Work Text:
“Rocky!” I yell as loud as I can. “I don’t know if you can hear me! But I’m here, buddy! I’m on your hull!”
I wait a few seconds. “I have my EVA suit radio on! Same frequency as always! Say something! Let me know you’re okay!”
I turn up my radio volume. All I hear is static.
“Rocky!”
Still no response. I adjust my grip on the wrench and begin smacking the hull again, harder this time. I fight back the creeping anxiety.
I reposition the wrench to carry vibration and resume shouting. “Rocky! Please, buddy, talk to me! I need to know you’re okay!”
All I hear is static. I resist the urge to panic; I can’t afford to be stupid right now. I take a breath and think: what next? Do I try the radio again? There’s no way I can melt a hole in the hull to enter without venting the atmosphere and killing Rocky, except maybe the airlock if it’s still functioning properly, but even that’s a stupid risk.
He can’t be dead. He’s Rocky. He survived several minutes outside his zone and on fire in my air. He’s strong and smart and better at handling a crisis than me. Whatever problems the taumoeba caused, he could solve them enough to survive, even if he couldn’t save his fuel supply. He could fix anything, as long as he wasn’t asleep- That’s it! He must be sleeping. A loud noise wouldn’t wake him up; it couldn’t. I just have to wait and try again in a few hours.
I return to the Hail Mary to wait more comfortably, then repeat the process an hour later. Still no response. I cycle aimlessly through radio frequencies on the off chance he’s using a new one for some reason but hear nothing but static.
After sixteen hours of on-and-off shouting with no response, I need a break to eat something and reassess my situation. Rocky said the upper limit on Eridian sleep cycles is a little over twelve and a half hours, but that was just an estimate, and Eridian sleep cycles are unpredictable. He could be sleeping for longer, probably. I should get some sleep myself and try again later.
But you’ve never seen him sleep longer than ten hours at a time, my own thoughts betray me. I can’t go down that line of thought. I just can’t. I need to stay focused, getting upset will just make my situation worse.
How long can you keep this up? How many hours do you keep trying until you give up and go home? I violently shove the water pouch away from me and pull my legs into my chest, trying to take deep breaths. Rocky can’t be dead. He just can’t. I can’t turn my ship around without even having seen a body, I can’t give up on him with so little evidence (so much evidence), I can’t just leave him after everything we’ve been through. I feel my throat start to constrict as breathing becomes harder. And even if he is dead, I can’t go home, Rocky is Erid’s only hope and if he dies then his planet will too. I can’t go to Earth, I have to save Erid, but I didn’t come back here to die for a planet full of strangers, I turned around for Rocky, and it’s so much easier to die for a friend than billions of nameless aliens, and I don’t want to spend four years alone in a ship full of ghosts and I don’t want to die!
The panic has completely overtaken me now, squeezing my lungs and tensing all my muscles and my heart is racing and I’m drenched in sweat and I can’t breath and Rocky is dead and-
“Grace, question?”
I bash my arm on the table scrambling for the radio. I try to reach it, but my movements are sluggish and reality is losing focus. I just need to reach a bit more, but-
“You are well, question?”
I wake with a start in my bunk, heart racing, full of adrenaline. I clutch my chest and look to the side to see Rocky in his zone, his tools cast aside on the floor. “You had a nightmare, question?”
“Yeah, buddy,” I nod sluggishly, still shuddering. I had already had to explain the concept of nightmares to Rocky. As it turns out, apocalyptic stress levels combined with amnesia-inducing drugs can have freaky effects on a guy’s subconscious, so they aren’t a particularly rare occurrence. Rocky is still just as concerned as he was the first time. I guess the concept of nightmares is scary for someone who can’t dream, and it can’t be fun to see the person you’re supposed to be looking after start shouting and thrashing in their sleep.
“You shouted my name. I thought you were awake.”
I give up on both trying to relax and trying to preserve my dignity and roll out of bed, dragging my mattress and everything on it to the floor. I shove it all up against the clear xenonite barrier and climb back under the covers, wrapping myself up in the blankets and curling up against the barrier.
“I’m awake now. Just a dream. No need to panic, I just need to calm down. Now that my body’s in fear mode it’ll be hard to get back to sleep.”
“You shouted my name, question?”
I sigh. “Yeah, buddy, I guess I did. In the dream, I was- it’s complicated. Sometimes dreams are memories, but sometimes they’re something totally made up, and sometimes they’re both. Memories, but different.” Rocky has come to meet me on his side of the barrier, cocking his body at an angle I know means he’s focusing his hearing on me. I have his full attention now; he isn’t going to let this go.
“Let me start over. When I first realized the taumoeba could get through xenonite, and I turned around, I had no idea what had happened to you. I was worried. I knew you’d be smart enough to have backup plans to keep yourself safe, but you were all alone with nobody to watch while you slept, and I was worried about you. I was more scared of what would happen to you if I didn’t come back to save you than I was of dying. And that’s what the nightmare was, the thing I was dreading, I found your ship but the power was out and I kept shouting and making noise for hours and you didn’t answer.” I furiously wipe the tears from my face and take deep breaths. I need to be calming down, not making myself cry more.
“But I am alive.” Rocky puts a hand up against the glass. “You save me, we save Erid, Erid will save you. Everyone will be saved.”
“Yeah. Yeah. You’re here. You’re okay. I’m okay. We’re going to be fine. It was just a dream. I just need to calm down so I can sleep some more, two hours isn’t enough.”
“I can help, question?”
“Just… Stay here, please. Close to the wall, close to me.”
He pauses for a moment, confused, but doesn’t question me. He scuttles over to grab his discarded project and carries it back to me, then settles back into his spot against the xenonite. ”Understood. You sleep. I watch.”
I could let the conversation end there and focus on sleeping, but he looked confused, and slipping into teacher-mode will help me relax.
“Earth is colder than Erid, but some parts of the planet can get even colder sometimes, cold enough that animals struggle to survive. Human bodies produce heat through all the various chemical reactions keeping us alive, but we don’t have a carapace to trap heat, and sometimes the heat we create isn’t enough. So we evolved to share our body heat by huddling together. It’s a standard way of showing comfort and affection, building social bonds. We wrap our arms around each other, it’s called a hug.” I demonstrate, rather pathetically, by hugging myself.
“Eridians sleep in shifts, so you can keep watch, but humans usually all sleep at the same time. Often, we sleep together, curled up for warmth and comfort. It’s not necessary, plenty of people sleep alone, I have most of my life, but couples- mates, family members, and sometimes friends will sleep together, especially when stressed or in pain. It’s part of the instincts that drove us to form civilizations.”
“Interesting. But strange. Sleeping together without someone to watch you. You miss it, question?”
This gives me pause. I don’t really want to admit it, but “Yeah. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to touch another person. I didn’t do much of that on Earth, not a lot of people I was that close to, but I miss having the option. You’re the only friend I’ve got, and you’re on the other side of a wall.”
Rocky takes a moment to reply, fidgeting awkwardly in what I interpret as shyness. When he speaks, his voice is low. “Eridians do not hold each other. Humans are strange. But if you and me no need xenonite walls, I would hold you. If you need it. Or want it.”
My eyes well with tears, which is really freaking annoying when I was starting to calm down. “Thank you. Even if you can’t hug me, it means as much to know that you would, even if to you it’s just a weird human thing.”
I lay my head down and try to sleep, but a thought keeps me awake: “What do you do then, if you don’t touch each other? You developed civilization, you clearly have a pack-bonding instinct, so how do you establish that bond? How do you comfort each other?” The ‘what can I be doing to take care of you’ is left unsaid.
Rocky pauses for a moment, considering. It’s a complicated question, it must be a complicated answer, and it will probably be hard for him to put it into words I can understand.
“Eridians have many bonding instincts. Biggest, most important is watching others sleep. It demonstrates trust, cooperation, care. We thrum together. It helps communicate with no words, creates understanding.” This all tracks with what he’s told me so far.
“Eridians do not normally touch. Touch carries vibrations, helps us hear. If touching, we can see inside each other in more detail. Intimate. But can be useful if a friend is hurt or sick, to see problem and maybe fix.”
“To comfort each other-” He pauses, probably searching for the right words. “Eridians have circulatory system like humans but different. Hot and cold, to make muscles move. Told you this before. ‘Blood’ moves when we move, without a rhythm, different to humans. Many pumps, no one ‘heart.’ Rhythm only happens when we make rhythmic motions. Rhythmic motion, rhythmic sound, means calm and safety. Like a friend doing a small task while watching you sleep. We hear each other’s blood flow when sitting close, but not always. To create a louder sound so others can hear, we do this:” He curls his claws into a fist and knocks against the floor in a steady thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump. I recognize this; he’s done it before to wake me from a nightmare. I always thought it was just a noise to get my attention, like knocking on a door. “We call it ****.”
“Like this?” I mimic him, knocking my fist against the floor to continue the rhythm. This is a breakthrough, something I can do from the other side of the barrier to comfort him when he misses Erid, a way to show affection that feels like home to him.
He waves a claw and I stop. “You are human, no need to ****.”
“No, I want to! I want to know how to comfort you, if I can.”
“You no understand. Eridian circulatory system has many small pumps, no constant rhythm. Human circulatory system has one large pump, always constant rhythm. Larger and louder. Always able to hear you sound, sound always in rhythm, rhythm always comforting. Except when you are stressed or hurt, then rhythm changes.”
I think about the implications of this, that just my presence is a comfort to him, not just because of our friendship, but because of our respective biology. How any human presence could be a comfort to any Eridian, once they got over the hideous-giant-leaky-space-blob factor. But then I remember the first thought I had upon hearing his voice, even despite the excitement of discovering spoken alien language: They speak in music.
“Music is important to humans; I’ve told you this before. It expresses emotion, it brings people together, it’s a constant in our cultures. In all our history as a species, music has always been there. We consider it an important part of what makes us human. Your voice, your language, humans can’t create those sounds on our own, but we can when we sing together, or create instruments. Your voice sounds like music, it sounds like community and culture and home.” I bet any human would find it comforting, once they got over the giant-spider-with-no-face factor.
Rocky tilts his carapace in what I recognize as a smile. “Good. You comfort me, I comfort you. Now sleep. No more talking. You need rest, no distractions.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he interrupts me. “You sleep, I watch.”
I accept that for the dismissal it is and settle in, blankets wrapped around me, still pressed as close as I can be to Rocky. Nightmare forgotten, I close my eyes, leaning my forehead against the xenonite. With my skull pressed against the barrier and Rocky’s carapace pressed against the other side, I can almost imagine hearing the constant rhythm of his blood flow as he resumes his work.