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Simon looked up from his spot on the couch and watched Grace pace the length of his lab for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. Letting out a sigh, he set his reading tablet down on the coffee table.
“Sweetheart, don’t you think it’s time to pack it in for the night?” he asked, glancing out the window. “It’s almost nine o’clock. You need dinner, and maybe we can watch a movie or something.”
Grace waved him off without breaking stride, brows furrowed as he stared at a spot on the floor just ahead of his own pacing feet. His arms were crossed and his glasses dangled out of the side of his mouth. “No, no, I’m good. I’m so close, Si, I can feel it. Whatever I’m missing is right there, right under my nose.”
Sighing, Simon watched him continue to pace. For the last week, Grace had hyperfixated on trying to recreate Earth’s soil biome so Simon could start up a garden with the seeds in Mary’s seed bank. It was as much of a sweet gesture as it was a physical necessity for their survival; Grace-burgers and synthesized vitamins were enough for their bodies, but not for their sanity.
The problem was, as Grace quickly found out after suggesting the idea, that Eridani had nothing even remotely similar to topsoil, anywhere. Mary was equipped with a decent volume of grow medium and a full hydroponic and aeroponic setup, but Grace didn’t know how to use those, and neither did Simon—everything his mother grew on Mars grew in fortified Martian soil.
So Grace had set himself upon figuring out how to make dirt.
Simon found the effort desperately endearing—he found most things Grace did for him desperately endearing—except for the fact that when Grace got into these ‘modes’, as he called them, he tended to forget to take care of himself. Simon didn’t mind having to do a little bit extra around the house to make up for it, but it was beginning to get to a point that worried him. Grace hadn’t come to bed the night before, and the night before that, Simon had found him facedown on his desk, sound asleep.
Enough, he decided, was enough.
“Ryland,” he said, and there was something off enough about his tone that Grace actually looked at him. Simon held his gaze for a moment. His hair was sticking up in every direction, his beard desperately needed a trim, and his bottom lip was split from how much he’d been gnawing on it. “You can work on it more tomorrow. Come here.”
Grace’s eyes slid away from his and back to the backlit drawing table in the middle of his lab, which was covered in hastily scribbled equations. “Just—thirty more minutes. I promise. Please? I swear.”
Simon had never been great at resisting Grace’s manners, so he nodded once, with a terse set to his jaw, and Grace didn’t even give him a second glance before going back to his work in earnest.
Thirty minutes later, Grace was perched awkwardly in his desk chair, scribbling something along the edge of his table, completely unaware of the time passing. Simon set his reading tablet down again and padded into the room softly, coming up behind Grace to rest his hand on the other man’s shoulder. He kneaded his thumb into the tight muscle there and Grace’s breath stuttered around an inhale.
“Time’s up, sweetheart,” he murmured, and Grace ducked away from him. Simon scowled. “Ryland. Enough.”
“No, it’s not enough, it’s literally on the tip of my—ngh.”
Grace cut himself off with a pleased groan as Simon dug his thumb into the tension point at the base of Grace’s skull. He worked out the tension there before switching to Grace’s other side, watching cautiously as the blonde rolled his neck and pressed back against his touch.
“Come on, bedtime,” he said, firmly. He was one second away from hauling Grace out of the chair by his hair when Grace got up of his own accord, slinking down the hall behind Simon like a particularly thoughtful shadow.
Even as Simon changed into a set of comfortable sleep clothes, he could see that Grace was still mentally in his lab, far far away.
Simon reached up to cup Grace’s cheek with his hand. Grace’s eyes refocused slightly, zeroing in on Simon’s soft gaze.
“Hi,” Simon said.
“Hi,” Grace replied, softly.
“You back with me?”
Grace’s gaze slid away again. “Not… not really. I’m sorry. I just—I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“I know.”
“It feels like the answer is on the tip of my tongue. I’m smart, I should be able to figure this out.”
“And you will.”
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be taking this long.” Grace scrubbed a hand down his own face, upsetting his glasses, and Simon smiled softly.
“I know, Ryland, it’s okay. I understand what’s going on. But you think better when you get enough sleep, right?”
“I don’t know if I can sleep,” Grace admitted, tersely. “I can’t get these theories out of my head, even if half of them don’t make any sense. I want to sleep—heck, I want to stop for a bit, take a break maybe—but I just can’t.”
The pad of Simon’s thumb roved over his cheekbone thoughtfully. Then, “Would you like to go down? Do you think that would help?” he asked.
Grace hesitated for a moment, eyes flitting between Simon’s face and the empty space over his left shoulder. “I… yeah. Um. Maybe that would… help. I think that would help.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I am sure, I’m just—distracted,” Grace grit out, and Simon leaned up to kiss him, chastely, soothingly.
“Alright, alright, it’s okay, I get it,” he said, then urged Grace down to his knees at the edge of the bed.
Grace shuffled a bit as Simon got himself situated, then all but shoved his face between Simon’s legs, hands coming up to curl around Simon’s calf and the back of his knee. Simon threaded his fingers through Grace’s short locks, steering his face more against one thigh than against the bulge beginning to show between his legs.
“Take it slow, sweetheart,” he instructed, and Grace mumbled out some form of protest. “Come on now, check in with yourself. Are you comfy? Could you be more comfortable?”
Grace grumbled again at the request, but did actually take a moment, and ended up shifting his knees further apart and shuffling slightly closer.
The first few times they did this, Simon realized Grace would throw himself so completely into the task at hand that he’d neglect to consider his own comfort in favor of letting Simon tell him what to do. Simon didn’t like that at all—the point of what they were doing was to get Grace out of his mind and his body into somewhere quieter. If his thighs and back were aching at the end of it, it somewhat defeated the point of relaxing distraction. They’d workshopped the process a bit, in true scientific fashion, until they figured out what worked; Simon gently checking in and reminding him to pay attention to the physical sensations in his body was a big part of it.
“Better?” Simon asked once Grace stilled. He nodded, face still smooshed against Simon’s thigh, and Simon scratched his nails down Grace’s scalp. “Good. Good boy.”
He didn’t miss the full-body shudder that ran down Grace’s spine at the words, nor the way he once again tried to hide his face in Simon’s crotch. God, that reaction got him every time.
“So pretty like this, Ryland. You’re doing so well.”
“Thank you,” Grace murmured, sheepishly.
Simon kept him there for a while, sticking to running his hand through Grace’s hair, occasionally massaging at his temples or the tension at the base of his skull. Eventually, he felt Grace’s body go mostly lax beneath him, surrendering to Simon’s touch and allowing his spread legs to bear most of Grace’s weight.
“Good.” Simon smiled, then nudged Grace’s head to the side so he should shimmy his pajama pants and briefs over his hips. Grace sat back on his heels, hands between his knees, and waited patiently. Simon’s mouth went dry at the sight.
Once his clothes were off, he beckoned Grace closer, and the other man shuffled into his space, hands returning to Simon’s now-bare skin. Simon hooked his fingers under Grace’s jaw and tugged him closer, causing his neck to strain as he craned his head. He rubbed the pad of his thumb against Grace’s thoughtfully-bitten lips before pushing down and sliding his thumb into the wet heat of his mouth.
Grace moaned and peered up at him with eyes still a little bit too clear for Simon’s liking, so he pushed his thumb in further, slipping it along the velvet softness of Grace’s tongue until he couldn’t go any deeper. Grace’s tongue fluttered around his finger as he simply held it there. Simon pressed down harder, trapping Grace’s tongue where it was, and Grace let out a stuttered whine as his eyelids slipped lower. Better.
Simon kept him like that for longer than necessary, stroking his thumb along Grace’s tongue every once and a while, otherwise just sitting there, letting Grace squirm and shift his hips and drool all over his own chin and Simon’s hand. When Simon finally released him, Grace reached up to wipe the drool from his face and Simon let him; he’d been so good, and he was about to go back to being just as messy in a few minutes, anyway.
“Open up, sweetheart,” Simon said, gently coaxing Grace’s jaw open, and Grace let his tongue loll out halfway, eyes half-lidded and hazy in a better way than before. “Good boy. Just like that.”
Simon stroked himself a couple of times with his spit-slick fingers before guiding the tapered head of his cock into Grace’s waiting mouth. He didn’t tease this time—there was a time and a place for that, and this was not it—and simply slid himself in until he met resistance and Grace choked a little. Simon’s hand went back to his hair and held Grace still as he rolled his hips softly, getting him used to the feeling. He slid in a little deeper and Grace gagged and whined, trying faintly to pull off. Simon didn’t let him.
“Breathe, darling, breathe—there you go, you’re doing so well,” he said, hissing slightly as Grace whimpered, then inhaled sharply through his nose. Simon rolled his hips as Grace relaxed and he sank in almost to the hilt, stuttering out a moan of his own at the hot, wet slide of the head of his cock sliding down Grace’s throat.
Grace gagged again and Simon held him down, forcing him to adjust. Grace’s fingers spasmed around Simon’s calves and he felt Grace shift to rut his hips into the floor. Interesting—he didn’t always get hard from this. Something must be doing it tonight.
As Grace settled around the intrusion, Simon gently slid the rest of the way in, and cradled the back of Grace’s head in his hand, pressing his face into the thatch of well-maintained pubes at the base of his cock. Grace let out a sigh that tapered off into a whiny moan and went boneless in his grip.
“You know what to do if you’ve had enough,” Simon said, phrasing it more like a statement than a question, and three quick taps to the back of one leg confirmed it.
With that taken care of, he propped his reading tablet on his leg and picked up where he left off before, alternating between turning the pages and stroking Grace’s hair. Every once in a while, Grace would shift, or swallow, or moan around his cock, and each time, Simon was reminded how delicious it felt to be up to the hilt in Grace’s soft mouth. Occasionally Grace would tongue along the ridges on the underside of his length and Simon would let out a hiss. He murmured a litany of praises under his breath, things like stars, you needed this, didn’t you, and isn’t this better, and all you needed was my cock in your mouth to make it all go quiet, hmm? and each time he spoke, Grace would whine and squirm and slip deeper into that blissful headspace.
By the time he’d finished his chapter, Grace was well and truly under. He’d begun mouthing around Simon’s cock like he often did, not quite a blowjob but not quite sitting there like a passive participant, either. Simon resisted the urge to rut into his mouth and instead held him still by the hair. He made it through half of another chapter before it finally became too much, and he set the reading tablet down on the nightstand before shifting down the bed so his heels were planted firmly against the floor.
He didn’t give Grace any warning as he pulled the man halfway off his cock by the hair before fucking back in, not harshly, but not so gentle that he couldn’t hear the sound of Grace’s throat spasming around him. But Grace didn’t gag, didn’t choke as Simon’s cock filled his throat over and over again. Instead, he started drooling to the point where Simon could feel it dripping down his balls and moaning these small, broken moans every time Simon fucked back in. Simon could feel a tightness in his lower stomach already, and his lips opened around a pant as Grace took everything he wanted to give.
Eventually, Simon’s thrusts got rough enough that Grace’s throat made little glk, glk, glk noises each time he thrust in, and the spit around his mouth had gone foamy from the friction. Simon’s breathing had shortened to uneven, stuttering gasps, and when Grace suddenly looked up at him through teary, red rimmed lashes—eyes completely unfocused, pupils vast black pits—Simon choked on a swear and came down Grace’s throat, nearly crushing the blonde man’s face into his pelvis as he shook through his own orgasm.
Panting, Simon carefully untangled his fingers from Grace’s hair and nudged him back onto his heels, where Grace sat patiently, his body shaking with the effort of keeping himself upright. Simon hastily wiped himself off with his discarded boxers, then pulled his mostly clean, slightly sweaty shirt over his head to wipe off Grace’s face. Grace leaned into Simon’s ministrations and allowed Simon to manhandle him onto the bed and strip off his clothes before tucking them both under the covers. Grace curled up against his chest almost immediately, head tucked under Simon’s, and Simon let out a heavy sigh as Grace melted into him.
“You did so good, sweetheart, so good for me,” Simon murmured, pressing his lips to the other man’s temple. “Such a good boy. So smart, so caring. You’re perfect, Ryland.”
Grace made a happy noise and nuzzled himself closer so the bridge of his nose was pressed firmly against the column of Simon’s throat, and Simon felt his breathing deepen and even out as he slipped into sleep. Simon’s fingers found his reading tablet tangled in the sheets and he snapped it into the holder bolted to their headboard—another Grace invention—and resumed where he left off, rubbing gentle circles into Grace’s shoulder blades while he slept.
Around an hour and a half later, Grace stirred, and Simon moved his arm to allow him to sit up. Grace took the glass of water Simon pressed into his hands gratefully, and downed about half of it before clearing his throat.
“How long was I out?”
“A little under two hours.” Simon reached up and tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ears. Grace snagged his hand and kissed his knuckles.
“Thank you,” he murmured, “I needed that.”
“Anytime, sweetheart,” Simon replied.
Grace got out of bed to relieve himself and wash his face, then paused in the bathroom doorway. “Sodium nitrate. That’s what I was forgetting!”
Simon laughed as he reached for the datapad he kept on his nightstand and hastily scribbled a new entry. When he was done, Grace tossed the datapad away a little carelessly and crawled back under the covers to curl up next to Simon, tangling their legs together.
“I could sleep for a week,” he groaned, and Simon laughed and reached out to tilt his head up for a kiss. Grace, still mostly boneless, went willingly.
“Why don’t you?” he replied, peering into Grace’s exhausted eyes with exasperated fondness. “I think you’ve earned it.”
Grace’s only response was a sleepy smile before exhaustion pulled him under. Simon gave his forehead another kiss, then put his reading tablet away and turned off the light.