Archive of Our Own

It took me a while to convince Grace about the (obvious) utility of keeping watch over each other while we sleep. Especially at the beginning of our partnership, he liked to sneak away and spend periods of time by himself. ‘Personal space,’ is the phrase he uses. A pointless pretext of putting a wall between him and me, even though he knows full well I can still perceive him.

I know Grace doesn’t stay the whole time I’m asleep, and we can’t keep direct physical contact with each other the way sleeping and guarding Eridians would. I’ve accepted this compromise. He’s right there on the other side of a xenon barrier when I go to sleep, and I believe he normally sets an alarm so he can at least be back in the same room before I wake up. Even if he leaves and goes about his other tasks in the meantime, it feels like he’s been there all along. He maintains this polite pretense solely to reassure me. Grace is thoughtful, considerate. Kind, kind, kind.

I could be a lot more productive if I were able to bring myself to do the same. Grace spends approximately one third of his time laid out on the soft flat platform where he prefers to sleep, and it would be nice if I could move around the ship and work on my own projects during that time. It just feels wrong, though. I know humans still maintain some awareness of their surroundings when they sleep. I discovered the hard way that a sufficiently loud noise will prematurely wake Grace, even before he is fully rested. He’s not paralysed and helpless when he’s sleeping. But I still need to stay as close to him as my habitat modifications will allow. Something bad could always happen. His crewmates died in their sleep, same as mine did. I’d like to be even closer, to stand directly above him or settle on his body mass. But even if I could survive for long in his ship’s corrosive oxygen-rich atmosphere, I’d burn him with my body heat, or crush his fragile internal structures. What I want is not possible.

Grace is usually quite consistent about being present when I wake up, so it’s a little concerning when I return to awareness and can’t sense him immediately nearby. I shake off any lingering disorientation, and try to hear him moving around elsewhere on the ship. I’d fallen asleep in my half of the lab, as I often do. I can sleep anywhere, so I prefer to do so in areas where Grace is likely to spend the most time.

Listening, I immediately locate him in his own domestic area. Specifically, the part where he goes to clean himself and dispose of bodily waste. The hygiene room. I don’t mind him being absent when I wake up if it’s for an unavoidable bodily urge. Although when he comes back, I think I’ll act like I’m hurt and upset by it for a few moments. Apparently, briefly pretending to feel an exaggerated version of an emotion you don’t actually feel is funny for humans. I don’t really understand why that’s humourous, but our translation programs aren’t refined enough yet for Grace to get any benefit from Eridian wordplay. So if I want to make him laugh at my jokes, I have to try doing it human style.

I spend a moment thinking about what I’m going to say when Grace returns, but then something gets my attention. A small vocalisation that sounds like pain.

I focus more closely on the hygiene room. I’d been trying to give Grace some ‘personal space’, but that was a mistake. I can hear his circulatory system, pumping much faster than normal, his breathing harsh. Another pain noise, muffled, like he’s trying to hide it. Stupid, stupid, stupid Grace. Is he injured? My own respiratory rate begins to increase with my stress and worry.

My xenon habitat doesn’t extend as far as Grace’s hygiene room, so I’ll have to get in the sphere if I want to go there. I do this as quickly as possible. If Grace has really managed to injure himself while I was sleeping, there’s not much I can do to help, but I still want to know. I’ll be able to hear what’s going on better if I get closer.

I scurry as fast as I can through the ship. There’s a moment of frustration as I have to heave my sphere over a pile of dirty clothing that Grace has left on the floor of his sleeping quarters, but then I’m there, in the doorway of the hygiene room. Grace is standing in the cubicle where he washes his body with water, but the water isn’t turned on.

“Grace, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” I ask urgently. Grace doesn’t have his computer nearby to translate my words, but he recognises his name in Eridian, and knows enough to understand when I’m urgently trying to get his attention.

“▀▍, ▃▒▄!” Grace says. He’s so startled by my arrival that he jumps and hits his elbow against the wall of the cubicle. He makes another unintelligible noise. I’ve brought my computer with me, of course. I’ll have to ask him to repeat and explain whatever he just said, so that I can log it in my translation program.

“Are you all right?” I ask insistently. “Are you injured? Concern concern concern.”

“∎░▄, Rocky!” Grace says. I like the name he’s given me in his language, even though it’s so much shorter and less elegant than my actual name. There’s an even shorter version he calls me sometimes (Rock) when he’s feeling particularly affectionate. “Can’t just ▎◼︎ ▒▄ in here!”

Grace leaves the shower, and walks from the hygiene room into his adjoining sleeping room. He opens his computer, discarded on his sleeping platform. Then, movements jerky and abrupt, he snatches up a soft fabric garment from the floor, and begins pulling it on to cover his lower body.

“Sorry,” I say. The translation program on Grace’s computer repeats my words in human language for him. “You were making noises like you were in pain.”

Only now does it occur to me how strange it is that Grace had taken off his clothing, even though he didn’t appear to be cleaning his body. Grace doesn’t just wear clothing for decoration or for practical purposes. It seems like a human custom to keep the majority of one’s body covered in cloth whenever possible. Embarrassingly, it was a while before I realised that the thin billowy layer beneath his space suit wasn’t even part of him at all, wasn’t just another iteration of the alarmingly heterogenous layers of hair-skin-fat-muscle-organs-bones that make up his body.

“No pain, Rocky,” Grace says. “Please leave.”

“Why were you naked, question?” I persist. “Where is the wound? You must show me.”

“No wound,” Grace says.

He’s lying. It’s hard to tell when humans do this, as their vocal tones are far less nuanced and I’m still not very good at reading them. But I heard his pain noises. He’s definitely lying to me.

“Let me look.” I roll my sphere forward, effectively trapping him in the corner of the room. He’s so much weaker than me, he won’t be able to move me, although he could probably climb over the sphere if he was determined to get away. I tap my finger against the wall of the sphere. The sound waves reverberate off Grace’s form, clarifying the shape of him. I tap again, carefully scrutinising the contours and textures of him. I can hear him breathing and circulating his fluids. Nothing seems immediately out of place, but… no, there. One of his appendages is somewhat swollen. Maybe that’s where he’s injured himself?

“It’s ▇█▒∎,” Grace says.

“New word,” I say. “Explain, please.”

“▇█▒∎,” Grace says. “Alone, personal, nobody watching,”

“Private,” I guess, and take a moment to log the word in my translation program. “Like eating is supposed to be, for me. Only for close family and mate to watch.”

“For mate, yes,” Grace says. “Rocky leave now.”

“You don’t have a mate,” I point out. “You were making noises like you were in pain.”

Grace says another new word, and after a little back and forth, I figure out he means he has no control over it. Involuntary. That still doesn’t explain what those vulnerable little vocalisations I heard actually were, though.

“So what was the noise? Why is your appendage swollen, if you didn’t injure it? Question?” I ask.

Grace buries his face in one of his hands and makes another pain-noise, but this one I associate more with frustration than actual injury.

“Rocky not supposed to see that,” he says.

“I perceive your appendage all the time,” I say. “Even when it’s covered in clothing. I can hear you through walls, remember. Clothing is nothing.”

“Don’t remind me,” Grace mumbles. “Rocky supposed to be asleep. Lost track of time.”

I’m beginning to understand that I’ve stumbled into something Grace really didn’t want me to intrude upon. But he eats in front of me all the time without shame, and I’ve never heard him make those kinds of noises when washing himself or excreting waste. How many other potentially private bodily functions are there? Well, I can think of one, but it doesn’t make sense that he’d be doing it now, alone and light years away from his own kind. So now my curiosity is piqued.

“What are you doing, question? Explain.” If I’m persistent enough, Grace normally relents and gives me what I want.

“I’m ▆░▄▚,” Grace says.

“New word,” I say. I sway a little from side to side inside my sphere, charmed and entertained by Grace’s obvious embarrassment. He’s seen me eat, and interrogated me at length about Eridian biology. Biology is not my specialty the way it is his, but I’m enjoying the chance to be the intrepid researcher for once.

“It’s, uh. It’s ■▁▄▀,” Grace says.

“I don’t know that one, either.”

“Self-pleasure?” Grace tries. “Self-mating?”

That’s the other option I’d considered, but I don’t see how it’s possible. “But you’re alone in here? Question?” I point out. “You said you didn’t have a mate.”

“I don’t,” Grace says. “No mate, not for years.”

“So how can you mate by yourself?”

“Stimulate own ▆░▄?” Grace tries. “For pleasure, not reproduction. Feel nice. Relieve stress.”

Stress is a concept we’ve talked about a lot, so I make an encouraging noise, hoping to get Grace to explain more. I notice his swollen appendage has settled somewhat, which I would have assumed was a good sign when I thought it meant he was injured. But maybe not?

“Self-stimulation,” I repeat, using the phrase Grace used. “Yes, we have a word for that too. Masturbation.”

“Human have many words,” Grace says. “■▁▄▀.” I quickly log that in the translation program as ‘masturbation’. “▆░▄▚, ▒▊■.”

“You do this a lot?” I ask. So many different terms for the one action suggest significant importance in human biology or culture.

“Not me,” Grace says. “Humans, yes. Grace, not much.”

Understandable. He’s been under a lot of stress lately. Personally, I know my egg cycle is extremely dysregulated. Messy, messy, messy. I could probably still masturbate if I really wanted to, but of course I haven’t felt an urge for it since I left my home planet.

“You’re on an important mission, no time for pleasure,” I agree. “Same, same.”

“Before mission,” Grace argues. His ‘stubborn’ tone and expression are very familiar to me by now, very endearing. “Not so interested in reproduction. Rarely with mate. Masturbate sometimes. First time in years. Rocky rush in and interrupt. Rude rude.”

Grace doesn’t normally repeat words to intensify meaning the way Eridians do. He normally just appends one other word that acts as an intensifier, so my translation program renders that as a rather lackluster double repetition. Still, beneath the computer generated translation, I can hear the emphasis in his tone. Either jokingly or seriously, he is very annoyed at me.

“Sorry,” I say. Teasing him a little bit, if he’s really that upset about it. “Maybe just keep going.”

Grace reacts to that with obvious surprise. Maybe it’s a biological process that can’t be easily resumed, once interrupted? Like how he’s always so grumpy, if he wakes up before he’s ready and can’t get back to sleep.

“Rocky leave,” Grace says.

I don’t want to do that. Even if I leave the room, I want to stay somewhere close by, so I can still observe him. This is a fascinating new behaviour from my friend. Why wouldn’t I want to see it? Maybe he’ll lay eggs and I’ll get to examine those, too.

“Rocky,” Grace repeats.

“Can I observe?” I ask. “I’m curious curious. Your biology and customs are interesting.”

“Not science experiment,” Grace grumbles. “Masturbation private.”

“You observed me eating,” I point out. Grace actually seeks me out sometimes, to eat in my company and continue a conversation we were having. We watch over each other in sleep, we’ve both nearly died to save the other’s life.

“Not same,” Grace says.

“I could leave the room and observe from out there,” I suggest. I could still perceive him almost as clearly through the wall, but light can’t penetrate the walls, so Grace wouldn’t be able to perceive me. He would be able to pretend I wasn’t there.

“No,” Grace insists. “Go to other end of ship. Go back to sleep. Go unconscious.”

“I want to observe,” I say. “You’re enjoyable to watch. I want to know. I want to perceive everything about you.”

Grace… doesn’t say anything in response to that. His mouthparts move soundlessly, and his tongue flickers out to moisten his lip. Humans have so many different kinds of fluids, it’s amazing. I’ve been trying to make a list of them, but when I recounted my list to Grace, he just laughed.

“You want to watch?” Grace asks. His language doesn’t have a specific question-particle, but I’ve gotten better at recognising the inflection.

I make a little movement to emphasise my excitement and interest. Yes. Yes, I want to know about human mating. I want to know what Grace does on his own to give himself pleasure and relieve stress. He’s the greatest friend I could have ever imagined, I want to know everything about him.

“You want to watch,” Grace says, inflecting it like a statement. I do another wiggle of excitement-agreement. We are in consensus. Harmonic. It feels good.

“You like the idea of me watching, question?” I ask. “You’re embarrassed, but your blood flow to your sex organ is increasing. This conversation is sexually stimulating for you, question?”

“∎░▄, Rocky!” Grace says. “Maybe? Don’t know. Never did anything like this before.”

That comes as a shock to me. “You said you had a mate before!”

“No! I mean I never masturbate with someone observing,” Grace says. “Weird. In human culture, kind of ▀█░.”

“New word.”

“Umm, ▀█░? Taboo? Like taboo but for unusual sex preference.”

I make a considering noise. As far as I know, we don’t have a word for that. “Wanting to observe alien masturbation is a somewhat unusual sex practice,” I say. “Maybe we’re both unusual.”

Grace makes the noise that I associate with amusement. It’s staccato, rhythmic, sometimes loud and shocking, sometimes more of a soft exhalation of air. I really like that noise.

“Guess we are,” he says. “Rocky really want this?”

“I really want to,” I confirm. I can’t explain why it’s suddenly the most fascinating thing I can imagine, but I really want to see Grace touching his own weird alien body. Bringing himself pleasure. I’ve seen him exhausted, I’ve seen him suffering and in pain, I’ve dragged his unconscious body through his ship and up onto the medical platform. I’ve seen him smiling and laughing and relaxed and triumphant, but not nearly enough. No matter how many times I see it, it’s never enough.

“I kind of want it too,” Grace confesses. Based on the blood flow to his sex organ, I had guessed as much.

“Pretend I’m not here,” I suggest. “I will stand outside if it helps.” I don’t want to do that. It’s like guarding Grace in his sleep from the other side of a xenon barrier. I want to be as close as possible, to hear the precise contours of his form, to monitor his internal workings, to know he’s still safe and well.

“No, Rocky ▋█▊▄∎ stay,” Grace says. “I know, either way.”

Well. In that case. I’m already blocking him into the corner of the room with my sphere, but I scuttle a little closer, pressing myself up against the clear xenon panels. I want to gather as much data on this as I can. Grace has never done this before, and might never do it again. I don’t want to miss anything.

“Will you talk about what you’re doing?” I ask. I’ll understand what’s happening a lot better if Grace explains it.

“I try,” Grace say. The corner of his mouth quirks up, amused. “Can’t promise won’t lose control of voice functions.”

That’s interesting. Eridians are normally in constant communication with each other while mating, but masturbation is mostly silent. I won’t mind hearing more of those not-pain noises Grace was making earlier, now that I know he’s not actually injured. I find his chatter companionable, pleasant, comforting.

“Grace, you haven’t done this since you left Earth?” I ask. “How often is normal for humans?” I want to establish a baseline, before we begin.

Grace makes an amused noise. “Variable. Many social and biological factors affect frequency. Must talk about this now?”

“Curious, curious, curious,” I remind him. “Grace is fascinating. Humans are fascinating.” Humans are only fascinating because Grace is fascinating, but I think he’ll understand better if I can make my interest sound a little more scientific.

His shoulders make that brief up-and-down jerky movement that I think signals confusion or not-knowing or ambivalence. “Different for everyone,” he says. “For me, maybe… every month or two?”

I quickly do the mental calculations for what that would be in Eridian time units. So, pretty infrequently compared a mated Eridian, but actually quite often for an unmated individual like Grace is. But Grace had implied earlier that he masturbates less frequently than most humans, without distinction for mating status.

“Does being mated or single have any effect on this?” I ask.

“Maybe?” Grace says, making the shoulder motion again. His right hand is cupping his sex organ through the soft fabric of his garment, thumb rubbing distractedly over the length of it. It’s starting to swell and warm with blood flow again, though not to the same extent it was when I first entered the room. “Depends. Not useful answer, sorry, I know. Um. Maybe less. Because mate with partner instead of masturbate alone.”

“Is it normal to keep some of your clothing on when you masturbate?” I ask. That would be quite strange, but Grace insists on keeping himself fully clothed in stranger situations, like eating or doing repairs that could dirty his clothes.

“No,” Grace says. I can hear blood entering the tiny vessels in his face, and he tugs the garment down over his hips and kicks it off onto the floor again. “Better?”

“More sensible,” I agree.

Seeing Grace with all his clothes off shouldn’t make much difference. The cloth barriers are thin enough for me to easily echolocate through, I know what Grace’s body looks like right down to the bone. But it turns out the clothes muffle some of the details. Standing up close, with nothing but the xenon walls of my sphere in the way, I can perceive details I’d never noticed before. Like the hair that grows on Grace’s head and face, there’s more of it scattered across his body. And the two wide, flat muscles on his upper thorax that help him raise his arms, each of them has an odd little nub in the middle of it that becomes tighter and more pointed when exposed to the air. I tap my fingers against the wall of the sphere to get a clearer impression, then can’t help tapping again and again. Nosy, nosy, nosy. Any other Eridian would wonder what I was trying to perceive in such detail.

“Your sex organ gets bigger when you touch it,” I observe.

“My ▒▒▎,” Grace says, and I quickly categorise that word in his translation program as sex organ. I want to know what I’m hearing, if Grace ever says that word again.

“Similar with Eridians,” I say. “My genital opening inside my orifice begins to widen when I’m aroused.”

“New word,” says Grace.

“Orifice, question?” I ask. I thought we’d already covered that one when discussing eating. Grace pivots his head side-to-side, a negation. “Oh. Aroused, question? Ready to mate.” That’s not quite it. “Anticipating mating.”

“Aroused,” Grace says, and I diligently save the equivalent human word. We’re both already learning so much today! “My sex organ always ▆░▄▄ visible, even when not aroused. Biology reasons, remind to explain later.” Grace has started moving his hand. His sex organ fits partially within his loosely closed fist, a slender cylinder enveloped in baggy skin that has become much firmer and tighter as his appendage swells. The internal structure of it consists of a thin narrow channel, and a lot of porous, spongy tissue. I observe it growing denser, as tiny blood vessels fill. The hollow channel in the middle seems too small to accommodate eggs, but I think I remember Grace mentioning that human eggs are microscopically small.

Grace moves from idly stroking his sex organ, to moving his hand in a more rhythmic and purposeful fashion. It looks quite rough to me, given how fragile I know humans to be. I had assumed their sex organs would be correspondingly delicate. Grace pauses, brings his hand up to his mouth, and forcefully expels some of his mouth-fluids into his palm, before resuming stroking.

“Purpose of mouth-fluids, question?” I ask.

“Mouth fluids? It’s called ▃,” Grace says. I save that to my translation program as ‘mouth-fluids’, anyway, since Eridians obviously don’t have a specific word for it. “Makes it smooth, feel nicer,” Grace says. “Can use, uh, lubricant?”

I clasp my front hands together in shock. I’ve only heard that word in a technical context, describing the lubricant we used when building the chain winch, to ensure it would run smoothly. Could that also be used for masturbation purposes? It seems unclean. Most likely Grace is talking about a different product with a similar name.

“Interesting how the human body produces so many different fluids, but not one for this,” I remark. The wet noise of Grace’s mouth-fluid covered palm against his sex organ should be disgusting, but it isn’t.

“Just wait,” Grace says. He sounds amused. “What else Rocky want to see?”

“Go on the sleeping platform,” I say decisively. I roll the ball away to let him out of the corner of the room. “Spread your legs apart so I can observe better.”

Grace makes one of his wide catalogue of positive noises, and begins to walk towards the bed. He trips over his discarded garment on the floor, and I feel somewhat vindicated. He’s so silly, with four limbs and only two of them used for walking. So elongated and easy to tip over. Watching him stumble over to his sleeping platform, I feel like I am overflowing with fondness.

Grace sits on the edge of the sleeping platform with his legs spread, so I can roll the sphere as close as possible. Once again, I press myself up against the wall to observe. Under his erect sex organ, he has a delicate-looking sack, maybe containing some sort of important gland, and then the furrowed opening of what I believe is his excretory orifice. It strikes me as oddly sensual, how many openings his body has. This one is neatly tucked away on the underside, between his legs, but others are just displayed out in the open.

“Yes, basic biology lesson,” Grace says. “Sex organ. ▛▏▀▍, ▀░. Understand?”

“Eridians don’t have words for any of that,” I say. “But thank you for telling me.”

“Feels good when I touch here as well,” Grace says. His finger brush over the sack hanging between his legs, and he massages it gently in one hand. Once again, it’s all loose skin, but with something more solid inside. I am entranced by how carefully he touches it, and then his hand is back to stroking his sex organ again. It’s hard enough now to curve up against gravity, brushing against his lightly haired lower abdomen. I drum my fingers on the wall of the sphere, and even click my mouthparts excitedly, to try and make sense of what I’m seeing.

“Fluid!” I point out. I can sense a glistening bead of it, emerging from the tip of his sex organ. Amazing, amazing, amazing!

“Told you,” Grace says, voice rough. His respiratory rate is increasing again, and I watch his thorax heave as his two big, cavernous lungs inflate.

“You did!” I’m so excited to find out what happens next. Plastered against the wall of the sphere, echolocating frantically, fascination and delight running molten through my body, and meanwhile…

Oh. Oh, I didn’t expect that. I flinch back towards the opposite side of the sphere, then run an agitated circle around inside it. It bumps into Grace’s spread leg, and he responds by lifting his foot off the floor, curling his leg around the sphere.

“Good, buddy?” Grace asks.

‘Buddy’ is one of the many nicknames meaning ‘friend’ that Grace has made me save to my translation program. Normally I like him calling me that, just another way to emphasise our closeness, our mutual harmony. Right now, it makes me panic a bit.

“Good,” I say, even though there’s definitely some things right now that aren’t good. I’ve already ruined Grace’s self-pleasure-stress-relief activity once by interrupting him, I won’t ruin it again. “Keep going, keep going. Important science happening here.”

It’s not particularly scientific, what I’m feeling right now. I feel warm and relaxed and pleasant, and loose. My orifice has begun to ache, in a way that I haven’t experienced in years.

Grace’s hand runs indulgently from the root of his sex organ to the very end. One of his thumbs brushes over the tip, smearing the fluid that gathers there. I try to remember what it was like when I thought human bodily fluids were disgusting, even though now all I can think about is what it would feel like on my carapace. Would it be thin or viscous? How much more of it will there be?

“Expel mouth fluid into your hand again,” I say. I just want to hear it. Lubricated, like the chain winch, so it can run smoothly. I want to hear Grace get slick and wet, making things good for himself.

Grace does what I tell him. He normally complains so much when I tell him to do things, then does it anyway. The wet sound of hand-on-sex-organ is louder now. Better. Another little spurt of fluid leaks out the tip. Despite myself, I find I’m pressed up against the wall again. If I tilted my body a bit more, my orifice would be right there on display. Grace has seen it before. It wouldn’t necessarily mean anything, if I just…

I feel the lips of my orifice parting. Inside it, my genital opening seems to throb. I don’t understand why this is happening. Deep in space, on a mission where there was a good chance I’d never see another member of my species ever again. Eridians are highly social. The group survives where the individual would perish. Arousal can’t happen without some underlying imperative to mate, and that never happens without some degree of proximity to a suitable partner. An Eridian partner.

I could probably stop the process now if I wanted to. Maybe if I left the room entirely, fled to the other side of the ship where I couldn’t hear Grace so clearly, and busied myself with work. Maybe. But I’ll still know it happened.

“Rocky hungry?” Grace asks. “Should I be scared?”

Of course that’s what he would think, that’s the only context where he’s ever seen my orifice before. Normally I keep it politely tilted downwards, lips shut except when necessary. Grace leans forwards on the bed, like he’s trying to get a better look at my normally hidden mouthparts.

“I’m not hungry,” I reassure him. “I’m just…”

What explanation can I give?

“I thought maybe you would want to examine my anatomy again,” I say. “Since we’re doing science. It might make you more comfortable, if we’re both vulnerable together.”

Grace grins, revealing his teeth, and the obscene soft wet inside of his mouth. “Thanks, Rock,” he says. “▄ ▙▄░▜ █.”

Based on his tone and expression, I assume he’s just paid me a compliment. I could grab my computer, ask him to repeat and explain, but expanding the vocabulary of my translation program is not my priority right now. My fingers scrabble uselessly at the xenon partitions of the sphere, trying to get closer, to hear better.

Grace’s teeth dig into the skin of his lower lip in a way that looks painful. My understanding is that his teeth are made of hard mineral deposits, like his internal skeleton. Like my carapace. And his mouth otherwise consists of the same soft fleshy tissue as the rest of his external body. His skin seemed so easy to damage— when we had to jettison the fuel compartment after collecting the Taumoeba samples, his face hit the instrument panel, his skin split open and his circulatory fluid spilled. But obviously he’s not quite as fragile as I sometimes fear. His hand is moving so fast over his sex organ now, I can perceive the cords of muscles in his forearm shifting and flexing. My human has such complicated insides. He’s like an intricately constructed model, a strange and perfect machine. I feel so indulged by this opportunity to watch him in motion.

I can perceive, just barely, the slightly raised outline of scar tissue on his arm, in the shape of my hand.

Grace’s eyelids flicker like they do when he’s falling asleep, and he lets out a pain-noise. Arousal-noise, I suppose.

“More,” I tell him. “More noise, Grace.” The sound of his breathing has grown harsh, like he’s exerted. I feel my own spiracles gape and flare in sympathy, sucking air into my respiratory system.

“Rocky,” he says. His words are slurred and indistinct, it’s amazing that my translation program can even still make sense of them. “I’m close.”

“Go, go, go, go,” I encourage him. Chittering wordless vocalisations of excitement. With another Eridian, it would be embarrassing to seem so lacking in self-control, so worked up without a single touch. But Grace doesn’t know any better. He leans closer, legs spread as wide as they’ll go, his entire upper body draped across my sphere. Feeling my radiating body heat, no doubt. Wet skin secretions trickle down his neck and from his underarms, smearing against the xenon surface. With me pressing my body up against the panel, we’re almost touching.

The flexible, tightly faceted panels of my sphere that I can use to handle external objects are not in the right position for me to touch his sex organ, but he probably wouldn’t want that. Instead, I rest my hand on his inner thigh. I can press against the soft give of his flesh, so I do, massaging and kneading it.

“Rockyyy,” Grace repeats, drawing the word out. “That’s good— bit harder, is good, ▄▔ bit harder. Won’t break.”

I increase the pressure of my grasp very slightly. Grace yelps, and I pull away, afraid I’ve hurt him.

“Nonono no, come back,” Grace whines. The patch of skin sounds inflamed, blood rushing to the surface. Grace explained this to me once— his arms and legs are always covered in such marks after he bumps into things, moving around the ship. Contusions, broken blood vessels leaking under his skin. Grace said they start off one ‘colour’ (his word for how he perceives different wavelengths of light), then change to different ‘colours’ as his body breaks down the cellular debris. I can’t imagine it. It sounds beautiful.

I place my hand back on Grace’s thigh, but much more carefully. He makes a satisfied noise, and resumes stroking. I can feel my genital opening crying out for some kind of pressure or stimulation. With another Eridian, we’d be pressed together, humming in unison, gently rocking against one another to stimulate our release. This frantic back-and-forth motion of Grace’s hand on his appendage shouldn’t appeal to me the way it does, but maybe we could compromise in this, the way we do so many other things. I can’t help but rub my orifice against the wall of the sphere. It doesn’t feel quite like another Eridian’s carapace, and it certainly doesn’t feel like human skin.

“Grace,” I say, just for the pleasure of saying it. Does he understand what I’m doing, pressed up against the wall of the sphere like this? His eyelids are shut. He’s told me that intense light can still penetrate his eyelids, but not with great detail, so I’m reasonably sure he can’t perceive his surroundings very well right now.

Grace gasps, and suddenly more fluid is released from his sex organ, a high-velocity spurt of it, semi-translucent and viscous. There’s enough of it to splatter across the surface of my sphere, making me jump back in surprise, and to drip down his hand as well.

Grace’s eyes drift open. He looks, as far as I can tell, the most relaxed I’ve ever seen him. “Sorry,” he says, smiling. “Messy human again.”

“I know you can’t help it,” I tease. Grace picks up a discarded garment from the floor and tries to wipe his… emissions off the outside of the sphere.

“Wait, need to get sample,” Grace mutters. He glances around urgently, then finds a beverage container on the table next to his bed. “This will work.”

“Is it usual for humans to save samples of their sexual fluids?” I ask.

“No, I put on microscope slide, so Rocky can see my ◼︎░▄ swimming around,” Grace says. He’s scooping globs of his own emissions off his stomach into the beverage container. “Will be interesting, promise.”

For a moment, I’m convinced the translation program is malfunctioning. It sounds like Grace is saying his eggs are independently motile. That sounds bizarre, but fascinating. And Grace’s first thought after experiencing sexual release was what I might be interested in learning about it. Once again, I am filled with fondness for my strange, silly human.

It’s nearly unbearable. I knew Grace was a rare sort of friend, to have risked his life and given up his chance to go home for me, but I never could have anticipated I would feel like this. I didn’t know to guard myself against it, because it should not even be possible. It feels like my carapace is cracking open with the intensity of feeling. Like oxidising in the atmosphere of Grace’s ship as I dragged his body to safety. Painful, but transcendental.

“Later, Grace,” I say. “We’ll look at your eggs later. I have to go.” I don’t even bother coming up with an excuse. If I’m lucky, Grace will assume I’ve just remembered an urgent task in the lab.

I don’t really have my own designated space on Grace’s ship, a place where I would go to be alone. I hadn’t thought I would need it. But suddenly, it’s imperative that I go somewhere Grace can’t see or hear me.

I end up choosing one of the storage rooms. I rarely have any need to go into this part of the ship, so Grace won’t immediately think to look for me here. I roll my sphere to a stop, somewhere with a solid barrier between me and the rest of the ship. Light can’t pass through here. I am unobserved.

I’m not proud of myself, for this sudden and uncharacteristic need to retreat. I thought nothing of inviting myself into Grace’s quarters, and insisting on observing his private moment of sexual release to satisfy my curiosity. He was initially embarrassed and uncomfortable, but he let me push my way inside, like he always does. Because he cares about me. But now that I’m having an unavoidable sexual response of my own, I flee and hide.

I miss Adrian. It’s strange and uncomfortable to experience arousal without their presence, barely having thought about them until now. If Adrian were here, this would all make sense, but they’re not. We argued, when I volunteered for this mission. They thought I was being reckless. I thought they were being selfish. Even though they knew we were all in danger from the Astrophage, I don’t think they could accept that the success of this mission was more important to me than my life. Of course we reconciled before I left, and then… then I left. They might even think I’m dead by now. Does that make all this better?

I can feel the egg packet pressing up against my genital opening. I managed to keep the lips of my orifice pressed shut as I ran through the ship, but it’s growing increasingly difficult.

I try to drag my heated thoughts back to where they rightly should be. To Adrian. They’re so beautiful and charming and clever. Preserved perfectly in my memory. But somehow, I struggle to bring their visage to mind.

It wasn't thoughts of Adrian— my mate, my bonded other half— that triggered this arousal.

Surely I’m just confused. All this time spent alone with an alien. Guarding his sleep, saving each other’s lives, allowing him to watch me eat. No wonder I’ve gotten so mixed up. But deep inside, I know that’s not true. I don’t just care for Grace as a friend, the best friend I’ve ever had. I think maybe I love him.

A couple of eggs slip from my genital opening in a pleasant rush. They crowd up against the lips of my orifice, still ruthlessly clamped shut. It would feel so good to let them spill out of me, but I can’t allow it. Instead, I swallow them down.

How nice it would be, to have done this back in Grace’s quarters. We could have masturbated together, and I could release my eggs to a blissful completion. I could even offer Grace a sample, once they’d cooled enough for him to safely touch. We could make it an exchange, a pitiful facsimile of true mating. I know him well enough to know how much he’d like to get them under a microscope. We could do it regularly, and the stress relief would benefit us both. I think I could even continue to keep up the pretense of pure scientific interest, if that made him more comfortable.

No, I think to myself, as I grimly work to swallow the rest of my egg packet back inside myself. Now that I’m truly aware of my own ulterior motives, this cannot be allowed to happen again. I picture how helplessly happy Grace looked, before I made my excuses and rushed from the room. Unthinkably rude for an Eridian, to leave a sexual partner alone in the aftermath. We should still be pressed together, humming and tapping gently upon each other’s carapaces. But even if I’d stayed, it wouldn't be possible.

My life back on Erid was a lonely one, at times. We are such an interconnected society, always in communication with each other, reliant on our peers for support and protection and consensus. It’s shameful to admit to being slightly out of harmony with those around you. But I was. I wouldn't have volunteered for this mission, if I wasn’t.

I’ve never had a friend as dear to me as Grace. I can’t bear to risk losing him. And once we make it back to Erid, he’ll be completely alone. He’ll be reliant upon my friendship, even once he settles in and becomes part of the community. I owe it to him, to keep on being the friend I’ve always been.

Up until now, I’ve never thought of myself as a coward. I'm not just protecting Grace by keeping my feelings secret, I'm protecting myself. But I feel like Grace and I have both been more than brave enough, lately. I deserve to keep this one thing, hidden, unobserved. Grace was right all along about the necessity of a little personal space.