Chapter Text
It happens over breakfast one morning.
Grace is picking at his Tauomeba Slop when he gets the sense he’s being watched. He was expecting Rocky, proposing some ridiculous scientific hypothetical and expecting him to entertain it.
But it’s Simon with his silent footsteps, leaning his head against the doorway. And this guy doesn’t look away when their eyes meet. So now they’re in this accidental staring match because Grace doesn’t know what to do, and his dark brown eyes are unreadable, or maybe they are readable and Grace has forgotten how to read people, not that he did to begin with, but
“How did you get that scar?”
“Uh?” Grace points at the stripes of raised, pink flesh that peek out from underneath his sleeve. Simon nods curtly. “It was that time when I had to carry Rocky back into his atmosphere. Why?”
“You never mentioned how you got it.”
“Oh.” It feels like having a bird in the palm of your hand that’s set to flee at the slightest threat. Desperate to keep the engagement, Grace says the first thing that comes to mind. “Rocky and I put together a timeline of the astrophage thing. It’s in English and Eridianese if you want to try your hand at that. Shoot. Sorry. That wasn’t supposed to be-”
“Why did you do it?”
“Write the thing? Because… bringing back an alien was a big deal?”
“No, why did you help Rocky?” When the meaning of that registers, anger, hot and molten, flares through Grace. And he stares into Simon’s unreadable eyes, trying to ascribe meaning where there isn’t.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Answer the question.” Grace huffs, letting his xenonite spoon clatter into the bowl.
“Because he’s my best friend! He’s a living, intelligent organism that saved me first. He wasn’t going to die if I could help it. Wouldn’t you do the same?” Grace didn’t mean to get so riled up, really, and it's a little embarrassing how quickly it happens. The silence settles heavily in the air. Simon's face shifts marginally, and this time, Grace can pick out something like intrigue in his expression.
“Rocky says if there were someone to pilot, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt. Says it wishes I showed up earlier.” Back into the comfort zone of scientific hypotheticals, Grace leans back and sighs.
“But you would pilot at the same skill level as me. It was going to be catastrophic one way or another. I told him not to beat himself up over the whole thing…”
“I went to flight school.”
“You went to what?”
“And the Iron Lung was crude.” Grace would invite him to sit, but he gets the feeling this is the kind of conversation that could only happen with social distancing and a bowl of slop in between. “The Hail Mary is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. My proximity sensor was an old buzzer. It didn’t have a true external camera, either. The Hail Mary has dozens! I had to navigate three dimensions by bumping into things. Hugging the wall. It’s no expense spared versus sparing every expense. What do you think?”
“Huh? Of what?”
“Do you think that if I were with you and Rocky on the Hail Mary, you would’ve gotten hurt?” What kind of test question is this? Grace exhales noisily, slouching forward so he can lean back and stare up at the xenonite structures that make up their home.
“It’s not easy talking in hypotheticals.” Simon nods.
“That’s what I was telling Rocky. There’s no way to know.”
“You talk to Rocky a lot?”
“Most of the time, we’re talking about you.” He snaps his head forward so quickly it threatens the integrity of his C-spine. Simon pushes off the doorframe and turns to leave.
“Have you been telling Rocky everything I say?”
“There's no need.” He says before rounding the corner, and Grace doesn’t get a chance to respond.
It’s easy to be bolder after that. Bold in the context of Grace and Simon’s relationship includes things like not running away from each other like they’re contagious with something incurable, not tracking their moves like two private investigators hired to stalk each other, and sometimes, even smalltalk! Grace knew from the start that things were going to be done on Simon’s terms (and Simon probably knew that, too), he just didn’t realize it would all happen at once. One day, they’re live bombs, the next, they’re eating their respective slop and Me Protein in the same room.
Yes, the concept was explained to Simon prior to feeding him, and no, he did not seem to care that it was Grace’s synthetic proteins that he was eating.
Grace is coming up with a new lesson plan. Whenever he explained the ideal gas law, he used pressure cookers to explain how it worked. By using water vapor to apply additional pressure within the closed space, you can increase the temperature and have your food cook faster! Simple! Something that everybody has seen! But here, anything food-related would be misconduct.
He rests his chin on his hand and looks over at Simon, who’s staring out the window with a far-away look. Hypervigilant as always, he notices the slight change in Grace’s posture out of the corner of his eye and turns to investigate. He raises an eyebrow as if to ask, What?
“I dunno how you eat that stuff.” Simon studies his bowl. The physique Grace had from when he first woke is long gone. He eats enough to be well-nourished - Rocky wouldn’t let it be any other way. The search for something that’s not Tauomeba or Sweet Vitamin Drink continues. Until then, Grace will display a general disinterest in food, and his body will reflect that. Simon, on the other hand, slams everything back without even a comment.
“Food is food.” He shrugs.
“Come on. You don’t think it’s, like, weird?”
“It’s like the rations I used to get.”
“Rations?” Grace parrots. He’s imagining those MREs he used to watch unpacking videos of.
“We called it our bricks.” He gestures with his hand, and he makes something about the size of a deck of cards. “They had everything we needed. Three times a day.”
“Oh.”
“They were dry.”
“That sounds…”
“This might actually be better. There’s salt.” For a moment, Grace is a little envious that Simon doesn’t have to miss Earth food the way he does. Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, he tells himself. "They didn't send me down with food in the Iron Lung."
"Why not?" Simon shrugs, scraping the bowl.
"Wasn't supposed to come back." Oh. “What are you working on?” At first, he didn’t register that Simon was trying to continue the conversation. The guy has a habit of saying things out-loud to himself. He feels bad when he looks over to see Simon patiently waiting for a response.
“A lesson plan. We’re doing the ideal gas law now. Normally I’d use a pressure cooker as an example of how it works, but food-related stuff doesn’t really do well here.”
“It was hot in the sub. With the pressure at the bottom of the ocean. You could use that.” He says, and takes a spoonful of his Tauomeba. Grace takes his glasses off, sticking the end of an arm between his teeth.
“Even at that pressure, the water would act like a heatsink.”
“Not water.”
“Right. Right… blood wouldn’t have the same heat-absorbing properties. But it would still wick heat from the sub to some degree, right?”
“The blood was hot when it got in.”
“There was a leak in your sub?”
“A few developed eventually.”
“Eventually? How quickly?” Simon hums, chews his food.
“After a few days.”
“Days!?”
“Maybe two or three.” Did that accelerate the rate at which he lost oxygen? Did CO2 build up inside the sub? Did it even have sensors for that kind of thing, or did Simon use his disorientation as a measure? Was it multiple hairline fractures or one large breech? Was that why he was covered in blood? Because it got in, and not because he got out?
“That sounds scary.” Saying it out loud, it sounds juvenile. But it’s the only other thing he could think to say that’s not an invasive question.
“It was.” Simon reaches up to the pendant tied around his neck and stares out the window, signaling the end of the conversation. Grace goes back to his lesson plan, typing away in the comfortable silence. Eventually, Simon rises to put his bowl away. Before he leaves, he takes a hard look at Grace as though he really wants to say something, but hesitates.
That time tomorrow, Grace finds he isn’t really able to incorporate submarines in oceans of blood into his lecture. He focuses instead on how he got his scars, and how Erid’s ambient temperature runs so high due to increased gravitational forces. But he thinks about Simon in that stuffy submarine all the same, just him and a CO2 scrubber that never actually worked, not even a nutrient block to keep him company.
Simon wakes up to Rocky’s “face” about a foot from his, its legs bracketing him against the bed. His chest threatens to brush against Rocky’s chassis. He wonders if all Eridians lack personal space or if it’s something it learned from Ryland.
“Simon is awake.” He untangles his arm enough to scrub at his face.
“What’re you doing?”
“Rocky wait for one-thousand five-hundred seconds.” Later, he’ll take a moment to do the math and realize it isn’t that long at all.
“It must be important if you waited fifteen-hundred seconds instead of waking me up.” Rocky went through a phase of doing just that to compare his sleeping habits with Ryland’s. Apparently, he sleeps easily but lightly compared to Ryland, who will delay sleep but is difficult to arouse once started. Ryland also has a lower resting heart rate and dreams frequently.
Fascinating, if you’re an alien.
Rocky only stopped when Simon threatened to revoke its measuring rights, and it had too many things it wanted to catalogue to risk that. So, yes. Simon knows that if it really wanted to, Rocky would wake him up.
“Not important. Simon understands English colloquialisms, yes?”
“Uh.”
“Simon has one hand. Make typing slow… it’s okay. Rocky can assist.”
“What am I doing?”
“You.” Rocky leans in. Simon digs the back of his head into the bed. “Will teach Rocky ♩♬. Need word. Specific, bad words for anger. Offensive.”
“For being really angry? You woke me up for this?” He offers, unsure why it’s such a high priority to the alien. Rocky considers this for a moment.
“Variations of fuck.” Simon bursts out laughing despite himself.
“Oh my God?”
“Simon knows variations of ♩♬, question?” Simon grins. He’s not used to it - he feels like he’s contorting his face in a bizarre way. But Rocky recognizes it as a smile, and that has to mean something. “Simon does know, statement! Yes yes yes. You will teach. Now. Get up.”
“What? Get Ryland to teach you.”
“Do not defer to Grace! Rocky has tried for long long long time to expand vocabulary. Grace will not teach due to moral obligation. Is stupid. ”
“That’s really not my problem.”
“Please, Simon? Imagine Grace reaction, statement!” He sighs, drumming his fingers against his abdomen.
It’s not like he was doing anything else today.
“Fine. I’ll help you type in all your swears.” Rocky makes celebratory noises. “Now get off me. I’ll teach you after I eat.”
“Ew.”
“So, if something is THE shit-”
“It’s good.”
“But if something is JUST shit…”
“It’s bad.”
“Confusing.”
“You’ll get it.”
Grace doesn’t know what he walked in on. If he can hear Simon, he is certainly within Rocky’s range, so he’s either willfully ignoring him or so engrossed in… whatever this is that he didn’t notice. Rocky fidgets wildly, the laptop balanced on Simon’s stomach as he lounges.
“What’s going on?” Rocky jolts, seeming guilty.
“Linguistics.” He offers, typing on the laptop with a sort of indifference.
“Have you been teaching Rocky how to swear?”
“Rocky has been swearing this whole time, it’s just not translated. Right, Rocky?”
“Uh.”
“Why now?” Grace crosses his arms.
“Why not?” Simon counters.
“It’s bad manners.”
“Oh no.” He says, not sounding sorry. Rocky looks frantically between the two.
“Grace Simon fighting… question…”
“Yes.”
“No.” They say at the same time. Grace whispers to Simon, not because Rocky can’t hear it, but to signify that Rocky he shouldn’t be listening in: “We’re not fighting!”
“Sort of seems like it.” Simon whispers back, giving a sort of half-smirk. Grace is momentarily distracted by the way he tucks his hair behind his ear before going back to peck at the keyboard.
“Well! We’re not! Fighting! Don’t freak Rocky out for no reason.”
“Uh huh. Whatever you say.” Grace can’t think of a clever follow-up because he’s thinking if this is what normal ends up looking like, he could get used to it.
“Both of you are fucking annoying.” Grace gasps.
“Rocky!”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” Simon cheers, getting onto his knees, and they bump fists. His laugh is low and breathless, interrupted by Rocky barreling into him. In a sight that is as impressive as it is terrifying, Simon actually manages to evade Rocky's attempt to pin him down. They're moving around the room, now, in something that almost looks like a dance. Grace feels the tiniest bit jealous, and he can’t really decide who it’s directed at. But he’s shaken out of those thoughts when Rocky calls Simon a bitch, and he finds himself laughing alongside them.
“This room is boring.” Simon turns a slow circle, studying the interior of the Sanity Room and its upgrades. If only Simon knew how heavily it was used.
“Trust me?” He hmphs at that. Then, all the screens turn on, and he startles. They’re not displaying anything, but there’s an obvious hum as they crackle to life.
“Ryland?”
“It's okay! It's a TV room. Sit. There's stuff I want to show you.”
“How come I've never seen this before?”
“It's off by default. Eridians can't naturally sense two dimensional screens, so there's not a point in running the display all the time.” Grace plops down onto the floor, patting at the space next to him. Simon holds onto the rail as he also sinks downward. He shuffles over until their shoulders are almost touching. Heat rolls off him in waves.
“What does it display?”
“Uh, anything I want it to, really. I'm not a hundred percent sure what its original purpose was, but there's a whole bunch of stock footage it came with. It sort of reminds me of The Sphere in Las Vegas.”
“The what?”
“It might be better if you plug that into Wikipedia. I don’t think I can explain it. But, uh. Have you ever seen Earth?”
“Not in person. I grew up on a space station.”
“What do you know about Earth?” Simon crosses his arm over his chest, holding onto his left shoulder.
“History, mostly. Geography by an extension of that.”
“Do you know about California?”
“The Republic of California?”
“Hasn’t been called that in a while. I’m from there.” Simon winces. “What’s that face supposed to mean?”
“Climate change made it uninhabitable." It’s Grace’s turn to wince.
“What happened?”
“It got colder. Earthquakes. Fires. The government stopped providing aid. It happened to a lot of different places.” It’s hard to think of California as anything but balmy and warm, with puffy palm trees hanging high in the cloudless, blue sky. He misses the arid deserts and the purple sunsets, the fog rolling in against the coast. He’ll never see himself sunkissed again. But if that’s his last impression of home, it’s not too bad.
“Would you consider yourself an American?”
“Loosely. I wish there was a database of information I could show you.” They let that simmer for a bit, but not for long. It's difficult to say where the discrepancies start, but it seems nationality is something they have in common. Grace slides his finger along the trackpad, hovering the cursor over the video he wants to play.
“Ready?” Simon furrows his brow. It's a common look.
“You make it sound bad.” Grace clicks on the title, and a satellite video of Earth appears in front of them. Simon flinches, shoulder bumping against Grace's, but his expression of wariness melts away into shock. Before them, Earth is suspended in a velvety darkness, blue oceans marbled with directionless white clouds. Thinking about the billions of people who are able to go about their lives… Grace wipes away a tear. He can’t help it. He literally cannot watch when nighttime descends like a curtain, lights flickering on in its wake. So many people who wanted to live as badly as he did.
“Is this live?” Suddenly remembering he is not alone, he studies Simon’s profile in the light.
“No. It’s about 72 hours of high-res footage taken a few years before the Hail Mary was launched.”
"This is Earth?"
"My Earth, at least." It didn't mean to sound so territorial, but Simon whispers wow.
“I think I could watch this forever.” Grace laughs, though he wouldn’t put it past Simon to actually do something like that. “You grew up with this?” Grace wishes this video came with some sort of audio because his rushing blood is all too loud in his ears. He never considered knowing what Earth looks like to be a privlege.
“Yeah.”
“What else can you show me?” This gets Grace to sit up straight, dragging the laptop over. They spend the rest of the evening like that, going over Earth’s various scenes, each as vibrant and unreal as the last. When they reach the foggy shoreline, Grace gets a good laugh out of his reaction.
A constant stream of chatter flows between them, and it feels like getting an old friend up to speed. Grace didn’t have many old friends back on Earth, so it’s amazing how Simon can evoke a feeling he knows nothing about. He used to think of human presence as a far-flung fantasy, a sort of indulgence, the kind of thing he couldn’t ever afford, but Grace can’t imagine anybody but Simon being the person that showed up. He hopes that Simon couldn’t imagine teleporting to anyone else’s biodome.
“Aren’t you cold?” Ryland is wrapping himself up in his cardigan, bracing himself against the wind. Simon is wearing as little clothes as possible without being inappropriate, his feet submerged in the water.
If there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s tolerating and adapting. Simon finds he doesn’t mourn the absence of his left arm as frequently or intensely as he once did. A handicap on Erid isn’t the same as a handicap on his station. But he didn’t anticipate the temperature changes. He always ran warm, but there's a new-onset inability to regulate his temperature that's driving him mad. He sees the numbers on the thermometers, but something happens between the atmosphere and his skin that nullifies the air conditioning. Sweat beads along his exposed skin, and his hair is unpleasantly damp against his warm neck.
Normally he’d just tie it up.
Hnng.
“Do I look cold?” Ryland is heavily debating his response, chewing on the inside of his lip. “Don’t answer that, actually.”
“You didn’t know what I was gonna say.” He mutters.
“You’re right.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s just… Not important.”
“This is about your arm?”
“Probably.” He leans forward, resting his chin on a knee and ignoring Ryland who stands beside him anyways.
“Is there anything I can do?” He offers in that eager way of his, like it’s his life’s meaning to give. He’s just so guileless, and Simon can barely look at him. It’s not so much that his heart is on his sleeve as it’s tattooed across his face in bold.
“Unless you’ve found a way for me to regrow a limb, then no.” Grace runs his fingers through his beard in thought.
“Inflammation could increase your temperature… and decreased blood flow and surface area could make it difficult to regulate when it does change… are you feeling feverish at all?”
“Thought you said you weren’t a medical doctor.”
“Well, human stuff always manages to come up in class. You’d be surprised how a 12 year-old could grill you. Or pretend to be sick.” Simon presses the back of his hand against his forehead. It doesn’t feel feverish, but maybe his own hand doesn’t provide a fair point of comparison. He rakes his hair away from his face and holds it, looking up at the scientist.
“What do you think, Doctor Grace?” Ryland’s voice box bobs underneath his skin as he swallows. There’s a fine tremor to his hand as he reaches out, pressing his cool fingers against Simon’s skin. He yanks his hand away and shoves it back into his pocket.
“Feels normal to me.” Simon wonders if Ryland knows he’s messing with him but decides it's funnier if he doesn’t. He twists his hair into a bun, staring off into the water. “Do you need help tying your hair up?”
“You offering?” When he doesn’t respond, it prompts Simon to look up. Ryland is wide-eyed and pursing his bottom lip in something like unexpected approval.
“I guess I am.” Simon bites the rubber band off his wrist and offers it to Ryland, who kneels behind him even though he probably doesn’t have to.
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Nah.” The feeling of someone tucking his hair behind his ears from behind is the first thing that’s made him shiver all day. Ryland goes through a bunch of unnecessary motions, including fanning his hair out across his shoulders and attempting to untangle the waves with his fingers. Having his back turned to someone feels like a developing burn, but in that analogy, Simon is willfully holding his hand over the flame. It takes two attempts before Ryland is satisfied and backs away, and Simon runs his hand across the loose ponytail.
If he knew the last time he tied his hair up was going to be the last, he would’ve savored it a lot more. He tries to conjure that last moment in his mind, but it’s the equivalent of asking him to imagine the last time he tied his shoelaces. It’s the sort of totally inconsequential thing that your brain doesn’t commit to memory. Simon is confident he can re-learn this skill, but he’s hit with a sudden wave of uselessness all the same.
“How did I do?” Ryland asks, slightly breathless. Simon can’t think of anything smart to say.
“Thank you.” He settles on, looking out at the horizon.
“Yeah, man.” Ryland dusts his hands off and does an exaggerated stretch. “Well. Don’t stay out for too long. Don’t want you to get sick.” It’s everything just to nod to that.
The next morning, there’s a 3D-printed claw clip resting on the counter. The garish, cherry-red that Ryland chose makes it stick out against the backdrop. It takes many failed attempts and a serious consideration to go bald for Simon to messily wrangle his hair into place and clip it, but when he greets Grace for the morning, the scientist beams at the sight all the same.
“You look like him.” Simon juts his chin at Ryan Gosling dancing in front of the twinkling LA cityscape with Emma Stone. The actor’s hair is styled and his suit is well-fitted and he moves with a grace that Ryland could only get from his name, but still, he preens a little at the comment.
“I used to get that a lot. His name’s Ryan Gosling. He’s a famous actor on Earth.”
“Even your names are similar.” Grace mouths them, feeling them blend into one.
“Huh.”
“I bet it made Halloween easy.”
“Super easy.” Grace smiles. 2023 was a blast. He’ll never forget the reaction to him showing up in a bright-pink costume, a platinum blond wig, and two pairs of sunglasses. He has to abandon that train of thought or else he’ll start crying. It’s too early in the movie for that, and there’s nothing sad about Emma Stone finding her car. “You… had Halloween?” He ventures. Simon nods.
“Yeah.” Grace looks at him only to find that Simon was already staring. In the light of a screen, it reminds him of something.
“You know! You look a little like some guy my kids- or, students used to watch. His name was… shoot. Mark? Mike? He did a bunch of YouTube video games, or something like that. Entertainment, almost like a TV show.” Grace drags the laptop over, punching in Mark youtube gaming into the search bar. “Ah, Markiplier. That’s it.” He clicks on the first image and swivels the screen toward Simon. The other gives it consideration.
“Hmm.” It’s not a no, which is basically a yes.
“I wonder if they’d make a movie about me. They should cast Ryan Gosling.”
“Isn’t that a little presumptuous?”
“What?” Grace challenges. “That they’d make a movie or that they’d cast Ryan Gosling?”
“Both.” He scoffs in mock offense, pushing Simon’s shoulder. He’ll never get used to how the human body just gives. Even though Simon is probably rocking a body fat percentage in the teens, the muscles in his arm are downright pillowy compared to Rocky’s everything.
“Just watch the dang movie.” And Simon gives a short laugh. An actual, real laugh, low and dangerous and filling up the room, competing with the sounds of the jazz club Sebastian and Mia are at. There’s the barest hint of a smile on his face - a slight scrunching of the eyes and nothing more. Grace wants to get up and start cheering like his team just won the Superbowl, but that would freak Simon out. Instead, he lets his eyes settle on the screen, not absorbing one bit of it.
It’s one of the last good nights they have for a while.