concept: no astrophage au where eridians and humans still make first contact but like, properly. a whole diplomatic mission meeting in the middle of space to save travel time. stratt is humanity's greatest representation. the eridian equivalent is equally as scary and secretly soft. it's all very star trek.
but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!
grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.
then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like
stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?
stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?
grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?
stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?
grace: he said he likes to match!
stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!
grace: i call him rocky :)
then on rocky's side of things it's like
eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?
eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.
rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄
eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?
rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!
anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.
cut to grace curled up with rocky while he sleeps like a baby.
