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Grace rolled over in his sleep, mumbling. His stubble scratched on his pillow case, (an awful texture), and he tilted his chin the other direction, expecting to find the familiar warmth of Simon like he had for the past few months.
When he didn’t find the expected comfort of Simon’s warm, solid body, he reached his arm across the bed and searched. There were only the soft sheets, heat still lingering in Simon’s usual spot, previously shared blanket now tangled in Grace’s legs.
Grace let out a sigh of discontent. This wasn’t the first time Simon had gotten up in the night. Sometimes it was just to go clear his head after a nightmare, other times it was to get water or a snack. But each time, he’d be back in Grace’s arms before Grace could even notice he’d left at all.
The only other time Grace had woken up without Simon, it had been after a particularly rough day. They had… a conflict. It wasn’t a big argument—if it could even be called that—and it wasn’t the first, but it was the one that had lingered in Grace’s mind for the longest.
It had been mealtime. A new norm, something that Simon had grown accustomed to quickly despite his claims that food had been scarce where he was from. Grace believed him, but at the same time, Simon didn’t look malnourished. Simon looked like a freaking bodybuilder.
And that had been the conversation that sparked it all: Grace had made some kind of stupid quip, and Simon had gotten that look in his eyes that looked like an animal about to hunt. At this point, Grace hadn’t known the extent of what went on before Simon ended up with him on Erid. Looking back, he would’ve kept his mouth shut if he had.
Simon got mad. Like, really, really mad. It was like a switch was flipped. The same man who had just gone on an hour long excited rant about maps now looked like he was trying with all of his might to not yell at Grace—and he was. Simon’s chest had tightened, his heartbeat had quickened, and he was so angry.
Grace was scared, yeah, but he was also so, so curious. He knew that Simon would take bits of food when he thought Grace wasn’t looking and hide them. Grace didn’t mind; if it made him feel safer, so be it. But what about commenting on this aspect of Simon’s past made him so… reactive?
That day, Grace had learned (via Simon yelling, mostly) about some of the things Simon did—and would still do—in order to survive.
And when he had finally calmed down, he had a look on his face that Grace could only describe as the most conflicted he’d ever seen the man. Not that he was stoic; no, he was far from it—but he rarely showed vulnerability in a way that didn’t come across as threatening.
Later that night, Grace had shared his own experiences with hunger. Curled up around Simon, Grace had recounted what it felt like for his scars to reopen, for his hair to fall out, for every step and movement to be met with spotty vision and shaking limbs.
Simon hadn’t responded. He’d just wrapped his arm around Grace tighter, pulling their bodies flush, and tried to ignore that he was still able to count Grace’s ribs if he were to want to. And part of him did want to. He wanted to be able to quantify Grace’s suffering, to look at Grace and say, “I would’ve done those things for you, too, if I had had the chance. If I had known you.”
But that would’ve upset Grace. So he didn’t say anything. He had just held Grace close, and when Grace woke up, Simon was gone.
Grace thought back to that now. It had been weeks since then, and they hadn’t argued today. In fact, it had been a relatively pleasant day, all things considered.
All it had taken was one off-handed comment and suddenly Grace was pulling every nature documentary he could for Simon, every article, every note on photosynthesis from the things he’d taught his own students in the classroom to things he hadn’t learned until he was working on his doctorate. Simon had finally felt comfortable enough to spend an extended period of time outside, watching the garden not just out of fear or obligation, but because of genuine interest—because of he was beginning to harbor hope for the little plants. So when Simon returned to the house with dirt under his nails and a soft, slightly apprehensive smile on his face, Grace had all but kissed him.
He thought about all of this as he laid in bed, staring at the ceiling while a pit of dread expanded in his chest. Where was Simon?
He couldn’t have been gone long, the bed was still warm. And Simon hated being on the beach, especially alone and especially when it was dark out. He wouldn’t have gone back to the garden, not without making Grace aware of where he was.
But the bathroom light wasn’t on, and Grace was able to see that actually, none of the lights in the house were on. There was a very real possibility that Simon didn’t actually need the lights—Grace had an ongoing theory that he had mutated a form of night vision—but Simon hadn’t seemed to have noticed a difference so Grace didn’t bring it up, thus causing Simon to continue turning the lights on.
Grace rolled over, kicking his blanket to the end of the bed. He shoved his feet into his slippers, wrapped his cardigan around himself tighter, and stepped out into the living room.
Nothing. No familiar blanketed figure on the couch, nobody leaning against the counter, not a soul filling a glass with water or propping the refrigerator open to grab a snack.
What was there, however, was the glint of simulated moonlight on the floor.
The front door was open.
Panic rose in Grace’s throat. There was a very real possibility Simon was fine, he had just gone for a walk and forgotten to shut the door. Heck, Grace himself did that all the time.
But Simon didn’t. Simon never forgot to shut the door, putting up a barrier between him and the ocean whenever he could. It didn’t matter that it was just water, seeing so much liquid crashing against the rocks was enough to make Simon spiral.
Grace considered this as he procured a flashlight from a kitchen drawer. It flickered to life as he made his way down the steps carefully, cursing his slippers for trying to fall off his feet.
At first those episodes had been angry, all thrashing and sometimes yelling and usually blaming somebody (often, the somebody being Grace). But recently, Simon seemed to have turned a corner. In place of yelling, Simon just dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to make it look like he wasn’t crying. At their worst, Simon would curl in on himself and just go completely silent, eyes seeing things that weren’t really there.
Grace figured the change had something to do with the fact that he never yelled back. Not because he didn’t want to, he definitely did want to sometimes—Simon’s ‘episodes’ could be brutal—but because he knew that if he did, he’d shatter the relationship they’d both worked so hard to build up. And because Grace knew it wasn’t Simon’s fault, not really. When Grace was at his worst, when he learned the truth of his mission, he had been angry, too. He had been so angry. If there had been another human around, Grace would’ve been flipping out at them all the time as well.
Clearly, Grace’s refusal to engage with Simon’s outwardly destructive behavior gave Simon an excuse to turn that destructive behavior inwards.
The beam of his flashlight swept across the sandy beach, illuminating the rolling waves. The distant hum of the wave machine combined with the sound of water crashing was just enough of a comfort to make Grace want to close his eyes and go back to sleep right there.
But he couldn’t, not without Simon at his back.
He moved his flashlight slowly, carefully, scouring every inch of the shore and water before moving outwards to increase his range.
He spotted something. A rock, poking out of the water every now and then as waves tumbled over it.
But there were no rocks on this beach, because it wasn’t a real beach.
Simon.
Grace raced towards the shore, kicking off his slippers as they got caught in the sand. The piercing beam of the flashlight highlighted Simon’s silhouette again.
It was him. It was definitely him. Black hair curling, swirling around him in the water. His eyes were closed, face pale.
Grace shoved the flashlight into his mouth, making an attempt to hold it with his teeth so that he could swim and still see. The cold metal made his teeth ache. When that didn’t work, he dropped the flashlight entirely, letting it sink to the bottom of the ocean before launching himself into the water so quickly it made his nose sting.
His swim towards Simon was a blur. The cold water crashed against his body, soaking into his clothes and weighing him down. Every second felt like a lifetime, felt like finding Yao and Ilyukhina’s pale, blue bodies, felt like seeing himself in the mirror for the first time after surviving the fishing incident—
And then Grace was there, and Simon was in his arms, but the warmth that Grace had spent the past few minutes looking for so desperately was nowhere to be found.
He struggled to get back to the shore, kicking and flailing and dragging Simon from his armpits and internally wincing because he knew that it would aggravate Simon’s amputation wounds if—no, when—he woke up.
There was no time. There was never enough time. Thoughts of Stratt, of being chased down, of loneliness swirled in his brain as he laid Simon on his back and felt desperately for a pulse.
“Simon!” He shrieked.
There was nothing. Grace tilted Simon’s head back and pressed his their mouths together, trying to give rescue breaths. He pressed his full body weight to Simon’s chest to the beat of a song that Grace couldn’t remember the words of but could remember the bassline of—funny how time worked.
He could remember a song he hadn’t heard in probably a decade just fine, but he couldn’t remember how to live without Simon.
Grace screamed his name again. There was nothing, no response but his own panting as he felt Simon’s ribs break under the force of the chest compressions.
His tears, mixed with the salt water dripping from his hair, were hardly noticeable.
More compressions, more rescue breaths. Grace had never been a religious person, but if there was anything out there that could help him right now, he silently begged them to do so.
Compressions. Rescue breaths. Compressions, breaths. Compressions, breaths, compressionsbreathscompre—
After an eternity, Simon coughed. Weakly, then with more force, until he vomited. Grace hardly noticed, too focused on trying to get Simon onto his side to prevent him from choking.
Grace couldn’t do anything but card his fingers through Simon’s hair as he struggled to catch his breath again. Foam dribbled from the corner of his mouth, lips still pale but slowly regaining color. He cracked an eye open, breathing heavily and rasping for air.
“Don’t talk!” Grace said, panicked. “Don’t try to talk. Just breathe.”
Simon obeyed, squeezing his eyes shut with a soft groan. They were both shivering. Grace rubbed soft circles onto Simon’s back as he vomited again, this time less so.
He was alive. Simon was alive. There was a very real possibility Simon had brain damage, let alone fluid in his lungs, infections, lung damage—well, the Lung had definitely damaged Simon. Now he probably had damage in his lungs to match.
The sheer silliness of the thought made Grace want to laugh. Instead, a sob escaped his mouth. Then another, and he was soaking wet, shivering, sobbing and laughing and trying so hard to be okay even though he was pretty sure neither of them would ever be okay ever again (as if they ever were before).
“I need to pick you up now. It’s going to hurt, I’m so sorry.” His voice was as soft as it could be, but still thick with both tears and terror.
Simon tried to make a noise of acknowledgement but all that came out was a pained wheeze.
Grace slipped an arm under Simon and he immediately tensed, crying out in anguish as Grace shifted him and stood up.
Fresh tears bloomed from Simon’s eyes, running down his face and leaving shiny trails in their wake.
“I know, I’m sorry, I know it hurts—” Grace murmured. He walked barefoot through the sand, sinking into it every so often, trying to move quickly but also stumbling because his joints were already struggling against Erid’s gravity and having to carry Simon was not helping.
Getting up the stairs would be impossible, and Simon needed medical attention now. Already, Grace could see that there was a distant look in his eyes and the speed of his breathing was fluctuating rapidly.
He began the trek up the stairs. The cold rock was sharp in some places, and Grace was never all that coordinated, so there were many moments he almost tripped. But he couldn’t afford to slow down, so he gritted his teeth and ignored that he was pretty sure his feet were bleeding by now.
When they got to the house, Simon had gone quiet again. The only solace Grace had was the fact that every so often, Simon would cough before letting out a soft, shuddering whine.
The front door was still open. This time, it was a blessing.
Grace set Simon on the couch as gently as he could.
“Armando!”
Immediately, Armando swung to life, sensing the problem. The tracks on the ceiling of the home had never been so useful as Armando moved towards the man on the couch.
Grace watched Armando stabilize Simon, all the while chewing on the skin around his nails and thinking about how he really wanted Rocky to be here right now, but that would mean leaving Simon’s side to actually go send a message to Rocky.
Eventually the quiet whirring of the doctor’s arm got to be too much, and Grace picked up the small radio-like device Rocky had made for him.
“Rocky—it’s Simon—he drowned, he was dead, he—” None of this was what Grace had wanted to say, nor was it what he had intended to tell Rocky in the middle of the night. There was a very, very real possibility that Rocky was asleep, and would not be able to wake up for a few hours.
Grace would have to be okay with being alone until then.
A series of chirps came back through the radio. “Rocky asleep. Adrian on the way.”
Adrian. God, Adrian. Of course. Rocky wouldn’t have been sleeping with nobody to watch him. They were the next best thing.
He barely managed to choke out a garbled, “t–thank you,” before he could hear the rapid clicking of an Eridian in a xenonite suit outside his home, because of course the front door still wasn’t closed.
Adrian’s looming figure stood in the doorway.
“What happened!?” They stomped.
Grace wailed in reply. “I don’t know—”
“Simon okay?”
He sniffled, pulling his laptop to the edge of the table to check the reports that Armando had been programmed to send to him.
Preliminary reports looked… okay. Not good, not good by any metric, but it could have been a lot worse. Simon was stable.
“Grace need to sleep. Adrian wake Grace up when Simon wake up.”
“I don’t want to sleep, Simon almost just died and he still might—”
“Grace,” Adrian stomped, “SLEEP.”
And he really, really wanted to. More than anything. He wanted to peel the sticky, sandy clothes off his body and curl up into a ball and cry until he passed out. He wanted to take a shower and sit and let the warm water blend in with his tears. He wanted to hold Simon to his chest and weep.
But Simon couldn’t breathe right, let alone be held—
Grace could feel himself spiraling again.
“‘M gonna go shower.” He muttered, a tear slipping into his mouth and dissolving on his tongue.
He tracked sand and water and a bit of blood through the house on his way to the bathroom. Peeling off his gross, sticky clothes, he wanted to throw up. Between the fading adrenaline rush, the panic, the tears, the awful textures and sounds, he was just so—so—
Grace sat down in the shower. Warm water ran over him, washing his sorrows down the drain as new tears took their place.
—
When Simon woke up, there were a few things he noticed immediately.
One, that his entire body felt like it had been simultaneously crushed and stretched out.
Two, that Grace was holding his hand in a vice grip as he slept.
And three, that he currently had just about every single one of Armando’s monitors attached to him.
The beeping of the heart monitor picked up and Grace woke with a start.
“Simon—” Grace looked awful. Dark circles surrounded his red eyes. His stubble had grown just a tiny bit, and his hair was a mess. He had a T-shirt and sweatpants on—an outfit he would not wear to go teach. Something was up.
He wanted to say something but couldn't manage due to the tube down his throat.
Simon’s eyes met Grace’s as they shared a frown; Simon's of confusion, Grace's of... something too complicated for Simon to name properly.
Grace’s voice cracked. “Are you having any trouble breathing?”
He shook his head no in response, an almost imperceptibly small movement. It sent shocks of pain racing through his body.
“Okay. I’ll have Armando take the tube out. This is going to feel weird,” Grace cautioned. Simon didn’t move or say anything, just sat there and waited, because what else was there to do?
Armando carefully slid the tube from Simon's throat. He coughed, and with every cough, winced. His face contorted into sharp, pained lines as he asked, “what happened?”
“I was really hoping you would be able to tell me.” Grace's eyes were red, probably from a combination of crying and exhaustion.
“I—what?”
Grace spent the next hour talking about what happened. About how he had woken up alone (it wasn't the first in his life, nor the scariest, but still awful nonetheless), how he had known Simon wasn’t in the house, about how he had spotted Simon floating in the waves unconscious and—
“I’m sorry.”
“What?” Grace’s voice cracked so badly he must’ve sounded like he was about to cry. Maybe he was...
Yeah, he probably was.
“I’m sorry. That I did that to you. That I…” He trailed off, unable to make eye contact anymore.
“No, Simon—what? This isn’t your fault, none of this would have ever been your fault—”
“But it is. It is my fault.”
A tear slips down Grace's cheek, then another, until a light drizzle turned into a downpour. Grace knew that Simon, at his core, was a hopeful person. That despite everything, despite the circumstances he’d found himself in, Simon knew life could be better and fought for it the way an animal fought to escape a cage.
But the way Simon had said that. It is my fault.
It made Grace freeze.
“There’s not a single second when I was swimming to you that I thought it was your fault. Not when I was on my knees trying to bring you back to life. Not when I was carrying you up the steps and cutting my feet along the way,” he murmured, voice shaking.
Grace looks up to meet Simon’s eyes, also glassy with tears. “And even if it was your fault? I’d do it all again.”