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It had been over λ days since Rocky had left to spend time with the alien, and Adrian couldn’t help but feel herself growing a little annoyed.
She knew it was a lost cause to even allow herself to be bothered by her mate’s devotion to the thing. It had been II+ years (Eridian years, not the “Earth” years Rocky still sometimes slipped up and spoke of) since he had returned to Erid, and she had long since had it drilled into her head that she was now relegated to being her mate’s second priority.
She tried her best not to be bitter, but she couldn’t help but wish that he’d return the devotion she’d shown him. She’d waited for him countless years, never once taking another mate. She had tried not to hold the time against him. He’d been through unimaginable trauma, all to save the world. He was a hero, undeniably.
But he had also promised to be back within V days, right before departing to the alien’s biosphere. He was a habitual liar, a trait he hadn’t had before he’d left. It frustrated her to the point of wanting to grab him and shake him until whatever had gone loose in his brain snapped back into place, and he started acting like a normal Eridian again. It was a cruel thought, so she only allowed herself to relish in it for a few moments.
She knew she had to be patient with him. As his mate, she’d been privileged enough to be allowed to be a part of the thrum that had taken place regarding Rocky’s condition upon returning to Erid. She’d learned that alongside the long list of poorly-healed injuries he’d sustained, his mental processes would likely take several centuries to be corrected after spending so long in total isolation, and that was if he could ever recover at all.
As it was now, he was strange and erratic. He was often very aggressive and mean abruptly at times it felt inappropriate, in ways that seemed totally at odds with how everyone around him acted. And he would not allow himself to be separated from his alien for longer than + days. He’d spent far longer with it than he had spent with her.
She would not be bitter about this. Her mate coming back to her was the greatest gift she’d ever received. Just because he was mentally unwell and dependent on an alien did not mean that she would take her frustrations out in such a negative way. Perhaps he’d needed to sleep, and had allowed Savior Grace to observe. She wouldn’t jump to the worst conclusions immediately. That had already started more than enough arguments, and she still felt guilty about heaping additional stress onto her mate when those occasions had occurred in the past.
Still, Adrian was peeved. A little. It was reasonable.
She’d grown tired of waiting. She stretched out each of her legs methodically, feeling her hearts pumping a bit faster to accommodate the sudden rush of blood throughout her system. She’d been lying down for a while, three of her legs tucked beneath herself as she fiddled with the radio that she’d told Rocky she didn’t need him to fix. She hadn’t been able to finish the repairs, but she’d made good progress. She knew that Rocky would’ve had it done already, but she enjoyed having a challenging task to do on her days off.
It was a relatively short walk to the alien biodome. Rocky had insisted on relocating to live beside it, and Adrian had begrudgingly agreed. The thing was massive, towering high above any of the surrounding buildings needed to support the fragile ecosystem inside. As she approached, she could hear the strange rhythmic rumble of the moving water crashing onto the sandy shore through the walls. If she listened closer, she knew she’d be able to hear the complex machinery that kept the water cycling. The fact that water on Earth moved so fiercely was shocking.
She made her way into one of the buildings connected to the dome. The two guards outside hummed a greeting, and she’d hummed back, not slowing down as she walked past. She didn’t come here too often, but she’d come to retrieve Rocky enough times that everyone in the workforce knew her personally. She hadn’t learned any of their names, but they all knew hers. Being the mate of the savior of Erid came with plenty of perks.
It was a long, slightly frightening process to clip herself into one of the xenonite suits that served to protect her from the frigid environment inside the biosphere. It was still shocking to her that any creature could survive such cold temperatures and dangerous atmosphere. She couldn’t help but remember the scarring on Rocky’s respirator slits from his brief exposure to so much oxygen. She knew that the suit would protect her, but the fear of a breach was just one more thing on the long list that kept her away from wanting to visit Savior Grace’s enclosure.
After checking an admittedly excessive amount of times that her suit was fitted correctly, and slotting the life support air conditioning into place fully covering her own respirators, she steeled herself. Activating the air lock always made her nervous.
It took a while for the air within to cycle out thoroughly. The ammonia that she was so used to breathing was extremely hazardous to the alien inside, and with how frequently Rocky visited, the system had to ensure that the absolute minimum would follow any visitor inside. After just enough time to make her feel anxious that maybe something had gone wrong, the door opened, letting her inside the biosphere.
The xenonite blocked the majority of the heat transfer between the two atmospheres, but she still couldn’t help but feel a chill running down her carapace as she stepped into the frozen habitat inside the biosphere. The suit held, just as she knew it would. It was custom built to her size by Rocky, as a way to encourage her to visit more often. It was much less unwieldy than the typical ball-shaped suit that most visitors had to wear, and was fitted to each of her limbs with a complex series of xenonite paneling. It wasn’t quite as flexible as Rocky’s suit, she knew. His suit was so complex and consisted of so many intricate panels that it felt as slippery as fine fabric, perhaps even more so. It did more than do the job, though.
It wasn’t quite comfortable, but she’d manage for the few minutes it would take to retrieve her mate.
She began to mentally prepare herself. She wasn’t particularly squeamish, but Savior Grace was quite unnerving to be around. Its soft outer shell left absolutely none of its internals to the imagination, and the way that its organs twisted and throbbed within it made her feel sick and uneasy. It felt like a fragile vector for disease, more like an open wound than a person, and to hear such a thing function like one was quite terrifying. She’d expressed her discomfort and disgust to Rocky only once, and he’d taken such great offence that it had led to one of their worst arguments that they’d ever had. She’d been around Savior Grace as little as she could help.
As she walked along the beach, Adrian did find herself unnerved with just how loud that the artificial sea was. It obscured most of her surroundings beyond a short radius, her echolocation struggling to work through the din. She only knew she was going the right direction because there were prints etched into the sand from when someone else, presumably Rocky, had walked along the beach prior.
As she approached the strange alien structure that Savior Grace called his home, leaving behind the crashing waves, her range of hearing began to expand. The jagged stone-covered landscape became more clear, and she began to walk methodically up the oddly shaped stairs that suited the human’s legs best.
It was a long trek up, and as she began to ascend she tilted her carapace in order to cast her hearing up further. She would hate to accidentally walk in on the alien eating, which he did with disturbing frequency even when Rocky was visiting. After making that mistake once, she would always make sure to check before drawing too near.
She froze at what sounded like an Eridian screaming. It took her only a few brief moments to recognize the voice as Rocky’s. It sounded like he was in immense pain. Worry for her mate made her move quickly, stumbling up the stairs as swiftly as she safely could as she craned her carapace in hopes of trying to view whatever horrors were happening to make it sound like her mate was dying.
As she approached and the interior of the home came into focus, though, her panicked scuttling began to slow once more until she had stopped entirely, unable to comprehend what it was that she was witnessing.
Despite its diminutive weight, Savior Grace had somehow Rocky pinned down on his back. It was an extremely vulnerable position for an Eridian, especially in the presence of others. To Adrian’s horror, she realized that his ventral seam was open.
Despite the thin layer of xenonite between them, it seemed as though that horrid alien had somehow pried her mate’s carapace open and was shoving its smallest appendage, the one between the legs it used to walk, into the orifice. Rocky writhed in its grip, but despite the fact that he was obviously much stronger than the creature on top of him, he didn’t seem to be trying to escape.
Savior Grace bore down on Rocky harder, pressing him into the ground with its full weight, and Rocky screamed once more. However, now that Adrian was properly paying attention, she realized that what had sounded like a wordless screech of agony was actually the alien’s name, drawn out long and forced out at such a high pitch that it left her auricles ringing despite still having a great distance between herself and the pairing.
Rather than pushing it away, Rocky’s arms desperately grabbed at the alien, letting out another wounded wail as the most private, delicate part of his body was forced open to accommodate the thing that Savior Grace was pushing into him. It was unlike anything Adrian had ever witnessed before. It was horrific. An Eridian’s orifice was not meant to be touched so roughly, especially not by someone other than themself, other than perhaps in a strictly medical context.
This was obviously not medical. Rocky must have been making those noises because he was in agony, unsurprising given how that strange limb was deep enough into his gut to press past his stomach and up into his more delicate organs. And yet still he seemed to be allowing it to happen. He writhed in place, screaming, but his motions only served to encourage the alien’s assault.
Adrian was just about to push aside her disgust and horror and storm the building in order to rescue her mate when she realized abruptly what she was witnessing.
They were mating.
Eridians did not penetrate each other. Their ovipositors were strictly meant to keep them from having to press their entire ventral openings to the ground when laying eggs. However, it was something that a few particularly disgusting and kinky individuals allegedly got up to in probably-fake rumors that occasionally spread in order to sully reputations. The idea of someone inserting their ovipositor into another Eridian’s orifice in order to lay eggs within them was seen as the ultimate taboo. It was no better than laying eggs in someone’s open wound, with the additional horror of forcing another to consume their unfertilized offspring. It was a violent act. It was the worst violation someone could go through.
And that was undeniably what was happening to Adrian’s mate right in front of her.
Savior Grace’s ovipositor, because she was certain that was what it was, was much longer and firmer than any Eridian’s. Rather than a short soft tube meant solely to transport eggs, it was like a blade, forcing Rocky’s delicate soft flesh to part before its own unyielding force. The xenonite did nothing to protect Rocky’s frail internals, and Adrian could only watch in horror as he was spread open with far more force than any Eridian’s body was meant to handle. There was so much blood that there was no way that it wasn’t agonizing.
But Rocky seemed to relish in it. Adrian felt hysteria rise within her as she heard his cries, pleading for his alien to continue to ravage him. This was so unlike typical Eridian mating that Adrian hadn’t even initially been able to identify it as what it was, and yet Rocky was allowing it to happen to him. He’d never made sounds like that for her, keening cries of pleasure so sharp that it sounded like pain.
He was ruined for Eridian sex. Forced open and taken apart and damaged irreversibly. Recreated into the role of a sick toy for Savior Grace to use at its own discretion. Eridians didn’t even usually mate at all outside of the peak of their egg cycle. But the familiar way in which the thing that Rocky had brought back with him from the stars moved him, as if it knew his body more intimately than even Adrian did, made her realize that this was likely something that the pair did frequently.
It was too much. Adrian took a step back away from the house, entire body trembling. She should intervene, she knew. Burst through the entrance of the building and fight the horrible creature that had corrupted her mate so thoroughly. But she felt sick. Did she even want to save Rocky, as disgusting as he now was? His orifice was stretched open and sloppy with blood, torn and gaping from an alien’s genitals. Ruined. And he loved it.
She didn’t think she’d even be able to talk to him without remembering this moment. The way he begged for it.
She took another step backwards, right as the alien let out a garbled cry that she recognized as its version of her mate’s name. A disgusting liquid gushed forth from its ovipositor, and if not for the xenonite it would have flooded Rocky’s internal cavity, staining him with its filth. Despite the barrier, it was still horrific to behold. The viscous fluid clung to the panels, certainly too dirtied now to ever get truly clean.
Is this why Rocky had insisted on his suit being so flexible? Is this what he’d been up to every day, when Adrian was waiting patiently at home for him to return to her? For how long? Since they’d arrived on Erid together? Sooner?
No wonder he had prioritized that thing over her.
She couldn’t bring herself to enter. She immediately started back down the stairs again, knowing that the loud clanking of her steps were probably loud enough for the pair inside to hear, but she didn’t care. She had to get away from what she’d just overheard.
Maybe she deserved to be a little meaner to Rocky in the future.