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Food, like a few other basic, life-sustaining concepts, was not something that Simon did well around. Not because he didn’t enjoy eating or camaraderie or all of the good that came with sharing a meal, but because the truth was, having food usually meant that something bad had just happened. And usually, that something bad was Simon’s fault.
He’d wanted to help Grace in the kitchen. Grace made all of their food. The act of even getting food was shocking enough, sometimes. On particularly bad days, Simon refused it—a habit he’d only formed after escaping the Lung.
Simon wanted to help, and more than anything, he wanted to prove that he could be useful.
Unfortunately for him, every single one of the steps involved in helping made him want to gnaw on the inside of his cheeks and sprint from the kitchen. Going into the garden to pick the vegetables had been bad enough.
Simon was making progress, pushing the fear deep down inside as he carefully picked peppers off the plant. Being so close to the damn thing already made his stomach turn…and then the door swung shut. The metal scraping rang in his ears as his muscles tensed, causing him to drop a pepper. He internally cursed himself for getting worked up about a door.
He muttered things to himself as he worked. Things that didn’t really matter, things he had learned from sitting in on Grace’s lessons or from watching shows on the laptop Grace had given him. Anything to pass the time, really, to avoid thinking about being alone in a room of plants with the door closed.
When he finally made it back to the house, he was sweating more than he really should’ve been. Grace gave him a quizzical look but, mercifully, didn’t comment on it.
Grace slid him a cutting board to put the vegetables on. Immediately, Simon was apprehensive. Not because he didn’t know his way around a knife—he definitely did—but because it had been a long time since somebody had purposefully, willfully handed him one.
And hand him one, Grace did: Grace handed Simon a small, simple kitchen knife before turning back to work on… whatever it was that Grace was cooking. Some kind of salad.
Simon steeled himself. It was a goddamn knife, and he could chop vegetables without getting all shaky and teary about it, thank you very much.
His hands still shook much more than he would’ve liked as he made the first cut. The sound of the knife hitting the cutting board pushed all the air from his lungs and suddenly he was small again, tugging on the hem of his mother’s shirt while she prepared them dinner.
Tears stung his eyes.
He hadn’t thought of his mother in a long, long time. Or, not since the Lung, at least.
Blobs of color swam around his mind as he tried desperately to form a solid memory of her before the moment was gone. And then as quick as it came, the memory floated away, leaving only the taste of iron in his mouth.
Simon cleared his throat, attempting to break the silence that had become suffocating. “Grace, do you want them diced, or…?”
“Hm?” Grace questioned, glancing over his shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice the change in atmosphere. “Oh, I don’t mind. Just cut them up however.”
The knife clattered to the ground. Different, worse memories flooded his mind, because god forbid he wanted to just do something normally. His breath quickened. Just cut them up however. Cut them up. Just cut them—-cut them—-
“Simon?”
His head snapped up. Right. The knife. On the floor. “Sorry. Just… slipped.” He muttered.
They settled into quiet once again. Echoes of just cut them up remained fixed in his brain, overlapping with the overwhelming urge to talk about anything instead of stewing in silence.
“Can we—” Simon started. His voice cracked, and damn, there went any chance of convincing Grace everything was fine.
Grace set down the bowl he had been mixing things in and walked over to Simon, whose chopped vegetables were coming out in very uneven slices due to a combination of shaking hands and blurry vision.
“Are you feeling alright…?” Grace reached his hand up in an attempt to feel Simon’s forehead.
Simon flinched. Like, full on, jumped backwards and pointed the knife in Grace’s direction. His leg muscles tightened as if he was preparing to run, but whether it was away from or towards Grace, he wasn’t sure.
Both of them froze. Grace, in shock, took a step back from Simon. He wore a look like a wounded animal. Immediately, guilt bloomed in Simon’s chest, burning and tearing at his insides and threatening to escape in the form of tears.
“Simon—”
“I know.” He grunted, setting the knife on the counter and stepping back. He rubbed his eyes, dots appearing in the blackness as he curled his arm around himself.
“No, Simon, what’s wrong?” Grace urged. “You’ve been acting weird since you got back from the garden...”
He avoided eye contact as if it would hurt. A look of realization washed over Grace.. “...Did something happen in the garden?”
Yeah, what didn’t happen in the Garden? Simon thought. Instead, he just blinked at Grace blearily and chewed his bottom lip.
“O-kay,” Grace offered, “let me know if you need anything.”
Grace was trusting Simon to tell him when something was wrong.
The idea of being trusted felt good. It felt like maybe, just maybe, there was a place for him after all.
Simon having control over the situation was both exactly what he needed and simultaneously the most terrifying thing Grace could’ve done. Didn’t Grace understand that trusting him would only hurt them both in the end? That by allowing Simon to decide what he needed and when, he had unleashed a selfish beast that would not be contained again?
More silence. It clawed at Simon, made his skin itch with memories he’d long since forgotten. Memories of faces he’d seen in passing, faces belonging to people he was once close with, faces he’d seen just before being sent into the Lung. Unwillingly, his brain started searching for similarities between the faces of those who had wronged him and Grace’s.
He tried to squash those thoughts down immediately as his throat burned.
The quiet made him almost miss the clicky music of Eridian voices. But Rocky and Adrian weren’t here right now. Normally, that would’ve been fine—but now? When the only things Simon could focus on were of the knife hitting the cutting board and Grace with his back turned to Simon and—-
Oh.
Grace had given Simon a knife and turned his back. Right after he had flinched and pointed it at him.
That… okay. Okay.
He let out a deep, shuttering breath.
Nothing about any of this was okay.
And Grace hadn’t even seemed to notice, just going back to checking and rechecking measurements and, now, humming softly.
The humming was worse. Definitely the humming was worse, and again those memories of his mother exploded in Simon’s mind. Fragments of a happier time, before he had been given that knife and all the expectations that had come with it. Before he had been cast as an anchor to humanity into the blood ocean.
He set the knife down again and ignored that he could see his reflection in it. Or, what he thought was his reflection. He didn’t recognize himself much these days, between the amputation and the facial scarring and…
“Can we trade tasks?” Simon choked out. His voice sounded strained and he knew it.
Grace turned, crossing one hand across his body and tapping his nose with the other. His thinking pose—something he never seemed to realize he was doing, but that Simon found incredibly endearing. The familiar sight helped push a bit of the panic in Simon’s mind down, just for a moment.
“Technically we could trade tasks. But I’m not sure…” Grace trailed off. What he didn’t say was I’m not sure that that’s a good idea, because clearly something is wrong and currently the amount of beet juice over here is making it look like a crime scene, and…
He gulped. “You can say no.”
Grace glanced between the bowl of salad ingredients and Simon, brow furrowed. “Then… uh… hm.”
Their eyes met and Grace made a decision. “We’re taking a break.”
Simon wanted to protest, to say, no, we’re both hungry, let’s finish making the damned food. But instead he just made a wounded sound, set down the knife for the final time that night, and let Grace wrap his arms around Simon.
—-
Simon inhaled the scent of Grace’s soap, nestling his head in the crook of his neck.
“D’you wanna talk about it?” Grace offered softly.
Simon had no idea. He didn’t want to say any of it, but yes, he wanted Grace to know. He wanted Grace to know because he couldn’t stand carrying all of this alone and the pain was beginning to seep into aspects of his life he had previously been able to compartmentalize. But now his heart had been put on full display, every wound and ounce of suffering available for Grace to pick apart and the worst part was that Simon didn’t mind.
Or… Well, he did. He did mind. Because sometimes, when it got too quiet in the house or when Grace was out teaching and Simon was left with just his thoughts, it got frighteningly easy to question if Simon deserved any of this at all. Overwhelmingly his thoughts told him no, no you do not.
And even then, Simon didn’t mind being held. He didn’t mind that he was suffering, even, because he knew inside that that was the penance he would pay for all that he’d done. But he absolutely did mind the fact that he wanted to be held.
That despite everything, despite the blood he has spilled and the blood that has seeped into every crevice of his brain, despite anything and everything he’d ever been told by Eden or the Consolidation of Iron or any other sick fuck he’d encountered, he was only human. He was only human and he just wanted to be held and God, he was crying now.
Warm tears soaked into Grace’s shirt as he rubbed soft circles on Simon’s back. Grace didn’t say anything.
Simon’s thoughts wandered back to his mother.
Before everything had failed, before their world had come crashing down around them, Simon had been held like this before, when he was small and sensitive and didn’t know any better. How strange it was, to trust someone the way Simon had trusted his mother, and to be led astray so severely. Then again, the path Simon had been sent down was no accident; he had just been too young and trusting to see its end. The same arms that had held him had also handed him the very thing that led him to become the monster he was today.
It made his heart ache for a home that he hadn’t ever really known.
By now, his tears were drying. Simon’s face was flushed and his eyes were glassy when he finally looked up to meet Grace’s.
Simon expected Grace to be looking at him with some kind of quiet pity. Or maybe even just boredom.
Instead, Grace looked at Simon with a look of concern. Not the kind of concern with harsh lines and brows pulled taut that promised everything was okay when it wasn’t; the kind of concern that cradled Simon gently and told him, I will hold you while you figure this out.
And he did. Grace held Simon for what could’ve been minutes or hours. Neither of them seemed to want to pull away.
When they finally did, it was because Simon was too tired to stay upright. His body swayed and Grace pressed a kiss into his hair. He led Simon to the couch, spreading a soft blanket over him and going to finish that stupid salad.
When Grace brought Simon a bowl, Simon choked out, “why do you do things like this for me?”
He hummed thoughtfully in response as he sat beside Simon on the couch. “There are a lot of answers to that,” he replied thoughtfully, “but I think the simplest is because I want to and because I can.”
Simon made a strangled sound. “But why—why would you take care of me? There’s—there’s no coming back from the things that I’ve done.”
Grace nodded slowly. “We don’t earn our right to be loved by being good. We earn our right to be loved by being. Doing bad things doesn’t reverse our ability to be good, the same way,” he swallowed, “that doing good things doesn’t reverse our ability to have done bad ones.”
Hidden between those words was a confession, Simon knew.
If Grace was being truthful—and he wouldn’t lie, not about this—then there had always been salvation for Simon.
Simon put his head on Grace’s shoulder and clung desperately to the thought.