Chapter Text
Ravaxis was a rather small person, Peter thought, glancing subtly at the other over his coffee cup. The realization came rather suddenly, though it had been months since he first woke up on the spaceship and he should perhaps have noticed sooner.
When he first arrived, the size of the ship’s captain couldn’t have been further from his mind. The last thing he knew, he’d exploded with his aircraft and crew. At least, that was what it had felt like. Then he found himself waking up in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar spaceship, with an unfamiliar person staring curiously at him.
Honestly, he’d been more preoccupied with the fact that the stranger was green. With the fact that he had yellow eyes, too large for his face. With the fact that he had sharp teeth in a mouth that split into a grin when he saw that Peter was awake. No, Ravaxis had not seemed small then. He had seemed terrifying. As terrifying as an alien could be to a human who thought such things only existed in fiction.
All things considered, he really shouldn’t have been that surprised. Growing up as a Walter meant being more familiar than most with the strange and unbelievable. He’d grown up with robots that acted like humans, among other things. He had thought he was rather open-minded. So, he wasn’t entirely proud of reacting with a cry before trying to jump off the bed and get away from the stranger.
Emphasis on try. The action instead made him crash into the wall as he seemed to lose all sense of gravity and control of his body. And thus, came his second shock when he realized that where Ravaxis was green, his own body was a mixture of blues and purples, dotted with stars. His first reaction was to look for paint cans, thinking the stranger – for whatever reason – had felt like painting a galaxy on his skin.
A shooting star crossing around his wrist, disappearing up under the sleeve of the simple shirt he was wearing, quickly changed his mind on that. His skin seemed ever-changing, hues shifting, stars twinkling. The more he looked at it, the more it seemed to change.
His body wasn’t his own anymore, he realized with a start. It looked a way no human body should look, did things no human body should be able to. The fact that his mind was in a state of chaos didn’t help. He panicked, then, breaking down in a fit of so many emotions that he lost all sense of control.
And as he raged and cried, screamed for someone to wake him up, Ravaxis was there. Ducking and dodging the damage and destruction Peter was unintentionally causing around him, but never leaving. He kept talking, calmly guiding Peter through what in hindsight might be described as a rather violent panic attack. Or perhaps mental breakdown was more accurate.
Hours later, Peter finally felt somewhat in control of himself again, curled into himself in a corner of the room, eyes closed so as to avoid looking at himself. He’d heard Ravaxis approach on quiet feet, and had to admire his courage, considering that he had nearly accidentally killed the man several times during the last few hours.
And when Peter finally dared to open his eyes to look at him, Ravaxis didn’t seem so scary anymore. After all, out of the two of them, Peter was much more terrified of himself and what he had become. Ravaxis had smiled, and told him it would all be okay. That he would be okay. And Peter had believed him.
It took days before Peter was able to talk without panicking at the hollow, distant sound of his own voice. It took weeks before he was able to move around without fearing he’d destroy the spaceship and its inhabitants.
It took months to get to this point, being able to calmly sit at the same table as Ravaxis, sipping coffee with enough control not to incinerate the cup, sharing easy conversations or just companionable silence.
And only now did he realize how small Ravaxis truly was. It wasn’t just because he, himself had grown larger, his skin turned to much harder material and the muscles and fat he’d had transformed into a solid wall of immeasurable strength and power.
He’d simply been so preoccupied with his own changes that he hadn’t thought to really observe the little things about the man who invited him openly to stay with them on his spaceship for as long as he wanted. The man who’d helped him discover himself all over again, taking on the challenge with a mixture of curiosity and empathy.
Peter looked at him now, as if he saw him for the first time. Like he’d suddenly regained a part of his sight that had been missing or had fully woken up after sleepwalking for months.
Ravaxis tended to sit on that particular chair with his knees pulled up to his chest, perfectly balanced in a manner that made him seem almost cat-like. Perhaps that’s what made Peter realize how small he was, being able to fit on a rather small seat that way. It was mostly in the mornings, though, like now. As the day went on, he seemed to prefer to move about or stretching himself across any available surface, confident as only a person who felt completely at home could be.
He was usually moving, tapping his cowboy boots to the rhythm of some song or another, often played loudly over the ship’s speaker system – after making sure Peter didn’t mind. And if he wasn’t playing music, or filling the silence with chatter, he was often heard humming, occasionally singing if he forgot anyone was listening.
He was humming now, his sharp teeth hidden behind a relaxed little smile. His once seemingly too large eyes looking just large enough to express the extent of the emotions and intelligence he hid behind mischievous smirks and snarky remarks.
Flipping a page of the book he was holding against his knees, he distractedly brushed dark curls out of his eyes, only for them to fall back into place a moment later. As he read something particularly amusing, his nose wrinkled, pulling Peter’s attention to the freckles dusting his nose and cheeks.
Ravaxis was a rather small person, Peter thought. He was also a rather adorable one.
It occurred to him that he should be more alarmed than he was by this discovery. But then the alien – who was actually part human, he’d learned over the past few months – glanced up to meet his eyes, and smiled. One of his more quiet smiles, the kind that wrinkled the corner of his eyes and filled Peter with the urge to smile back.
So he did. Because Ravaxis had said everything would be okay. That he would be okay. And he believed him.