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Rocky hates his body.
Not his real body, that was just fine. Preferred, even. But his new body- his finely crafted, carefully made android vessel he’d spent the better part of three Earth years developing with the aid of some pretty useful schematics on his laptop- is a different story. Grace can still remember Rocky’s first attempt to link his consciousness to it, under careful assistance of one nervous human. He wishes he could forget.
“Remind me again why this is a good idea?” he hears himself ask, the edges of his voice crackling with hesitation and just a hint of fear. “I don’t know why you’d need something like this, Rock.”
Rocky either doesn’t notice or ignores it, simply warbling something Grace cannot translate directly (even though he’s sure it’s a swear all the same, one day he’ll finally convince him to teach them to him) as he rolls towards the humanoid slumped against the wall. “So Rocky can be in Grace atmosphere. No worry about die if Grace need help again.”
Grace’s fingertips brush over the claw-shaped indentation on his arm reflexively, a pang of guilt stinging his throat until he sighs through it and forces himself to think of the hours and hours of back and forth they’d done the past three years. From Grace’s “I should’ve”s to Rocky’s “Not your fault”s until Grace started to believe it himself. Either way, echoes of Rocky’s screeches of pain lurk relentlessly in the corners his mind. He thinks they always will.
“Grace?” He blinks and sees Rocky, now secure in a xenonite container next to the metal body with his transfer equipment firmly secure in its proper positions. The way the cables are fixed looks eerily similar to that of hospital IVs and monitor wires, and Grace halts that trail of thought before he has the chance to sprint down it full force. “Rocky start link now. Time go, question?”
Clearing his throat, he offers an encouraging nod and strolls across the lab to his own computer, where he waits for Rocky’s thumbs up and starts the program.
In the movies, there’s usually some kind of futuristic beeping and dramatic music during this part, but all Grace experiences is a droning silence as the loading screen shifts to an upload bar. His stomach flips each time the bar pauses its progression, dread sinking in despite Rocky’s earlier insistence that the first upload should take about five minutes, according to the manuals. He tries to reassure himself with each achingly slow minute that his best friend, his only friend, will be fine and won’t in fact possibly die doing something for Grace’s benefit again.
It’s not much longer before the program clears from his screen and offers an underwhelming “complete” window. The android doesn’t move. Rocky’s real body doesn’t move. Grace doesn’t either, and it takes a deep breath through burning lungs to realize he’d been holding it for way too long.
The way its eyes open so quickly descends so fast into uncanny valley that Grace feels a sinking flip in his stomach. But he doesn’t have much time to think on it as it takes a few short blinks, recoils in on itself, and screams a piercing, agonizing yelp.
Grace bolts toward his friend, reaching out in a panic. He stops himself just as he’s about to rest a careful hand on the mechanical shoulder. He remembers how everything felt when he first woke up aboard the Hail Mary. Recollections of a particularly rowdy dorm party his freshman year of college and how the noise amplified the unadjustable frigid temperature of the a/c unit, the scratchy texture of his new sweater he’d already been on the fence about, the sharp lingering on his tongue of a beer he’d sipped after a class that made him feel dumber than a box of rocks. Maybe he shouldn’t use that simile anymore. Not important.
Rocky is overstimulated.
“Hey,” Grace hums, voice as gentle and quiet as he can muster, at such a loss for what to do that he can’t think of anything else in the moment but to try and ask Rocky how he can help. It isn’t much use; Rocky flinches and lets out another warbled shriek that sounds a strange mix of machinery and human, his hands covering the ears in what Grace supposes is a futile attempt to cover the auditory sensors.
It suddenly hits him just what is wrong, and he feels a wave of nausea loop around his stomach and crawl up his throat. Rocky had intentionally turned the auditory processors up to account for his typical hearing. The schematics he’d found had been specifically tailored to human ears and their hearing range. He’d been insistent that he keep his hearing as close to his own standard as possible.
Neither of them had thought to account for the multitude of other senses he would be adjusting to, all at once.
Grace feels like such an idiot as he scrambles to the computer in a hurried search for what to do, if it was safe for him to disconnect the link so suddenly or if it would hurt Rocky. A soft thud on the floor makes him whip his head back to see the android collapsed and limp on the floor. For half a second, it looks more human than it had sitting unceremoniously against the wall at the start of all this. Grace chooses to ignore that.
Just as he begins to comb fervently through the manuals for help, the program returns with another loading screen, this time with “UNLINKING…please stand by” replacing the upload prompt. He huffs out a sigh of relief that forces him to swallow it down when it deepens that queasy sensation he can’t yet shake.
They don’t talk after Rocky returns to his body. Not for the rest of the day cycle, or the one after. Rocky sleeps, Grace watches, and meals are otherwise wordless. He waits for Rocky to speak first, not wanting to overstep or risk being too loud in case it’s too much again, even in his own form.
“…Rocky hate machine human.” Grace glances up from the noodles he’d spent more time looking at than actually consuming to see Rocky leaning against the xenonite. “Loud. Not only ears. Eyes loud. Touch loud. Nose loud. All loud, loud, loud.”
Grace’s heart aches listening to his friend explain, offering nods of understanding. “The sensory settings are all too high for you, buddy. It probably didn't help when they hit you all at once. You got overstimulated.”
Rocky thinks for a moment. “…This happen to humans?” he asks slowly.
Grace nods.
“This happen to Grace?”
He bites the inside of his cheek and nods again as his tongue soothes the sting.
“…Understand.” Rocky chirps something Grace can’t be sure, but he’s come to believe it’s some variation of “damn it”. “Human biology picky.”
Grace can’t help but chuckle a little. “Well, to be fair, humans don’t tend to experience it all as soon as they’re born. They have time to adjust. Some just…don’t adjust the same way as others.”
Rocky taps his leg against the floor, like he’s thinking. “Rocky do research.”
A couple weeks go by of Rocky pointedly avoiding the link equipment and Grace quietly reading CyberLife user manuals while he watches his friend sleep. He doesn’t once ask Rocky to take another shot at it, even though he knows he probably should’ve. In the event of an emergency it could be a matter of life and death for both of them. It would mean nothing if Rocky couldn’t cope with the input.
“Grace?” He feels a sense of deja vu as he looks up from the movie on his laptop at Rocky, who’s approaching him in his xenonite ball. “Rocky human body ready for second link attempt.”
Grace blinks, unsure what to say. “…Are you sure about that, Rock?” he asks, eyes darting from Rocky towards the lab where the android body lay. It’s only now that he sees that the design has been altered slightly. Where once was a metal body which appeared just south of human for comfort now displayed synthetic skin and hair that seems eerily similar to the real thing. While it offsets the uncanny valley of before, it still does little to change the real issue at hand for him. “You didn’t do too well with the last try-“
“No, no. Sensory features on too early,” Rocky explains. “Too much at once. Bad, bad, bad. But if we link with all off and turn up slow, we find correct settings.”
Grace nods slowly, even as he hides his inkling of reticence at the prospect of something going wrong. He hadn’t been the biggest fan of CyberLife before he’d been sent into the vast unknown, both due to the ethics and the way humanity had acted in the wake of artificial intelligence. Not to mention their CEO seeming like such a tool. That didn’t help. But he knows the designs are relativity well crafted, and Rocky’s alterations during the build had eased any remainder of doubt. But still, it’s Rocky, and Grace doesn’t want to gamble. Not again.
“…Alright,” he says quietly after a moment of talking himself off the ledge. “But I have an idea.”
The mental health node seems freaky to Grace without the screens on. It’s something akin to a liminal space and completely defeats the purpose of the room in the first place. But he keeps the screens off as Rocky offers a confident, “Ready!” in the darkness. The light of his computer screen is the only thing he sees as he starts the program and reminds himself seemingly every other second to just breathe, it’ll be fine, he’ll be okay, you won’t be alone-
He’s careful as he steps over to the android body laying on the floor and kneels next to it. The moment the loading screen shifts to the complete prompt he takes a deep breath and begins the procedure as they’d planned it.
First, touch. It was the quickest to do, and easiest to do silently. He stares at the dials on the board next to the link equipment, just barely illuminated by the screen as he slowly turns the first one up about halfway. He reaches out to the android’s hand, and rests his hand over it. Then, firm enough to be felt but not much more, he taps its arm. Just two gentle taps, looking to gauge a response.
Nothing happens for a moment and Grace feels dread gnawing in his chest. But just as he’s about to let it swallow him whole, he feels the hand slowly turn and tap his own,, earning a deep exhale from Grace. Two in response meant the input level was okay.
“Good, buddy. That’s great,” Grace breathes in relief, even though Rocky can’t hear him. He clears his throat and looks to the next dial.
Sound. It’s best to continue with the senses Rocky’s most familiar with. He turns the dial slower than before, only about a quarter the amount he’d turn the last. “Testing, testing,” he says gently, pinching the dial a little harder when he hears his voice trembling nervously. “Rocky? Can you hear me?”
The android flinches in reaction to the noise and Grace immediately turns it down. He tries to think of an easy way to do this without hurting Rocky, and his thoughts land on the headphones wrapped around his neck. He pulls them off and places them on the android- on Rocky’s ears (the disconnect between the mechanical vessel and his best friend feels odd) and tries again. “Testing, testing.”
There’s only a short moment before he feels a hand reach out to deliver two insistent, excited taps. Grace chuckles. “Alright, two down. Doin’ great. Do you want to try to speak now, or do you want me to go ahead with vision?”
He shifts the laptop’s screen to direct the light as best he can onto Rocky to see his mouth open and close and his face contort into…annoyance?
Oh, that’s right. Grace just asked an either/or question when Rocky only has “yes” or “no” responses. Amazing.
“Sorry, my bad. Do you want to try to speak first?”
He feels two taps and then-
“G…Gra- ace?”
It’s distorted and grainy and laced with uncertainty, but it’s unmistakably Rocky. He sounds just like the voice they’d picked before. Grace supposes Rocky had chosen to keep it for his android body as well, which feels a bit endearing to know Rocky had grown somewhat sentimental to his previously selected human voice.
Rocky’s lips part, but he doesn’t speak again. His tongue pokes out as he opens his mouth, and Grace can see the clear synthetic lubrication coat his chin as he sticks it out as far as he can. His face contorts in repulsion and Grace can’t fight down a laugh as Rocky utters out, “Wet. Disgust.” His words sound strange, his vowels elongated and not quite correct at times as he puts the linguistics instructions he’d studied in his preparation to good use. Grace can still tell that maneuvering lips and teeth and tongue is unsettling him, even as he does his best to take it in stride.
“I wonder why they gave androids spit,” Grace asks offhandedly, looking back at the dials as he plans their next step.
“CyberLife manuals say saliva is designed for lubrication and cleaning during analysis. Models HR400 and WR400 utilize for-“
“WOAH,” Grace interrupts suddenly, really not wishing to be educated on the sexual logistics of the Traci models. This proves to be a terrible reaction when Rocky winces like his synthetic skin is being burned. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles apologetically in return.
“Vision, question?” Rocky asks when both fail to initiate the next step. Maybe it’s out of an abundance of caution, but Grace is certain he’s riding the wave of hesitation to turn that dial out of sheer nervousness for what could happen. Rocky’s shrieks of agony during the first link attempt fill his own ears in the voided silence of the room until he feels two taps on his wrist again. He clears his throat and taps back, then ever so slowly turns the third dial.
He barely gets a fifth of the max settings before Rocky’s tapping rapidly across his arm, having missed his wrist entirely from the speed of his movements. Three taps, pause. Three taps, pause.
Bad, Bad, Bad.
Grace is quick to shut it off again and sighs in defeat, pulling his glasses off his face to rub his eyes. A thought pops into his mind as he pushes them back up the bridge of his nose and he abruptly stands. “Hang on, I think I’ve got something-“ he says, freezing in place before he can just absentmindedly walk away. “Will you be okay alone for a second?”
“Yes,” he hears in the darkness. “Can still use senses. Know where Grace go. Normal.”
He smiles a little and makes fast work of leaving and returning, now with a pair of white sunglasses in his hands which he tenderly places over Rocky’s new eyes. The light of the computer screen reflects a dim white light on his expressionless face and Grace hums in satisfaction at his idea.
“Alright. One more shot. Are you ready?”
Rocky’s hand lifts to touch the glasses. He nods a little more enthusiastically when he understands what’s happening. “Yes, yes. Try again.”
Grace takes one long, slow inhale and turns the dial just as slowly as before. The silence is tense, and maybe holding his breath isn’t helping the heartbeat pumping wildly in his ears with each chronically slow second that passes.
“Good. Is perfect,” Rocky says quickly when Grace manages about a sixth of the max input level. “Try with light now. Then adjust.”
Grace doesn’t dare exhale. He barely moves for more than it takes to slow turn on the reserve lights. They flicker for half a second before bathing the space in a dull illumination. Rocky is sitting up, head moving about the room with his mouth slightly ajar. “…Oooo,” he says quietly under his breath. “Good. Good, good, good.”
Rocky simulates an inhale and an exhale and the release of air Grace does in turn is silent even as he forces out the burn from his lungs to replace with fresh oxygen. He nods. “Great. So uh…what’s next again?” he asks lamely. He honestly hadn’t been expecting to get this far.
“Other senses unnecessary. We run diagnostic.”
So they run through the CyberLife manual’s checklists, testing everything from Rocky’s dexterity to his balance to his auditory and visual acuity. Rocky isn’t too pleased by the finer details he can see. “Too much,” he mumbles when Grace is a little too heavy handed with the adjustments and he sees with a clarity that makes everything so much louder and his synthetic skin crawl. “Human biology picky. Even machine human so easy to overstimulate.”
Grace offers a hum of agreement. “Tell me about it, pal,” he says as he turns the sharpness down. “Wish I could fix my own settings like this. It would’ve made stuff a lot easier in my life.”
There’s a lingering silence that follows. Grace worries he might have overshared when they were supposed to be focusing on Rocky, but just as he begins that spiral, he watches Rocky slowly raise his hand to his face, grasp the edge of the sunglasses, and pull them off.
Rocky’s eyes are green.
They’re a bright green that borders on inhuman, but falls just shy of it. It teeters precariously on the edge of the unknown and traps Ryland Grace in them completely.
Until they’re suddenly dimmed by Rocky placing the shades over his current pair of glasses, smiling like he’d accomplished something important. “Better for Grace?” he asks curiously.
Grace needs a second to process, but he breaks out into a smile when he realizes. He had helped Rocky dull his sensory input, and now Rocky was doing the same for him. He laughs softly and takes them off. “I’m alright for now, Rock. Thanks, though. I don’t think it’s as bright for me as it is for you.” As he speaks, he sees Rocky’s smile melt as he raises his hands to his cheeks, rubbing him softly.
“Strange,” he offers, tone flat. “Hurt, but not.”
“Muscle aches,” Grace points out, nodding. Before- “Wait, they put pain receptors in them?” he asks curiously, turning back towards the computer to fire up the manual for reference. “That…” he trails off, unsure how phrase it. “That seems kinda cruel.” He supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised. Again, their CEO was awfully pretentious.
“No, no. CyberLife androids no feel pain. Big feature.”
Grace blinks. “But that doesn’t make sense. If androids don’t have pain receptors, then how are you-“
“Link requires deviation. Code in program. Rocky fix. Easy.”
The room is eerily silent as Grace’s eyes remain fixed on a proud Rocky, who stares back at him with that same grin of accomplishment as before. He tries really hard not to think of the horrifying implications of what he’s just been told.
“…Right…” Grace says slowly. After another beat passes, he shakes his head. He can get into that later. They still have tests to run. “So is everything at a good enough level for you now? No overload?”
Looking around the room, Rocky hums a short vibration and stands from his position on the floor. “Good now. Need more input to test limit.” He points to the laptop. “Grace show Rocky more Earth. Can see from Grace perspective! Much input, is perfect!”
He seems so excited by the idea as he voices it Grace can’t dare argue. In fact, he’s got a little boost of energy himself thinking about Rocky getting to see the way he sees. Part of him wishes he could experience things the way Rocky does in his real body. Maybe all of him does, actually.
“Oh!” Grace’s head snaps up from the laptop in response to the interjection just in time to witness Rocky take half a step back and smile brighter. “Can do environmental scan in mind. Look like how Rocky see! Amaze, amaze, amaze!” Rocky’s undiluted delight pools out of him and builds infectiously in Grace’s chest. It’s both a joy and an immense relief to have gone from hearing warped shouts of pain to clear, lighthearted tones of surprise.
“Got the best of both worlds,” Grace says.
“Hm, no understand. Not on world.” Rocky blinks curiously. “On way to Erid. Grace okay? How long since last sleep?” He sounds worried again and Grace has to fight a confused expression he nearly makes when he notices the warmth in his chest intensify at the firm look Rocky is giving him.
“It’s an expression, Rock. It just means you get to have good parts of your normal body and this one.” Grace looks away to pull up a video for the screens. “Do you want to choose one?” He turns the screen towards Rocky, who approaches and scans over it before nodding and using one finger to move the pointer and click.
Nothing happens at first, strangely. But then, a long streak shoots vertically across the screens and explodes into streaks of red with a loud POP.
Rocky flinches (as does Grace) but he doesn’t make a sound of discomfort or move to shut it off or even aim for Grace’s wrist in distress. He just stares for a moment, mouth agape in wonder. “…That…” He pauses. “Need word.”
Right. Grace holds up a finger. “Hang on, wait, I’ve got this,” he says energetically as he reaches near the link equipment where Rocky’s Eridian body remains just as still as he is when sleeping. He scoots a setup closely akin to Rocky’s texture monitor towards the screens, displaying patterns across it in time with the video. “I thought it might be easier to understand the color spectrum based on what you’re familiar with.”
The way Rocky looks back at him Grace can only describe as “grateful”, but there’s a hint of something else that make the warmth sink into his stomach. Not knowing the reason is starting to bother him.
They spend what feels like hours in there, but Grace can’t feel a genuine passage of time anymore. At least not with Rocky there. It feels like all the time in the world and a microsecond all at once. He can’t understand why.
After a while, they stop fretting over the details of calibrating the body and just watch the fireworks displays. Grace offers to play other videos, but Rocky insists on these. So Grace plays themed shows and large events, homemade recordings of local displays with rowdy children laughing in the background.
“Colors so beautiful,” Rocky breathes out in amazement. Despite not needing it to survive, he’s gotten really good at well timed inhale/exhale cycles for a normal human, something Grace notices out of the corner of his eye. “So…much. But good. Good much.”
Grace watches idly from where he’s sat next to Rocky, legs criss-crossed and knees up as his arms wrap loosely around them. “Yeah, it’s pretty, isn’t it?” he asks softly, eyes shifting to each quick burst of color that dances across the screen. Blue and purple and red and green- the same bright luminesce of eyes that look at him so gently yet so firmly-
“Colors so beautiful on Grace face.” It’s only when he finally makes eye contact that he notices Rocky is looking at him, not the screen. “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”
Oh.
Oh.
It all make sense now. The feeling in his chest, the bouts of tension, the soft worry they both have when they take a step too far for the other. Something was happening here.
He doesn’t dare speak first. Not like he can anyhow, his tongue has melted in his mouth and his brain’s a puddle of goo that can’t form words.
“Grace?” Rocky asks quietly, moving to sit on his knees in front of the other. “Grace beautiful,” he says, like he’s confessing something.
For just a moment, he wants to relent and give in to whatever Rocky is offering in between the words. But then he thinks of Adrian and feels a guilt quickly overshadow. “But what about Adrian? You’ve been together so long and-“
“Adrian will think Grace beautiful as well!” Rocky replies with an enthusiastic nod. “Adrian Rocky take good care of Grace. Make happy, happy, happy.”
Grace feels his face heat up and something churn in his stomach that feels slightly stranger than the warmth of before. Strange, but not unwelcome. He sees Rocky’s hands fiddling together in his lap, which he immediately clocks as anxiety. Ever so slowly, like he’s waiting for Rocky to notice and interrupt, he reaches out to cease the nervous wringing by taking one synthetic hand into his own. It’s warm, and softer than his own from the lack of any wear on them. But they feel real, and Rocky is in control of them, so they are real.
“…Okay,” he says after either an eternity of silence, or maybe just a few seconds. Either way, it’s enough for Rocky. He smiles brighter than he ever has before and scoots excitedly closer to Grace.
“Kiss Grace now, question?” Rocky asks him. Grace just grin shyly in return and takes another leap of faith for Rocky with a short nod.
So Rocky can’t kiss. That’s okay! He’s new to this body, after all. This body he once loathed and found overwhelming but now finds to have its benefits as he tries to navigate lips and tongue and teeth for more than speaking. Grace takes his inexperienced movements in stride as he reciprocates and finds he’s not much better than Rocky despite having this body literally his entire life. None of it matters, though. He pulls away just long enough to shift into a more comfortable position and then Rocky’s arms are around his waist and his lips are back on his own and- oh, that’s different. Grace is a little jealous at how fast he navigates a learning curve.
It’s over as quick as it begins. Grace catches his breath while Rocky looks on in amazement. “Grace face red. Softer red. Beautiful.” His smile is bleeding adoration that causes Grace’s cheeks to only heat up more from the statement. He turns his head to the side in embarrassment. “No, no look away!” Rocky insists, reaching up to grab Grace’s chin and turn his face back into view. “Let Rocky see color!”
Grace laughs and tries to turn away again as Rocky continues, the fireworks popping along the screens and bathing them in colors that Rocky now gleefully ignores in favor of the one warming Grace’s face.