Chapter Text
Grace was always thankful for his alarm. Like any self-respecting scientist, he hated sleep. He’d always been like that, even before the horrendous nightmares and the nights he’d jerk awake in a panic, convinced that years had passed while he was asleep. He kept a handmade calendar with Earth dates on it pinned to his wall for the latter. He’d never been good at keeping those before. Now, it was compulsive.
He’d fallen asleep with his laptop in his bed again. He almost crushed it rolling over to slap his alarm off. David Tennant’s malleable face mocked him from the pause screen as his movements jostled the trackpad. The sheet was hot underneath it. He groaned as he reached to place it on the nightstand, closing it with a click.
Grace rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling with a huff. He was more than used to not getting many hours of sleep, but this morning, exhaustion weighed on his eyelids in a way it hadn’t since he was wrapping up his doctorate. It was a conscious effort to keep them open, no matter how much Grace didn’t care to go back in there. His mouth tasted foul. Not even that was enough to get him up and moving. His body was leaden, sinking deeper and deeper into the soft comfort of the bed.
For the most part, Grace was good at pulling it together for others. Being a teacher allowed him to hone that particular skill. There were notable exemptions to the rule, but he could handle someone getting sick from their nightmares. He’d had kids in his class puking from anxiety before, and it got easier to push aside his own disgust to prioritize them over the years.
It was so stupid of him to be stressed yesterday. He had needed to pull it together anyway. Simon getting sick was really the shove he needed to get moving. God, Simon.
Grace’s breath hitched in his chest, and he quelled it with a lungful of air. His whole body relaxed, down to his tear ducts. “Nope, nope,” he murmured as he shook his head, voice scratchy and foreign. He was familiar with pressure under his eyes and the catching in his throat well enough to know he didn't want what came next. “Keep it together. Keep it together,” he said, roughly rubbing his face with his palms.
Yesterday had worn him down to a hair’s breadth, and he was sure he’d come apart at the slightest breeze. If he just stayed here and kept watching his comfort TV shows, no breezes could jostle him. He was supposed to do lesson plans with Rocky today, but he could cancel on that and just stay in his bed, couldn’t he? No, he countered himself promptly, Rocky will beat your ever-loving door down if you don’t show up for lesson planning. Besides, you need something to do.
Despite this, Grace continued to stare at his ceiling, contemplating rolling onto his side that was less sore and resuming the episode during which he’d fallen asleep. Staying in his room until Rocky came to break down his front door was winning for Best Option Award. That was preferable to walking out and seeing Simon on the couch and knowing he could only help as much as Simon would let him.
He didn’t know if he could keep this “exit the scene and quick-change into someone more put-together” routine up for much longer. He was good at it, sure, but it always ended poorly at some point. Whoever was in the audience saw through it eventually, entirely at the fault of Grace. He felt like a shaken bottle of soda; maybe he’d stopped visibly fizzing, but the remaining tension made his bones ache like stretching plastic.
The alarm clock let Grace know that about forty-five minutes passed before he finally moved to sit up. Enough time to have finished that episode, he thought bitterly. The only other indication that time passed was the changing light outside, but Grace’s eyes had been too fixed on the ceiling to notice. His thoughts hadn’t budged; he was just sick of lying there and getting sore from the immobility. Once more, he stretched, groaning and shaking in the way that let him know he would feel much better in the seconds after the horrific sounds finally stopped coming from his mouth and body. He jammed the charger into the port on his laptop and began to pace the room.
Grace pulled open a drawer on the storage credenza turned dresser. The thought of choosing clothes felt like the cold metal of a barrel against his temple, so he closed his eyes and dragged his hand randomly over each item of clothing. He’d end up with some variation of something good enough for him.
Even after he was clothed with his glasses on, he didn’t leave his room. Outside of his sliver of a window, the Sun was climbing over the rocky outcropping. His chest began to ache with the awareness of how quickly the time was passing. Leave the room, leave the room, leave the room. Sharply, he shook his wrists and scrunched up the muscles in his face, but the phrase repeating in his head did not go away.
“Keep it together,” he whispered to himself again. “Keep it together.” If not for your sake, then for Simon’s. Out of everything you’ve done, you can do this. Hand on the doorknob, Grace pulled his face into something approximating relaxed and shook his wrist out one more time. Inhaling, he twisted the knob, and exhaling, he pushed it open.
Simon was not on the couch, and the bathroom door was open. Once again, the guilt from his relief was almost immediate, but it just as quickly turned to panic. If Simon wasn’t in the house, where was he? Grace’s shoes were gone. Simon’s blanket hadn’t moved from where it sat last night, bunched up in a ball in the corner of the couch.
Grace sucked in breath to calm his shaking. Simon was an adult. He could leave the house whenever he wanted to. Grace had even told him as much. Even if he went for a midnight stroll, it wasn’t like he was in danger. There was no one here to mug or attack him. The Eridians were keeping their distance; they’d been told to do so when Simon first arrived, and they were much better at respecting Grace’s wishes than other humans were.
Grace fought the urge to go looking for Simon. He popped a room temperature piece of bread in his mouth– immune to mold, if only because Data didn’t know how to make fungus yet– and stared out of the big bay window in the living room. There were uneven shoeprints in the sand, then disparate hand- and knee-prints where Simon likely struggled to balance himself.
He followed the line with his gaze, bread-less fingers rubbing the hem of his flannel until a smudge of dull red caught his eye. His mind struggled to comprehend it, like looking at a wildly foreign animal and not understanding how it could even exist. The sensation was unpleasant, but not nearly as much as the realization. Blood.
“Jesus Christ,” Grace breathed. He threw the bread on the windowsill and ripped his socks off. The door in the living room stuck when he tried to yank it open. He never used this stupid door anyway. He wedged his foot against the frame and pulled again, praising the stars when it cracked horribly and swung open.
“Simon!” He was shouting before he even started down the stairs. His hands shook on the railing as he tried to keep himself from tumbling down the stairs. In his rush, he jumped the last few stairs, and his body immediately reminded him he was not in his twenties anymore. The jolt that coursed up from his feet all the way to his lower back made him shout in pain. He would regret that in the coming days, but as he took off running, he said a quick prayer of thanks to the keeping-the-humans-alive team of the Hail Mary for keeping him in good shape while he was in his coma. Otherwise, he would have been out of commission right then and there.
“Simon, where are you?!” The smears of blood were showing up more and more frequently. Even Grace struggled to keep himself upright running like this through the sand. Grace should have known. It should have clicked that Simon couldn’t even walk in the sand as soon as Simon wasn’t on the couch. Grace pushed himself harder, feet grinding into the hard-packed sand beneath the surface layer, muscles screaming.
He ran past the classroom, past the garden, until he spotted a shape slumped against the rock at the edge of an inlet. He’d made it all the way to the end of the beach. “Simon!” Grace shouted breathlessly. The bundle of limbs and fabric did not move. Grace kept shouting as he closed the distance. He couldn’t see if Simon was breathing from this far away, but his bandages were soaked through. He must have ripped out some of his stitches. It didn’t seem like he was actively bleeding anymore, but that wasn’t necessarily good.
Corpse corpse dead body just like Yáo dead dead just like Ilyukhina Simon bled to death because you couldn’t get out of bed again. “Shut up, shut up!” Grace hissed in a whisper, but it did nothing to disperse his horrible thoughts. He could so easily recall their sunken faces, their lifeless eyes, their gnarled fingers clenched around the last specks of life. Simon slotted neatly into his brain next to them, unmoving and wrapped in a third sleeping/body bag like a fish too long out of water.
Grace shouted, half in pain and half in despair, as he slid onto his knees in the sand next to Simon. Careful to avoid any sensitive and injured areas, Grace grabbed Simon by the collarbones and shook. “Simon, Simon, wake up!” he shouted breathlessly. At some point, it occurred to him to press his fingers into Simon’s jugular, just above the scar on his neck that Grace now absentmindedly noticed covered a tattoo. His skin was still warm. Good sign. An even better sign was the pulse thump-thumping under Grace’s fingertips. Simon’s chest rose and fell with steady breath. The relief was marginal.
Deep within him, buried under years of no longer needing it, his first aid training kicked in. Grace whispered instructions to himself as he tore his flannel off and wrapped it loosely around Simon’s residual limb, tying the arms in a lax knot around his shoulder. “Don’t take the bandage off just– there we go, okay, and–”
Grace grabbed Simon by his middle and pulled as hard as he could with a strained grunt, close to a scream. Simon was like a boulder. Grace whispered apologies as Simon slid down. The ridiculously slow speed at which Grace pulled Simon down would be comedic under any other circumstance. As he finally started to slump down the rock, Grace cradled his head and neck with his hand to keep him from banging his head and giving him a more traumatic brain injury than his concussion. “C’mon, c’mon. Here we go,” Grace whispered as Simon finally came to rest on his back in the sand.
“Simon, wake up!” Grace shouted, voice going stupidly singsong in fear. He checked Simon’s clothes rapidly for anything squeezing him or restricting the blood flow to his brain. Just in case, Grace pulled his shoes off of Simon. “All good, I think. I don’t–”
Simon groaned; raspy and soft, but a groan nonetheless.
“Simon?” Grace clambered on all fours back up to Simon’s head. He grabbed Simon’s right arm and started shaking before he could take in anything happening on his face. Simon’s eyes were moving beneath his eyelids, and as Grace shook him, he slowly began to open them. “Thank god, oh, thank god,” Grace chanted breathlessly. His heart was beating out of his chest; he could feel and hear it now. When had he started crying? His eyes and lungs burned.
“Wha–?” Simon started to push himself up to his elbow, but he wavered immediately, collapsing down on his back with a groan.
“I don’t know, I– don’t sit up,” Grace added quickly with a nervous chuckle, stopping himself from holding Simon down by his shoulders. He collapsed down on his elbows and knees, trembling fingers cradling the base of his head. “Jesus Christ,” he breathed, “you’re going to kill me, you’re gonna…” Grace trailed off and began the fight to get his breathing under control. Two days. Two days of waking him up and it’s weird, it’s so weird and I’m so scared. Grace huffed out breath and tried to keep sand from getting stuck in his molars.
“You still with me?” Grace asked every few seconds of silence. Each time, Simon met him with an exhausted grunt that increased in energy each time. Slowly but surely, Grace’s breathing returned to normal, and he slid back up to sit on his heels. “You're going to kill me,” he managed. He couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of this all. Simon did not return the laugh. He remained flat on his back, his arm across his face, chest rising slowly up and down. It took a moment for Grace to notice that Simon was mirroring his breathing again.
“Okay, I think you can sit up now,” Grace said after staring at Simon for what was probably too long. “Slowly, slowly,” he added as Simon started to push himself up. “Give me your hand.” Grace clasped Simon’s palm with his own, and that sensation of pushing magnets together returned. When Simon was upright and they broke apart, he could still feel the ghost of Simon’s flesh on his. “You okay?”
Simon rubbed his face as if he were mapping it in his mind by sensation alone. Grace mirrored the motion, shoving his glasses off of his face as he collapsed his back against the rock next to Simon.
“I don't…” Simon started, gaze stuck on the sand.
For a while, there was nothing but the sound of the waves. For the most part, Grace kept staring at the horizon, glancing at Simon every now and then to make sure the other man was still conscious. The xenonite barrier shimmered in the far distance. He needed to take Simon home, get his vitals checked, and re-wrap his bandages. He couldn’t carry Simon, though. The flannel seemed to be doing the trick from what he could tell, so maybe they’d just sit here until Simon could walk again.
“You might have to give me some details. I don't know either,” Grace added to justify his pushing. “Why are you out here?” He put his hands into his lap again, shoving his fingers deep into the sand to quell the shaking. Breathing was good for keeping his body calm, so he mostly focused on that. Keep it together. The need to scream out some of the fizzing in his chest and stomach was becoming overwhelming. This wouldn’t be the breeze that snapped him.
Simon didn't respond. The only sign of life were his occasional blinks, slower than they should have been.
“You can talk to me.” Grace nudged Simon’s knee with the back of his hand before he could stop himself, dusting Simon’s pants with sand. His knuckles burned like he had punched the wall of xenonite.
Simon continued to burrow with his eyes into the ground.
“You passed out,” Grace supplied. His gaze, in contrast, lingered on the grains on Simon’s knee. He considered brushing them off, but that would make matters worse, wouldn’t it? “Do you know why that may have happened?”
Nothing but the whooshing of the waves.
The only thing that Grace could think was… “Do you have a fear of blood?” Grace’s stomach immediately turned. Static filled his body. The image of Simon unconscious, floating in a massive body of dark red liquid, burst forth in front of him like a flashbulb. Grace wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. The world began to tilt, and Grace held an arm out as a kickstand to keep himself upright. “I’m sorry, I didn’t–”
“It’s fine,” Simon murmured, barely audible over the similar rumbling of the waves. “I don’t know.” The words were clipped. They would be aggressive at any other volume, but instead, Simon sounded downright exhausted, lacking the energy to even raise his voice, much less walk back home.
“I'm sorry,” Grace repeated. He knew hammering the apology wouldn’t help, but it was an impulse. “I don’t mean to grill you.” More than anything, Grace wanted to put his hand on Simon’s knee, to transfer the warmth from his skin to Simon’s. Maybe that would give him the strength to talk. Maybe it would keep him from slinking away and disappearing into himself. “I don’t… you tell me, can you walk?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t leave you to go get someone to help. I don’t remember the I’m-in-danger code word,” he added sheepishly, “so it’s just you and me for a while. We can sit in silence, or…” Grace trailed off, and hoped that left the door open wide enough for Simon to walk through. “You need water, but it’s not like I can walk to get you a glass either and this is… oh, this sucks.” Grace deflated, pressing the heels of his hands into his forehead. The air became tense immediately, so Grace huffed a laugh to relieve it a bit, and the silence became less heavy in the ensuing minutes.
“Grace.” When Simon finally spoke, his voice was barely audible, but Grace would know his name in English anywhere. His gut ached. The pit in his stomach longed to hear it again. “I thought you were God.”