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Sometimes Grace was glad he was living in a tiny pressurised space with only a sentient rock for company. It meant that there was no one around to care that he lied spread eagle on the floor, wearing a T-shirt with a sunglasses-wearing cat drinking coffee and the words “I love maths, it makes people cry” paired with a long swishy yellow-orange skirt with tiny dandelions embroidered on here and there (which he assumed was Ilyukhina’s but fit him surprisingly well), making snowless snow angels and humming along to whatever song the computer pulled up at random from the near endless playlist of incredibly diverse music.
They’d been at this for an hour now. Grace and Rocky had both run out of any real tasks a while ago, and today they’d both admitted to themselves and to each other that they’d even run out of any pretend tasks they’d been doing to keep themselves busy. So here they were, both lying on the floor in the lab on their respective side of the xenonite barrier, cycling through Earth’s music that Rocky periodically interrupted to ask for clarification or to comment on the horrendous chord choices, and Grace more than happy to rattle off explanations or to nod empathetically, and otherwise to just vibe on the floor while Rocky bobbed to the melodies.
Grace vaguely remembered having seen some video that argued that Spotify’s shuffle wasn’t true randomness, not even in the pseudo random number sense. He wished he could introduce them to the Hail Mary’s shuffle algorithm, because every time a new song came on, Grace was momentarily startled at the jarring difference to the previous song. Although, wait, no, that wasn’t an indicator for true randomness. Humans tended to consider “very different from the previous result” to be a good measure of how random a process was, which in of itself favoured a direction and was hence not random. Darn, lizard brain tricked science brain again.
Anyways. Three songs ago had been some kind of Swiss or Austrian Après-Ski song that Rocky had called nonsensical and repetitive and while lizard brain made Grace move his feet with the beat, he agreed. Then came some East Asian traditional or classical piece, which Rocky had considered abstract but enjoyable. The previous song had been Mongolian throat singing, which had fascinated them both, as Grace couldn’t remember ever having heard something like this either. He wondered how he knew it was Mongolian throat singing then. One of the few perks of being an amnesiac, he supposed, being able to re-experience things. The current song was some kind of western, probably American, pop song.
Don’t you want somebody to never let you go?
Knowing someone’s body better than your own
Out of all the pop songs that had come on, all of them had been about either love, sex or both. Ah, allos.
Don’t you want a family with a white picket fence?
Tell me when’s the wedding, the names of all your kids
Huh, that sounded kinda sarcastic. Not a love song?
“Pause, pause, pause,” Rocky called, and Grace moved his hand to hit the space bar on his laptop. He’d turned off the translation software as several of Rocky’s hums and chimes as he sang along got interpreted as words or partial words, and they didn’t want the robotic voice killing the vibe. Not that Grace even really needed the software anymore these days, as Rocky and him had been living together for close to two years now. It had just been on because Grace had been tired and stupid and a bit too slow for any non-English conversation the day before.
“What is word after ‘don’t you want’, question?” he asked. Grace thought back to the lyrics, then blanched.
“What, ‘family’?” he said, tilting his head back to look at Rocky upside down.
“Yes, this.”
They’d discussed mates before, of course, as well as the basic differences in their species’ methods of reproduction. Apparently they’d only talked about it in the purely scientific sense up to now if “family” had never come up.
“Well, a family is a group of people that are related to each other, for example mates and their children. But it can also include more members that were added by choice, like an adopted kid or a pet or anyone else really. They often share a living space.”
“Understand,” Rocky hummed. “We call this ♫♪.”
Grace nodded, replaying the sound in his head a few times to memorise it.
“Human family,” Rocky continued. “What is shape, question?”
“The classical constellation would be two mates, one male and one female, with on average two kids. These kids are called siblings, because they have the same parents. Your parents’ siblings are your aunts and uncles, their mates are also considered your aunt or uncle, and their kids are called your cousins. Your parents’ parents’ are called your grandparents. Your siblings’ mates are called your siblings-in-law, and their kids are your nieces and nephews – I think also called niblings.
“The parents and children are considered the core family, all the others are part of the extended family. But there’s a lot of variation, not everyone has the traditional family setup.”
Rocky had been listening intently, then gave a short hum to indicate he was satisfied with the explanation. He asked for him to repeat the words for siblings and grandparents so he could offer the translations.
“On Erid,” he said after Grace had done his best memorising the new terms (grandparents was easy, it was simply “before-parents”), “family only means core family. Extended family is too large to consider family, they are all just called ‘relations’.”
“Interesting,” Grace said. “How large would your entire extended family be?”
Rocky thought for a moment as he did the headcount. “I have one mate, five parents, six siblings, 14 grandparents, 31 siblings of parents, 78 mates of siblings of parents, 134 children of siblings of parents, 22 mates of siblings, 25 children of siblings, and some of children of siblings already have some mates, one already has two children. By now probably many more mates and children of children of siblings.”
Grace blinked.
“Yeah, that’s a lot,” he said weakly.
“What is size of Grace’s family, question?”
Something churned in Grace’s stomach. It wasn’t embarrassment, but it felt strangely similar. Not-embarrassment and some not-envy.
“Uh,” he said, stalling and scratching his leg, cheeks suddenly flush. “I’ve- I’ve got no one. Not anymore. I’m a single child, no siblings. Never knew my father. Uh, that’s the male parent. My mother, female parent, was also a single child, and her parents died when I was five and 13 years old. My mother died when I was 25. No mate, no kids, no pet. Just me.”
He did consider his students to be his kids, but that was different. They all had their own families. Grace was just their teacher. He didn’t…he didn’t even have a dog.
Silence stretched on between them for way too many moments in which he tried not to squirm. Then a low sad warble resounded through the room, and he heard Rocky place one of his hands against the xenonite wall.
“Yeah,” Grace mumbled, going back to making lab floor angels but stopping a few seconds after because the vibe had been utterly killed.
“Anyways,” he announced, ready to steer the topic away from his lonesome existence, “you have five parents? Details please.”
“Yes,” Rocky said, slowly at first but as he continued his pace grew, having picked up on the fact that Grace didn’t like the topic of his own family very much. “Most ♬♩♫ Eridians have four mates, so ♩♪ often has five Eridians. Some-”
“Wait, wait, new words,” Grace interrupted him.
“Ah, yes. ♬♩♫ means able to lay egg. Opposite is ♬♫♩♫.”
Right. He’d thought he’d heard the root word of “egg” in there somewhere. “Okay, we call that ovular and anovular. Some Eridians can’t lay eggs?”
“Yes, two thirds lay eggs, one third not.” Before Grace could ask any follow-up questions, Rocky continued on to the next new word. “Good. ♩♪ is group of mates.”
“Hmm, I think we call that a polycule? No, that’s only if there’s more than two. How about…constellation?”
“I like,” Rocky chimed happily before picking up where he left off as Grace tried to keep up with all the new terminology. “Most ovular Eridians have four mates, so five in constellation. Some have more, like my sibling ♬♬, they have ten mates. Some have less and are not looking for more mates, like Adrian and I. But-”
Rocky hesitated, claws clicking together a few times. Grace turned his head to see Rocky’s limbs curled in a bit, indicating he was uncomfortable.
“What?”
“I have not told anyone except Adrian,” he said quietly. There was something horribly vulnerable in his tone.
“It’s okay, Rock,” Grace immediately assured him, “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No,” Rocky said, “I want to say it. It’s just…difficult.”
“Alright,” Grace said, turning over onto his stomach and propping his head up with his hands, showing that Rocky had his full attention. “Take your time.”
After a pause and more claw clicking, Rocky spoke. “I am anovular.”
Grace nodded, not sure yet why this carried such weight for his best friend. “You said one third of Eridians are anovular?”
“Yes,” Rocky confirmed, “but most anovular Eridians don’t want mates or children. I do.”
Ah.
Oh.
A few months ago, another random memory had popped up. He’d been 17 and absolutely flabbergasted when one of his classmates had casually mentioned that yeah, more than half of the class aren’t virgins anymore, with which his “I’ll understand the sex thing when I’m older” excuse to himself had crumbled, because now he was at the age where people did the sex and he still didn’t get it. A lot of googling later had led him to the asexual label and yeah, that had tracked. So much. Still had been jarring to find out that he wasn’t the norm, that people experienced something as absurd as sexual attraction. His little biologist-in-the-making brain had told him that logically, the existence of sexual attraction made perfect evolutionary sense, but man had it been such a weird concept. Still was.
With the regained memory had come more labels he’d considered but knew he hadn’t adopted, at least not when he’d been 17. Most didn’t click with him anyways, but he remembered wishing he were aromantic as well, but thinking that it couldn’t be true because he had experienced crushes before as a kid. Due to the holey nature of his memories, he didn’t know if anything had changed label-wise since his teenage ace awakening. He remembered Linda and that whole train wreck, which was the only romantic relationship his brain could supply him with as a data point when it came to figuring out his romantic proclivities as an adult. He supposed he could do some more soul searching now, but since a) he’d been fairly busy trying to save humanity and Eridianity (naming things is hard, give him a break, okay?) and b) he was very likely never to see another human ever again, it hadn’t made it onto his list of priorities.
The point was, Rocky experiencing sexual and romantic attraction – or whatever the Eridian equivalents were – while being born with the other set of biological traits, it rang some familiar bells. Vaguely relating to his own asexuality but you know, flipped, as well as general human trans experiences, but also something else. Something just out of reach. It was a well known feeling at this point, the “I know I know this but I can’t fudging remember”.
“Humans have something similar,” he opted to reply. He still had all the vocab at the ready, both from his own exploration of the queer community as a teen and all the additional research he’d done after the first time a student had come out to him. “Not associated with relationships but with gender. Male humans are generally considered to be men and female humans to be women, which are the social roles tied to the biological makeup. These match for most humans, which is called being cisgender. But for some, the social gender is different from the biological sex, either swapped, some combination of the two or something else entirely. That’s called being transgender. So a trans man for example would be born with female parts but socially be a man. I don’t know how comparable it really is, but I guess you could be trans ovular? You align with the social aspects of being ovular but biologically you’re anovular.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Rocky agreed, perking up and doing small jazz hands. “We call this ♫♪♫. I am this.”
“Cool,” Grace said, smiling. Then he remembered the difficulty with which Rocky told him this aspect about himself, and his smile dropped. “Is it- do Eridians care? Is it socially accepted to be like this?”
Rocky lowered his arms. “Mostly, yes. Many don’t care. But some don’t think it is natural. Where I was hatched, there are more who think it is strange. I know my family would not care if I told them I was anovular but have mate. They also do not care that ♬♬ has many mates and that I only have one mate. But I was still scared to tell them this, so I didn’t.”
Grace nodded solemnly, raising a finger to tap against the xenonite. Rocky tapped back.
“I get it,” he said after a beat. “I’m asexual, or ace for short, which means I don’t feel sexual attraction to others. I still have all the bits to reproduce, but I just don’t see the appeal. So I guess in Eridian terms – since all humans are ovular in the sense that they are designed to have reproductive functions, even if some are infertile despite it – I would be trans anovular? Sorta. Not too sure about relationships as a whole though, but whatever.”
Rocky hummed excitedly. “Grace and Rocky are same but opposite!”
Grace laughed, something warm spreading in his chest. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Humans are accepting of this, question?”
He pursed his lips. “Not that much. Nowadays being gay is more accepted. That means two men or two woman are mates instead of one man and one woman. Being bi, so feeling attraction to more genders, is kind of borderline. Trans acceptance took a nosedive before I left, I hope they calmed down a bit on that front with the whole ‘our planet is dying’ stuff going on to distract them. But ace acceptance?” He sighed. “Generally it’s just not that well known. I remember that after I figured it out about myself and started expressing it to others when they asked me about sexual things, they tended to not believe me.”
“Humans are stupid,” Rocky stated, making Grace snort. “Why do they think you would say this if not honest, question?”
“Humans like their sex,” he said with a shrug. “And I don’t know, they’re generally not too good at trying to understand things that are different from themselves.”
Rocky hummed in acknowledgment, then after a pause pressed his fist against the wall.
“Trans friends,” he chimed.
Grace smiled, putting his fist to Rocky’s. “Yeah, buddy, trans friends.”
It felt a bit weird saying it because of the different meaning in human terminology, but also…not?
“Difference between social ovular and anovular is wanting mates and reproduction,” Rocky said, a bit more energetic than before. “What is difference between social male human and social female human, question?” (Since Eridians had no concept of sexual dimorphism, Rocky called female “large-egg” and male “small-egg” humans.)
Grace let out a long sigh. “Where do I even start? There’s too many subtle differences, especially behavioural, that I can’t even begin to differentiate because honestly, even as a human I never fully understood all the intricacies of gender. But I can give you the general social appearance distinctions that aren’t related to sexual dimorphism like height or body hair.
“In my culture and time period, men tend to cut their hair short while women grow theirs out. Men wear pants, so the fabric that goes around both legs individually, and women can wear pants too but they also wear skirts or dresses, where the fabric hangs loosely around both legs. Women wear makeup, which means they put materials on their face to enhance or change their appearance slightly. Women wear more decorative jewellery. Women’s clothing is generally more decorative and less boring than men’s clothing. But I don’t know, these are all just guidelines, a lot of cis people don’t fully adhere to these either.”
Rocky considered this, then pointed at him.
“You don’t follow rules, question?”
He frowned. “What do you mean, buddy?”
“You wear social female clothing.”
It took a second for it to click in his mind, and then he remembered that he was wearing a skirt. His cheeks burned.
“That’s not- I’m- I-”
Any excuse he was going to give died on his throat when a new memory wormed its way back into his brain.
It was a rainy afternoon, and Grace was sitting on his couch, laptop balanced on his legs. The Wikipedia page for Agender was opened.
Earlier that day, Ash had come out as non-binary to the class, which had lead to him holding an impromptu crash course on non-binary genders with the help of the internet and Ash themself. He’d been immensely relieved that none of the kids had given Ash any crap for it, and that most had seemed either curious or indifferent towards the concept of there being more than two genders.
During his only slightly clumsy explanations, his heart had been weirdly pounding in his chest. First he’d written it off as him not wanting to mess this up for Ash and the general education of the other kids. But later in the teachers’ lounge, he’d been sipping his coffee a few seats away from two of his male colleagues who were having a conversation about their definitely-not-a-shopping-trip, nooo it was a manly excursion to purchase tailored suits, and had rolled his eyes, the usual thoughts of “calm down, boys, no one’s taking your masculinity card away if you do [insert vaguely feminine thing]” popping up, and he’d frozen. It hadn’t been some big penny drop, but his mind had immediately wandered back to the labels discussed earlier that day and his heart had started to pound again in the exact same manner.
Which was why now he was staring at his laptop screen, cycling through all the times he’d thought gender roles were stupid and unnecessary and he’d wished people would stop bugging him when he chose a fruity cocktail and he’d wondered why he always felt like the odd one out in a troupe of men – as well as in a troupe of women – and how incredibly relieving it sounded to just not have to participate in gender, period.
The memory faded into the background, a voice bringing him back to the moment.
“Grace? You are okay, question? Did I offend, question? I apologise. Grace?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” he whispered, pushing himself up into a crosslegged position. He adjusted the skirt so that it rested neatly over his knees, running his fingers along the hem.
This was his skirt. Ilyukhina’s clothing was much smaller than his, he usually had a hard time zipping anything of hers up when he tried it on. This was one of his personal items. He was sure of it.
Grace couldn’t pull more information on his gender identity from the Swiss cheese that was his memory, but he now knew that he at the very least had felt a connection to the concept of being agender. Judging from the way his cheeks were still burning a bit as he played with the fabric of the skirt, he guessed that maybe it had been a fairly recent development, finding out he might not be cis. Maybe he’d only bought the skirt to try on at home and otherwise hadn’t done anything close to potentially transitioning before Project Hail Mary had taken over his life.
“I just remembered something,” he said eventually, Rocky having patiently waited until he gathered himself. His best friend produced a few encouraging notes, always glad whenever Grace managed to reclaim little parts of his past life. “It’s still kinda fuzzy, but I think just before I left Earth, I thought I might not be a man after all? That I’m- that I could be agender. Meaning that I don’t have a gender. I don’t know. I think this skirt is mine. I put it on now because there’s no one around to judge me, but I guess a regular guy wouldn’t do that even if they weren’t being judged. I don’t know.”
“It’s okay not to know,” Rocky rumbled, hand on the wall again. A soft smile tugged at Grace’s lips and he placed his hand on the same spot. “Grace is double trans, maybe, question?”
He huffed out a laugh, wiping a stray tear from the corner of his eye.
“The general term we use is queer,” he supplied. “This includes anyone who is either not straight, meaning exclusively interested in mating with the opposite gender, or not cis, or both. I guess I’m not straight, because I’m ace and maybe aro? That means I don’t want a romantic relationship. Maybe. And I might be- I might be trans, if I’m agender. So yeah, double queer. Or triple. I don’t know.”
“Me too,” Rocky said enthusiastically, one hand still on the xenonite while two others did jazz hands again. “I am trans, and I am other-mated, meaning someone who has more or less than five mates by choice. General word for both is ♫♪♬♩.”
Grace’s smile widened as he logged the new term. Rocky’s hand against the wall curled into a fist again. “Queer friends.”
Several more tears dripped down Grace’s cheeks at the wave of emotions regarding the accidental bout of soul searching he’d just done, and that he was definitely going to dig into more now that Rocky showed such enthusiasm about the topic. If not for his own sake as someone who was to spend the rest of his days on an alien planet with no more need for human labels, then for the sake of cultural understanding and perhaps some type of community on Erid. A community he’d share with Rocky. That alone was enough reason to explore the depths of human social constructs and how he used to stand with them.
“Queer friends,” he agreed, forming a fist as well.
“Happy, happy, happy,” Rocky chimed, pulling back his hand and getting comfortable again. “Continue music.”
Still smiling, Grace rolled onto his back again, hitting play on his laptop. “Sure, buddy.”
I'm not missing someone that I've never met
Maybe a little scared, still I don't care
I'm not missing out so don't ask me again
Thanks for your concern, but here's the thing
Yeah, this was definitely not a love song.
I've never been in love
And it's all good
Not the only one
Feeling like they should
Maybe one day, some day
But no, I ain't in a rush
I say whatever, don't care that I've never
No, never been in love
“It’s like you!” Rocky piped up animatedly, claw clicking against the xenonite. “Human who doesn’t want mate!”
“Yeah,” Grace said, raising a hand to tap back. His heart was jumpy and his cheeks flush, but in a good way now.
You can have your romance, go on a perfect date
But for me, there just ain't enough hours in the day
And I, don't mean to rain on your happiness
But I'm alone with no loneliness
Grace was going to be living alone as the only human on Erid for however long his life was going to be, depending on his food situation. Being afraid of loneliness because of it had never even occurred to him. All his fears were centered around, you know, dying. Because when he had such an amazing friend as Rocky, promising him the biggest welcome and the best habitat a leaky space blob could ask for and anything else he needed to be happy, how could he ever feel lonely?
Fingers of one hand brushing against the xenonite where Rocky’s were doing the same, Grace began to bob his other hand and his feet to the rhythm, the soft fabric of the skirt rippling over his knees every time he swayed them from side to side.
Sometimes Grace was really glad he was living in a tiny pressurised space with only a sentient, queer rock for company.