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The third time Grace says “We don’t have to do this,” Simon snaps.
“This was my idea,” he reminds him, watching Grace from his position on the table. “I know we don’t have to do it, and if I didn’t want to I would say so.”
“Oh, like you said when you didn’t wanna watch The Fox and the Hound for the third night in a row?” Grace asks, stepping closer to the table. His gloves make a sharp snap when he pulls them on. A shiver goes through Simon.
“Fucking—Grace, come on. That’s different. You were working through some shit or something. I didn’t say anything because watching a movie I’m a little sick of isn’t that big of a deal. I would say something if I changed my mind about you putting your hands inside me.”
Grace winces. “Don’t say it like that.”
Rocky, from somewhere in the ship, chimes in: [Simon statement is accurate!]
“Rocky, you’re already banned, stop listening,” Grace says, looking around the room like the 400 pound rock in a hamster ball might be hiding in the corner, in a room that notably does not have corners.
[Hearing not work like that, statement.]
Grace sighs, and says, “Okay, well just stop distracting me,” and then Simon rolls his eyes and mutters, “Yeah, just let him distract himself,” and then Grace makes a huffy little noise like he’s thinking of walking out the airlock.
“Look, this is a lot for me,” he says, finally looking back at Simon strapped to the table and then immediately looking away. Simon can see his Adam's apple bob as he swallows, licking his lips and then just holding his tongue out like he does when he’s focusing, except he’s very deliberately not focusing. “I’ve never done surgery before. I’m a molecular biologist, not a human biologist, and even if I was a human biologist that’s a world away from being a surgeon!”
Simon sighs and reaches his hand out as much as he can while restrained to the table, just barely managing to graze Grace’s wrist. Those bright blue eyes finally meet his own as Grace lets his patient wrap a hand around his wrist.
“It’s okay,” Simon says. “I trust you.”
Grace’s face crumples. His head tips forward, chin to chest, and he lets Simon hold his wrist a little longer before he looks up again. “I know. That’s what makes it so scary.”
“Even if we had an actual qualified surgeon, I’d rather have you do it.” He holds Grace’s eyes. Grace doesn’t look away.
“You really wanna do this, huh?” Grace asks with a sigh. He doesn’t wait for Simon’s response. “I know, I know. Okay. Let’s get started.”
Simon’s ready. Has been ready. But he doesn’t complain as Grace washes his hands and disinfects Simon’s chest again, because he has the little cart of tools next to the table, and after he’s gone through the disinfecting routine again, Grace says, “Mary, start recording,” and finally picks up the scalpel.
“Alright. Here goes,” he says, and then he cuts Simon’s chest open.
It doesn’t hurt. He’s on a lot of medication, courtesy of Armando, but even if he wasn’t he doesn’t think it would hurt. Grace is gentle with him. The scalpel slices down Simon’s skin, and Grace inhales slowly, like he’s the one being vivisected, and then pulls the flaps of skin aside until Simon’s ribcage is on display.
“Ribs look…hm.” Grace makes a thoughtful noise, pinching his tongue between his teeth again. He looks at the laptop beside him as he puts the scalpel down. “It could just be some kind of…association I’ve got stuck in my head, but the ribs look a little bit like teeth.”
Simon does not say anything. The teeth on the side of his face stay firmly shut. He waits in anticipation for Grace to continue, watching his face. Grace’s brows are furrowed and focused, his glasses pressed firmly against his eyes. Simon doesn’t get to see him like this as often as he’d like. Grace is often so distractable, but it’s beautiful to see him in his element like this.
Grace inhales again, slow and steady, and then he picks up the saw.
It still doesn’t hurt. He can feel it, sort of, his brain struggling to comprehend the sensation of Grace splitting his sternum, settling for a sense of suffocating pressure. He forces himself to breathe, deep full breaths. Grace can certainly see the way his lungs inflate, but he doesn’t say anything. Thank fuck. He couldn’t speak if he wanted to. There’s too much sensation.
And then Grace reaches in, takes his ribs in his hands and pulls, and Simon stops breathing. His chest splits open like a book opening, like it was designed to do this, and Grace is speaking again, but the words no longer mean anything to Simon. Something scrapes against his breastbone. It’s a gentle ghost of touch, so alien that his body short circuits and lands on good, this is good, this feels nice. If it was anyone else perhaps it would hurt, but it’s not. It’s Grace, and he’s mumbling to himself, “I don’t think bone and enamel are supposed to look this similar, but what do I know? I’m not a surgeon or a dentist," and then makes that kind of half-hysterical laugh he does when he’s pretending he’s fine.
Simon tries to breathe. A strained wheeze comes out instead. Grace’s hands retreat from Simon’s chest, leaving him open and empty, and he whines at the shock of it and the feeling of exposure. There’s the statick-y sound of Grace taking off his gloves, the latex snapping against itself, and then a hand on his face. Two hands. One brushes his forehead, pushes his hair back, and the other swipes under his eye, the normal one, and then Grace’s thumb presses under his other eye, careful to avoid the teeth. Is he crying?
He’s closed his eyes at some point. He’s not sure when. Simon opens them to see Grace’s face, smiling, a tiny spray of blood across his cheek. Simon tries to reach up to wipe it away and only remembers the restraints when his arm hits resistance. “Hey, shh, don’t try to move,” Grace says. One hand is still on Simon’s forehead, and the other is on top of his hand like a blanket. “You’re doing great, Simon. You’re doing so good. Do you wanna stop?”
“No,” Simon chokes out. “No, please. Please. Keep going.”
Grace’s expression is fond, so gentle Simon can’t handle looking at it for too long.
Long ago, before Eden, before the Quiet Rapture, when Simon was just a kid, his mom told him about the Sun. Not the Sun as he knew it, the tiny glint of light in the distant horizon, but the Sun she knew. On Earth, people hadn’t needed so many vitamin supplements, or heat lamps, or lanterns to keep the hallways lit. The Sun had provided all of that for them, and then it painted them the most beautiful pictures in the sky. But the Sun could be dangerous, too. Looking at it directly could make someone go blind.
Grace is a bit like that. If Simon looks too long, too close, he’ll burn out.
The hand on his forehead brushes his hair back again. Simon shuts his eyes, leans into the touch as much as he can, breathes unsteadily.
“You gotta breathe, buddy,” Grace says softly. “You remember the exercises we practiced?”
He doesn’t, but that’s fine, because Grace squeezes his hand and walks him through it. Squeeze, inhale. Squeeze, hold. Squeeze, exhale. The rhythm gets easier as Grace keeps talking at him. “Just like that. Yeah, good job. Okay. Okay.”
He clears his throat. Squeezes Simon’s hand again. “I’m gonna start doing my notes, okay? I’ll get new gloves when I’m done. Can you keep breathing for me?”
Simon makes a noise that he hopes conveys yes, yes, whatever you want. Grace’s hand trails through his hair as he clears his throat again. It makes up for the emptiness in his chest. Breathing is too easy, and he craves the weight of Grace’s hands again, but at least they’re on his forehead and holding him against the table. He might float away otherwise.
“Okay, so. First observations,” Grace says. “At first I just thought that the ribs looked…strange. They’re kind of thin, kind of…I mean, they kinda look like teeth. Not normal teeth, more like fangs. And then when I cut into the breastbone…the spongey bone was more than just spongey. The interior of the breastbone is sort of…fleshy. Uh, it’s not literally flesh, but it’s a little…pink, and kinda soft. Like, um. Gums. There was a lot of blood when I cut into it, and then underneath the, uh, gummy part there’s…ligaments. I would have to cut through a rib to check, but I think the ligaments connect to them. Like, well. Like teeth.”
He takes his hand off Simon’s forehead, and for a second his eyes flutter open, confused, but then Grace pats him again and he’s still holding his hand so it’s okay. His hand is warm.
“So, I opened the sternum, and tried to push the ribs aside, but it turns out they’re not actually attached? Or, they are, but there’s just small ones growing from the breast bone, and the bulk of the ribs are actually only attached to the spine, I think. I’d have to cut open Simon’s back to check that, which, maybe another time.” He makes that hysterical laughing noise again. “But the ribs overlap. Like…”
Grace sighs heavily. “I don’t know why I’m beating around the bush. His ribs are teeth. The sternum has teeth and then the teeth from his spine wrap around them like an overbite. Uh, initial observation over, I guess.”
His hands pull away. Simon whines again. “Just a sec, bud. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”
How he’s feeling? He’s forced back into his own head, trying to take stock of what Grace cutting him open feels like, and the only thing he can manage is, “Good. It’s good.”
“Nothing hurts yet?”
“No.” He shakes his head, trying to convey that Grace hurting him is an impossible idea.
“Alright. I gotta wash up again and get new gloves. Can you keep breathing for me?”
Simon demonstrates that he can, and then there’s the sound of water and latex and Grace says, “Good job.” He says things like this so easily, so often. Grace hums as he comes back to Simon’s side, and the first touch of his chest is another gentle grazing of his ribs, Grace murmuring sh-sh-sh as he traces the shape of the bones. Simon exhales, forgets how to inhale, chokes on his breath, until Grace starts to tap out the breathing pattern again on his breastbone.
This time Grace wraps a hand around the outer ribs, the ones that connect to Simon’s spine. There’s a crack, but it’s not the snap of bones breaking. It’s just an old gate opening. The rest of his chest is on display.
“Okay. I’m gonna…I can see your heart,” Grace whispers. There’s a wet sound, a soft oh from Grace, and then his fingers are wrapped around Simon’s heart. He can feel it pulsating, the gentle grip feeling tighter every time his heart expands. “Oh, Simon. No, no, it’s okay, don’t cry. It’s beautiful, okay? It’s so, so beautiful.”
Is he crying again? He doesn’t mean to. If he could speak he would tell Grace that this is the safest he’s ever felt in his life.
His hand squeezes. Simon forgets how to breathe. He can feel his pulse in every inch of his body, radiating from his chest, the staccato rhythm getting faster as he lies on the table with Grace’s fingers inside him. “I would have to remove the heart to see everything, and, uh, I’m not gonna do that, obviously,” Grace says, and Simon thinks: Why not? He would take better care of it than Simon ever has. His heart has never been safer than it is in Grace’s hands.
Grace keeps talking. “But it seems totally normal. I mean I’m not an expert, but looking at the diagrams and looking at Simon, everything is where it should be. There’s no mutations that I can see. It’s all normal. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.”
Simon thinks his heart beats a little faster at that, and then there’s soft laughter.
Grace pulls his fingers out of Simon’s chest. Simon arches towards him, chasing after Grace, and there’s more shushing noises, hands on his shoulders pressing him back down. “C’mon, you gotta stop moving,” Grace whispers. “Last part, alright?”
But that’s the problem. He doesn’t want it to be over yet.
The gloves are peeled off and Grace holds his hand again as he says, “Okay, second observation. The heart is…I mean it’s normal. There’s not much else to say, except that it’s beautiful and it’s completely, 100% human. It’s a good heart. It’s perfect. There’s no abnormalities, except maybe it’s beating a little faster, but that could just be the adrenaline.”
Grace’s hand is in his hair again. Simon makes a noise that would be embarrassing if he wasn’t so out of it.
“Simon, gonna need you to use words.”
“Safe,” Simon blurts out. “Felt safe.”
“Safe?’ Grace repeats. His voice gets squeaky at the end. “Oh, well, uh, okay. I’m glad…I’m glad you’re so comfortable.You ready for the next part?”
“Please.”
“Okay then. Lungs. Uh, I’m gonna need you to do the breathing exercises again, okay Simon?”
He does the hand squeezing thing again until he seems satisfied with Simon’s breathing, and then rushes through the whole cleaning routine. This time when he touches Simon it’s to brush against his gills, a featherlight touch that sends shivers through his body.
His eyes snap open, body arching upwards again, stopped from doing too much by the restraints. “Woah!” Grace says, touching Simon’s arm. “Woah, hey, it’s okay. Sorry. Keep breathing, okay?”
Grace pushes his ribs aside again, reaches past his heart, and lays a hand on Simon’s lungs. There’s a faint pressure while he breathes, but it’s not bad.
“Lungs look normal,” Grace murmurs. “I don’t think the gills are connected, but…Alright. Hey, Simon? I’m gonna pour some water on your gills, okay? Can you let me know that you heard that, and that you’re ready?”
“Mm,” Simon manages. “Y-es. Yes.”
“Think you can open your eyes for me, bud? So you can see when it happens, and you’re not startled?”
“Okay.” He doesn’t tell Grace that it doesn’t really matter if his eyes are open or not. He’s too overwhelmed by the physical sensations to try and make sense of the visuals. But he can vaguely see Grace with a cup, can see his hand move and the glass press to his skin and then the water, spilling onto his side and then swallowed by his gills.
“Lungs stopped moving when water was introduced,” Grace notes absently. “So it’s not simultaneous. Okay. Can you hold your breath for me, Simon? I need you to hold it for as long as you can, and I’m gonna time you.”
Well, that’s easy enough. He’s already struggling to breathe. It’s easy to just stop entirely.
“One minute,” Grace says, and then, “two minutes,” and then, “three minutes,” and then Simon loses track. Time is nothing like this. He’s floating somewhere, maybe. He’s on a space station, praying for a tree that he knows is already gone. He’s with his mom, listening to her talk about the sun. He’s on a table in a space ship being dissected by the only human in the world, and he never wants to be anywhere else again.
Water trickles over his gills again, and Grace says, “Okay, okay, that was really good, Simon. You did so good, okay? But now I need you to breathe again. Can you do that?”
Simon mumbles something, and Grace takes the hint. The glove comes off, hand sliding into his, squeezing out the rhythm.
A few moments of this, and then Grace says, “Okay. Hold it again.”
They repeat the exercise a few times. Simon loses track pretty quickly. He feels a little dizzy, but not in a bad way. A couple times he reaches a breaking point and inhales before Grace tells him too, but Grace praises him just as much as when he manages to hold it. Between the lack of oxygen and the praise his head is spinning, reality slipping away easily. He’ll do anything Grace asks as long as he keeps telling him how good he is. All Simon has ever really wanted is to be good, to do something right. Grace asks for so little. He’ll die before he lets him down.
“Last one,” he says, and this time he hears Grace count off, “Ten minutes,” before water spills over his gills again. “Good. You did really good, Simon. I just need you to breathe normal now, alright? No more holding your breath. We’re done with that part.”
Simon manages a nod, and is rewarded with a hand on his forehead.
“Third observation,” Grace says. “Lungs seem normal. There’s definitely some extra capacity, but it seems more connected to the gills. If he holds his breath after just breathing through his lungs, then it’s usually about ten minutes before he has to breathe again. With his gills, if I give him some water…I mean, we got to fifteen minutes twice. But, uh, if it’s mostly the gills then I don’t think we need to do this with his whole chest open, so that’s an experiment to continue later. Maybe with an audiobook or something so I’m not just…watching him and waiting for him to start suffocating.”
Grace makes a noise that might be a laugh, and then he pulls away from Simon again. “Alright. Gimme a sec, bud. I gotta get some different tools for this part.”
Simon is good at waiting. He lies still on the table, breathing the way Grace wants him to. Grace mumbles to himself as he gets his supplies, his gloves, and washes his hands again.
“Alright. Alright, just gotta sew everything up. That’s the easy part, yeah? I know how to sew,” Grace mumbles as he pushes everything back into place. He closes Simon’s ribs, letting the flaps of skin fall back into place. He’s humming as the needle pierces Simon’s skin.
“Should’ve paid more attention,” Grace says to himself, and Simon thinks of Grace sitting in the don’t-go-crazy-room, tongue between his teeth, carefully mending a hole in his shirt while Simon advises him. “Your stitches are so much better than mine.”
Something wet touches his chest again; more disinfectant, probably. Grace is quiet as he finishes putting Simon back together, and then it’s a few minutes of silence before he says, “Alright. All done,” and unlocks the cuffs that keep Simon pinned to the table. Simon doesn’t move until Grace adds, “Simon? You good, buddy?”
“Yeah,” Simon manages.
“Okay. You wanna open your eyes, maybe?”
His vision is blurry, but he can make out Grace’s shape, his bright eyes and beaming smile. Simon has to squint so he won’t go blind. “How’re you feeling?”
“Good,” Simon mumbles, and Grace laughs.
“That’s probably all the painkillers. Alright, we’re gonna get you off the table now, okay?” He turns, puts a hand to his cheek, and calls out, “Rocky! I need the stretcher!”
[Now you want Rocky help,] he hears from some distant corner, and then a moment later Rocky is there, pushing the stretcher by ramming his hamster ball into it.
“Look, I didn’t want it to get crowded in here,” Grace says. He leans down, grabs Simon’s arm, and loops it over his shoulders, gently sliding him off the table and onto the stretcher. “It’s not like you missed anything. You could see the whole thing even if you were on the other side of the ship, and this way I didn’t have to hear you go “disgust disgust disgust” every five seconds.”
[Was not disgust,] Rocky says with an offended inhale. [Was beautiful.]
“Thanks,” Simon mumbles, attempting to give him a thumbs up and failing miserably. Rocky chirps happily at him anyway..
[Simon anatomy very interesting. Rocky perform surgery next time, question?]
“Absolutely not,” Grace says, at the same time that Simon shrugs and says, “Maybe.” Grace turns to stare at him.
“No! No maybe! We are absolutely not doing this again, and if we did, which we won’t, I would still—”
[Grace want to be only one inside Simon,] Rocky says, doing that smug little nod that Simon knows he only does because it annoys Grace. Grace turns a vivid red.
“That is not what I meant and you know it,” Grace seethes, and Rocky laughs at him and rams his hamster ball into the stretcher again. It’s not as uncomfortable as it seems like it should be, and somehow Rocky manages to roll Simon down the hall smoothly, pushing the stretcher up against the bed they’re set aside for recovery. Grace hurries after them. “Hey! You can’t steal a patient like that!”
[Grace is jealous, statement,] Rocky says, and then Simon gets to watch from his stretcher as Grace chases Rocky’s ball around the room, finally managing to corner him into the doorway. He likes seeing them like this.
“Shoo!” he says, with the accompanying hand motion, and then he ignores Rocky creeping back into the room so he can help Simon off the stretcher and into the bed.
“How do you feel?” Grace asks again. “I mean, really feel.”
Simon blinks at him. He feels a bit like he’s waking up. He feels empty, but it’s not a bad feeling, exactly. It’s a bit like after a shower. Something under his skin finally feels clean. “Good, I think. It…it helped.”
Grace smiles at him. “Then it was worth it.”
“Thank you,” Simon says, and Grace puts his hand on Simon’s shoulder, pulls him into a careful, one armed hug.
“Thank me when you’re not on an insane amount of painkillers,” Grace says as he leans back. “Nothing hurts?” he asks.
“No. No, it’s fine. You couldn’t hurt me if you wanted to.”
“Okay.” Grace seems skeptical, but that’s probably just because he knows Simon has a high pain tolerance and very little understanding of what most people consider to be “unbearable pain”. “You’ll tell me or Rocky if anything starts bothering you, right?”
“Yeah.” Right now the idea of pain is a far away dream. He’s never felt so good in his life.
Grace still doesn’t seem convinced, but at least he drops it for now. “Do you need anything to help you sleep? I brought the laptop in here earlier. We can watch a movie, if you want.”
Shyly, Simon says, “The Aristocats?”
“Course, buddy.”
[Rocky will watch humans sleep,] Rocky announces from his corner.
“I’m not—” Grace tries to protest, but Rocky interrupts him.
[Grace always fall asleep anyway. Rocky will watch. Statement.]
“Fine,” Grace mutters, and sure enough, they’re barely ten minutes into watching a bunch of cats wander around and get into trouble when Grace slumps against Simon, his head on his shoulder, making snuffling noises that he insists are not snoring.
[Simon sleep, question?]
“I’m trying, Rocky.”
[Not tired.]
“Not really,” he agrees.
[Patient need rest after surgery, statement.]
Simon looks around himself. The soft bed, the patchwork quilt, the children’s cartoon on the laptop screen. “I think this should count as rest.”
Rocky rolls his hamster ball closer, until he’s just barely pressed up against Grace. Simon reaches across to rest his hand on the xenonite. He’s still getting used to Rocky. The alien is…well, he’s a lot like Grace. There’s a deep well of energy the two of them seem to have, and a comfort between them like they’ve spent their entire lives tangled together. Somehow it’s easy to trust him.
[Humans sleep,] Rocky insists. [Rocky will watch.]
Simon falls asleep to the sound of Grace snoring.