider my flower thoroughly plucked, pal. Sheesh.”
There’s a sweet sorrow in parting as Rocky withdraws from Ryland’s body, as slowly and tenderly as he can manage. It’s almost painful tucking his ovipositor back inside his carapace, and so he lingers, letting it limply lay there between the spread of Grace’s slick-covered thighs so he can admire the ruins of the pretty cunt he just defiled. The inner labia is swollen, puffy and leaking viscous discharge from within, and Rocky is not expecting to witness Grace’s hand reaching down to curiously swipe his fingers over his own stretched seam.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he assesses, bringing up his dampened fingertips to examine them in the soft light through his glasses. “No blood, either—maybe just a trace of pink.”
“Grace’s hymen is still intact as Rocky promised,” Rocky tells him, snickering a tiny bit. “Still half a virgin after all.”
Ryland’s brow furrows as he delves into his tender opening to feel for himself, and as sure as anything, he seems shocked when he feels the untorn membrane—stretched ever so slightly, but still quite the same as before.
“Well slap my butt and call me Sally,” Grace snorts. “You weren’t kidding about that.”
“You think Rocky tells lies for fun? Especially when Grace is crying in my arms, desperate and vulnerable?”
“I never said anything about you lying—I’m just amazed, is all!”
“Can be amaze all you want, but sex with Rocky will never hurt Grace,” Rocky insists, and then goes still as he dwells on that for a moment. “Well. Not unless Grace wants it to.”
“I think we should do it next time,” Grace mumbles, throat bobbing in place as he swallows. “Break the hymen, I mean. Kinda like ripping off a band-aid.”
That makes Rocky’s cock twitch like a dying eel inside the limp xenonite sleeve; better to save that line of thought for more thorough introspective analysis, later. “Grace is a freak,” he says simply, endearingly. “But is okay—Rocky is a freak, too.”
“Guess we’re a match made in heaven, huh,” Ryland snorts. “Or a match made in Tau Ceti, anyway.” He palms Rocky’s carapace to fondly trace around the outer edges of his ventral seam before twisting around to reach for his forgotten water bottle. Just beyond it lies the abandoned Magic 8 Ball, and Grace gasps when he sees it, scooting as far as he can under Rocky’s cage of limbs to grab it from the nest of blankets.
“Not this ♩♪♩♬ again,” Rocky grumbles, busy putting his ovipositor away while Ryland shakes the orb so the liquid sloshes around inside.
“One more fortune for the road,” Grace says, holding the tip of his tongue between his teeth while he pretends to listen to the swirling power of divination nestled within. “Let’s give it another whirl…”
He closes his eyes and gives the Magic 8 Ball a little shake without uttering his question aloud this time. When Grace glances at the readout in the message window, his mouth turns up into the soft, fond smile that Rocky cherishes more than anything else in the universe.
Rocky’s vents only manage to flutter cantankerously with half-hearted effect. “What did Grace ask the ball of lies this time?”
“Just the same query as before,” Ryland says, staying rather still as his eyes crinkle with mirth. “If tonight was everything I’ve been waiting for these past forty years.”
“So why Grace acting so smug? Show Rocky fortune on wicked soothsayer ball before I break it into forty million pieces.”
Ryland snorts but holds it out so Rocky can see the engraved message like before. The readout on the die simply says, It is decidedly so.
He harrumphs with a fuzzy flurry of notes and holds out his claw. “Let me try, statement.”
“You better not break it,” Grace warns, but passes the Magic 8 Ball over anyway. “I’m pretty sure it belonged to Ilyukhina, and you definitely don’t want the wrath of somebody like her coming down on your head from the afterlife.”
Rocky carefully takes the orb and passes it between two claws, clicking as he does, turning it this way and that. He sends a supersonic frequency that Grace can’t hear through his carapace and the ball doesn’t respond, only remains listless and stationary in his grasp. It is deceivingly harmless, he thinks. Too harmless. Time for a brief stress test.
“Is Rocky the Eridian holding you right now?”
It is certain.
“Is Magic 8 Ball full of debauchery and lies, question?”
My sources say no.
“Is astrophage an interstellar star-eater organism with natural predator taumoeba?”
Without a doubt.
“This is the weirdest afterglow I’ve ever been a part of,” Grace says, chugging water as he happily reclines in the nest. “Just ask it what you really want to know, Rock, so we can get back to cuddling.”
Rocky growls and lets out a puff of steam before he calms himself and gives the Magic 8 Ball one more firm, definitive shake. “Are Grace and Rocky truly one star soul split into two different vessels?”
Ryland slowly brings a hand up to his mouth and goes very still, eyes glistening again. Neither of them speak for a long beat until Rocky carefully clicks and inspects the fortune waiting for him in the tiny window, and then turns it around to show his Grace.
As I see it, yes.