Chapter Text
The next time Simon saw Grace, the man looked oddly unwell.
Admittedly, Simon shouldn’t have been where he was right now – the laboratory had gone quite for most of the day, with even the other scientists seemingly having gone off elsewhere for some reason. He’d actually been looking for Dr. Stacy, but upon seeing Grace hunched over a desk and muttering to himself in a half-dark, completely empty lab, all his previous thoughts basically threw themself out the window.
He hadn’t bothered to shift to look more human before coming up here, so as he approached, it became obvious that slithering out of the blood-only zone in the lab would lead to the floor being dirtied. Simon may not have cared much for the lab regulations, but even he had his limits on what to cover in blood.
“Uh... hello?” Simon tried. Grace didn’t move, and Simon cleared his throat to try again. “Dr. Grace? Is everything, uh...”
Fuck, how do you go about this interaction again? Simon had been below the waves of the Carmine Sea so often that he didn’t even fucking know how to ask if someone was alright anymore. The blood-sirens never really needed to do that, mainly because the answer often happened to be ‘obviously fucking not’.
“Do you make a habit of staying up late to do math?” Simon tried, and this time, he saw when Grace’s head practically snapped up from where he’d hunched over the desk. “Or is this a new thing?”
Still not the right way to say that, but it at least worked.
Simon half expected to be told off, or for Grace to make some kind of joke, or for him to actually explain that yes, his lack of sleep happened to be a normal thing for him. Grace stood from his seat, and Simon clenched his toothed jaws as he waited for something to happen, lowering his torso to be at the same level as a normal person.
What Simon did not expect, however, was to nearly be thrown sideways, with arms suddenly wrapped around his chest, and Grace to be clutching onto him like he might disappear.
Simon’s first instinct was to lunge backward and away from the man, the sudden contact sending thousands upon thousands of tiny little alarms in his body screaming. They screamed warning, they shouted that Grace might be about to attack him, anything that might encompass even a hint of violence.
His second instinct, upon hearing a muffled noise emerge from where Grace had pressed himself into Simon, was to stay perfectly still and never move again for the rest of his life. He had no idea what to do, especially not regarding the fact that Grace might be crying into his chest right now.
Silence settled back into the lab, only broken by Grace’s muffled sobbing into Simon’s bare chest. It felt a little weird, but he had no idea how to handle any of this right now. He carefully eased himself down a little further, so that it wouldn’t be horribly uncomfortable for Grace to hug him.
“Grace?” he tried quietly. The man’s grip on him only tightened, and Simon nearly had to bite his own arm to hold back on the urge to try throwing him off.
Seriously, why is he... why is he... hugging me? Simon wondered. Not that he entirely minded – the tight grip from Grace still somehow felt as soft and as weirdly comforting to his brain as it had been in the cafeteria – but this felt so out of the ordinary that he genuinely had no idea what to do in this situation.
Grace pulled his head away for a moment, breath heaving and face smeared in both tears and fresh blood from where he’d buried it against Simon. An irrational urge to wipe it off arose in him, but he must have been paralyzed by the hug, because he couldn’t even bring himself to move.
Why couldn’t he move? Why didn’t he immediately want to throw Grace away from him? Why did he want to wipe the blood from Grace’s cheek so that he wouldn't be smeared in the stuff?
“I... frick, I’m sorry,” Grace whispered, voice painfully thick with emotion and more tears pouring from his face. “I should have... should’ve asked, Simon, I-I didn’t mean-”
It actually hit him in that instant. “You’re crying.”
“Sorry, yeah,” Grace choked out, pulling his hands away even as Simon let himself shift to be a bit smaller than before. “I just... frick, I don’t even...”
An obvious sob tore through him, and the awkwardness that had been choking Simon before faded off into something unusual. Pity? No, not pity – he actually cared that Grace was crying. Concerned. Real concern.
“Do you... what happened?” he asked. Grace’s eyes seemingly went blank for a moment, as though he were much further away from here than he should be, and Simon snapped his finger quickly to avoid accidentally falling onto the floor. He could have shifted out his left arm, but it didn’t measure near the top of his priorities. “Grace?”
No response. Grace’s tears only came faster, as did his ragged breathing. Simon’s own panic started to rise – he had absolutely no idea how to calm down someone who might be having a panic attack. His last five years of panic attacks had been either done completely by himself or by swimming into Elli’s mouth and hiding in there.
I have to get his attention somehow, right? Simon looked him over and around the room, trying to locate anything to in the room that might prove useful in snapping Grace out of it.
His eyes caught on the lanyard around the man’s neck, holding his ID. The name, for some reason, stood out clearly to him.
I can try, right?
“Um... Ryland?”
The speed at which Grace’s head snapped up could have convinced him that he’d been trying to break his neck, but it worked. The man in front of him stared up at Simon with newfound energy, albeit still looking two steps away from completely breaking down into hysteria.
“I... I’m sorry?” he asked.
“I called your name a couple of times. It only really worked when I said your first name.” He didn’t quite know why he felt like he had to explain himself, but here he just so happened to be. “I asked you what happened. How come you’re freaking out so badly?”
Grace winced, and Simon carefully leaned back to sit against the divider wall between here and the rest of the lab, instead of holding himself up with his arm. More comfortable than just standing there – and much to his shock, Grace followed him, crouching down and curling into a ball against the wall next to him. He’d almost nestled himself in the little open space between Simon’s tail and the wall, which confused him just as much as the out-of-nowhere hug.
“I, uh...” Grace sniffed, trying to clear away his tears and wiping his nose on his lab coat. Which also happened to be covered in blood, so it didn’t really help the situation on his face. “I dunno. I’m just... well, Szymanski and Ava had us look through the black box files today, as part of a deal they worked out between one another. There was just a lot in there that kinda spooked me, I guess. And the... and the audio., it-”
Simon’s hearts dropped to his stomach the moment the words ‘black box’ hit open air.
“They made you look through the black box files?” he asked, feeling an almost irrational flare of anger burn to life in his gut. Ava had allowed that!?
“Only what we needed to know,” Grace whispered. “And nothing that could potentially put us in ‘danger’, whatever that means now. I just...”
He went quiet again, and Simon wanted to just... do something. He wanted to tear the captains a new one, to understand why the fuck they thought that was a good idea. He wanted to disappear into the ocean for the rest of his maybe-life and scream into a seafloor pit until he suffocated on the blood. He wanted to offer Grace some kind of comfort, as cold as it may be coming from a monster.
And still, Simon found himself utterly paralyzed, unable to formulate a further thought as Grace shuffled sideways, moving closer to him, and leaning against him with a shaky sigh.
The gentle touch absolutely obliterated anything in his mind associated with function. Nothing about it was familiar enough for him to let his guard down, and yet he nearly caught himself sinking into the feeling anyway, to just offer Grace a second more of relief that he clearly needed.
“Can I...” Simon tried after a few minutes, his mouth drying as he worked to formulate yet another stupid question. “What did you hear?”
Grace went still from his fidgeting, and Simon slid down the wall a little further to make sure he wouldn’t totally miss if he tried another surprise hug or a pat on the shoulder or something. Simon anticipated it a little more this time, but Grace refused to move, instead hugging himself as he stared at the wall opposite with glassy eyes.
“I... I heard you die.”
Oh.
“Is that why you’re upset?” The idea completely baffled him.
Grace nodded, and just like that, Simon’s confusion only skyrocketed. “We had the option to leave before the audio played. Most people left. Even Rocky and Adrian left. I... I don’t know. I didn’t want to feel like a complete coward for once, so I stayed. I just... I didn’t expect to hear you like... like that. I’m so sorry.”
It didn’t take too long for his brain to pull pieces together, though, and the conclusion completely floored him.
He actually cares about... about me. He had the option to leave and he didn’t take it.
That still felt absolutely ludicrous to Simon, but already, something in his addled brain tried to settle, even for a moment, in Grace’s presence. To calm itself, to be at ease, and he almost smacked himself with his tail fluke to get his incessantly chattering brain to just shut up for a while.
“I guess I got lucky that you’re the one who showed up, instead of any other blood-siren,” Grace whispered with a choked laugh. “I don’t think I’d have been able to explain this very well to them. Hell, I barely even really understand half of what I saw. It hurts my head to think about.”
Simon snorted softly, despite how much everything about this confused him. “You have no idea. It still makes my head hurt, and I live in there.”
Grace managed a halfhearted laugh, which felt like progress, before he went quiet again.
Something in his mind hissed out its worries, and Simon found himself genuinely trying to think of ways to somehow put Grace at ease.
What the hell is going on with me? I’ve never... do I care about him that much?
“I’m- shoot, this is gonna sound a little stupid, I think,” Grace muttered, catching his attention again. How did his voice just do that? Was that why it constantly got stuck in Simon’s head? “But I’m glad you’re here. And, y’know... alive. Really nice to know you’re alive. I’d rather you not be... well... actually super dead.”
That officially broke every thought and question circulating in his mind.
“You don’t want to see me dead?”
“What- why the heck would I want that!?”
“A lot of people do!”
“And I don’t!” Grace leaned into him much more heavily. “You’re interesting! And I can probably name at least a couple people who want you alive.”
Simon tried to roll his eyes, but his brain felt too broken for sarcasm. “Interesting as in science specimen?”
“I mean, kind of, yes, but also just as Simon!”
Fuck. Fuck, okay, Simon could be normal about this.
A short, hiccupy breath escaped him, followed by a tear down the side of his face.
Fuck me. Never mind.
Simon wiped at his eyes to try clearing the tears suddenly building there, just in case Grace suddenly decided to switch up and jump on the vulnerability. It proved a fruitless endeavour, considering all he really managed to do was smear half-dried blood all over his face and nearly nick his hand on his extra teeth.
“Simon? Are you alright?”
“I’ll be fine,” he managed, sounding distinctly not fine even to his own ears. “It’s just... I’m shocked you care.”
Grace let out a short laugh of his own. “I don’t think I’d be me if I didn’t. Do you, uh... do you want a hug?”
On the one hand, his mind immediately started to panic. He didn’t know if Grace might just be trying to get him while his back was turned, or if he might hurt him, anything.
But the other hand whispered that it wanted to try. Curiosity slithered back into his mind, the little parasite that it was, and clouded out too much of his wariness to be drowned. Curiosity about what the touch might feel like, after so long in an ocean of living, singing blood that offered no such comforts to him. Curiosity about that it might be like to once again have Grace casually touch him, even if he’d asked this time and had sufficiently prepared him for it instead of yet another out-of-nowhere touch.
Simon, very slowly, nodded, and shifted to be as small as possible while still blood-siren. Just so that Grace wouldn’t be mashing his face into his chest again, because surely that couldn’t have been too comfortable the first time. Grace scooted closer, and despite the warmth that Simon usually emitted, having it come from someone else felt different. He didn’t quite know why, but it did.
Awkwardly, Grace managed to wrap his arms around Simon’s back, and he fought the urge to slap him off with his tail for a few moments as the other man settled. The hug fully registered in his brain, soft and attentive and unreasonably caring, and Simon found himself paralyzed once more.
“Seriously,” Grace said. “I’m happy you’re alive, Simon.”
Oh.
Oh.
The remaining thoughts in the back of his mind all settled, the dust of curiosity and his incessant wondering culminating into a few ideas that circulated with ease. Simon brought his tail around wehre Grace had been sitting near it, almost wrapping it around them both. He caught the shape of the leaf-like fin through his tears, and for the first time, couldn’t bring himself to look at it as though it were a cruel mockery of his sins.
Now it looked like a leaf of the Tree. The one he’d grown, by accident, but technically the fruit of the seed he’d carried through hell.
Now it looked like something alive.
Simon hesitantly put his one arm around Grace, trying not to curse the claws that looked like they could accidentally cut the poor man if he wasn’t careful.
Grace looked just as alive, and the hug only proved it even as Simon tried to hold back tears.
They were both alive.
And Simon had an idea on how to keep them both that way. He’d already had it – it had been why he’d come up here in the first place – but now, certainty settled in his chest like roots into soil.
Later. I can... I can enjoy this a little longer, can’t I?
A selfish thought. But one that stayed with him throughout the evening, throughout the quiet goodbye when Grace had to leave, and throughout his swim back to the Tree.