Chapter Text
“Simon! Dinner’s ready!”
Grace’s voice rings out from the kitchen of their shared home. Ever since Simon was found washed ashore in the teacher’s biodome, they’d lived together. It’s been almost 7 months since that day.
Simon grimaces at the thought of dinner. Hopefully, he can manage to keep some down this time. His stomach growls, but the man has long since lost his appetite. It wasn’t that the food was bad per se, but that Simon just couldn’t seem to keep it down. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t manage not to throw up after every meal.
Simon grunts as he stands up from the place where he was hunched on the floor. He sets the laptop he was using on the edge of their shared bed, and stretches his arms– er, arm– above his head. He sighs as his shoulder lets out a satisfying pop. Making his way down the hallway and into the kitchen, he picks up the smell of cooked vegetables. His nose scrunches at the scent. It’s unappetizing to him, but he has no particular reason to feel that way. Simon’s dark eyes land on the blond science teacher setting plates on the table. Ryland’s hair was getting a bit long, falling in front of his eyes ever so often, and being tucked behind his ear each time. Simon would have to get Adrian to cut it soon.
Grace looks up at the sound of the shorter man’s footsteps. Simon had a bad habit of accidentally stomping wherever he went.
“I made a stew! Hopefully the veggies are good, Rocky wasn’t sure if the artificial soil would have the right nutrients or affect the taste…” the blond smiles, finishing setting the table and moving to grab the crockpot from the countertop. He sets it in the middle of the table and grabs a ladle, scooping up a serving of the stew and plopping it into his own bowl. “Help yourself!”
Simon tries to smile, but it doesn’t look all too convincing, and he takes a seat across from Ryland. The smell of greens infiltrates his nose, and he grimaces, but pushes through it and grabs his own serving. For a moment, Simon just sits there as he watches Grace eat. He’s always been a bit jealous of Grace’s ability to eat just about anything. Picking up his spork, Simon takes a bite of the stew– or, he tries to. He ends up accidentally bringing the spork up to the teeth on his cheek before remembering they aren’t very good for eating anything other than raw meat. Grace chuckles, and the shorter man flushes a bit before taking a bite, successfully this time.
It doesn’t taste great, but Simon isn’t sure if that’s just the fish talking. It’s salty, which is good, but there’s not nearly enough umami in it, and it just tastes a bit bland. It leaves his mouth feeling a bit dry, which is strange given how wet stew is.
It takes a while, but eventually Simon finishes his bowl. His stomach isn’t very happy with him, but if the smile on the blond’s face is anything to go by, then Ryland is, and that’s good enough for him. Like every night, Simon offers to clean up, and as always, Grace tells him no and says he can wash up by himself. He wishes the blond would let him help out from time to time. Simon’s worst fear is being useless.
Making his way to their bedroom, Simon is struck with a sudden wave of nausea, worse than anything he has ever had to deal with before. He clutches his stomach, quickly switching course and heading for the bathroom instead. He barely makes it to the toilet in time before he’s throwing up the meal he finished only a few minutes ago. The taste of bile is less than pleasant, but strangely enough, it tastes better than vegetables.
Hearing the sound of retching coming from the restroom, Grace hurriedly makes his way to the source of the sound and crouches beside Simon, rubbing the heaving man’s back. Ryland hushes the shorter male when tears rush down his cheeks, wracking his body with sobs.
“Shh…I know, Si…It’ll be okay…”
Simon heaves up the last bit of food in his stomach and doesn’t stop crying, letting himself be guided into Grace’s chest. When he first got here, Simon would never allow himself to cry in front of Grace, let alone be held by him. But things are different now, and it’s a good thing.
“I-I’m sorry,” Simon slurs, hiccuping as he wipes his eyes.
“Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault you got sick. I couldn’t keep a meal down for at least 4 months when I got here,” Ryland soothes.
“No– I–...” Simon hiccups again. “I can’t eat human food.”
Grace’s eyes widen, and he takes a moment before seemingly reeling himself in and taking a deep breath. “You can’t?”
Simon shakes his head.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Grace asks, genuine pity in his eyes.
“Because…It’s gross.”
“What’s gross?”
“What I– what I h-have to eat. It’s disgusting.”
Grace rolls his eyes playfully and pats the shorter man’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. What is it, fish?”
“Yes, small fish like sardines…but also…human flesh.”
…
What?
“What?”
Simon puts his hands up in defense and backs away from Grace’s chest as he hurriedly tries to explain himself. “I-It’s not like I have a choice in the matter! I don’t enjoy craving people, I just– I can’t eat normal food, and it’s what my body wants, so–”
“Hold on, woah, woah, woah, I’m not mad, Simon. I just…uh…have never really met a human with cannibalistic instincts before.”
“Am I really even a human?”
Grace seems a bit shocked by that reply and takes a moment to think.
“If…If you want to be…?”
“I don’t really want to be.”
“Then you aren’t. My point is– I don’t really know how we’d obtain human meat withou–...” Ryland pauses. Simon glances over at him and tilts his head.
“What is it?”
“The Me-Burgers!”
All of a sudden, Grace is standing up and hurrying out the door of the bathroom. The noirette trots after him, scrambling to get upright. Following the blond out of the door and into the kitchen once again, he sees Grace pull something out of the freezer. It’s pink and almost disc-shaped, but thicker. Simon’s nostrils flare as the scent of meat– not any meat– human meat– wafts from the patty and into the air.
“Food?”
Grace nods, putting the disc onto a plate and putting it in the microwave oven. “Yup!”
Simon is about to ask if Grace is sure he’ll be able to stomach it, but after sniffing the air once more, for some strange reason, he’s sure he will be. After about a minute and a half, Ryland takes out the patty and sets it on the table, gesturing for Simon to try it.
“Sorry, I didn’t have time to season it, so it probably isn’t the best–” Grace starts, but is cut off in surprise when Simon almost immediately starts tearing into the patty with his secondary set of teeth. Juices get all over the shorter man’s face and mouth, but he doesn’t seem to care, instead focused on taking large, aggressive bites of the meat as quickly as possible.
“Wha’s ‘is made of?” Simon questioned through his full mouth, little bits of food falling from his lips as he talked.
“Uhm…my muscle tissue?”
The ex-convict pauses for only a moment before quickly chewing and swallowing the rest of the meat. “That’s what you taste like…?” Simon breathes out.
“Y-Yes.”
“You…taste really good…”
Grace glances around nervously, chuckling on instinct. “Uh, thank you? Please don’t eat me– not that I think you would eat me!– but I would really just p-prefer to not be eaten!”
Simon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, staring at Grace with wide eyes. “Do you have more?”
Ryland perks up at that. “Yes, actually! It’s pretty much the only form of protein I have, so the Eridians made a lot of it! T-There’s probably some more in the freezer, I’ll grab it!” The blond quickly darts over to the fridge and opens the freezer, digging around and pulling out a few more patties.
“What are they called?”
“Hm? Oh, I call them Me-Burgers,” Ryland replies, placing the discs he grabbed onto the plate from before.
“That’s what you were talking about earlier?” The ex-con tilts his head.
“Yeah. I just figured…maybe it would be the same…? But I probably should’ve asked, it’s not like many people are okay with eating another human, and that was a total breach of trust, so–”
Simon cuts him off. “It’s fine. If I had to eat anyone, I would probably want it to be you.”
Grace turns around and stares at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Oh shit, he shouldn’t have said that, it’s probably off-putting, like most things Simon says.
“Sorry,” Simon starts, “I shouldn’t say things like that, it’s odd.”
The blond snorts and waves him off. “No, no, I was just a little surprised, you don’t hear that often. Or…at all, really.”
Simon smiles at the teacher in front of him and gets lost in his thoughts. It’s sort of poetic, in a way, the fact that Simon gets to eat the flesh of Grace. Grace, his savior. Grace smiles back and tilts his head, and the way the kitchen light wraps around his blond locks makes it look like he bears a halo.
“You shall be redeemed by The Holiest Grace, through flesh and blood shall we be born anew into paradise…”
“What?”
Simon looks up. “Hm?”
“You were mumbling something to yourself.”
“Oh, was I?” The shorter man tucks his hair behind his ear absently. “Sorry, I didn’t notice.”
Ryland pulls out a chair and sits next to Simon. “Was that, like, a prayer?”
“Oh. Something like that, yes.”
“For what?” The blond tilts his head in curiosity. Whenever Grace does that, he reminds Simon of the pictures of puppies he would sometimes see in books.
“Uhm, it’s just something you would say before eating a meal,” Simon lies. It wasn’t really something you would say before just any meal. Really, you would only say it before eating meat, which was a luxury very few on Eden could afford – though extremely faithful sisters and brothers would say grace before eating, regardless of the contents.
“Oh, so it’s like saying grace?”
Simon gives Ryland a confused look, one eyebrow raised in confusion. “...Yes, that’s what it’s called. How do you know that?”
“Well, on Earth we– or, I guess just Christians, but– we would also say a prayer before eating a meal. It was called “saying grace”, so I guess that sort of transferred over…or never went away?”
Simon straightens up and shakes his head a few times like he’s trying to clear his thoughts. “Wait, so you guys had The Holiest Grace on earth too?”
“Uhm, I don’t think we called it that. Who’s The Holiest Grace? Or– what is it?”
“The Holiest Grace is, like, our creator,” the ex-convict starts to explain, “He made us– humans, that is. And he was responsible for The Quiet Rapture as punishment for us…being sinful, I guess. If you didn’t have The Holiest Grace, then why were you saying grace in the first place?”
“Ohhh! We didn’t call him The Holiest Grace, but we had something similar. We called him God. Well, some humans did. There were a lot of different religions with different beliefs, but I’m most familiar with Christianity. Though I don’t really believe in any religion. Unless science counts, haha. I guess you can call me a…scientologist? Wait– no, that’s already a thing, never mind–”
“How can you not believe in him?” Simon questions, furrowing his eyebrows and clenching his fists. Why would anybody not believe in The Holiest Grace, or the human equivalent, at the very least?
The blond chuckles nervously and averts his gaze from the shorter man quickly. “It’s just that I personally like to look at things logically– not that your religion isn’t logical! But, uhm, I’m a scientist, and a lot of times science and religion conflict, so I-I just choose to stand with my job instead of faith, it’s nothing against–”
The noirette waves Ryland off, sighing in annoyance. “Whatever. You can do what you want, it’s not my…” Simon trails off, eyebrows raising as he gets lost in thought. “You shall be redeemed by The Holiest Grace, through flesh and blood shall we be born anew into paradise.”
Simon looks down at the plate of Me-Burgers that he hadn’t even noticed had been set in front of him. Through flesh and blood? The Holiest Grace?
He’s jolted out of his thoughts by the teacher snapping his fingers in front of the ex-con’s face. “Helloooo? Earth to Simon? Or– Erid to Simon?”
“What, what is it?”
“Are you gonna eat the rest of the burgers?”
Simon glances back down at his plate. “Oh. Right, yeah, I will.” He takes a patty and starts eating it, albeit a lot slower than he was previously. Is this the flesh and blood they were talking about? It seems fitting, does it not? And plus, when Grace first found Simon, and the latter awoke with him watching over him, he really did believe Grace was an angel. Though there isn’t any blood involved, so he supposes it only counts for the flesh part. But what about being redeemed? Simon certainly hasn’t been redeemed. He’s still the same murderer, butcher, sinner that he always was. He doesn’t think there’s been any significant changes with him since meeting Grace, aside from the obvious. But then again, how would Simon know what redemption looks like? Perhaps it doesn't feel or look like anything. Maybe it really is just nothing special.
“Through flesh and blood shall we be born anew into paradise.” Hm. Simon glances at his mutated form. He’s certainly been “born anew” in some way or another. And compared to Eden, Erid felt almost better than paradise. “Through flesh and blood”…if the MeBurgers are the flesh, then…
The blood ocean.
Suddenly, a lot of things make much more sense to Simon.
Shit.