Chapter Text
Thanks to Stratt’s penchant for piracy, Hail Mary contained nearly everything humanity knew about botany, arboriculture, and seed propagation. After a quick jaunt up to the old girl, the Eridian scientists were primed to grow a tree.
They had evidently been storing Grace’s waste for study ever since he arrived—”That’s so gross, Rocky.”—and had plenty of it to spare for such a mighty cause. It would take a while to compost it and generate enough soil for Project Second Chance, but the thought of seeing a real live Earth plant again shook off any impatience Grace might have felt.
It helped that he had Simon to keep him company now. It really helped.
They got along well. Simon had a natural curiosity that matched Grace’s own, and the attributes that had set them apart from ‘normal’ people in both of their universes just seemed to… fit together. Like they were on the same wavelength. He made Grace’s life feel suddenly new and exciting.
Simon had never seen the stars, and Grace was all too happy to give them to him. He pulled up everything Hail Mary had to offer: amateur videos of the night sky over Earth; images taken through telescopes; photographs of deep-space nebulae; maps of every star and constellation that had ever been found. Whatever he had, he showed to Simon. He reacted with a relief and joy that was utterly infectious, but it was always fleeting.
Everything that had happened to Simon before Erid had left him wounded and fragile. There was a hard-earned hesitation behind his every action—as if he were a caged beast newly freed, wary of the distant clanking of chains.
Grace had forced Simon to take his bed while he relocated on the couch—temporarily, until the Eridians were able to build Simon his own place to live—in the hopes that a bit of comfort and privacy would help him settle. It didn’t. He would wake throughout the night and pace around the house for hours, before falling asleep on a random chair, curled up in the corner of a room, or, once, on the floor beside Grace’s couch.
Sometimes he would take himself down to sit on the shore, staring out into the black sea until night turned to day. This night was one of those nights.
Biting back a yawn, Grace pulled on his cardigan and headed outside. He found Simon where he always did: sitting on the dark sand with his knees tucked up against his chest.
Although he was uninvited, Simon didn’t blink when Grace sat down beside him. They hadn’t touched again like they had on that first day—as much as Grace’s body yearned for physical contact—but they had definitely grown accustomed to one another. No longer did Simon freeze when their hands brushed, or when they bumped into one another in the hallway.
“You could still go back to Earth, you know. You’re free to leave whenever you want,” Grace said. He had offered the Hail Mary to Simon on his very first day, but as he had never gotten a true answer, he continued to offer it. Grace did not fancy the idea of a long journey back to an uncertain world, but Simon was not him. “If you aren’t happy here—”
“I am.” Simon rubbed his brow, pale scars on his hands catching the not-quite-moonlight that illuminated the dome. “I think I am.”
“Rocky’s not been giving you a hard time?”
“No more than usual.”
“Adrian?”
“He’s fine, too. Everything is fine. It’s really… really, fine.”
“But you’re not happy,” Grace said. “Or maybe not happy.”
With a drawn-out sigh, Simon laid back in the sand. Grace looked down at him, marvelling at the light reflecting in his dark eyes and the shadows across his fine features. He noticed Simon had unbuttoned the top three buttons of his pyjama shirt, revealing two generous handfuls of pecs.
Handfuls. God, Grace needed to focus on something else.
“Is it Project Second Chance?” Grace asked, hoping to redirect his ridiculous thoughts. “We don’t have to plant the seed, if you’d rather keep it.”
“Are you kiddin’ me?” he made a short, airy sound that Grace had come to learn was his equivalent of a laugh. Simon didn’t quite let himself tip into full laughter, even when something really funny happened—like the day Rocky left a perfectly him-shaped imprint in one of the walls of the house after slipping on some spilled not-coffee—and Grace had come to relish the little joy of a Simon-laugh. “I’ve wanted to grow something ever since I was a kid. I’m not gonna throw away a chance like this.”
Grace laid down beside him. The sand was cool beneath him, even through his thick cardigan. “There are trees on earth, you know. Lots of them. You could… I don’t know, become an arborist or something. You could grow anything you wanted.”
“Grace,” Simon said, sending a little thrill through him. Hearing his name in Eridian didn’t quite hit the same spot as someone saying it in plain English. “Stop trying to get rid of me.”
“I’m not trying to get rid of you!”
“Are you sure about that? You keep telling me to get on that ship and go back to Earth.”
“I’m not telling you to do anything, I’m suggesting—” Grace paused, considering his words. The last thing he needed was to start an argument with the only other human being in the entire solar system. “Being the study subject for an alien species has been my dream since I was old enough to have dreams, so I have no real reason to leave. That’s my decision, and I’m not going to force you to make the same one. I don’t want you to feel trapped here.”
Another Simon-laugh. “Trapped. What part of this makes you feel trapped?”
Simon waved his arm up at the sky. Adrian hadn't quite figured out how to put fake stars up there yet—although Grace had definitely been pushing them towards that goal more lately, for Simon if nothing else—but the sky still looked real enough at night. The atmosphere inside the dome naturally led to the formation of clouds, and they drifted endlessly overhead. Pale wisps in the dark.
“We can’t leave,” Grace said, quietly. “We could go out in a xenonite suit for a while, but it wouldn’t be the same as actually leaving. This is… this is it. Are you sure you want to spend your life here?”
Simon was quiet for a moment. Grace felt movement at his side; Simon’s hand drifting towards his. His pinky finger curling around Grace’s.
“I thought I was gonna die in that submarine, Grace. I thought that no one was ever gonna remember me. Just another body at the bottom of the ocean,” Simon said, his voice almost as quiet as the whispering waves. “I don’t know how I survived or how I got here, but there’s no C.O.I, no Eden, no end of the universe, and we’re gonna grow a fucking tree. You think I wanna risk all that to go somewhere I’ve never known? You think I want to risk losing you?”
Surprised, Grace turned his head and found that Simon was already looking at him. Something in his chest grew tight and warm at the sight of him. “What… what do you mean?”
“I’ve been nothing my entire life, Grace. No one worth knowing. You’re the only one who’s ever seen me, who’s ever treated me like a real person. Why would I want to leave that—leave you?”
Grace couldn’t find the words to say. He squeezed Simon’s pinky finger as tightly as he could.
“I’ve spent enough time alone.” The corners of Simon’s mouth turned up in a smile that reached all the way up to his eyes, glimmering in the dim light. “I want to stay here, if you’ll have me.”
“You really mean it?” Grace said. Simon nodded.
And before Grace could react, before he could even breathe, Simon closed the distance between them and kissed him.
For a moment, Grace was still. He wondered if he was dreaming it—if he was laid on the couch imagining the soft pressure of Simon’s mouth against his, the slight scrape of his stubble, their hands squeezed together between them.
It was only when Simon pulled away that Grace realised that it wasn’t a dream. And it was only in the absence of his touch that Grace realised that it was, deep down, all he had wanted ever since Simon arrived on Erid.
Grace kissed him back. He cupped Simon’s face in his and kissed him hard. In the space where their mouths met, something changed. Their grief and sorrow and loneliness tangled together until their pasts were indistinguishable from one another. Until there was nothing but him and Simon, the not-quite-sand and the not-quite-sky, the sound of the not-quite-waves rushing by their feet, and the promise of a brighter future—their future.