Archive of Our Own

Immerensis

n.

the maddening inability to understand the reasons why someone loves you—almost as if you’re selling them a used car that you know has a ton of problems and requires daily tinkering just to get it to run normally, but no matter how much you try to warn them, they seem all the more eager to hop behind the wheel and see where this puppy can go.

〰 The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

They build him a house up on the cliffs; down a winding stone path, away from the sweep of the tide.

It takes three months for him to be able to sleep through the night. He’s never had a bed before.

The earliest days, the ones of isolation in thick, transparent Xenonite are a haze, a distant dream on the heels of a nightmare. Sometimes he can still feel the blood on his skin— sometimes he can still taste it between his teeth. The injuries fade, the blisters heal, and he doesn’t die from radiation exposure or alcohol poisoning, or any of the other scrawled words on the board outside his isolation chamber that Grace spends hours frowning at when he thinks Simon is sleeping. Day by day they get crossed off.

He doesn’t think too much about how impossible it is that he walks out of that chamber. He wants to live.

And so they build him a house up on the cliffs, these strange aliens who he can’t understand without Grace’s machine. 

What do you want? The one he comes to know as Adrian asks, and he doesn’t know how to put into words that he doesn’t know, because he’s never been asked that before. 

Big windows, lots of light? They suggest, unperturbed, their carapace tilted as though trying to figure him out, trying to extrapolate some answer from his silence. He nods, and from there it’s almost simple.

It ends up much like Grace’s, closer to the cliff face, so close it makes Simon queasy the first time he spots it, but lighter, the ceilings taller.  

He sobs so loud and long that first night he worries about waking Grace in his little house down the path.

Two weeks after he’s discharged from the medical unit, Grace shows him the greenhouses.

“They’re pretty bare-bones, for now,” Grace says, sheepish, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Mary only carried a few species, and it took months to synthesise the soil.” 

Simon realises he’s supposed to say something, but words fail him. 

The greenhouses are a collection of small domes further down the cliff face, each one set aside for a different purpose and designed with specific parameters. Different temperatures, levels of moisture. Grace explains it all to him in that rambling way of his, halting every so often as though he’s conscious of going on for too long, but then barrelling on ahead anyway. 

Simon doesn’t find he minds it. Especially not when all he can focus on is green, vibrant and alive and swaying lightly in the simulated breeze. 

He reaches out without thinking, breath hitching when his fingertip brushes the fuzzy edge of a tomato plant’s leaf, before immediately recoiling, chastising himself. He jerks backwards, panic surging through him, that he might have overstepped, that he might have ruined it, that Grace won’t-

“Woah there,” Grace exclaims, hands raised plaintively, showing his palms. It’s the first time Simon really notices the scar on his arm, and notices that it seems to stretch from Grace’s jaw all the way to his palm. “It’s alright, you can touch them.”

His ears ring. 

He looks away from Grace’s soft, sad smile, his bright eyes, and over to the small plants. Too young to sprout fruit. In his mind’s eye, he sees Eden’s tree, her barren branches, and swallows around a mouthful of grit.

“No I’ll…I could hurt it.” 

The silence hangs heavy between them, and he can practically hear Grace thinking but he doesn’t dare to look at him, eyes still locked onto the delicate leaves, the damp soil. He’s never seen anything like it before.

“Hey,” Grace coaxes, stepping closer to the small pots, scarred hand raised. “You just have to be gentle.” He says, and then runs his fingertip along the underside of one of the leaves, repeating the action on another.

Simon meets his gaze, wary, and he wonders how he must look with his mismatched eyes and jagged teeth where they shouldn’t be, hunched over and shying away from a collection of seedlings.

“I don’t know how.” he settles on.

Grace smiles, tilting his head to one side. His eyes are so bright. “I’ll show you.”

Adrian takes to visiting him in the afternoons. Not every day, but often enough that he starts to become accustomed to their quiet company.

He sees Grace in one way or another everyday, whether it be out on the path or in one of their homes. Grace invites him for dinner regularly with Rocky and Adrian, and he comes to appreciate the warmth of it all, the endless bickering between Rocky and Grace and the way Adrian has some kind of unspoken authority over movie choices, seemingly based solely on a subtle, judgemental tilt of their carapace.

On the rare occasion that Simon musters up the courage to suggest something, Adrian never disagrees.

Have proposal, they announce one sunny afternoon. Grace had started ceding absolute control of the Biodome’s weather system after Simon had moved in, apparently ending a year-long argument that humans needed varied weather patterns for superior wellbeing, and Grace’s insistence that he didn’t. 

He still feels guilty about it every time the artificial sun shines a little brighter.

“What sort of proposal?” He asks, wary. 

Adrian hesitates for a moment, tapping two of their claws against the floor. Eridians can lose limbs too. Can grow back, but takes time. Build temporary devices to help.

He twitches, a phantom pain in the open air where his arm used to be. He wonders if Adrian has known all along that it’s been bothering him, how obvious he’s been. Ungrateful. “It’s…you’ve done enough already.”

Adrian taps at the ground again, harder this time. Have done plenty, yes, but not too much. They pause again, taking a few steps closer until they can settle beside Simon where he sits on the floor, back against the sofa. If it would help, if Simon wants, then only need to ask. 

He swallows, looking away. He’s always appreciated their bluntness - a trait that seems to be common amongst Eridians but particularly strong in Adrian - but it throws him off balance, now, knees drawn up towards his chest. He’s tried not to think about it, about the way he’d torn his own arm off, the way it aches in the night. The way he still tries to reach with a hand that isn’t there. 

“Can…can I think about it?”

Adrian hums a low note that the translator doesn’t seem to pick up. It reminds him of Grace, back in the greenhouses, Simon’s fingertips still tingling from a brush with something so alive. 

Yes. Simon think about it. Your choice, always your choice.

They say that to him a lot, all of them. He wonders how long it will be until it stops surprising him.

Things become familiar. The salt on the breeze, the cadence of Grace’s laugh, the walls of his little home that he maps out with his palm obsessively, dragging the tips of his fingers along the edges of walls and windows, the frames of doors. 

The nightmares don’t stop— some nights he scrubs his skin raw trying to rid himself of it, that all encompassing red that looms in the back of his mind, that he catches a glimpse of every time he accidentally looks in a mirror. Ava’s screams echo in the back of his mind, it’s more than us, please, Simon, please, and just like then he stands there in his dreamscape, impotent and terrified, his senses overwhelmed with red. 

He spends hours some evenings thinking about the black box, about whether it ever got found, if all of it had truly happened for nothing, and he’d been rewarded for his failure, for his selfishness, for his cowardice. 

He takes to walking on the nights that he can’t escape it.

Tonight the simulated moon is full, bright and pale in the clear, dark sky. Simon stares at it, transfixed, almost waiting for its silvery face to drip crimson. It never does.

It's a short walk to the greenhouses from his door. Grace has been trying for weeks now to cultivate and grow grass and though Simon has only ever seen pictures of it on the laptop Grace had given him, he knows it’s not going well. Sample trays of different specimens litter the outdoor workspace close to the small domes, all of them just slightly off, slightly wrong. For now, his boots meet stone, and while Grace frets over grass he can’t help but appreciate the feel of it underfoot. 

Better than the cold metal of Eden. Better than the rust and decay of the SM-13.

He crests the small hill separating their homes from the greenhouses and pauses, relishing the cool night air against his skin, greedily inhaling the distant salt of the waves, eager to cleanse himself of the ghosts lingering in the back of his mind. 

In the moonlight, a lone figure sits at one of the tables.

Months removed from everything, the sight is still enough to have him reaching for a knife no longer holstered, to twitch for a wall to put his back against. The memory of that many-mawed thing and its unseeing eyes, the stench of iron and desperation choking him. But the figure shifts, legs crossed beneath him as he sits on rather than at the table, and casts his head skywards, perpetually skewed glasses flashing silver for a moment. 

He thinks he ought to turn away, that Grace had clearly come here for a reason, and that reason had not been Conversation. That if he wanted Simon’s company he would ask for it, as he so often did. That he’d reach out, despite how Simon flinched, despite how he guarded himself. 

He doesn’t turn away.

He purposefully scuffs his boot on the path as he approaches, and Grace still flinches at the sound but not as badly as he might have if Simon had been closer. As he knows he would have, if their positions had been reversed. 

“Oh! Hey there, Simon,” he exclaims, but there’s something strained in his voice, and Simon immediately regrets his decision, he should have just turned back, should have just left well enough alone. “Can’t sleep?”

“I can go back, if you want to be-”

“No!” Grace pauses then, sheepish, and Simon finally gets a look at his face in the dim light, notices for the first time the deep, dark bags under his bright eyes. The pinch of his forehead as he sighs, shoulders slumping. “No you can stay. I…I’d like it if you stayed.” 

Simon’s head fills with static the same way it does anytime Grace says something like that, and he nods, averting his eyes and hesitating for a moment before joining him on the table, legs swinging as he situates himself. 

In the distance, the waves hiss as they swing to and fro, but Simon is deaf to anything but Grace’s shaky breaths. He wants to know what his heartbeat sounds like, and immediately drowns out the thought as soon as it occurs, shoving it deep into that part of himself he can hide from if he focuses hard enough. 

“You ever get so angry you just don’t know where to put it all?” Grace asks after a while of sitting in that silence, half of his face cast in shadow, his eyes cast towards the simulated sky.

Simon thinks back to Eden, to the Butcher, he thinks back to slamming his hand into that damned X-ray camera, and he thinks of smashing the Eel’s teeth, snarling and braying, out of his mind with fear so fierce it had burned into rage. 

“Yeah,” he replies, voice low and gravelly. He clears his throat. “Yeah, a few times. Before.” 

Grace hums. “Back on Earth, before I was a teacher, I used to just—lose it. Embarrassed myself so many times,” he trails off, sighing as he knocks his glasses off his face and lets them hang beneath his jaw in a way that Simon still finds perplexing, no matter how many times he’s seen him do it. “I had a lot of ideas that weren’t very popular and I…I went about sharing them in a way that was even worse, and I paid for it, I did. And then after that I told myself that I wouldn’t let it happen again, and it didn’t. For a long time, it didn’t. But then, well…” he tails off, scrubbing a hand over his face, and Simon looks away, up at the dark sky.

He’s heard the story piecemeal over the months, details taken and held close, memorised with extreme care. He knows the full story of how Grace and Rocky had met, how they’d saved their respective stars, how they’d prevented their version of the Quiet Rapture, but Grace doesn’t like to speak about his life before, and he likes to talk about the circumstances of him ending up at Tau Ceti even less. 

But Simon’s gotten enough details to get the gist of it. Simon’s fate had been sealed with a weld— Grace’s with a syringe. 

“I don’t hate them, I don’t really blame them, in all honesty,” Grace continues after a long moment, his voice catching, breaths shakier. “One life against billions, the choice was obvious, I know that.”

It’s bigger than us. It’s bigger than me. 

“But it still hurts.” Simon suggests, feeling something strange and new flutter between his ribs when Grace nods.

“Yeah, it really does,” he draws in a shuddering breath— he’s trying not to cry. “I just…I liked my life there. I don’t think I would trade this for it, but it mattered. I guess sometimes I just wish someone else had seen that.”

“It mattered,” Simon says without hesitation, holding Grace’s gaze when he turns his head. His eyes are red rimmed and bloodshot, his stubble longer than he usually lets it be. “It mattered.” he repeats, and Grace smiles, eyes slipping shut for a moment, nodding.

“I’m so glad we found you, Simon.” he whispers.

Simon’s ears ring. 

“Me too.” he manages once Grace has turned away, looking back up at the sky.

Grace hands over management of the greenhouses to him one foggy afternoon. 

“Don’t think I haven’t seen you reading up on all this stuff on your laptop.” Grace says when Simon tries to refuse, pointing at him, eyes narrowed. He’s much too energetic for so early in the morning, but Simon is too busy panicking over the suggestion of responsibility that he almost burns his breakfast while Grace takes residence at his dining table. 

“What if I do something wrong? I could kill them all, I could-”

“You’ll have the rest of the team to help you out with research, but you can do this, Simon, I know you can. You’re smart. And I know you enjoy working with them, so, why not?”

He turns away from his slightly blackened food - Grace calls it toast, but Simon knows they don’t have any bread, and knows it definitely shouldn’t taste vaguely earthy, but doesn’t care to question beyond that - and leans against the counter. Grace is looking at him over the tops of his glasses, a smug little smile on his face that makes that new thing in his chest twist and squeeze, aching between his ribs. 

“I wouldn’t know what to do, not really.” he tries, and Grace purses his lips for a moment, head tilting in that way of his. Sometimes he wonders if Adrian and Rocky had learned the habit from him or vice versa. Either way, it makes that ache all the worse.

“You can say no,” he starts, laying his hands flat on the smooth dark stone of the table, thumbs gently drumming against it. “You don’t have to. What I’m asking is if you’d want to, and I think that maybe you would.”

He thinks back to standing on the cliffs with Adrian that first day, wondering how to want without being too greedy, without digging his nails in, without letting the desperation show. He doesn’t know how to do it properly, doesn’t know how to make that decision— he’d been a good soldier for a reason. 

“I-” he tries, voice failing him. Grace doesn’t falter, just stays as he is, thumbs drumming against Simon’s table, his eyes bright and shining in the morning light, no trace of the tears from a few days prior. “Yeah, I would like that. If you think I can do it.”

“I think you could do anything.”

Simon turns away then, back to his food— if he notices a bright flush on Grace’s cheeks when he turns back, he blames it on the light.

Life is slow on Erid.

The days pass quietly, as easy as the waves on the sand because Grace doesn't like them loud and crashing. He likes them soft, smooth so that they blend into the fog. Simon doesn't hate them as much as he used to. 

His memories of his previous life - lives - are disjointed, scraps of memories patched together, fraying at the edges. But he knows it had never been slow, he couldn't afford it, then. Nobody could.

Eden had painted over its desperation, dressed itself in the vestments of an uncaring god. He'd been so convinced by it, convinced that he was doing right, that what he was being told was the only truth that mattered. But the desperation had still been there beneath the façade.

Prison had been worse, backed into a corner, fighting tooth and nail for every last damned thing he could get his hands on, every day a battle, every night an exercise in resilience. 

He struggles at times to fill that gap. Desperation had driven him in the same way it has everybody else. In the same way it had driven the people who put Grace on that ship. 

But life on Erid is slow. Comfortable. And sometimes the itch to do something, to fight for something, is so strong that his hand trembles with the reflection of his own restraint. 

Working in the greenhouses helps. 

He takes to the work with an intensity he finds embarrassing, at first, spending long days amongst the growing seedlings and meeting with the Eridian scientists working on ways to improve their growth and stability. Before he really knows it, he's worked out a better way to create compost and developed a meticulousness about soil pH levels that drives more than one of the Eridian scientists to despair. 

The problem with wanting when you've never been taught how is that it's impossible to know when to stop, when to loosen your grip. And so he agonises over it for days, whether he's gone too far, whether he's upset the people he's supposed to be helping, whether he's done it wrong again-

And then the first tomato plant fruits.

It's a damp, grey morning, rain pattering softly against the roof as he steps into the dome and sets about checking on the plants. And then there, in the middle of the third row, a small cluster of tomatoes presses closely against the stake helping keep the wiry stem upright, the green of their waxy skin only a few shades lighter than the rest of the plant. 

His breath hitches and he just stares— he’s never used his hands for something like this before. Something gentle, something good.

The tears come almost embarrassingly easily.

The greenhouses continue to flourish, more and more tomato plants sprouting their own clusters before the green beans follow suit. Lettuce leaves grow firm and healthy, and he harvests a batch of small carrots that Grace fawns over, before seizing a few samples to try and develop full sized versions. Grace had, by some miracle, discovered a few small packets of various mystery seeds a few months back, and they sprout into basil and thyme, and a small but determined chive plant. 

The day the first tomatoes are ready and ripe, Grace cooks soup. There's more than a little improvisation due to the fact that they don't have any garlic, and the onions aren't quite ready yet, but he makes it work. Or, they do, because Grace throws a spare apron at him and drags him into the kitchen to help while Adrian and Rocky observe with a mix of amusement and scientific curiosity.

And when they finally sit down to eat, paired with the mysterious, starchy blocks that Grace was now referring to as dirtbread much to Rocky's annoyance, Simon is so overwhelmed he almost breaks down right there at Grace's dinner table. Because it's so good, and he'd grown the food that Grace had turned into something so wonderful, so unlike anything from his last life, he doesn't quite know how to reconcile the person he was with the place he now finds himself in. He doesn't know how to accept that his fingers are now stained with soil, not blood, and that he can afford for his life to be quiet, slow.

In the end, Grace beats him to it, choking on a sob halfway through the meal and having to set his spoon aside to try and stem his tears.

“I never thought…” he trails off, voice trembling, and he doesn't need to finish because Simon knows, even if he doesn't exactly. 

Leaky, Rocky chides, but he doesn't sound too upset about it, and nor does he hesitate to clamber out of his chair and over to Grace, climbing up to hover over his lap so that Grace can hug him tightly, muffling another sob into the shimmering Xenonite between them. Friend Simon make more of these, yes? Make Grace leaky. Happy happy happy.

Grace lifts his head, chin resting on top of Rocky's carapace, and the smile that stretches across his face is so warm, so soft, that Simon's chest seizes because nobody's ever looked at him like that before. He wants Grace to keep looking at him like that. 

“Yeah, yeah I'll make as many as you want.” Simon replies, that familiar static returning as Grace's smile widens further, only to be distracted when Rocky lets out a pleased melody, remaining in his spot over Grace's legs. 

Good good good, he chimes.

Good good good, Adrian echoes.

He's starting to think that they might be right.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Grace is saying, upside down on his sofa. His socks don’t match. “I just thought it might be fun, you know?” 

Simon rolls his shoulders— there's a faint itch in a wrist he no longer has. “Are you sure I wouldn’t be a distraction?” he asks, rubbing his forearm against his knee, quelling the phantom itch a little, just enough to make it bearable. “Y’know, on account of all the-the fuckin’ teeth.” he gestures vaguely to the marred side of his face, watches as Graces frowns up at him, cheeks red from the blood rushing to his head. Simon isn’t sure if it would be rude to ask why he’s upside down. 

“They’re good kids, they won’t…they know better than that.” His scarred hand clenches and unclenches as he says it, averting his eyes for a long moment. 

“Alright.” he says eventually, because he still hasn’t quite worked out how to say no to Grace, even though he knows he should, even though he knows he should be putting space between them for Grace’s sake. Protecting him from the blood under his nails, the phantoms in his mind.

“Yeah?” Grace jolts upwards, excited, but he doesn’t go far enough to pull himself upright, and instead bangs his head before sliding somewhat pathetically to the floor, groaning and covering his rapidly flushing face with his hands. “You didn’t see that.” he mumbles from behind his fingers.

“I did.”

“No you didn’t.” 

A week later, Simon finds himself trudging along the beach towards the small cove that Grace has established as his classroom. He’s been here only once before, one long and lonely night that first week when he’d needed to see all of the edges of his new cage, as he’d thought of it then. He can’t remember when that changed, exactly.

Grace shows him his equipment, the modified keyboard and microphone that allows him to speak something close to Eridian, the whiteboard with a tactile panel beside it that translates everything he writes for his students to read more easily, and the table lined with small models of planets, molecules and everything in between. Some of them are made from Xenonite in Rocky’s familiar style, while others are far more haphazard, Grace’s hallmark. 

He settles in a stool as the students start to arrive, their little figures visible through the thick panelling carved into the cliffside, and Simon tries not to look too closely at the gloom behind them, tries not to think too much about the fact that Erid is so dark beyond the walls of their dome. 

It becomes apparent very quickly that he’s made a mistake. 

There had been teachers on Eden, but beyond the Father’s teachings, he’d learned little of use, little of what Grace sometimes talks about when he talks about Earth and the life he’d lived there. There hadn’t been the time, and they’d put a knife in his hand when he was thirteen anyway. He’d never thought much about it before. He does now. 

Grace just— blooms. He’s seen him hard at work in the labs, seen him working out complex theories and stringing together words with Rocky that he’s convinced aren’t actually real while they’re poring over something together, but he’s never quite seen him like this. He’s so kind to them, so present as he sweeps around his little classroom, all chunky knitwear and scuffed shoes, his hair a mess as he continually fiddles with it, but his glasses staying on his face for once.

He makes them laugh, keeps them focused, easily steers them when he needs to. He’s never seen anything like it, and it makes that now familiar ache between his ribs throb, twitching and alive and looking for something, half of a whole. He doesn’t know what it means. He tells himself he doesn’t know what it means. 

He’s so caught up in it all that before he knows it, the class is over and Grace is crouching close to the Xenonite panel, speaking softly with a small group of students. Simon stands, crossing the sand to read over Grace’s notes, eyes darting between his own familiar scrawl and the Eridian panels, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth at the sight of Grace’s doodles framing the actual notes. 

“Hey!” Grace calls out, straightening up and joining Simon beside the boards as the last of his students scuttle away into the darkness. “Thank you for coming. I hope it wasn’t too, y’know.” He averts his eyes, scratching at the back of his neck, and even as alarms blare in the back of Simon’s mind and tell him to turn back now, run while you can still save him, he stays rooted to the spot, watching Grace knock his glasses halfway off his face by accident.  

“You’re a good teacher.” He blurts, cringing slightly at his own bluntness. Grace pushes his glasses back onto his nose, his eyes wide and surprised..

“You think so? Sometimes I worry that they’re just humouring me, you know?” 

Simon squeezes his thumb into the middle of his palm, taking a deep, slow breath in through his nose. “They love you, I can see that. Hang on your every word, man,” he hesitates, hearing that alarm again. He wants so badly, to soothe, to reassure. To be gentle. His hands itch with it, but maybe that’s just the blood, the hypocrisy. “You’re a good teacher.” he repeats.

He’s never felt starlight on his skin, never felt its warmth or seen its light, not that he can remember at least. Erid’s atmosphere is so dense that light from its star never actually reaches the surface, and so all of the light in their dome is simulated, made just for them. He doesn’t know what it feels like to bask in the sun on a long, lazy afternoon, and doesn't know what the first day of spring feels like after a long and dark summer. 

He thinks it must feel a bit like this, that it must feel like watching that wide, brilliant smile pull at the corners of Grace’s mouth, that it must look like the crinkles around his eyes, the slight flush of his cheeks. 

He’d take this moment over a thousand summer days— he’s never felt so warm.

In the end, there’s only so much he can hide, even from himself. Maybe especially then.

He figures that if he keeps himself focused on the greenhouses, on helping the Eridian scientists with their experiments splicing the plants together, on all the usual routines of movie nights at Grace’s and watching his lessons once a week, he can keep his head above the water. That maybe he can observe without coveting, without corrupting. Without staining anybody else with his bloodstained fingertips, his clawing desperation. He figures that maybe he can convince himself that the ache between his ribs isn’t real, or that it's just a phantom pain like all the rest. But it isn’t, and he doesn’t. 

There had been words for it, back on Eden, words for men like him. Men who craved things they couldn’t have, things that they didn’t deserve. Harsh words, hissed in dark corners, spat at unfair trials before an uncaring jury. 

He sees something divine when he looks at Grace but it's different. It isn’t the oppressive devotion of the Last Tree, nor the cold calculation of the Father or the false love of his brothers. And it isn’t the despotic ignorance of that half-seeing eye. It's something new, something bright, warm. Real. 

The thought of staining it - him - with his filthy hands is more terrifying than an entire ocean of blood. 

It keeps him up at night for days, staring up at the ceiling, almost waiting for it to shift, for the smooth Xenonite to fade away into rusting metal. Into primordial darkness. But it never does and he thinks that maybe that’s another thing he doesn’t deserve, along with all the rest of it. His head hurts if he tries to think about how he got here, and it pisses him off so much that he takes to pacing around his living room in the dead of night, trying to be better, trying to be gentle like Grace showed him. 

But he’s still the same man, and so he seethes. 

Between Eden, the COI and that damned moon, he doesn’t quite know where his faith stands, where to place his devotion. Cast adrift, chain cut. There had always been someone, something, to idolise, always some all-seeing all-knowing deity somewhere in the sky above him, testing his will, his faith, and he’d always been so eager to please regardless of how much it hurt. Regardless of how much he destroyed to grasp for some small piece of divinity. 

But then he’d been betrayed by his own brothers, cast into the bowels of the COI and then thrust into that fucking submarine, sent into that ocean and tormented by some grotesque embodiment of humanity’s own failure to save itself. And he'd faced a god, or something close to it at least. That half-blind eye leering at him through the darkness, watching but not seeing, witnessing but not understanding.

The Eel had called it an ignorant god— one of the few times she'd spoken the truth. 

He wonders if it was the Eye that put him here, that wrenched him out of reality - like it had done already, dropping him into its own domain, an endless night of blood - and dropped him here. Because nothing else makes sense, nothing else adds up. He died, he felt it. He felt every inch of his body mutate and tear itself apart and the idea that that thing had seen his fight and decided to hand out mercy in his final moments is laughable. 

He doesn't want to owe his life to a despot, not again. He doesn't want Grace and Erid and his greenhouses to be something he's been given, and he doesn't want some incomprehensible hand guiding his path, ready to snatch everything away from him all over again. 

He doesn't know where that leaves him, soil under his fingernails and his dreams drenched in blood, orbiting helplessly around a man with golden hair and scars that almost match his own. He aches to be soft, gentle, to be more like Grace, but he feels cumbersome when he tries. Out of place. 

There’s something divine in the way Grace smiles— Simon has been damned since the day he was born. 

Bloodied then, too.

He wants to know what Grace’s heartbeat sounds like.

He thinks about pulling away. Distancing himself. But as much as he swears to himself and the empty night that he’ll keep his hand to himself, that he’ll resist the urge to give in to his want, he can’t help but be selfish still, even now. Old habits die hard— that’s what Grace says, at least.

And so he still attends one or two of his lessons each week, and he still steps into Grace’s home every other night for dinner with Rocky and Adrian. He still lets Grace ramble at him in the greenhouses when he’s stuck on some stubborn problem, and he still takes the occasional walk with him down the beach when the tide is calm and quiet, and Simon can handle the thought of it being so close if only because Grace is there. 

He looks his fill but he doesn’t touch, doesn’t try to exercise his want. On the long, empty nights that the ache is at its worst, he lies in his bed and forces himself to fight against the heat coiling in the pit of his stomach at the thought of Grace. His smile, his perpetually messy hair and the long, lean lines of him. He doesn’t know where it comes from, this lust, but it drives him to despair, fingers clenched tightly in his bedsheets, sweat on his brow as he fights a losing battle. 

That old selfishness again. 

Because it’s one thing to want him close, to want to have him there in Simon’s kitchen cooking soup, to want his mess to mix with Simon’s mess, and to know the rhythm of his heart and the cadence of his every breath, but it’s another to want him. Especially when Simon doesn’t even know what that means, not really. 

Grace hates to be idolised, this Simon does know, and he tries with all his power not to place him up on that pedestal he shies from regardless how much he thinks he ought to be there, venerated. But he’s never felt as heretical as he does when he thinks of Grace in his bed, underneath him— piety fails him like everything else. 

He’s losing the battle more often than not, now, overcome at the memories of Grace’s hands on him. A gentle, reassuring squeeze to his arm, a jesting knock of their shoulders together and the brush of his hair against Simon’s unmarred cheek the night that he’d fallen asleep halfway through a movie and he’d slumped against him. 

And then Grace hugs him, and Simon loses the battle completely.

It had been brief, a celebration more than anything as Simon had finally harvested his first batch of onions, but it had been so much more than he’d had in such a long time. Since his mother died, maybe. Because one moment he’d just been content to bask in the warmth and light of Grace’s smile, and the next a warm pair of arms had wrapped around him, palms pressed to his shoulderblades as Simon had frozen in place, before summoning enough wherewithal to return the gesture. 

Knowing what it felt like to wrap an arm around Grace’s waist was, ultimately, his undoing. 

He’s a mess that night, alone in his bedroom with the door firmly closed and the blinds drawn. His skin still burns in all the places that Grace had touched him, and the ache in his chest erupts into something desperate and ugly, all empty hands and gasping breaths and it hurts. He wonders if it isn’t some punishment from whatever cruel deity had decided to stir his fate on this particular day, to tempt him with something, let him hold it in the palm of his hand for a brief, golden moment, only to tear it away again because he didn’t deserve it, because men like him deserved only one thing, and he’d found a way to escape even that. 

Eden had taught them of this, the perils of lust and covetousness. And he knows, logically, that it had been more about population control in light of their limited resources than anything else, but he feels the words on his skin like a brand nevertheless, lying on his front in his bed and rutting desperately against the sheets, not daring to slip a hand between his legs but not so righteous that he can’t pant and writhe like a pathetic creature, that he can’t fall into the haze of want want want. 

He thinks of Grace’s arms around him, how they’d pulled him close for that gilded moment, and he thinks of how they might feel wrapped around his shoulders, how his hands might drag down his spine and his legs might bracket Simon’s hips as he-

“Fuck.” he bites down on his own pillow, and comes so hard into his underwear that he has to close his eyes to stop the vertigo. 

He doesn’t dare to meet his own gaze in the bathroom mirror.

Eight months in, he stops feeling surprised every time he wakes in his bed, every time he returns to this hidden sanctuary rather than a dark cell. The bottom of a crimson sea. He still feels wrong, out of place. His eyes still don’t match, and the teeth sprouting from his cheek keep growing back every time he’s stupid enough to try and pull one out, but he stops expecting the illusion to fade, stops expecting the dim lights of the SM-13 and the crackle of Ava’s voice on the radio. 

The dreams don’t stop— he makes peace with the fact that they probably never will. 

Subconsciously, he’s been waiting for this, waiting for the trust to settle and crystallise, waiting to stop viewing the world as a dark corner which he was perpetually backed into, and when the day finally comes he does feel relief, relief that all of the horror is another step behind him, even if his memories of everything that came before are hazier. 

He can no longer remember his mother’s face. A new sort of despair swallows him whole.

The greenhouses are his only solace these days. He spends too many long hours at night pacing around his home, trying to remember things about his childhood, about his mother, his friends, anything, and coming up frustratingly short. 

Adrian corners him between the rows of green beans one rainy afternoon, rubbing their fingers together in a mannerism he’s seen in Rocky a few times, one that means they’re thinking about how to phrase something particularly hard. 

Simon friend okay? They settle on after a while of silent not-staring, their fingers still twitching anxiously as Simon sets his trowel aside and turns to face them.

“I’m fine,” Adrian is bigger than Rocky, the pointed tip of their blue-green carapace finishing around the middle of his stomach. He’s never sure if he ought to be bending down to their level, but he has an inkling they wouldn’t appreciate it. “Why?”

Simon quiet, more than usual. Grace like this sometimes too, never want to talk about it until Rocky force him. 

He thinks of Grace, cross-legged under the moonlight months ago, eyes red-rimmed and tired, his voice shaky. Grace does a good job of exuding optimism and positivity, but Simon knows that there’s more to him than just that light, that he has scars of his own etched into his soul. 

He wants to know the shape of those scars. Wants to hold the weight of them. 

“I…I’m forgetting things. Or maybe I’m just realising that I’ve already forgotten them, I’m not sure,” he pauses, curling his pointer finger around a plant stem. Gently— Grace had shown him how. “About Eden, about my family,” his breath shudders as he exhales, and his eyes slip closed. “About my mother.” 

Adrian is silent for another long moment, before taking a few slow steps closer. Miss family, question?

“Yeah, but it’s…I can’t remember what she looked like, or the song she used to-” his chest constricts and he stops, shaking his head and swallowing down on that particular anger that fired in his veins at being like this, stripped bare, vulnerable. “I don’t remember as much as I wish I could.” 

Humans never can, Grace says. Human mind not like Eridian’s. Sad, they pause again before taking another step closer, enough that the edge of their carapace nudges against his knee, the Xenonite warm and smooth against his skin. Have spoken to Grace about this?

“No,” he admits, subtly moving his leg a bit closer so that Adrian presses against him more closely. He doesn’t know how to ask for touch, but Adrian always seems to know when he needs it before he does. “I don’t-he shouldn’t have to deal with all of my shit.”

Grace disagree, Adrian retorts, vents huffing. Grace want to help more, but not want be too much. 

“He’s got enough to deal with.”

Let him make this decision, yes? 

“Adrian-”

Grace forget much about life before too, they interject, unperturbed. Can help each other, common problem. 

“I can handle it.”

Adrian considers him for a moment - and even though he knows they don’t have eyes, they still have a particular way of facing him that makes him feel like they do, that makes him feel like he’s being squinted at incredulously - before tapping their arm against the floor decisively. 

Yes, can handle. But should not do alone, and that makes his chest hurt all over again. He deserves none of this, none of them. Simon talk Grace, help each other.

“I’ll think about it.” he concedes.

Simon do, or Adrian send Rocky here instead.

“Alright, alright, I’ll do it.”

Adrian trills, pleased, and Simon turns back to his work, muttering.

New bad word, question?

“Yeah, but I’m not teaching you this one now.” 

Bitch, Adrian says, and Simon laughs until his ribs ache.

Simon stands in Grace’s kitchen, suds collecting around his fingers as he washes the dishes. He has to take a harsh breath through his nose to steady himself, lest he acknowledge how surreal the whole picture really is.

They’d cooked soup again, together, Simon watching Grace’s movements greedily, following his instructions without question. Rocky and Adrian had joined them, and they’d all settled into the soft comfort of his living room for a movie. Rocky has filled Grace’s home with small, warm lights that turn on with a brush of his fingertips, placed carefully amongst trinkets and items harvested from the Hail Mary, perched high on shelves and nestled into corners. His proudest achievement by far, he’s been told at length, are the strings of small bulbs that hang from the ceiling. Simon thinks they look like stars from below. 

If he turns, he’ll see Grace dozing on the sofa, his colourful quilt draped across his shoulders, and Rocky curled up carefully beside him, humming gently, soothing. Setting a cleaned bowl aside to dry, he chances a look over, and spots Adrian carefully pulling Grace’s glasses from his face, moving out of view to set them aside— he doesn’t wake.

Grace had been working himself ragged the last few days, telling them all he was so close to finally cultivating something close to grass. Simon’s seen his lights on in the middle of the night, seen him fall asleep at his kitchen table more than once, and had finally resorted to telling Rocky on one of his visits to the greenhouses. He hadn’t disappointed, and Grace had been corralled back into his house for a nap that afternoon. 

He takes his time cleaning Grace’s mug. There’s multiple from the Hail Mary, all of them more or less identical with their mission insignia, but Grace’s favourite one has a chip in the handle that he likes to press his thumb into when he’s thinking about something particularly complex, and so Simon handles it carefully as he soaks it in the warm water, focused entirely on the task at hand. He tries not to think too much about how he knows that, why he knows that.

Towelling his hand dry and letting the water drain, he turns to find Grace awake again now, Rocky sitting up a little straighter and speaking with him softly as Adrian climbs up beside Rocky, chirping in greeting as Simon steps back through the archway. 

“You didn’t have to do that.” Grace murmurs as Simon comes to sit at the end of the sofa, accepting Adrian’s presence against his leg, warm and steady.

“S’fine,” Simon replies. “You did most of the cooking anyway.”

Grace hums, contemplative. “You grew the food, though.”

Simon narrows his eyes, buying time to think of something to say, but Rocky saves him by stretching upwards and tapping two fingers against Grace’s elbow. 

Time for sleep, question? He's needing the translating machines less and less these days, but he still keeps it handy.

Grace rolls his shoulders, yawning. “No, not yet, I just want to have another look at those-”

Time for sleep statement, Rocky interjects, and Simon huffs a laugh as Grace rolls his eyes and deflates, clearly too tired to argue the point. 

He returns to the kitchen when Grace stands, drying his mug carefully, so it's ready for the morning. Adrian stands quietly beside him while Rocky bullies Grace into the bathroom to brush his teeth. Despite his frequent complaints of disgust, disgust, so leaky, Rocky makes no effort to leave Grace to it, and Simon can’t help but smile to himself as he listens to them bicker. 

He’s aware that he’s lingering, that he ought to just leave already, but he feels rooted to the spot as he sets Grace’s mug onto the counter. There’s nowhere else he’d rather be, and that thought scares him less than it used to. Adrian taps a fingertip against his calf and he nudges them back with a socked foot.

Rocky Adrian go home now, Rocky announces, and Simon clocks his strange posture immediately, the way he's slowly edging towards the door. Most nights, Adrian walks Simon home while Rocky stays with Grace for a bit longer. He is inevitably distracted from his suspicion by Grace reappearing, hair a disaster from his nap and squinting slightly without his glasses in the dim, warm light. See Grace tomorrow at lab.

“Bright and early, pal.” Grace says with a yawn, curling his fingers momentarily around Rocky's outstretched hand. 

No. Afternoon.

“Rocky-”

Scientists lock airlock until lunch, Adrian interrupts, and Grace makes a frustrated noise but doesn't push it. 

They're out the door in record time, before Simon's even found his shoes, and it occurs to him that their sudden disappearance from their usual spot beside the door might not be a coincidence. He stands there beside the small rack littered with Grace's various jackets and scarves, frowning down at the empty space that he knows they ought to be filling. 

“Huh,” Grace sidles up to him, frowning down at the same spot. “That's odd.”

“Left them right here.” 

Grace hums, scrubbing a hand over his tired face. “Well, there's only so many places they can be.”

He's right, it doesn't take them long.

They find one of his shoes underneath the coffee table, while the other is hidden at the back of one of Grace's shelves, placed strategically behind one of Rocky's lamps and a framed drawing from Earth, all bright, garish colours and childish hope. 

“A joint effort, you think?” Grace asks as he steps down off the chair he'd used to reach the shelf.

“I guess.” He murmurs, looking down at the floor, trying to swallow around the growing lump in his throat and praying that Grace will assume it had just been a joke, that Rocky and Adrian hadn't wanted to push them together like this, that Grace will just leave well enough alone.

His prayer goes unheard, as they so often do.

“Look, Simon, I uh, I wanted to thank you.” 

He frowns, and turns to find Grace much closer than he'd expected. He has to tilt his head up ever so slightly to meet Grace’s gaze. “Thank me?”

Grace nods, rubbing at the back of his neck in that way he does when he's nervous. “Yeah, I…you've done so much great stuff around here, especially with the greenhouses.”

“It's nothing-”

“It's plenty,” Grace insists, still holding Simon's shoe firmly in his hand. “I appreciate it, a lot,” he takes a breath, jaw twitching. “You make everything around here better, you know that?”

He tries to speak but his voice fails him, caught up in Grace's soft, timid smile, his bright eyes and his messy hair. His fingers ache, his heart beating that familiar rhythm of want want want but he knows he can't, shouldn't. Knows that this is the one thing he can't have— the one thing he's beginning to think he might not be able to live without. The one thing that makes everything else make sense. 

“Why are you so nice to me?” he rebuffs. “You know what I did, what I-” his voice breaks and he huffs in annoyance. But Grace just watches him, silent, still soft, still far more than anything Simon deserves. More than anything he can trust himself with. “I don't deserve any of this.”

Grace makes a wounded noise, Simon's shoe hitting the floor with a thud as Grace steps closer, his hand curling around Simon's forearm. And Simon tells himself to pull away, to wrench himself out of Grace's orbit once and for all for his own good. To do the right thing and protect him for once. 

Old habits— his selfishness wins out and he can't help but lean into the touch. 

“I think you do.” 

It hits him the way Grace's little revelations always do, like a hammer straight to his chest, winding him, his head filling with static. 

“Grace-”

“Simon,” Grace interrupts, his grip on Simon's forearm tightening for a moment, almost clinging, almost desperate. His heart battles against his ribs, thrumming with want, and his restraint begins to waver. “It doesn't always have to be about deserving. Some things just are, and we get to enjoy them, we get to enjoy the peace for a while,” he steps closer again, and Simon imagines he can feel his warmth, the beat of his heart. “Nobody's keeping score.”

“Not used to that,” he admits, voice raw, mouth dry. “How do you trust it— the peace?” 

Grace shrugs, humming contemplatively for a moment. “It takes time,” he settles on eventually. His hand slides down Simon's arm, his thumb pressing against his wrist bone. “You expect it to be taken away from you, for everything to go wrong, and then one day you wake up and you just…don't.” Grace runs his thumb over the hollow of his wrist, and Simon turns his arm over without thinking, stretching out his fingers. An offering. 

“Never been patient.” he rasps, his entire body jolting when Grace slides his hand down into his, fingers lacing together like they were made for this, only this. 

“Well, at least you don't have to wait it out alone.” 

His restraint snaps.

It shatters like glass underneath the weight of a dozen soft, kind words. Under the strain of careful, lingering touches and warm smiles. The force of it is so strong he feels light-headed as Grace squeezes his fingers, a tide threatening to wash him away. He lets it.

Releasing Grace's hand, he watches him for only a moment and something else breaks free at the look of loss on his face as he stares down at his now empty hand. He lifts his head to say something, but Simon doesn't let him get that far. His hand darts out to grab at the back of his neck, shivering at the feel of soft hairs against his fingers, and hauls him down into a kiss.

There's a gasp against him, and then Grace is all feverish touches and soft lips, his hands on Simon's shoulders as he opens to him. It occurs to him as he backs Grace up against the wall, following the pull of his hands on his shoulders, that he doesn't actually know what the hell he's doing, but if the noises Grace is making are anything to go by, he's doing a decent enough job. 

Simon presses in close, sliding his tongue into Grace's mouth just to feel him shudder, to swallow the soft moan he can't quite choke back and feel those hands tighten on his shoulders. He can't remember the last time he was this close to another person, but it doesn't matter because nothing could ever compare to the slick movements of their mouths, the softness of Grace's hair between his fingers. 

They part for breath, their chests heaving, and Grace pulls at Simon's bottom lip with his teeth until he leans back in, kissing him until his lungs start to burn and his head spins but he doesn't care. Nothing else matters apart from the feel of Grace against him, long and lean and warm, so warm. He thinks that maybe Grace saved the stars because he carries some part of them within him, some ghost of their warmth, their light-

And then he remembers. 

He remembers the callouses from a knife handle that still adorn his palm, the half-formed mouth on his cheek and the jagged teeth that burst out from it. He remembers the SM-13 and the smouldering remains of Filament and every terrible thing he ever did in the service of something false. The cruelty he dealt because he'd allowed himself to be convinced it was kind.

He remembers who he is.

He pulls back, gasping, but Grace won't let him go, pressing their foreheads close as Simon takes a few steadying breaths, knowing what he has to do. Because he can't, he can't destroy something else. Can't pollute Grace's light with his own darkness, can't bear to see his skin covered in the blood from Simon's hand. A Quiet Rapture of his own making.

He basks in it for a moment, the final dregs of light before a sunset— Grace's hands and his breaths and the thud of his heart so close to Simon's own. It's all he's ever wanted. It's all he can never have.

Grace must see something on his face, because he tenses, his grip tightening. “Simon?” he prompts, face screwing up with concern. “What is it? Are you alright?”

“I'm sorry,” he forces out between gritted teeth, working to disentangle himself. But the further away he pulls the more he can see Grace's expression and the devastation on his face, his eyes wide and confused, hurt. He's never hated himself more. “Fuck, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have done that.”

“Simon, it's alright. I-I wanted you to,” he stops short as Simon pulls further away. “What's wrong?” 

“I can't. I'm sorry.” Grace's fingers loosen their grip and Simon pulls himself free, blindly leaning down to grab his shoe and staggering towards the door. 

“Simon!” Grace calls, voice frantic as he follows behind him. “Will you just-Simon please, wait a minute.” 

He gets his hand on the door handle, trembling, his legs a dead weight he hauls along behind him as he forces himself forwards, but Grace slips alongside him and grabs it too, and Simon knows he's stronger, knows he could pull the door open with ease, but he doesn't. Because he's weak, and he can't even do this right. 

“I can't, please just, forget about this alright? I'm sorry.” 

Grace's face contorts again, hurt and confusion and frustration and that thing between his ribs screeches, claws at his insides until his breath hitches. 

“Why? Tell me. If it was a mistake, or you didn't mean it or- just tell me why,” he's pleading by the end, desperate, so familiar it makes him nauseous. “Please just tell me why. If I did something-”

“You didn't do anything,” he stresses, his knuckles turning white where they grip the door handle. “I can't do this to you.” 

“What? You can't do what to me?”

He summons the last of his strength to straighten up and meet Grace's eyes, regardless of how much it hurts. Regardless of how deeply the claws in his chest tear. 

“Ruin you.” 

Grace's frown deepens, confused more than anything, but Simon can't bear to say anything else, knows he'll crumble if Grace begs him again, so he pulls the door open and steps out into the night even as Grace tries to stop him, calling out to him, his desperation ratcheting up into incredulous anger. 

Halfway home, Grace's voice stops echoing on the breeze and he turns in time to watch his door slam closed. He stumbles to his knees and sobs so hard he retches. 

The moon is silent and pale above him. He almost wishes it would bleed.

He does what he should have done from the beginning: he stays away.

He doesn't join Grace for his lessons, doesn't seek him out on the trails or the beach, doesn't show up for dinner two nights later. 

The greenhouses are, again, his only solace, and he doesn't know what it means that Grace never seeks him out there himself. It makes sense, he thinks. He'd hurt him, enough to make him angry, enough to make him yell Simon's name fruitlessly into the night from his doorstep. 

Adrian knocks every day and he just— hides. He can't face them, they'd just wanted him to talk to Grace and he'd fucked it all up. It takes a week for them to stop trying. 

Sleep evades him, his dreams a sea of red wherein that disjointed voice taunts him, hissing seething hatred into his mind. He paces around his home through the night, an apparition in every shadow. He thinks there would be none, over in Grace’s house with his warm little lights and the constellations hanging from his ceiling, and he almost breaks his hand with how hard he slams it down onto his kitchen table to try and stop the thought, the images of that night.

Grace’s heart beating against his and his nose pressing into Simon’s cheek. The softness of his lips and the little sounds he’d made, and the feel of his hair, soft and light, and the taste of him, and, and-

He sits in the shower for hours, cold water numbing his skin— it does nothing to soothe the gaping wound in his chest where something warm used to be, something soft. Something he was never supposed to have.

It doesn’t cleanse him, either.

He’s starting to think that nothing ever will. That he’ll be the Butcher until the day he dies. And he knows he must have been doomed from the start, born wrong, broken. He thinks of his mother, that faceless spectre in the fog of his mind and wonders if she’d known what she’d laboured for, what he’d grow to be. 

Perhaps the Eel had been right. He’d never be enough.

At night, the water reminds him of AT-5.

The complicated machinery still drives the waves, but gentler, softer. A lullaby designed by the Eridians for Grace specifically. To Simon, it’s a gaping maw of a memory. He’d always avoided it for that reason, turning away from it on the restless nights he took to walking along the clifftops.

He doesn’t turn away now. He knows he doesn’t deserve to.

There’s a level of guilt to being on Grace’s beach at all, but sleep continues to evade him, and sitting on the stones, facing that nightmarish view head-on seemed a worthy enough penance for his trespass. For this one, at least— he’s not so sure he’ll ever be forgiven for the rest.

He wants to turn his head, to look up the cliffs to Grace’s home and see if his lights are on. But he doesn’t dare to. Can’t risk temptation now, when he’s down on his knees already.

He allows himself to sink into the movements of the waves, the sweep of the water across sand and stone, the hissing as it pulls back. Despite the way he feels compelled to scan the horizon for any sign of movement beneath the water, he understands why Grace seems to find so much solace here. It's hard to think much at all with that steady rhythm filling his senses.

The distraction is enough that his usual hyper-vigilance fails him— soft footsteps on the sand obscured by the to and fro.

Simon.

He flinches so hard he almost falls onto his side, wrenching around to find Rocky standing there, his Xenonite suit glinting in the moonlight, and one of Grace’s translators haphazardly attached to his carapace. 

“Fuck. The Hell are you sneaking up on me like that for?”

Rocky tilts slightly— he doesn’t need a face in order to frown. Only way to speak. Simon not answer door to mate Adrian.

“Simon doesn’t want to talk.” He replies, moving to stand but halting when Rocky darts forwards to stand in front of him. Adrian still finds the Xenonite suits cumbersome, he’d forgotten that Rocky suffers from no such issue.

Simon sit and listen, or Rocky break down door and make listen. Statement.

“Why should I?”

Rocky make door, Rocky break it too. Simon listen.

He sighs, looking up towards the cliffs again. He might be able to outrun Rocky if he tries, but he knows he means what he says about the door. He sags in defeat, sighing. “Fine.”

Rocky straightens up, watching him carefully, before curling his legs up beneath him to sit on the sand close to Simon’s feet. 

Know what happened, Rocky starts, to-the-point as ever. Need to fix. Both of you need to fix.

He finds he can’t blame Grace for telling Rocky, not really. They both tell each other everything, he’s seen more than once just how deep that bond goes, and he can’t begrudge Grace for feeling like he needed to speak to someone after what he did. After he ran.

“I don’t know if I can fix it, Rock,” he admits, drawing his knees up towards his chest. “I really fucked up.”

Rocky hums a contemplative note. ‘Can fix. Simon just not thinking properly,’ he pauses for a moment, shuffling slightly as he thinks. ‘Said did not want to ruin Grace, what did you mean, question?’

“I’m not like him, Rocky, or you or Adrian,” he replies, digging his heels into the sand. “I’m not a good person.”

Simon is friend. Help with greenhouse projects, help Grace, how not good?

“Before all of this. I’ve told you what happened, I know you remember.”

Before, not now. How bad person now?

“People don’t just change like that. And he’s…he’s everything, and I don’t want to ruin that. I’ve got a lot of blood on my hands, he shouldn’t have to get stained by it too.”

Have asked him this?

“What do you-”

Think Grace perfect? No problems?

“I mean, no, but-”

Then why treat him like glass? Grace is not fragile, takes much to break him. Have seen, Rocky’s voice does the Eridian equivalent of wavering, then, his words trailing off for a moment. Grace needs you, you need him. Why Simon hate self so much?

And there it is, he thinks, laid plain. Eridian bluntness will always win out. He swallows around a mouthful of gravel, drawing his knees up even closer to his chest so he can rest his chin on them.

“I’ve hated myself for so long I don’t know how to do anything else,” he rasps, hot tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. “He deserves better than that, better than me.”

Grace not care about deserve, he stresses, raising upwards slightly. All here love you, Simon. Grace love you, want you. All just want you to be happy.

He shrinks in on himself further, moving to rest his forehead against his bent knees, his voice muffled when he speaks again. “I don’t know how.”

Have to learn, then! And will be hard, and will doubt self but have to learn. What else is there to do? He taps his feet in obvious frustration against the ground, pausing for a long moment, his vents shuddering. None of this easy, too good to be easy. But Simon not alone, never alone again. Simon wanted to live, you said this. Enjoying, loving, all part of it. Accepting good things part of it. Survived much before you came here, are you going to let it all have been for nothing?

He snaps his face upwards, streaked by now with tears, and finds Rocky standing there, tall and confident, almost challenging. 

“I…” he trails off, looking out at the water, at the smooth waves that will never turn red, will never swallow him whole. Because he’s free. He will always be free. “I don’t know how to start.”

Rocky tilts his carapace, chittering. Yes you do.

The Hail Mary rests atop a complicated foundation in the sand dunes close to the main airlock. It's kept to meticulously high standards by an entire team of Eridians, and despite its readiness to fly, it will never leave Erid’s atmosphere. Simon made that decision months ago, and he knows his answer won’t change regardless of how this night ends.

Grace hadn’t been at his home, or his classroom or the greenhouses or the lab, and so this is his last resort— the irony of it would make him roll his eyes if he weren’t so frantic.

The layout is familiar by now, even if he doesn’t come here much. It doesn’t take him long. 

Green light spills down the hallway, and he finds the walls of the Don’t Go Crazy Room illuminated with a looping scene of a vibrant forest. One he’s familiar with— it had always been his favourite. 

Grace is sat hunched over in the middle of the room. He doesn’t hear Simon walk in.

For a long moment he just watches. He watches the way Grace adjusts as he cranes his head upwards to stare at the ceiling, the way the light catches in his hair and draws patterns over his skin. He doesn’t send up a prayer as he steels himself, he’s tired of letting fate control him, crush him.

He clears his throat.

Grace flinches, caught off guard, and scrambles to stand, narrowly avoiding falling off the gangway. Simon’s so in love with him that every inch between them aches like a wound.

“Oh. Hey, Simon.” he says, and his eyes are wide and puffy, the bags under them deeper than usual. Guilt swirls in his stomach again, but he stands firm, doesn’t shrink away. Rocky’s words echo in his mind. 

Survived much before you came here, are you going to let it all have been for nothing?

“Hey, I uh-” he clears his throat again around that familiar lump, sharper now than it ever has been. No half measures. “I told you once what Eden was like, and the COI. It was…I never really learned how to just live, and after Filament,” his voice breaks but he presses on, resolute, even as Grace stands there, motionless. Silent. “Everything I ever had that mattered got taken from me, and I have never wanted anything as much as I want you, and I convinced myself that I’d ruin you, that I’d want you too much and I’d lose you for good. That’s why I pushed you away,” he takes a breath, self-conscious of the rambling speech but feeling that old weight begin to slip off his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

Grace is still staring at him, silent and wide-eyed, his glasses wonky. He almost looks dazed. 

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go,” he manages after a while of that heavy silence, his voice strained, his jaw tight. “You ran.” He takes a step closer— Simon’s breath hitches with the effort it takes to remain still.

“Yeah, I did.”

“You kissed me and then you pushed me away, and you ran.” Another step closer.

“Yes.”

“I’m not some-some perfect being, Simon,” he stresses, his frustration evident. “You can’t ruin me, I’m just a person, not an ideal.”

Simon bows his head. “I know. I don’t want you to be. I want…” he trails off, that fear resurging as Grace pushes his glasses further up his nose and crosses his arms, head tilting to the side.

“What? What do you want?”

He takes a deep breath, and he doesn’t send up a prayer to an uncaring god, and he doesn’t shrink away, doesn’t run. Time to start living.

“I want to wash dishes in your kitchen,” Grace’s stern expression falters, his eyebrows raising in surprise, his stance softening every so often. “I want to argue with you about spending too much time in the lab, and I want to help you organise all the gifts your students give you,” Grace’s frown falls away entirely, and Simon takes a gamble, taking a step closer, and then another. He could reach out now, if he wanted to, but he won’t. Not yet. “I want to grow food for you in the greenhouses and help you cook it, I want to walk on the beach with you and-” he swallows around that lump again, getting smaller and smaller as he speaks. 

“And?” Grace prompts, his voice raw. 

“I want to spend the rest of my life figuring out how to make you laugh, and bickering about the weather, and-”

Grace chokes out something incoherent, something that sounds suspiciously like fuck, and he lunges. He moves with so much force that he almost knocks them both off the gangway, but Simon manages to steady them just as Grace grabs his face with both hands, pulling him in close enough that their noses brush.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Grace breathes, tears running freely down his cheeks now. “You’re so important to me,” his grip tightens on Simon’s shoulders, his entire body shuddering. “I want to spend the rest of my life washing dishes with you too. In our kitchen.”

Simon’s brain, predictably, fills with static, but it's so loud he can’t hear that old doubt screaming in the back of his mind, can’t hear any of that self-loathing above the beat of Grace’s heart. “I’m going to kiss you now,” he grinds out, because that desperation is still there but it's different now, or maybe he is. “Can I?”

“Don’t run.”

“I won’t.”

"I'm still mad at you," he insists, but it's half-hearted, the anger fading. "We're going to talk about this properly. Later."

"Whatever you want. Whatever I...whatever I can do to make this right."

Bright, wet eyes consider him for a long, drawn out moment. Simon doesn't dare to breathe. 

"Stay," Grace settles on eventually, his voice small, gravelly. "That's how you make it right. You stay."

"I'll stay," Simon murmurs. "I won't run."

Grace hauls him in by the back of his neck— that old ache in his chest fades, and in its place a forest grows. Vines snake into the spaces between his ribs, and flowers the colour of Grace's eyes bloom along the side of his heart. 

Grace kisses him— the forest sings his name.

Grace's bedroom is exactly how Simon had expected it to be. A large window comprises an entire wall and clutter covers just about every surface. His bed is a collection of blankets, pillows and quilts bundled together, mismatched and unmade, and more of Rocky's small lights hang from the ceiling and occupy the few places left vacant by Grace's things. 

It's warm, soft— Simon can't help but surrender to it.

They stand together at the foot of Grace's bed, shoes and socks discarded haphazardly in the doorway. Pressed in close, they share breaths as Simon places a tentative hand on Grace's hip, noses brushing as they study one another in the low light. The last time they were here, Simon almost destroyed everything. Despite his nerves, and the little voice of doubt still spitting venom, he's determined not to make the same mistake twice. 

Grace's fingers curl around the hem of his shirt, questioning, and he nods before he can let himself overthink this any more than he already has. He watches as Grace gently sets his shed shirt aside before moving his own hand to tug at Grace's in turn. Grace smiles, and promptly gets tangled when he tries to pull his shirt over his head without taking off his glasses. Simon can't stifle his laugh, and Grace glares at him half-heartedly as he finally frees himself, tossing the shirt off to the opposite side of the room, and setting his glasses on the dresser beside the door.

Simon pulls Grace in by his hip— their skin touches in so many places that he feels light-headed. His gaze is greedy as he drinks Grace in, the lean lines of muscle and the small softness around his stomach dusted with pale hair. The sharp juts of his collarbones that he longs to taste. He feels like a cartographer on fresh ground. 

Grace's hands lift to Simon's chest, and he frowns. Simon's heart drops. 

He's forgotten how bad it is, the scarring over the left side of his body, stretching up from the place that his arm used to be. Red, glassy skin cratered by healed blisters that climbs from his bicep up his shoulder and across his chest, branching out like vines. Grace dips his fingers into the pockmarked skin, still frowning, and Simon thinks that he should offer to put his shirt back on, or he should leave entirely, or-

Grace leans forwards and presses a kiss to the scarred skin. He's so gentle it makes Simon's knees shake. He moves his head slightly and does it again, then again. He swipes his fingers over the scarring, tracing the jagged edges of it, and Simon just stands stock still and feels— Grace's gentle touch is a balm on the parts of himself that feel so wrong, so broken. 

“I’m sorry.” Grace murmurs.

Simon drops his gaze to Grace's scarred arm, curling his fingers around his wrist. “So am I.”

They shed their trousers without incident, pausing briefly when the can't distance between them grows too wide to lean back in, mouths moving together in something slow and achingly sweet, something gilded. Grace presses an open palm to the centre of Simon's chest, and he allows himself to fall back against the softness of his bed. 

Urging Simon backwards until his head rests on colourful pillows, Grace climbs on after him, straddling his hips and smiling down at him as Simon sits up as much as he can with Grace in his lap, his hand resting on the soft of his thigh. Anxiety swirls beneath his skin, but it's hard to focus on with Grace flooding his senses like this. When all he can see, feel, smell, is Grace, and when he leans down again to capture Simon's mouth, all he cares about is tasting him, learning the contours of his mouth and the movements that make his breath hitch. 

Heat coils in the pit of his stomach as their movements become more purposeful, as Grace continues to nip at his lower lip and whines softly into Simon's mouth when he wraps his arm around his waist and squeezes just to get that smallest bit closer, just to feel more. More skin on his, more of Grace's warmth. It's worth the sunburn from being so close to his star.

Simon rolls them, carefully, laughing with Grace when they get stuck halfway in a tangle of limbs. But it's worth it, his breath momentarily stolen by the sight of Grace below him, a flush staining his cheeks and throat, his hair wild and eyes dark with want as he smiles lazily up at him. His knees rest at Simon's hips, his hands trailing up and down his arm, roving over his chest, and for a moment he just stares at him, unable to do anything else. 

“You're so beautiful,” he murmurs as he leans in close again, not missing the way Grace's fingers tighten around his bicep and his breath stutters. “Look at you. How'd I get so lucky?” 

“Simon,” Grace whines, tangling a hand in his hair to pull him down, closer, their noses bumping. “Want you.” 

Simon's mind shudders to a stop.

“Fuck,” he rasps, hips twitching against Grace's, heat flooding him from head to toe. “Are you sure? I've…I've never.” His cheeks flush with embarrassment, but Grace just smiles up at him, the hand in his hair sliding around to cup his cheek. 

“I'll show you.” He says, and when has he ever led Simon astray?

The world narrows to all the places where they touch, to the gasps Grace lets out when Simon leans down to press his mouth to his throat, dragging lips, teeth and tongue down to his collarbones, bruises blooming like flowers beneath his touch. He almost panics at the sight of the first one, but Grace reassures him with a tight grip that keeps him close, that pulls him back down even as he shivers and keeps, sensitive. 

All that matters to him is Grace beneath him, around him, his mouth on Simon's, his hands stroking idly down his spine. He's never been touched like this before— part of him is almost glad for that fact. That Grace gets to be the first, the only. 

Eventually, they part, only for Grace to push up the bed slightly, leaning over to the table beside his bed and fishing a small pot out of the top drawer, dropping it into Simon's hand. The bottom drops out his stomach as soon as he twists the lid open to find a shimmering substance, and Grace laughs, his knees drawing upwards and thighs parted to make space for him.

“We don't have to,” Grace offers, sobering. “It's alright if it's too much.” 

“Didn't say that,” Simon replies, pushing up closer between Grace's legs, not knowing where to look, where to touch first, what to pay attention to the most. “You'll have to show me how.”

Grace smiles indulgently up at him, nodding. “I'll show you how.”

He becomes lost to it for a while, focused on the way Grace flushes slightly as they both shed the last of their clothes, the way his voice wavers as he takes Simon's hand in his own and dips it into the pot, guiding him. Gentle, careful. Simon has never felt like a soft thing before, like something worth keeping. But with Grace flushed all the way down to his chest and staring up at him with wide, soft eyes as he slips his slick hand between his parted thighs, the world tilts, and he sheds the last of that old weight from his shoulders. 

Grace talks him through it until Simon's got two fingers inside him down to the knuckle, and has figured out how to curl them upwards and press against something that makes Grace's spine bow and his voice falter. The sounds he makes now are different to before— louder, unrestrained, desperate. Simon wants to memorise them all, catalogue them. He wants to know everything about how to make him feel good.

“Simon-” Grace chokes when he tests out a twist of his fingers, legs spasming, one of his hands a claw around Simon's bicep while the other fists in the soft sheets. “Fuck. Oh-” and Simon can't help but grin, victorious. He's never heard Grace swear before, and he wants to see how many times he can make it happen. Needs to. 

“I didn't know you knew that word.” Simon murmurs, shuffling closer, pressing a kiss to Grace's open mouth. 

“You're such an asshole.” Grace replies, breathless, but he's smiling despite himself, bathed in warm light. 

“I warned you.” 

Grace sighs. “I suppose you did-ah.” Simon slides in a third finger, careful, always careful, and Grace forgets how to speak for a while.

He's starting to ache between his legs now, watching Grace writhe and gasp, hips rolling downwards so he can meet every movement, his voice cracking on a repeated plea of more, more, more, and that deep and wanting thing in the forest of his ribs drinks him in. He presses a kiss to the inside of Grace's knee and breathes him in for a moment, wanting to stay suspended in this moment for as long as he can cling to it. 

“Simon,” Grace manages after a while, his face suddenly serious. “Simon you've got to-I need you to.”

“Alright,” He concedes, moving his fingers in one last pointed stroke over that bundle of nerves before withdrawing again. “You'll have to show me, Grace, need you to.” 

Grace nods, hesitating for a moment before saying. “Would you- would you call me Ryland?” he rasps. “Please?”

“I can do that.” he promises, easy. Because it is. Everything about loving Ryland Grace is easy, he'd just convinced himself that it wasn't. 

He's liberal with the slick he uses on himself, still afraid of hurting the man beneath him, but now in a far more tangible sense. But Ryland doesn't tense up as Simon situates himself between his legs, and he doesn't pull away as Simon presses up against him, hesitating, asking for permission one last time. Ryland nods up at him, and Simon leans down to kiss him as he pushes forwards. 

He takes his time, like Ryland had told him to, pressing in slowly, methodically, and swallowing keening moans and high-pitched whines. He can't tell which of them is making which noise, but with Grace around him, under him, he finds it doesn't matter. He breaks the kiss when their hips meet, overwhelmed, and Ryland just holds him close, one hand stroking a soothing line down his spine while the other holds his cheek, keeping him close as he peppers Simon's face with gentle kisses. 

“You're okay,” Ryland whispers, and Simon just about melts. “I'm here, you're okay.” His legs lift to bracket Simon's hips, and he starts to understand why people back at Eden sought this out, or something close to it. Starts to realise that he's never been touched like this before, never felt so connected to another person before. He never wants it to end, but Grace is clenching around him, and he just has to move-

Pleasure shoots down his spine as he pulls back and pushes back in, and Ryland throws his head back to expose the long line of his throat, littered with bruises from Simon's mouth. It's impossible to stop after that.

He builds up a slow, steady rhythm, thrusting long and deep and adjusting his angle until he brushes over that spot every time, until Grace is trembling beneath him, his legs locked so tightly that Simon's lower back starts to ache. The world narrows further, everything that isn't Grace falling away into the abyss, unimportant. He leans down for a kiss, but both of them are too far gone to do much more than moan into each other's mouths, lips kiss-swollen and bitten, Grace's tongue sliding out to meet Simon's in a desperate, sloppy dance. 

Shifting his position slightly, he grabs one of Grace's legs and throws it experimentally over his shoulder, and hangs his head low with a loud groan as he slips somehow deeper. 

“Simon!” Grace gasps, his fingers clawing at the sheets, one hand shooting out to cling to Simon's bicep. “Fuck, oh my god. Both of them, put-” Simon doesn't need him to finish, pausing to lift the other leg before pushing back in and watching as Grace's entire body arches upwards, hips grinding down against his.

“Ryland,” it's his turn to groan now, still keeping that moderate pace but thrusting deeper, a little harder. He's just so warm, so soft, everything about him so inviting. He glances down at Ryland's cock between them, rubbing and leaking against his stomach and has to swallow another sound, lest he lose himself completely. “Can I touch you?” he asks, continuing to move as Grace lifts his head to stare at him, eyes glazed over. “Please? I want to make you feel good, please let me-”

“Holy shit,” Grace breathes, somehow flushing even redder. “Fuck, yes, please. Touch me, please.” 

Simon's always been good at following orders— he finds himself grateful for that trait now.

Wrapping a hand around his cock, he watches as Ryland's eyes roll back in his head, his legs slide down Simon's sides, and both of his hands scramble to find something to hold him together. He finds it in the set of his shoulders, the expanse of his back, clutching and holding and moaning obscenely into the space between them, his eyelashes damp and his cheeks flushed bright red. His nails bite as Simon starts to move his hand in time with his thrusts, and Ryland clenches somehow tighter around him, warm and wet and- fuck, he isn't going to last long like this.

“You feel so good.” Simon gasps. Ryland's legs tighten around his waist, pulling him closer, and it's hard to balance with only one arm - especially when he's got a handful of Ryland's cock, rather than using it to hold himself up - but he makes it work, keeping that same pace and angle until Grace is incoherent beneath him. 

And he's so close now, surrounded by Grace's warmth on all sides, his fingertips a welcome brand on his skin as he drags his nails down the valley of his spine, as his whole body sings a song just for him. Realising that he can feel Grace's heartbeat from inside him is almost enough to send him over the edge, but he has to hold out, has to make sure Ryland finishes first. 

He sets about that task with a single-minded determination, until Grace's eyes snap open, his jaw slack as his entire body tenses, arches.

“Simon, I'm-” he cuts off into a whine, trembling from head to toe, his chest heaving with short, shallow breaths. 

“Let me see you,” Simon coaxes. “Come on, Ryland, let me see you.” He's as close to begging as Ryland is.

He gets his wish.

Another thrust against that spot, another jerk of his wrist, and Grace's spine bows upwards so suddenly Simon worries it must be painful, but then Grace is pushing his hips down against Simon’s, tightening even further, and Simon groans loud and unabashed, the heat coiling in his stomach primed to snap.

He fucks Ryland through his orgasm, until he's over sensitive and batting at Simon's hand. He wonders if he ought to pull out, starts to slow his pace, but then Grace is grabbing him by the hair and pulling him down so suddenly that Simon has to throw his hand out to stop himself from crushing Grace beneath him. 

“Inside me. Come inside me,” Ryland says, more an order than a plea, but his voice wavers with desperation either way. “Come on, Simon, you can do it.” 

“Shit.” he breathes, and redoubles his efforts, pushing back into the welcoming heat of Ryland's body and chasing that high. 

Ryland holds him close all the while, hands smoothing over his shoulders, tracing the musculature of his back as his pace speeds up. He brings Simon down closer to pepper kisses over his cheek, to bite at his lips, and coos gently into his ear. 

So good, he murmurs, gentle and exhausted, still whining in the back of his throat, still gasping at Simon's movements. Come on, Simon, that's it. I want it, need it, 

The coil snaps. He buries himself so deep and comes so hard his vision whites out for a moment, his entire body shaking from the force of it. And all the while Grace strokes his hair, his back, whispering good, so good, and thank you, you did so well, and Simon collapses down onto him, face buried in the side of his neck as Ryland laughs softly, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and holding him close as the pleasure recedes. 

Simon wonders if he could stay here forever, in the cradle of Grace's body— he figures he wouldn't mind. 

Eventually, once his breathing returns to normal and the heat and stickiness between them becomes too much, he carefully pulls out, murmuring apologies at Ryland's wince. He flips onto his back, arm up above his head, exhausted, and Ryland stands on shaky legs, disappearing into the adjoining bathroom for a moment before returning, a damp cloth in hand. 

It's colder than he's expecting, and he yelps as Grace drops it onto his thigh, laughing. Cleaning himself off and tossing the cloth back in the vague direction of the bathroom door, he refocuses on Grace. He's a mess with his flushed cheeks and blemished throat, his hair wild and untamed— a lopsided halo in the dim light. 

Ryland pulls the blankets up around them, settling down with his head on Simon's chest, and an arm thrown around his waist. His breath stutters again because this too is something new, something he hadn't even realised he'd been starving for since he was a child. 

Simon turns his head so he can place a kiss on Ryland's temple and stays there, pressed in close, warm. 

“Promise me something?” Grace murmurs, his voice heavy with impending sleep.

“Anything.” Simon replies into his hair.

“Be here when I wake up,” he asks. “Don't leave.” 

“I'll be here,” he promises, tangling their legs together. Roots intertwined. “I'll be here.”

Ryland smiles, Simon can feel it against his skin. Between his ribs the forest sings, swaying to the beat of Grace's heart. 

For the first time in a long time, sleep finds him easily. 

fin.