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After a year or two living with Grace on Erid, Simon’s nightmares had become less severe. Not necessarily less frequent, but less severe.
He still dreamed of his past life– Eden, a childhood of scarcity and conflict, Filament Station, betrayal and a guilty conscience, his cell, endless isolation and desperation– but most of the time when he went to sleep, he found himself back in the iron lung. He still wasn’t too sure how long he’d spent in the crudely made submarine. Between the time spent navigating the blood ocean on AT-5 and the time spent dying while floating in space, it was just impossible to keep track. Regardless, the experience managed to be the most traumatic thing he’d ever been through, which meant his mind just loved to latch onto it when he drifted off.
On this particular night, his gracious brain had decided to throw him back into the depths of the blood ocean and treat him to the screams of the men who were killed before him, pleading for their lives. It sounded like they were right next to him, and it sounded a whole lot like the pleas he had ignored in past battles between Eden and the C.O.I. He pressed his left ear to his shoulder and covered the right with his hand, desperately trying to dampen the noise. Nothing changed. The screams were just as loud, just as desperate, just as angry, and just as torturous. He felt the tears welling up in his eyes, but when he went to sob, he instead found himself coughing violently as blood poured out of his mouth. And it didn’t stop.
He kept coughing and gagging as he fell to his knees in the middle of the pool of blood. He couldn’t catch a single breath, yet he knew he wouldn’t pass out either. All he could do was choke and pray for mercy.
Mercy came in the form of ginormous teeth piercing through both the metal of the ship as well as his chest and heart.
He woke from the dream with tears in his eyes and the sob that he had been denied escaping his lips. Feeling Grace shift beside him in the bed, Simon clamped his hand over his mouth to stop himself from making any other noises. The absolute last thing he wanted to do was wake his companion.
Not that Grace would be bothered. It wasn’t uncommon for either of them to wake the other when they had nightmares. They’d both grown accustomed to comforting the other after the aftermath of a nightmare, yet Simon could still never bring himself to wake Grace up. He just didn’t ever think he needed to. He was capable of handling his own nightmares. He had to be, considering how frequent they were. If he woke Grace up every single time he had a nightmare, he’d ruin the other man’s sleep cycle entirely, and, considering the fact that Grace was a teacher, he needed the rest. He deserved the rest. So Simon would let him rest.
Slowly sitting up in bed, he shifts to sit on the edge of his side of the bed. Every single time this happened, he considered talking to Rocky and Adrian about making a second bed, because he knew Grace would never allow him to sleep on the couch long-term. But that would require a few things. First, Simon would have to be okay with taking up extra space. There was no spare bedroom in this house, which meant he’d either have to take over Grace’s office or ask the Eridians to build him his own room, be it an extension to the house or a shed he could sleep in. Second, he would have to tell Grace why he was asking for his own bed. He’d have to fess up to hiding his nightmares and refusing to ask for help, which would almost certainly upset Grace. Lastly, he would have to be able to sleep on his own. And…yeah, he wasn’t so good at that.
When Simon was no longer on the brink of death, but still not well enough to get up and move around on his own, Grace had taken to sleeping on the couch so that Simon could have the bed. During that time, Simon realized that the only way he could get to sleep was to utterly exhaust himself. He couldn’t just lie there and fall asleep; he had to push his body past its limit and nearly make himself pass out. When he didn’t do that, either the nightmares woke him up every ten minutes (at best), or he’d end up just staring at nothing, letting his mind wander until Grace woke up and it was time for him to pretend he’d been sleeping.
One night, after the third horrifying trip down memory lane of the night, Simon woke up to see Grace in the doorway, watching him with concern.
“What?” Simon grumbled, propping himself up a little with his arm.
“You were screaming,” Grace said softly, stepping into the room and walking towards the bed.
“Sorry,” he muttered, going to lie back down.
“No, no, you don’t have to apologize. Can I- Can I sit with you?”
Simon shrugged. He didn’t talk much back then, when he was still assessing the reality of the situation. Grace didn’t make that assessment easy.
“...I’m gonna take that as a yes,” Grace decided, sitting on the edge of the bed. For a moment, he was silent, which honestly drew Simon in more, curiosity getting the better of him. Grace was rarely quiet, so he clearly had something on his mind that he was hesitant to say. Right as Simon opened his mouth to speak, Grace asked, “You were having a nightmare, right?”
“Yeah.” No point in lying. Not if his literal screaming woke Grace up.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He shook his head.
“Okay…” He grew silent again before asking, “Do you want me to stay with you?”
Simon blinked, “And watch me sleep?”
“Not what I had in mind, but if that would make you feel safe. It’s an Eridian custom to watch over others as they sleep, actually, so it’s pretty normal here. But I meant that I could stay until you’re back to sleep.”
“Would you leave then?”
“If you wanted me to,” Grace smiled softly, “But I could also stay longer if you wanted. If you were okay with that.”
Simon had to think about it. The idea of Grace watching over him as he slept did bring him a little comfort, but there was another part of him that ached for more. He craved the warmth of another body beside him, to know that he wasn’t alone anymore. After spending much of his life in solitude, he’d forgotten the feeling. He never thought he’d have the chance to feel that warmth again, but here Grace was, offering it to him. He thought. Maybe he was entirely wrong about what Grace was offering. He took the risk anyway.
“Only if you’re also going to sleep. You need your rest too,” he stated plainly.
It was Grace’s turn to blink, seemingly taken aback, “You want me to?”
“It’s your bed. Wouldn’t be right for me to keep it from you for much longer anyway.”
“Well, you’re not keeping it from me. I just assumed you’d want the space.”
Simon quietly shook his head, but didn't elaborate.
Despite that, Grace just waved his hand a little above Simon, “Scoot, then,” and settled into the bed beside him a second later.
Simon slept through the night peacefully for the first time in decades.
Since that night, they’d shared Grace’s bed. And, though the nightmares never fully stopped, there was still the occasional peaceful night. Simon treasured those almost as much as his pendant.
But, of course, tonight was not one of those nights. It was, in fact, the abrupt end to a short string of consecutively peaceful nights. Which was exactly why he wouldn’t be waking Grace up. He just needed to let the terror wash away with the waves. So he quietly stood from the bed, left the room, and headed for the front door.
He was barely outside for five minutes before he heard the door open from behind him. He sighed, accepting the fact that he was about to have another unpleasant conversation about his reluctance to reach out.
When Grace sat down beside him on the rocky beach, Simon turned his head away from him. He didn’t want to do this again. He didn’t want to lie and tell Grace he’d try to do better again, and he didn’t want Grace to pretend he believed him.
“I know you don’t like being vulnerable,” Grace started, “But…am I doing something wrong?”
That got Simon to turn his head, but he stayed quiet as Grace continued.
“Because, I don’t know, I feel like I’m trying so hard to be there for you that I’m pushing you away, and I don’t- I don’t want that. I want you to trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
Grace met his eyes, “Then why don’t you let me help you?”
Simon sighed, immediately breaking away from his gaze while pulling his knees in and wrapping his arm around them. “You don’t understand… You could never understand.”
Grace nodded quietly, “Of course I don’t,” then leaned ahead to try and catch Simon’s eye again (he doesn’t). “But I’m probably as close to understanding as anyone could get.”
Anyone alive, Simon thought bitterly, guilt washing over him as he once again thought about the convicts who never made it out. Whose names he would never know. Whose lives were thrown away with callous carelessness. Whose voices still rang in his ears.
Why was he the lucky one? Why did he get to be free when he deserved a gruesome fate just as much as, if not more than, his fellow convicts? He deserved to suffer for everything he did wrong and everything he failed to do right. And no amount of kindness from Grace would change that. He just needed to convince Grace.
“Just because you’re the only other human doesn’t mean you understand what I’ve been through.”
“Okay, but also being sent on a suicide mission against my will gets me at least a little close to understanding.”
Simon couldn’t help but argue with that, “I chose to go on my mission.”
“Simon, you were literally a prisoner. You didn’t have another option.”
“Could have stayed in my damn cell.”
“And let a chance at freedom slip through your fingers? No sane being would pass that up.”
“Still…”
“Still what?” Grace shook his head, “They welded you into that thing and left you to die.”
Simon knew he was right, but he still had a hard time separating himself from the reality of Ava’s desperate pleas for him to understand that this was bigger than them both. He couldn’t be certain about what happened to the data of the SM-8 or even how he got here, but he was certain that his life before this was as real as life with Grace was. The stars had died, the Earth was gone, and most of humanity went with it.
Yet somehow, due to some sick twist of fate, he ended up here, on an alien planet with the man who saved his own Earth when Simon couldn’t even save Ava. It made him sick some days, thinking about all the ways in which he failed his…universe? Dimension? Timeline? It didn’t matter. Nothing he could do now could change what had happened. He just had to live with it.
“They were trying to save humanity too.” Simon huffed.
Grace stared at him for quite some time before he spoke up again, “You’re unbelievable.”
Simon rolled his eyes, tilting his head to face Grace, “Yeah?”
“Yeah! You have these horrible nightmares that you refuse to tell me about, which I can only assume include nightmares about the trauma of being sent to your death, then you defend the people who sent you to that death.”
“Could say the same about you, y’know.”
“I-”
“Except,” Simon interrupted, “For the ‘refusing to tell me’ part.”
“Which is most of my point. We can argue all day about who’s more justified in defending their would-be murderers, but there’s no debate about who here is still struggling to even consider processing what was done to him.”
“I’m processing fine,” Simon glared, daring Grace to continue.
“You literally sneak out of the house to avoid talking to me about your nightmares, never mind how you feel about them.”
“I feel,” Simon echoed, “like I’m done talking about this.” He put his hand on the ground to push himself up, but Grace rested his hand atop Simon’s before he got the chance. He looked up and locked eyes with his companion.
“Si…” Now that just wasn’t fair. Grace knew the nickname softened him even in his most stubborn moments. “Please let me in.”
He gulped, but couldn’t tear his eyes away. “I…” he hesitated.
Grace let him sit in the silence, waiting patiently for Simon to break it.
“If I talk about how much it terrifies me, then it wins. I don’t- I can’t let it win. I just want to be happy.” His lower lip quivers, “Why can’t I just be happy?”
Grace shifted to kneel beside him and pulled him into a hug right as Simon started to cry. Wrapping one arm around Simon’s shoulders and cradling the back of his head with the other hand, Grace held him tightly and let him sob for as long as he needed. He combed his fingers through Simon’s hair and listened to the other weep in his arms.
When Simon grew quiet, no longer sobbing but still trembling, Grace spoke softly, “Emotions are weird. They suck, and I don’t understand them all the time, but I think I understand you more than you know… I’ve seen you happy. You’re happy when Rocky calls me dumb and when he brings Adrian over to spend time with us. You’re happy when you sit in on one of my classes and realize you’re learning things too. You’re happy when I sing off key or tell you about my favorite movies or say darn or drat or anything other than one of your favorite words.”
Simon couldn’t help but chuckle a little.
“See?” Grace pulled away enough to see Simon’s face, bringing his hand around to wipe away some of his tears. “You can’t be happy all the time. Neither of us can. We’ve been through too much crap. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be or aren’t ever happy. I see you happy all the time. You just don’t realize it because everything else is so overwhelming when you feel it. Happiness just feels like peace.”
Simon didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
“How ‘bout we go back inside and lie down?”
He nodded again, and Grace let go of him to stand up and offer his hand, which Simon took.
As they walked back to their house hand-in-hand, Simon kept glancing over at Grace, wondering what the fuck he could have done to deserve such kindness.
When they settled back into bed, Grace didn’t let go of Simon. He held him close and kissed his head and showed him he cared. And Simon felt happy.