Gay :)

There's help by governments for people who lost their partners at war, isn't there? I imagine Adrian starkly refusing it. Their family tries to subtly help them instead when it gets too hard. They watch Adrian sleep and Adrian watches them sleep, but everyone knows they would've slept better if it was Rocky.

"Adrian just won't accept it"

"Grief affects people in different ways, we just need to give them time"

Imagine people not telling Adrian that the government was starting talks for sending another ship. Imagine the reaction. Adrian probably could've been very helpful with the new mission, but they just broke down whenever they thought of working on it because that meant they had given up on Rocky, Rocky who they had been with for nearly 150 years. Rocky who they should've been with for another 400 more.

Imagine how they felt when they got that weird radio signal from that weird ship up in orbit. At first no one would've told them, wanting to wait for confirmation for Rocky before getting that poor, heartbroken widow's hopes up. But Adrian found out anyways and they are so goddamn hopeful. Sure it's not an eridian ship. Sure the radio signal is this weird, garbled, non-eridian thing. But what if Rocky is on there.

AND HE FUCKING IS AS WELL

Can you even imagine?? How Adrian must've felt hearing their soulmates voice over the radio once more, once it's been translated to frequencies they can receive? They are dropping everything. They're gone. They're going to the space elevator site. They are demanding to be let up. Rocky is alive and Rocky is home. Nothing else matters. In that moment Adrian doesn't even give a damn if the astrophage problem has been solved. Rocky is safely home.

The microsecond that Rocky has been medically cleared off the ship, he's gone to the room where Adrian waits patiently alone, he's getting tackled. He's getting hugged harder than he ever has before. Doesn't matter is Adrian is taller or shorter than Rocky, they have half a decade of pent up sadness and love and yearning behind them. They tap his carapace, his legs, everything just to confirm it's him he's real he's here he's safe. Words fly out of their mouth, words of relief and love and joy so fast it sounds like someone playing rush e badly. Rocky is shell shocked at first and then starts replying in turn, fast and loud because Adrian is here! Adrian still loves him, still wants him! He saved Erid, he saved Adrian, they're safe again!

The Future, Somewhere Far Away From Here

Some dejointed drawings and doodles of my own post-canon headcanons! Where humans send a ship to their neighbors in order to meet them, and make sure their sun didnt die in case Rocky wasn't successful, but end up finding a very much alive Ryland Grace, looking younger than he should and living his best life on Erid

I'm just fascinated by the idea of ​​humans and eridians collaborating and what that would look like. We are so advanced in some areas they lack, while they are so advanced in some areas where WE lack due to our respective biologies, the progress from both sides would be insane.

And now Rocky and Adrian equally love Grace. They always argue over who gets to bring him to their work (Adrian likes to have him for feedback for the bio-dome and Rocky likes to have someone to talk to while he tinkers). They both watch over him when he sleeps and Grace wakes up to two Eridians very, very close to his face.

They’re the couple with the third wheeling friend, except they are all equally happy about the arrangement. Rocky and Adrian go on a date, just the two of them, one time and get asked by no less than six people if Grace is okay.

Like, Rocky will come home one day and be like “Adrian have good day working on Grace habitat dome, question.”

And Adrian will just go, “Yes, dear. We’ve made some good progress on the lighting adjustments. I take it you paid the aforementioned Grace a visit this afternoon?”

And Rocky, switching back to standard Eridian speech patterns and positively dripping tonal indicators for affectionate sarcasm, is left to reply “However did you guess?”

god this is dumb (original)

of course grace is delighted! but it'd be very funny if rocky had just. a massively specific regional accent. and now grace has it too. all the eridians from that area are like OMG THE ALIEN IS ONE OF US - we're adopting it. that's an honorary member of the clan. listen to it. it might as well have grown up here.

...actually i'm gonna do it. fuck it. rocky is space scottish. to me. he's mine now, i'm taking him out to look at the kelpies and the falkirk wheel and climb up ben ledi. he can go fishing in a loch. and now grace's eridian accent is their equivalent of scots. he says stuff to adrian's family (posh motherfuckers) and theyre like 'i think it's trying to communicate with us..?' meanwhile adrian, well used to rocky's accent by now, is like 'it's giving you a compliment. be nice to my spouse's alien, please.'

We know that "color" is a concept that Eridians will never be able to fully understand, and that human perception of it is the only way they'll likely ever have of knowing about it (sorry shrimp colors). What if, after Grace becomes the resident alien science teacher, the concept of "colors" becomes like. the Eridian equivalent of knowing your star chart or something.

Grace kicks the whole thing off by accident by telling his students what colors and patterns they have and they go absolutely nuts over this. Turns into this whole thing where they build these light sensors that can tell what general color someone's carapace is and if there are any patterns, or by knowing what material your carapace is you can have a vague idea of what color you are (like the difference between knowing your whole birth chart and knowing your zodiac sign)

And it becomes the Eridian version of a daily horoscope to look up what the lucky colors are that day or if spots or stripes will have more luck with their relationships. Rocky’s specific shade of brown is seen as supremely lucky by virtue of his mission, but with some more somber implications as well due to the loss of his crew. I imagine whatever Adrian’s carapace is (I’m a green Adrian truther personally) that their color scheme becomes one coveted by Eridians looking for their ideal mate- I mean who else gets to say that their mate saved the stars and then defied death multiple times to return to them??? That’s some Eridian fairy tale material right there.

The color of Grace’s hair or eyes becomes the color of Eridians known to be incredibly curious but foolhardy. Every Eridian in their teen angst phase is hoping against hope that they’ve got a smidge of blue somewhere on their carapace to prove that they’re Not Like Other Rocks.