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The blood ocean.
"Open your eyes, Simon," A voice tempts him. A voice from the Sm-8.
The eel. That thing, as he's been calling it.
Simon feels himself jolt awake. He doesn't dare move, doesn't dare breathe. He stays as still as he possibly could, because maybe if he just acts dead that thing will leave him alone. Just be dead, just be dead, he tells himself.
Beep.
Oh fuck. Oh god, what the fuck is that. He doesn't have any technology that would make that sound. Just be dead, just be dead, he repeats the mantra in his head. He'll figure it out later. For now he just has to stay alive.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Simon?" A voice says. That thing. Another hallucination. "Simon, you need to breathe."
The beeping becomes a ringing alarm. Simon knows that can't be good, knows that he can't trust that kind voice, and he knows that he's being hunted by that thing. He can't look at that thing again, he almost didn't survive seeing it the FIRST time. It's a trap, a trap, a trap-
"Fuck," the voice swears, low, and under his breath. "Convict."
That… that makes Simon pause.
"Convict," The voice says again. "Breathe."
It's an order. Simon feels something give. That's- that's a human, he's suddenly sure. Something in his will gives as he feels his lungs respond before his brain does. He takes a big stuttering breath in.
"Good," The voice says, still sharp with an edge. "Again, convict, breathe in."
Human, he determines, and he listens. The rapid beeping starts to slow.
"Good," the human says again. "You're on Erid, okay? My name is Dr. Ryland Grace, and your blood oxygen levels are dangerously low. You probably had another nightmare. Keep breathing, in through your nose, come on."
Erid.
Simon remembers now.
He was rescued from the blood moon by the eridians, and Grace, two months ago. He'd been living with the only other human he'd seen since he was welded into that ship, in the biodome, one that mimicked life on earth, apparently, on the planet Erid. He remembers mis-attributing his Ry as an actual angel, golden and haloed, the first time he'd seen him.
Trap, trap, hallucination-
No, Simon thinks. Ryland was real. He was flawed in ways humans could only be.
"Ryland," Simon croaks, his voice gruff and scratchy.
He rolls his neck, tilting his head in order to put eyes on Dr. Grace. He's beaming, a giant and warm smile, and Simon feels himself take another gasping breath in without his input.
"That's me, pal!" Ryland beams. "Hey, look, we managed to get your oxygen levels up without using the inhaler or the even the oxygen mask this time! I call that progress, you know, and I think we're making a great team, me and you."
Simon doesn't respond, but he doesn't have to. Ryland seems to fill the space with his words, and all Simon has to do is listen. It's nice.
"You know," Ryland hums, "I can't wait to tell Rocky about this. You know how he worries over both of us, and he'll probably freak out when he sees the medical readings- But! He'll be super happy that we're slowly figuring out systems to help with the PTSD attacks quicker. Okay, I'm going to turn the lights on now-"
"No," Simon croaks out, and Grace pauses.
"…No?" Ryland asks, tilting his head in confusion.
"Keep the lights off," Simon clarifies. "It's still dark. I'm fine now. You can go back to sleep."
Ryland just shakes his head. "No can do, pal. It's like, 4:30, and Rocky's coming over at 6. By the time I fall asleep again, it will be time to get back up."
"Sorry," Simon frowns. He hates waking Dr. Grace up in the middle of the night.
"Don't be," Ryland responds swiftly and kindly. He clicks on the lights. "Just means that I have more time to enjoy breakfast- ooh, or maybe a morning shower! Though, today is an experimentation day with Rocky, and I usually need a shower afterwards, you know how messy we can get in the lab-"
Simon snorts. Understatement.
"Yeah, yeah, Si," Ryland laughs. "Laugh it up. Look, we can't help it! We're mad scientists, man!"
Simon slowly goes from lying down, to sitting up in his bed, to standing up as Ryland chatters around him. The constant talking makes every move feel less heavy, feel a little lighter. He unhooks the little plastic claw, pulse oximeter, from his finger, turning it off before the beeping can start again.
He hates that thing, but it is unfortunately helpful when your trauma response is to hold your breath until you pass out.
By the time Simon manages to get changed and move to the breakfast table, Ryland has already doctored up two cups of coffee. God, Coffee. Out of the many, many luxuries he's experienced since coming to Erid, Coffee was the one he liked the most. When he was growing up, he never had good coffee like this, just the watered down stuff, and only after Sunday's sermons.
To have coffee- good, rich coffee- on a random Tuesday? Or every single day, for no reason at all? That was the kind of thing he could still be grateful for.
"Ryland?" Simon asks, cutting him off from some sentence or other.
"Yeah?" Ryland responds, tilting his head in what Simon can only describe as a dog-like motion. "What's up?"
Simon takes another sip of coffee before he says what must be said.
"I know you hate calling me that. Convict, I mean," Simon tells him. "And I'm sorry that I keep asking you to."
Simon watches as Dr. Grace pauses, like his whole body and brain systems stall into a stillness that is uncharacteristic of him. Then, he turns to face Simon fully, sitting down at the table and setting his mug down.
"I can see how much it helps ground you," Dr. Grace says, sounding torn. "I don't know why it helps, because it seems needlessly mean to take your name from you, but you say that it helps, and I can see you return to reality when I call you that. So, I'll keep doing it. Because if that's what you need…" Ryland blows a breath out from his mouth. "I'll do it, even if it makes me a little… uncomfortable, to be mean to you, I guess."
Simon nods. He supposes now would be a good time to explain, as much as he's been dreading it. But Ryland needs to know, he supposes, why it makes him snap back to reality. And it would probably make Dr. Grace feel less miserable, being 'mean to him' as he put it, if he knew why it helped.
Doesn't he deserve that? To feel less miserable while he's taking care of Simon?
"That… thing, the one that was hunting me in the blood ocean, tricked me into giving it my name," Simon starts to explain. He takes a deep breath, keeping a lid on the panic for now. "And it used my name to manipulate me through hallucinations."
Dr. Grace's eyes go wide, surprised and full of sadness.
"But the humans who sent me down there," Simon continues to say, pushing through the discomfort to keep speaking. "They never knew my name. They only called me convict."
Ryland takes a sharp breath in, upset anger radiating off of him, but clearly not upset at Simon.
"It is mean," Simon explains. "It's cruel, in a way that only humans can be. That thing lured me in, by being friendly, by giving me what I wanted. By calling me by my name. It helps when you call me that- convict- because the hallucinations wouldn't do that. That thing knows how much I hate it. It'd call me Simon, to trick me."
Ryland pauses again, taking a second to reel all that information in.
"So when you're in a PTSD attack, and I call you Simon," he says, "You think that I'm not real and you don't trust me."
"I'm sorry," Simon finds himself saying, because yeah, Simon doesn't trust him when he's like that.
"Don't be," Ryland says again, so kind and gracious. "Considering what you've been through, it makes sense."
They sit there for a moment in comfortable silence.
"I just need you to know," Ryland says, so softly that Simon has to lean in a little bit to hear him. "I won't deny that humans can be incredibly cruel, but they can also be kind to a fault. Not every person is so cruel as to deny you your basic rights. And I hope, one day, you'll be able to see all of the undeniable love of the human spirit."
I do see it, Simon thinks. Because I have you.
"You believe a lot in the humanity that abandoned you," Simon says instead. "It's almost impressive."
"And stupid," Ryland laughs at himself. "It comes with having a big heart, I'm afraid."
There's a knock at a door- well, not a knock, it's a series of three bangs that comes with Rocky's arrival, the closest thing that they've managed to come to a knock. It's better than the alternative, Rocky just opening the door and inviting himself in. Ryland hops up, going to open the door and greet the alien.
"Rocky!" Ryland smiles big and wide. "You're like… uh-" He looks over to the clock on the stove. "A Earth hour early."
"Worried, worried, worried," Rocky responds. "Simon heart rate wrong, Simon not breathe right, Simon in distress, question?"
It used to freak Simon out, being monitored by eridian scientists 24-7. But after a little while of letting the alien species take care of him, it's clear to him that they only monitor him- and grace, of course- to make sure he's comfortable.
It's more than Eden ever did for him, and they were just as invasive.
"I'm okay, Rocky," Simon says. "Really."
And he is.
-x-
The blood ocean.
"Open your eyes, Simon," That thing whispers. "Look at me."
No, Simon thinks. You're not real.
He feels himself wake, he feels himself freeze. He knows that thing isn't hunting him anymore. It's been ten years. He's on Erid. He's with Ry and Rocky. He is safe, He knows that. He knows that. He just has to break free of it.
He's still holding his breath.
He hasn't worn the pulse oximeter to sleep in years, hasn't needed it, but he wishes for the annoyance of the beeping now, something to ground him to reality and help him pry his eyes open.
He's less scared with the freeze response and more annoyed by it. He needs to breathe, he knows that, and he just wishes that his body could just get on board with his logical brain.
"Si…?" A groggy voice croaks beside him, and Simon relaxes a bit (though his body refuses to relax and actually breathe).
But Ryland is somehow in tune with him, like always, and he must have known, somehow, in his sleep, that Simon was in distress. It possibly has to do with the fact that they sleep pressed up against each other, in one king bed instead of the two twin beds that they used to sleep in.
Simon can't move, can't breathe, completely and fully frozen, but he knows that Ry is awake and going to help take care of him.
"Simon, come on, wake up," Ryland says, his hands pressing into every inch of Simon's skin he can reach. "You've got to breathe, baby. Come on."
Come on, Simon thinks, echoing the sentiment. I've got to ground myself. I got to breathe.
Ryland cups both hands on Simon's face.
"My love," Ryland says, bordering on tears. "Please breathe."
My love, Ryland had said. It was the first line of his wedding vows, handwritten and hanging above the fireplace, framed with Simon's own. It was the thing he said when Simon was so sick with the flu and was throwing up everything he ate, unable to stomach water, and Ryland held his hair through the whole night until the fever broke. It was what Ry whispered to him on the hard nights, nights where neither of them could sleep through the pain and the agony, and the good ones too, where- even though they were both light years away from where they were born- they were at home in each other's arms.
Those two words are full of so much love and joy and history that there's simply no way it could be anyone but Ryland uttering them. Even his own brain, even the thing hunting him, even the stars that had been made ghosts or the ones that had been miraculously saved.
Those two words are like a release valve to his lungs, and Simon coughs as he finally- finally gets a deep breath in. Tears come, but they're not from sadness, or fear, or distress.
He's crying because he's so incredibly lucky- to be alive and here with Ryland. He had to fight to stay alive, in the blood ocean, yes, but also in all of those years after he was rescued from that planet by the eridians, and his future husband. He had to fight to survive it, to not give in to the darkness that comes with going through something brain-altering like that.
And maybe, Simon thinks, as he pulls his husband in for an embrace. The universe looked down on me kindly for surviving, and gave me my angel as a reward.
(Even he knows it's sappy, but spare a man for getting sentimental in his old age, won't you?)