Chapter Text
“Simon get smaller, statement.”
Grace paused in what he was doing, checking the math of their rations for the thirtieth time that week, in order to glance over at Rocky. He had been adding the neutralized taumeoba to their food, maybe ¼ to 1, just enough for it to make the texture horrible and make the flavor tank, but it was going to stretch their real food for a couple more weeks, at least. In a month he would double it, half taumeoba, half food, and they’d be eating nothing but the flavorless, colorless, sludge for the last two months to Erid. His body hated it, his mental health hated it worse, but it was what they had to do and he couldn’t let his pesky food sensitivities keep him from eating completely. At least neutralizing the “food grade” taumeoba had made his stomach stop squirming. He really couldn’t afford throwing up anymore.
“I know, buddy, we’re rationing pretty hard,” Grace explained, even though Rocky knew all that. At least Rocky had enough food, had brought enough of the rations from his own ship to last him another year. He had lost all of his compatriots but he got all of their food. It was just poison to humans. He could tell that Rocky hated it, that he couldn’t share, and he kept his food tucked out of sight for the most part. “We’re both getting a bit thin. It’s going to get worse but, once we get to Erid and we figure out all this food stuff, it’s going to get better, you’ll see. We’ll bounce back fast.”
Rocky clicked his fingers together, a nervous habit that he had had when they first met and had only become more common. “No.”
“No?” Grace asked, cocking his head.
Rocky tilted his carapace to match. “No. Grace is getting thin, lose weight, bad. Simon lose weight fast, too fast, insides noisy all the time, bad bad bad.”
He could hear Simon’s stomach rumbling, his intestines try to digest nothing. Simon had told him, when he first found out about their food situation, that it was fine, that he was used to low supplies and rationing, that it was common in Eden to fast, that he had eaten little when he was with the C.O.I., which Grace didn’t know why he was with them if he hated them so much, and that he had been in the SM-13 with no food at all. Yet he was huge, broad in the shoulders and in the chest and in the arm and the thighs and that was a run-on sentence but Grace kept thinking of different places that Simon was thick.
“Maybe it’s the gravity?” Grace thought out loud, “We don’t know how it was on the stations that he was on, they must have figured out how to fake gravity differently then centrifuge.”
“No,” Rocky shuffled in a way that showed his frustration, his note growing sharper with impatience. “Simon smaller because Simon not eating. Bad.”
“He’s eating, I’ve seen him eating!” They always took their meals together. Grace got their rations and split them and then they cooked them or rehydrated them or whatever they needed, and then they ate together. Simon ate fast, hiding his food with his arm while he chewed it, his hair over his face, over the teeth that stuck out of his cheek, no matter how badly Grace wanted to see how those teeth interacted with eating. He was always half way through with it before Grace had even sat down, like he was worried someone would take it away from him. He always finished the meal with a prayer that Grace felt uncomfortable with, never having been a faithful man, but the prayer didn’t sound like it came from any faith he had known on Earth and he couldn’t find anything when he searched the specific words Simon used.
“Grace stupid,” Rocky said, annoyed again if that that sharp note was any indication. “Not believe Rocky.”
“No, no, I believe you!” Grace said, sliding his glasses up into his hair so that he could rub at the bridge of his nose. He was getting a headache, again. It came easily, with the low blood sugar. “It’s just, there’s not much I can do about it, it’s not like I can make more food.”
Still, he felt guilty. Simon had come from so little and had been so scared when he got here, Grace had down everything that he could to help him settle in, and he had tried to convince Simon that he wasn’t a drain on their already stretched food, that he didn’t have to worry about repaying Grace for what he ate, drank, the medical supplies, the clothes, the bed. Simon didn’t understand just how much he gave to Grace by letting Grace touch him, however he wanted, even though Grace could see the way that he flinched away, feel the tension under his fingers. He didn’t argue when Grace asked for samples of his teeth, hair, skin, blood. He didn’t fight against anything, even though he was clearly primed to. It was amazing and brave and shameful. Grace didn’t even know if Simon was doing it consciously or if his nervous system was so fried that he just froze up.
“I’ll talk to him,” Grace said with a sigh, “is that good enough?”
Rocky whistled and rocked side to side making the ball roll in a pleased pattern. “Good good! Simon healthy like Grace, better, statement.”
Not healthy but healthier, at the very least. He set the rations and his pen down, curious, because he had counted them so many times and the number was wrong. It had been wrong once before, last week, where the dried strawberries duplicated and the oatmeal refilled by a full cup. He didn’t think the food was spontaneously reproducing but it was odd. This time there were more dried apples then he expected, three little snack sized bags of cheesy chips, and two bags of dehydrated garlic chili noodles. Weird. They’d been out of chili noodles for two months now.
With it all put away he went to confront Simon, getting dizzy the moment he stood up, all the blood running to his feet.
He had to lean against the wall a few times, or support himself with one hand on it, to get to where Simon tended to spend his time. They didn’t have an observation deck, unfortunately it wasn’t as Star Trek as Grace would have liked, but Simon did like to spend time in front of one of the larger windows, looking out at the stars. He was curled up on his side, propped up by a few pillows and wrapped in a blanket, facing the window, but he wasn’t staring like some star-struck child. He was reading a book, casually, and Grace could tell that he was squinting through a headache and a lack of glasses. They should get him an eye exam, at some point, not that it would help much, it wasn’t like they could get him a pair of prescription lenses.
From behind, Grace could see the knobs of his spine, through his shirt, sticking up past the blanket. Could he see them before? He had never looked for them.
“Hey, uh, Simon?” he asked, trying to keep his tone soft, gentle, without any threat to it, and yet casual enough that Simon didn’t think there was anything amiss.
Simon set down the book, his thumb inside it as a bookmark, and he turned, quickly, to look at Grace. The squint was still there but this was less for the blur of something in his blinder spot and more because he was looking for something to worry about. “What is it?”
“Oh, nothing to worry about!” Grace lied, holding up his hands to placate. “I was just wondering how you were feeling, if you wanted to split some of the strawberries we’ve got. We have more than I thought we would.”
Simon stared at him. His healthy eye was tinged with red and he seemed to be focusing hard to keep focused. His cheek did look a bit more gaunt and the teeth, ribs, whatever they were, sticking out of his other cheek were agitated, rolling against one another in waves. His hair had lost a lot of its volume, it was thinning, just like Grace’s was, but it was more rapid, Rocky was right about that.”
“You should save them for when you need them more, shouldn’t you?” Simon asked, “A bit of extra food, you look like you need it.”
That was an opening. It wasn’t a good one but Grace would take any that he could find. “So do you. That’s what brings me to my main point. How are you feeling? Rocky told me you’ve been losing weight.”
Simon looked at him and then past him, down the corridor. Rocky was back there, of course he was, back in his tunnel instead of his ball, and he rocked back and forth, whistling a tune that sounded uncannily like the ones in cartoons where a character was acting nonchalant. He’d been caught snooping, it seems.
“We’re both losing weight,” Simon grumbled, getting up and dragging the blanket around himself more, hiding his body, keeping himself safe. “You’ve seen me eat. Is there a problem?”
Grace’s hands were still up. He was swaying a bit. He was trying to keep calm, keep his cool, but blood sugar was weird. When he was low on it, he lost all of his patience, became snappy, became mean. He was trying, he hoped Simon could see that he was trying, but Simon was acting weird and Rocky was right there, being strange, and he needed answers and it would just be so much better if Simon would simply tell him.
“Yeah, I have, and you shouldn’t be losing weight faster than me. We’re eating the same things in the same quantities so that means that there’s either something really wrong about your metabolism, which Armando should have picked up on when we first got you, or you’re hiding something.”
At that last part, the words steeling over, getting sharper than Grace wanted them to, Simon stilled, his red eye darting around just a bit faster than his brown eye could keep up with. His teeth stopped rolling, stilling nice and tight with the tips digging into rough scar tissue.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” Simon hissed.
“Apparently I do! I’ve had enough corpses on this ship, Simon, I won’t add yours to the list.”
“Oh, so many? You told me two! That’s nothing! Nothing!” Simon almost gave more, more information that Grace had been trying to claw out of him for the past months, but Simon shut his lips tight, the anger clear in his face, the teeth curling in with the tightness of his jaw for the points to dig into the scar tissue enough to bleed. He tilted his head down, let his hair hide it. “I don’t matter, not to you or your cause. I’m not saving any stars. I don’t need to be bright and clever and quick, not like you scientists. So stop wasting resources where they’re not owed.”
“What?” Grace snapped. He didn’t mean to. Part of him was very aware that he was acting erratically, could see Simon flinch back. “Did you hear a word I said?”
“Yeah, you don’t want a third body on your hands, one that you can pretend has stained you with blood.”
“The fudge is wrong with you?” Grace shouted, his voice rising higher than it ever had in his classroom, even louder than it had when he had flushed his career down the drain. But then, he’d had a microphone. “You want to act so tough when you’re just as scared as I am. That’s why you hide out here, isn’t it? Don’t want us to notice that there’s something wrong because even being treated like a person is too big and scary?”
“I’m trying to protect you!”
“Then stop acting like some wild dog with his foot in a trap!”
Simon shrank down. Smaller, that was what Rocky had said. His eyes were wet, one with tears, the other with blood. He shuffled, back and forth, and tried to cross his arms, but there was only the one. He looked like a snot nosed little kid.
“What are you going to do to me?” Simon asked, staring at the floor. “I can’t leave and there’s nothing I can do, I can’t do anything, I just take. I hate it.”
“Do to you?”
“I can share better, you can give me half rations, it doesn’t matter, and I can add protein to what we have left. I can do something. I can help you stay stronger.”
That wasn’t what Grace meant at all and he didn’t understand what Simon meant with ‘adding protein’ but he shivered all the same.
“Just tell me what you did with the food, why you’re losing weight so fast.” Grace slumped, his headache causing stars to dance behind his eyelids. He was so tired. All of this arguing had worn him out. So did walking over here. So did trying. He was trying so hard, all the time, he wanted a break, needed one. Every thing he did, trying to get Simon to fit in here, to get things to settle down, to survive until they got to Erid, it was all exhausting. Even having a conversation with Rocky was draining and Rocky actually responded in a way that made sense!
Simon gulped and looked around, a thick red line dripping out of his eye and tracking down, through the scars, on his cheek, catching on his rib teeth. He closed his eyes and he braced himself before pointing at one of the side panels. Simon didn’t have any tools of his own, but the edge of the panel was slightly curved, having been bent from being popped out of the wall with something.
“What are you going to do?” Simon asked.
Grace didn’t look at him. He walked over to the panel instead, dropping down to a squat in front of it with a sigh. “I’m going to take this back to the pantry and I’m going to math out our ration schedule, again, and then I’m going to eat and take a nap, and then we’re going to figure out what to do about this.”
“What to do about me,” Simon corrected.
“Yeah.”
Grace fiddled with the panel for a bit before he was able to get a good grip on it and pull it out from the wall.
“Grace destroy Mary, question?” Rocky asked. He must have been hanging back, giving them enough time to actually talk about things, even though he could easily see everything they said from the opposite side of the ship.
“Not destroying, the damage is already done! Simon decided to damage the panel because he doesn’t care about us, thinks he’s better than the community we’re trying to build.” It was harsh and it didn’t exactly make sense, but Grace didn’t care. It felt good to say.
“Simon okay, question?”
“Simon-” Simon started.
“Simon’s got a lot of explaining to do,” Grace snarled. He hadn’t let himself be this angry in such a long time. It felt so good to do, freeing. Maybe he’d ask Rocky for a rage room on Erid. “He’s fine! If he was hungry, he would eat, right? He’s not stupid.”
The space behind the panel was maybe a square foot in all and it was absolutely stuffed full. There were soy sauce, barbecue, and other packets in there as well as the seasonings for ramen and the singular foils full of dehydrated milk. There were multiple packs of ramen and other packs of dried noodles. There were multiple packs of dehydrated meals. There was nothing fresh, only things that would last a while, even a few bags of water, even though the water they had was super filtered and was an an almost renewable resource. This would add another week or two to their rations, and Simon had just been hoarding it instead of eating it. Why? It didn’t make any sense.
“Where Simon going, question?”
“I. I just-” Grace’s attention changed and he got dizzy from turning his head so fast. Simon had his hand up, a blanket draped over him, and he looked like he was giving up, surrendering. Good, he needed to be sat down and made to explain everything that had been going on. Grace wanted explanations for more than just the food. “-I just need some air.”
Without another word, Simon was turning on his heel and running out of the room. Grace got up to follow him but the movement was too much and he collapsed, landing hard on Rocky’s ball. His vision was all spotty. He thought, for a moment, that he was going to pass out but maybe he already had.
He did see Simon sprint down the hall, best he could, and turn a corner. He didn’t care, let him be upset about being caught. He was being bad, after all.