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Why do you fight your nature?
Simon grits his teeth.
It is a question he has found that has been asked of him more and more. It's Insistent. Aggravating. A never ending cycle, like Oroboros eating its own tail over and over in a ravenous need for an answer that never changes.
“I'm not like you,” he snarls.
Something presses against him. Hot. Slick. Flesh, beating and pulsing in time to his own heart.
He's dreaming.
He knows he's dreaming.
This is not real, and yet it is.
Whatever safety and reprieve Simon had once found in his dreams had been taken from him a long time ago.
But you are
Simon tenses. Liquid laps at his feet, warm and sticky and viscous. He doesn't look down. He doesn't dare. Instead he looks up. At the graveyard that stretches before him. Vast. Endless. Filled with the ghost light of dying stars and corpses of dead planets that have not yet crumbled to dust.
It's a familiar view, but it is not a comforting one.
I have made you to be like me
Simon doesn't say anything.
So why do you fight your nature?
The question is asked again, murmured in his ear like a psalm. It is not like the psalms of his youth. It does not have the veneer of kindness that their Father held in his voice. Everything is raw. Stripped away. Flayed down to the bone.
You hunger, my Butcher. I can feel it.
“Don't call me that–”
But it is what you are
Simon snaps his mouth shut, teeth catching on his lip and tearing into the skin.
He can't dispute it.
Can't argue it.
Because it's true.
Despite all that he's left of his past life behind, despite all that his Ryland insists Simon is not entirely at fault for the atrocities he’s committed, he is still a butcher. The Butcher. He still wields the sword of an unjust god, blind in his judgment he casts. He has stayed his hand for now, perhaps, but eventually it will fall. Gravity will win, as it always must in the end.
Simon lifts his hand.
It's shaking.
Your hunger is as if it were my own, but I cannot sooth it for you
Simon stays silent.
You must feed, you must consume–
“No.”
You grow ravenous, my Butcher
Simon looks down.
The uncaring eyes of his god stare back from Its ocean of blood.
How long can you continue to deny yourself? How long until you break? How long until it is your precious Grace’s blood staining your maw–
“Shut the fuck up–
–soon you will feast. Soon you will know the taste of stars upon your tongue–
“No–!”
“Simon–?”
Simon opens his eyes.
All that greets him is the textured ceiling of their bedroom.
And yet he feels wet. Slick. Sticky. He can task copper and honey and iron. He’s breathing hard. He can feel the skin of his gills twitching, trying to keep up and rush oxygen to his lungs. His fingers are tangled in the sheets. His hand is still shaking. Simon twists the soft fabric beneath his palm, grips in harder, tries to still the trembling of his hand, but he can’t. His breathing is growing labored, his ribs ache, he can’t get enough air, he can’t–
“Hey–you’re okay–you were dreaming–”
Simon flinches back before he even realizes what he’s flinching away from.
Ryland doesn't pull his hand back, but he stops moving it closer.
It hovers between them, an offering as much as a comfort as they stare at each other, locked in a stand still.
Simon wants to throw himself into Ryland’s arms.
He can't stand the thought of it.
He wants to take his Ryland’s hand, press his lips to his wrist, feel the flutter of Ryland’s pulse against his skin, but he won’t. He can’t. Because there is blood on Simon’s mouth and between his teeth and he can’t–
–he can't stand the thought of staining him.
His Ryland.
And yet, none of that matters.
Because Ryland ends up making the decision for him.
He reaches for Simon and pulls him close. Simon stiffens, thinks about pulling back, wrenching himself free, but he doesn't. His desire for the comfort that only his Ryland can give him, once Simon has been allowed to have it, is a terrible, all consuming thing. He melts into Rylands arms. Collapses into the sleep filled warmth of his chest. Buries his face in Ryland's neck and lets his body shake and shudder as sobs try desperately to claw their way up his throat.
“It's okay, I've got you Simon–”
Simon’s whole body is trembling.
“I’m sorry–” he gasps.
It hurts.
Ryland hushes him gently, brings a hand up, cards his fingers through the tangle of Simon’s hair with the same sweetness as if he were holding a newborn. They rock back and forth, slow and soft. Simon lets himself fall into the lull of it. He doesn’t close his eyes. Not yet. Not again. He looks at Ryland’s chest instead, tracks the rise and fall of it, forces himself to match the pace. This hurts too, his gills screaming in protest at not being allowed to do their job, forced to sit back while his lungs take over for a function they no longer perform as well as they once did.
Ryland hums and pulls Simon a little closer.
Simon doesn’t know how long they stay like that.
Long enough for his breathing to eventually even despite how difficult he’s made it.
Long enough for the artificial sunrise of their biome to begin to fill the bedroom with the soft gray light of morning, illuminating the shapes and outlines of what Simon has begun to call his life.
It’s a familiar sight.
A comforting sight.
This is where he belongs.
Here.
Like this.
Even if his stomach aches with the pangs of hunger and starvation, even if he finds himself desperate for the taste of stardust and ozone, this sight alone is enough to stave it.
It is enough to satisfy him, even if it will not sustain him.
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
Ryland whispers the words.
It is not as if he’s afraid to speak them, but it’s more so that he’s afraid to break whatever fragile moment they’ve found themself in.
Simon shakes his head.
“Okay.”
Ryland takes it easily. He doesn't fight. He doesn't argue. He doesn't poke or prod. He just holds Simon a little closer. Pulls the blankets tighter around them. Guilds them both into laying back down properly in the bed.
Simon clings to him.
Ryland lets him.