Chapter Text
Grace ran his hands through his hair again as he leant over the notebook full of Simon information. He’d actually chosen to cancel class today after his dream. As much as he was choosing to believe in fate and some divine force bringing the two men together, his science brain was working incessantly, and demanding for him to come up with some genuine theory that made some correlation.
Nothing.
Eventually he gave up, sighing as instead, he walked out onto the beach of his biodome, and sat at the shore, the artificial waves lapping at his feet.
Simon was somewhere grace couldn’t make sense of, clinging just barely to his humanity, desperate, every time he witnessed grace and realised he was real.
Grace wanted to help the other man, seeing him look so disheveled and traumatised made something in his heart churn, and he didn’t want to stand for it.
No matter what the teacher tried, however, he couldn't get himself back to sleep unless it was exhaustion that made his eyes become heavy, and his limbs weak. So instead, grace did the only thing he could reasonably do.
He deep cleaned his home.
Ok, yes, this was an old habit of his when he was stressed. Grace, despite bing such a messy person in general, constantly had an itch to clean whenever he hit a stump in his work. If there was no other path to choose, he suddenly became all too aware of his surroundings and how messy they were, and he wouldn't be able to focus again until his space was clean again.
This involved Grace running around his home like a hamster in a cage all day, picking up clothes, rearranging furniture (which he knew Rocky would complain about the next time he visited) and wiping every possible surface in his little beach cottage.
It was safe to say that by the end of the day,every muscle in Grace's body aches and groans under erid’s double gravity. When he crawled into his bed, letting his head fall into the mass of pillows and blankets he had collected, Grace felt every wring in his muscles drop, and in an instant he felt like he could fall into the hands of sleep instantly. But despite his yearning for rest, Grace pulled himself slightly up to reach over for his notebook on his bedside table.
He flipped through the pages, originally intending to look at his notes on Simon, but his eyes landed on his sketches of the dark man, and he sighed unconsciously, his eyes lingering on every graphite muscle line.
The man was the definition of mystery for grace…and simultaneously the definition of handsome.
Grace wanted to call him perfect, but that was far from true. He barely knew the other man, but grace could tell that not a thing about him was perfect. He was traumatised, horrified, imperfect and violent. But there was a softness beneath every feral, animalistic instinct that demanded he protect what he had.
The tree.
That tree seemed to be the most important thing to Simon, and grace wasn't dumb, he was a scientist. He was observant. He’d seen that little glass pendant wrapped in twine and twisted around Simon's wrist. It had some kind of tree seed inside it.
As graces eyes dropped, thought of Simon filling his mind, he briefly wondered what kind of tree it was, and if it could be planted next to the eden tree in his garden.
-
When graces eyes opened in the red haze vid, he immediately noticed the mass clinging and pinning him down in the bloodied floor.
Simon.
Grace moved his hand to the man's back, and he jumped up at the touch, suddenly stumbling back and away from grace
Grace sat up on instinct, “Shoot- simon i’m sorry i thought-”
Simon shook his head, his lips pressed together as his eyes pursed into grace “no. no i just…i thought…” he shook his head and gulped slightly
“You ok..?” grace muttered slightly as he watched the man nervously fidget
“I keep…waking up here…” Simon admitted sheepishly, “ without you…i’m here longer than you are and…sometimes i think you aren’t going to come back…”
“Oh simon…”Grace whispered, and the softness in his voice, the care made Simon flinch.
“The oxygen levels in the sub…there getting lower…i keep, blurring in and out of consciousness, but maybe thats because im to week and whatever's in that ocean keeps rocking the sub, i cant count the amount of times i’ve hit my head-”
“Simon, do you…know where you are?”
Suddenly the mention of the oxygen levels made graces heart spike, and in an instant his saviour science brain was working.
“H-here..? With you…in this dream scape-”
Grace shook his head, moving forward and holding Simon by the shoulders, “in the solar system. Where are you in the solar system…”
“i…AT-5…” he whispered, the words coming out before he even registered them.
“Simon…i won’t let you die…i’ll get you out of that sub no matter what. Alright?” Grace's grin was soft, and Simon almost smiled back at the teacher, until his eyes went dark and glossed over, and suddenly grace was falling forward into Simon's arms.
Suddenly he was unconscious, and as Simon screamed, trying to get grace to wake up, suddenly the blood ocean floor seemed to open, and as if something beneath it was yearning, it was dragging grace beneath it.
Simon used all his strength, but grace disappeared beneath the surface, and Simon screamed till his throat was raw, and his tears fell and mixed with the ichor floor.
“Grace…” he whispered as he crawled like a broken dog back to the glowing tree, and he curled himself beneath it.
That's all he was after all. A broken, abandoned mutt, whining and clinging to any sense of an owner, of safety.