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It was another dreadfully boring day on the Hail Mary, roughly a year into their journey back to Erid. Grace was in the midst of playing one of the many, many games accessible thanks to having the entirety of human knowledge stored on his various laptops, although he didn’t really have his heart in it - it was just something to pass the time, really. As most things were, these days. They really needed to find something more enriching, or else both of them were going to lose their minds of boredom sometime soon (maybe Rocky less so, as he had far more practice in total isolation, and being aboard an alien spacecraft with an alien for a constant companion was a fairly interesting situation on its own, but even he was still at risk).
Rocky, for his part, was tinkering with one of his tools, which had come slowly out of alignment over the duration of their trip. Or at least, he had been, but he had mostly finished that repair a while ago, and now was just fiddling with it, for the most part.
Curious, and with nothing much better to do, Rocky turned his attention towards Grace, observing him from across the room within his tunnels. He still tinkered idly with the tool in his claws, and since his perception was already omnidirectional anyways there wasn’t any real indication that his focus had changed at all - all he had done was switch which perceptions were a priority to him, mentally. Even when Grace wasn’t doing anything important, he found it oddly soothing to observe Grace at work, watching the squishy alien tap away at his thinking machine to accomplish some menial task all for the sake of having something to do. The constant, steady noises of his existence were a balm to Rocky, so long used to silence. Now, even when Grace was doing absolutely nothing, there was still the simple rhythmic sounds of Grace’s body keeping itself alive - breathing, swallowing, heart pounding, even blinking sometimes audible, depending on how hard Rocky focused and how close he was. Not to mention the sounds of whatever activity he was engrossed in, when he was doing something.
He had found it weird, and even off-putting, at first, being near a creature that made noise so constantly, in such wet, squelching ways, the sound travelling oddly through the soft substances that comprised its body. But now... it had long since stopped being an oddity, and had merely become a source of comfort. Fascination, still, sometimes, but he rarely found it truly disgusting anymore - even if he would pretend to, on occasion, just to make Grace laugh, or because it was simply something he had grown so used to saying that it would feel wrong to stop.
“Whatcha up to, bud?” Grace asked, not turning to face Rocky - not that it would’ve made much difference, anyways, since Rocky didn’t need Grace to face him (or even be anywhere near him) to hear him.
Rocky paused for a moment. It wasn’t like Grace was entirely engrossed in his task, so it wasn’t too odd for him to make idle conversation while he played whatever game it was this time. But... something about that timing felt odd. Rocky had made no noticeable change in his behavior, was still tinkering with the tool in his claws as Grace spoke, and even if he had visibly shifted, Grace’s back was to him - which should, as Grace had described it (and as Rocky had observed himself) completely limit his vision so that he could not perceive Rocky at all (well, perhaps he could still hear him in the background, but that was a vastly different sense for humans than it was for Eridians, and it should have given no indication of anything different on Rocky’s part).
Perhaps it was sheer coincidence. Or maybe Grace had simply noticed from the sound that Rocky hadn’t done anything significant with the tool for a decent amount of time, and now had simply been the acceptable amount of elapsed time at which he decided to check in. Regardless, there was no reason to get out of sorts about it. Rocky answered, and Grace went back to his game, and there was nothing more to it.
Surely.
A few days later, Rocky decided to perform a little test. Nothing major - he wasn’t going to begin experimenting on Grace, even in their growing boredom. Though, even if he was, he wasn’t entirely sure Grace would be against it - he was a scientist first and foremost, after all; perhaps he’d be thrilled by the idea of running experiments together, even if he was the subject.
Regardless, that wasn’t the case at the moment. Grace had been writing another research paper (for who, Rocky wasn’t entirely sure - the Eridian scientists, perhaps, for when they reached Erid? Or maybe to send back to Earth on another probe, once they had settled the food situation and everything else first, when they arrived? Or perhaps simply out of sheer boredom, as it seemed,) while Rocky used his camera to practice reading the human written language on his own laptop (well, one of the written languages; unfortunately Grace could only really teach him the one he knew, and learning others would likely require knowing this one first already, since he’d have to be translating all instructions twice).
As Grace typed away behind Rocky, the two facing in opposite directions (well, technically Rocky could be facing any direction right now, but he had one side he tended to favor as the “front”, as it provided slightly better sound conductivity than the other sides), Rocky slowly shifted his focus away from his language practice. He continued using the camera towards the screen, and continued scrolling through various pages on the device, but he wasn’t really paying attention to them anymore. Instead, he had turned his focus to Grace, quietly observing the way his fingers worked across the keys, the scrunched muscles in his face as he focused, the idle tapping of his foot against the floor.
It was a few minutes before anything happened, and if Rocky hadn’t been paying so close attention, he might not have noticed a shift at all - but there, near imperceptibly, Grace’s posture changed; a slight, miniscule stiffness to his muscles that wasn’t there before, slowly growing the longer Rocky observed him. And, as much as he first seemed to ignore it, or perhaps simply treat it as a normal part of prolonged study on a single intense subject...
Grace eventually glanced over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at Rocky.
“Making any progress over there?” He asked, casual as could be, and yet..
And yet...
Sure, maybe it was still a coincidence. Two instances in isolation meant nothing, right? One of the first rules of science he had learned, even well before he had gone into engineering, was that correlation did not necessitate causation. Just because Grace had twice now engaged in conversation while Rocky happened to be focused on him, it didn’t mean the two variables were related at all - in both cases it had been after a prolonged period, and both of them had been working on their own separate projects. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Grace to take breaks occasionally, checking in every now and then with Rocky even if they didn’t need each other’s input. Grace could never go too long without talking, Rocky had long since picked up, and if he didn’t talk to Rocky he’d simply talk to himself, even when not making those video logs.
Surely that was it. Merely a periodic need to check in, just as he had always done.
But...
Well, Rocky had perfect memory (as was standard for Eridians). He combed through it now, trying to piece together any other instances or evidence, trying to make sense of it, find an alternate explanation, or perhaps, simply, gather more data. He hadn’t entirely been keeping track, prior to now, so it might not stand out in his memory, but surely he would have picked up on this sooner if it was important, right?
Rocky considered how averse Grace had been to having Rocky watch him sleep, that first night back in the tunnel. Which, of course, was partially due to differing cultural norms, and the novelty of it all. But even after Grace had closed his eyes - turning off his main source of perception, which Rocky still marvelled at, even now - and turning to face away from Rocky, he had still been tense. Perhaps it had just been from the knowledge of being observed, or the wariness that came from Rocky’s request, but...
...
This required more testing.
Over the course of about a week (an Earth week, always Earth units), Rocky repeated the experiment, over and over, whenever he got a chance. He would change nothing about his behavior, give no physical, audible, or visible indication that anything had changed. All he would do was direct his focus towards Grace, observe him as he went about whatever activity he happened to be doing in the moment. And, inevitably, within a short period of time (sometimes under a minute, sometimes closer to half an hour), Grace would address Rocky in some way. It wasn’t 100% of the time - sometimes Grace would be too engrossed in a task, or too tired, or simply not notice. But it had a low enough failure rate that Rocky was fairly certain he wasn’t just attributing it to confounding variables.
Rocky was growing frustrated - and fascinated, he had to admit. How in the world could Grace seemingly just... know when Rocky directed his attention to him? Was Rocky doing something that he didn’t notice? Did he make some sort of subconscious noise when he focused on Grace? Was Grace actually monitoring him somehow without Rocky knowing, due to that pesky light sense revealing things that Rocky couldn’t perceive?
...did Rocky somehow change colors depending on what he focused on?
(No, he quickly dismissed that notion as nonsensical - it would have to change his physical or chemical composition somehow to change which wavelengths of light reflected off of him, which Grace would then perceive as colors. And, while he didn’t know much about colors prior to meeting Grace, he could be almost entirely certain that his own chemical composition didn’t fluctuate with his mood or attention. At the very least, not on the outermost layers of his carapace, which was all that Grace could perceive, anyways).
Today was yet another attempt at figuring it out, wordlessly observing Grace as the alien worked on some random project on one of the lab tables - as it appeared currently, attempting to stack small, standardized cutouts of thickened paper, into some sort of pyramid-esque shape through precarious balancing. Rocky, for once, didn’t particularly care about the task - he had a feeling it was just as inconsequential for Grace as well, just something to occupy the time - but he was always interested to see the way Grace’s hands worked, the way his muscles contorted on his face as he concentrated, the subtle tension when he attempted precision.
“...any reason why you’re staring at me, Rock?” Grace asked, hands hovering a short distance from his current endeavor, a quiet, frustrated huff of air escaping his lips.
“Rocky does not have eyes, statement. Cannot stare,” he declared, dodging the question entirely. Then, after a long moment... “Grace’s vision does not extend to the direction Rocky is in. How can Grace know what Rocky is doing, question?” He added, too curious to pass up the opportunity this time.
Grace sighed, leaning back in his chair. He let his hands flop onto his lap, not wanting to disturb his precarious tower, it seemed, tilting his head to glance over his shoulder at Rocky only for a moment.
“You don’t need eyes to stare at me, bud. You’ve got this intense focus thing you do when your attention is on something specific - and don’t pretend you don’t,” he remarked, earning a quiet huff from Rocky in return. Just because Grace was right didn’t mean he wanted to hear it - and besides, he was purposefully refraining from doing so for the sake of these little tests!
“Grace still cannot see Rocky without facing him, statement. And Grace has been very focused on his stack of tiny papers, has not turned around for long time,” Rocky declared (really, it wasn’t a long time at all for him, but he had gotten so used to working in Grace’s timeframe, it almost felt like it - plus, it made his point better than “short-to-intermediate time”).
Grace crossed his arms over his chest, finally swivelling in his chair to face Rocky (not that it made much of a difference to Rocky, but still, he tended to do that when he was giving his full attention. It was a nice gesture, if nothing else).
“I’m not entirely sure how to explain it, other than that... humans can kinda tell when they’re being watched?” Grace began, shrugging. “It’s mostly a subconscious thing. There’s probably a bunch of small sensory inputs we’re picking up on that we’re not consciously noticing, and it’s usually easier around larger groups of people - we can notice others noticing someone looking at us, so even if we can’t see the person behind us, we can see the person beside us looking at something behind us,” he continued to explain, perking up slightly as another thought occurred to him.
“It’s actually quite fascinating. So, I’ve told you about how eyes work for the most part, right? There’s the sclera, the iris, and the pupil, all with different functions. Well, for humans, the sclera is much larger and more visible than in pretty much any other animal - humans evolved for our irises to be very visibly distinct from the rest of our eyes, so that we can see at even a short glance where someone’s vision is directed. For most other animals, the iris and pupil are so large it covers pretty much the entire visible part of the eye, making it harder to tell where attention is directed - although, as I said, humans are pretty good at picking up on that anyways,” he rambled happily, going off on one of his many tangents - not that Rocky minded (most of the time), he was usually quite happy to learn more about Earth and humans and all that it entailed. “Anyways, back to my original point, humans have gotten very adept at picking up on subtle details of their surroundings without consciously noticing them, which often leads to us having just sort of a... “feeling” about something. There’s actual stimuli we’re picking up on, but because it doesn’t become a distinct thought of any sort, we often feel like it’s just this almost metaphysical sense impressed on us.”
Grace shrugged again.
“It’s not every time, and it’s not instant. If someone just happens to glance at us, we don’t tend to notice. And since it’s not entirely conscious, we might not recognize what we’re feeling, just that something seems “off”. But... it’s like this creeping sensation, that slowly sets in the longer it goes on. So if something is focusing its attention on us for prolonged periods of time, we’ll begin to pick up on it - and the longer it goes on uninterrupted, the more unsettling it becomes. Eventually it can become really hard to focus, until we can figure out what’s wrong or why we’re getting that sensation,” he continued casually. “And even if we figure it out, that feeling doesn’t necessarily go away. Even knowing that someone behind you is staring at you just for the fun of it, it can still be hard to get past that sensation of something being just wrong, so we’ll usually have to ask the person to stop, or else just get out of their field of vision so that we can feel normal again,” Grace finished, idly taking off his glasses and wiping them on his sleeve.
Rocky hummed, taking a long moment to process everything he had just learned.
How... strange. It made sense, to some degree - he could imagine how something like that would be a large evolutionary advantage, especially for a species with such a limited range of vision and perception. To be able to tell when they were being perceived... it would make up for a lot of their “blind spots”, so to speak, especially in situations where they were supposed to be isolated... feeling watched when there was no one else around would be a dead giveaway for danger, which would provide them quite the advantage.
But, still... Rocky never ceased to be amazed by the other-worldly, seemingly impossible abilities that humans had. First the ability to sense light, now the ability to sense perception, even with no conscious indicator of it... what a strange, fascinating species.
Though... wait a minute...
“But... Rocky can perceive Grace at all times. Does Grace feel “watched” like this constantly?” he asked, suddenly worried as the implications began to sink in. “Has Grace been constantly unsettled by Rocky’s presence, question?” he asked worriedly, limbs straightening out in growing distress at the thought.
Grace shook his head, seemingly unbothered.
“Nah, not really. I’m pretty sure it’s specific to focus - just being aware of me doesn’t set off that uncanny feeling. It’s just when attention is directed at us - like, if I’m in a large crowd, obviously there’s a bunch of people who can perceive me. But none of them are really paying much attention to me, so I’m not gonna get that feeling of being watched. But, if suddenly all of them were focusing on me... then I’d start to be pretty unsettled, yeah,” Grace assured him casually. “So even though you can perceive me from practically anywhere in the ship, you’re not constantly focusing on me and me alone, so it doesn’t trigger that feeling.”
Grace pursed his lips. “Plus, I can’t perceive you from a few rooms away anyways, unless you’re shouting for me to hear. If I can’t perceive you at all, I probably won’t be able to pick up on you focusing on me, even with this subconscious sense,” he added.
Rocky sank down slightly in relief, at least glad that Grace hadn’t been living in a constant state of unease around him. Especially considering how long they were going to be trapped in isolation together, with no possible way for Grace to escape Rocky’s range of perception.
“Also, funnily enough, sound pretty much negates it,” Grace offered, smiling, now. “Like, when I’m talking to you, even if my back is to you and I know you’re focused on me, it won’t cause that feeling. Silence triggers it the most - if something is watching without making any noise, it’s much more unsettling. But if we’re already chatting, or if I’m aware of you some other way - like hearing you move around behind me, or feeling your ball pressed against the back of my legs or something, then I don’t get that feeling,” he continued.
Oh.
Well, on the one hand, that was a relief. On the other hand, that maybe explained why Grace had picked up on it so steadily throughout Rocky’s tests. Each time, he had deliberately been as silent as possible, trying not to give off any indication that he was focused on Grace or doing anything different. But, in doing so, it seemed he had accidentally tapped into the exact thing that helped to trigger this phenomena.
It made sense, really. If something was deliberately trying to avoid detection, or watching without making any noise... well, that was usually a predator stalking its prey. Especially on Earth, where creatures didn’t all inherently rely so heavily on making sound to perceive the world. Having the ability to distinctly tell when something was watching you while trying to avoid detection... it was the exact sort of thing that would protect you in the times of most danger.
Still. That didn’t make it any less frustratingly vague and nonsensical to Rocky. Frankly, humans had too many ways to perceive things considering their completely useless hearing.
“Understood. I’ll... try not to go silent, like that,” Rocky added tentatively - although part of him felt odd about admitting to the implication that he would be watching Grace again, in the future. It was definitely true, but, well, that typically wasn’t the type of thing you just told someone.
Though, he supposed he and Grace were far past that point, by now.
Grace just snorted in amusement.
“I don’t mind it, usually. Just... makes it hard to focus sometimes,” he assured Rocky, waving a hand dismissively. “Not great for precision tasks like making a house of cards,” he joked, nodding his head towards the balanced papers - is that what it was?
Rocky resisted the urge to point out that it looked absolutely nothing like a house, neither human nor Eridian. He was sure Grace already knew, and that it was just another weird human thing they did for entertainment.
Though... wait. As his thoughts settled, something else occurred to Rocky - something he’d started to wonder about earlier, but had brushed aside in his determination to solve the mystery of Grace’s impossible vision abilities.
Rocky tapped his claws together nervously, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Does that mean... does Grace feel uncomfortable when Rocky watches him sleep?” he ventured tentatively, sinking in on himself somewhat.
He knew that declaring something as “culture” usually superseded any argument about the way things were done, and Grace had acquiesced with little fight once Rocky had declared that it was an Eridian norm that they watched each other sleep. But... Grace had been uncomfortable with the idea initially. And they hadn’t previously encountered an issue where human culture and Eridian culture were directly contradictory, yet... but what if that was because Grace was merely relenting whenever Rocky invoked the “culture” agreement they’d had? If being watched was truly such an unsettling thing, especially in the quiet - quiet that Grace needed to sleep, because he couldn’t fall asleep with too much noise (or light, but that was mostly irrelevant to Rocky anyways) - then had Rocky inadvertently been triggering an unsettling physiological response every time Grace went to bed?
The thought was nearly sickening. Was that why Grace slept so poorly? Why he stayed up far past when his body should, sometimes? Going hours to even days without sleep past when his rest cycle should have been?
Grace shrugged, far less concerned than Rocky was.
“Eh, not really,” he answered casually. “It was a little weird at first, honestly. Having company while we sleep isn’t exactly foreign to humans, it’s just not deliberately watching someone that we’re used to. But you’re usually doing something else, too, anyways, so it doesn’t feel the same as being stared at,” he mused honestly.
Grace glanced away, his glasses already hanging by his chin once more, though when they’d moved Rocky wasn’t sure.
“Besides, I’m used to it by now. Even if it had been unsettling at first, which it wasn’t entirely... I’m pretty sure I’d have adjusted to it. If anything, it’s kinda... comforting, now. To have someone looking after me while I sleep, like that,” he admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.
He was avoiding looking at Rocky now, something he’d come to recognize as meaning Grace was unsure or uncomfortable about the topic. He wasn’t tense, and he wasn’t dragging out his words the way he tended to when he really didn’t want to discuss something... so Rocky could only assume that Grace felt just as unsure about admitting to enjoying being watched as Rocky had felt about admitting to planning to watch him.
Rocky let out a quiet sound of relief, trying to shake off the tension that had been building within him.
“Good good good,” he hummed, idly tapping his claws on the xenonite barrier - partially to see better, partially just to have something to do with his hands. “...Rocky will always watch over Grace, statement. Grace is safe with Rocky,” he declared, gentler than usual, but sincere.
Grace smiled, glancing back at Rocky once more.
Maybe they weren’t so incompatible after all. Even if humans and Eridians had vastly different norms when it came to being observed... well, it seemed the two had found something that worked for them. And that was all that really mattered.