So I've got this scene stuck in my head and idk when or if I'll finish the fic it's a part of so:
It's shortly after Grace and Rocky have arrived on Erid. Adrian has reunited with Rocky and been introduced to Grace, and is with them both now as some planetary leaders speak with Grace. One of the leaders makes an off-hand (off-claw?) remark. Vaguely apologetic, utterly casual, just something that they're sorry it was Rocky that had to make first contact with Grace.
(The Eridian implication—awkward, weird Rocky, who seems more comfortable around machines than people sometimes, who is blunt and abrasive and swears so fucking much, who's too intense sometimes and weirdly distant other times—it would have been better, some Eridians say, if someone else from the crew had survived to make first contact. Someone with better people skills who might make a better impression.)
Rocky stiffens, mortified. Adrian presses close to him, furious but unable to do anything more—there's no way they could rebuke a leader. Not without causing a scene, not without making something worse.
Then Grace, who's been listening carefully this whole time, also goes still. For just a moment, Adrian hopes that he didn't understand the leader— then he starts typing a response. In broken Eridian—in Rocky’s voice, since Grace reverse engineered the audio translator for Erid—he says that Rocky is the smartest, bravest, best Eridian he knows. That he's so glad Rocky was the one who found him. That they are friends, they are soulmates*.
Rocky’s vents stop exhaling for a moment. The planetary leader stutters out an apology. And Adrian—
Adrian had been so grateful to Grace for bringing Rocky back that they'd resolved to adore him before they'd even met him. Now—
Now they're quite certain that it won't take any effort at all.
*the word I'm actually going to use in the fic is songsfriend, Eridian for queer-platonic partner. Grace does not know this. One day Rocky said that they needed a word for "friend but—more." Grace thought about it for a moment, then shrugged and half‐jokingly said, "best friend?" Rocky immediately started wiggling happily and said that he really liked that word, that such a person was the "best" of friends, and neither of them realized that it hadn't been translated right. Then Rocky, shyly, not that the translator picked up on his tone, asked if the two of them were "best friends," and Grace, very touched, said yes absolutely they were, and Rocky cheered, and Grace’s lonely aroace ass thought that was a perfectly normal reaction, and he maybe also cried a little, and they continued on. Grace never realized that the term hadn't been translated right until Adrian asked them a few questions about their relationship and he realized that there'd been a miscommunication. Luckily Adrian was able to help him sort out his feelings and he realized that yeah, he does feel that strongly for Rocky.
