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Ryland could feel Simon's eyes on him, boring into the side of his face. It wasn't…uncomfortable, just noticeable. He'd come to learn that Simon is kind of a starer. It often gave off the vibe of awestruck hesitancy, like he couldn't really believe any of what he was seeing and it left him at a loss for words. Ryland could relate, it's how he felt when touring Rocky's ship for the first time.
With that thought and a tap of his pencil, he cast his eyes up to look across the lab table at Rocky, asleep in one of his tunnels. He really was so eerily still. It used to freak him out a bit, not being able to tell if he was alive by the show of small breaths or muttered noises. It took a bit to get Simon to come around to the whole thing too. That, and the watching each other sleep habit. For all the staring Simon liked doing, he wasn't too keen on being watched himself.
With a sigh, he scratched his pencil against the pad of paper in front of him on the table, the crudely drawn graphs and charts mocking him with their gloomy statistics. Ryland pulled his glasses from where they sat on his nose to hang them from one ear, the numbers and sloppily scrawled letters swimming around the yellow paper, no regard for the blue lines dissecting them. Maybe if he couldn't see things properly it would be easier to accept the grim reality of their situation.
"What's wrong?"
"Sweet Christmas!" Ryland startled, his chair rocking unsteadily beneath him and his pencil clattering against the aluminum lab table. Barely steadying himself before he fell completely off his seat, he swung his head over to face Simon.
An amused smile tugged at his lips, partially hidden behind the hand his cheek was propped up on, elbow leaning on the table. He was wearing Ilyukhina's chunky headband that Ryland had gifted him, his hair spilling out over top of it and framing his eyes in a way that almost made him seem…softer around the edges.
Stars above and below, what was he even thinking? Stratt was right, being alone on a ship hurtling through space was a recipe for relationship disasters. Ryland remembers her saying that either everyone would try to kill each other or…the alternative option would happen. He really, really didn't want to prove her right a second time.
With a few blinks to anchor himself back in the present, he cleared his throat and looked back down to the blurry pad of paper. "It's nothing." He cringed, already opening his mouth to amend that statement. "Well, not 'nothing.' It's just…ship stuff. Inventory and boring things like that." It wasn't technically a lie.
Ryland could see Simon shrug out of the corner of his eye, the unscarred side of his face still pillowed in his palm.
"I care about inventory," he said in a way that sounded like he was offering it up just to keep the conversation going.
Incredulous, Ryland turned back to face him, eyes narrowed. "Really?"
He was immediately met with a soft chuckle, one that creased the corner of Simon's good eye as he tucked his face further into his hand. It wasn't often that Simon laughed, and Ryland swore it was like witnessing a miracle every time he saw it. It caused his face to warm in a way he didn't quite understand. The small, poetic side of him wanted to say it was probably the closest he'd ever get to feeling the warmth of his sun on his skin again, but that was silly. And also didn't even really make any sense. He was a man of science after all, not prose.
"Okay, you got me, I don't really care about inventory." Simon lifted his head to properly face him, waving his hand along with his words.
"Hah," Ryland sighed, still reveling in the echoes of Simon's light laughter.
"But I do care about what you think about inventory. Must be important if you look so…torn up about it."
Ryland's expression sobered, something shooting through him that oddly felt like being in zero gravity for the first time. "Oh."
There must've been something in his voice that betrayed him because Simon sat up a little straighter, his hand reaching for the ghost of something at his right clavicle. He twisted his fingers in the fleece fabric of one of the Grover Cleveland Middle School quarter-zips that was packed in the bottom of Ryland's clothing duffel bag. It was oversized on Ryland, but just barely fit around Simon's broad shoulders and frankly ridiculously large biceps.
"Ryland, I—"
"You, um—"
They had both spoken over each other, and Ryland had made a grab for his pencil on the table in an attempt to fiddle with something as an outlet for his sudden nervousness. He hadn't been expecting Simon to say anything, much less say his name in a tone like he was about to reverently apologize for something, and his fingers fumbled the thin line of the pencil, sending it skittering to the floor between the both of them.
"Oh! I'll—
Simon lifted his hand to stop him, already sliding off his stool and bending down to pick it up. "It's okay, I got it." Ryland could only watch as Simon plucked it from the floor and blithely handed it back to him, the pads of his fingers grazing Ryland's own.
"Thanks," he muttered, looking down at the pencil in his hands and trying to ignore the ever-growing feeling of something in the air between them.
"Mm," Simon hummed, and Ryland thought that would be it, but without much warning at all, there was suddenly a warm hand grazing his ear and tugging his glasses from where they hung loosely there.
His eyes darted up to meet Simon's just in time to watch him maneuver the frames through his fingers so he was holding the nose bridge and then slowly, carefully, placed them properly onto Ryland's face. All he could do was blink owlishly as the finer details of Simon's face came into focus. The fine dark hairs of his beard, the reddened scar that traveled in the space between his eyes, the honeyed brown of one iris and the polar white of the other one.
"Y'know, you really should wear these properly." Simon's lips moved softly around the words, and Ryland felt something tight lodge itself deep in his chest as his eyes tracked each whispered motion of them.
"Yeah, I, uh, have a bit of a bad habit of not wearing them right, have for a while." His throat felt so dry. Did his throat normally feel this dry? No, something was definitely different. He was acting different. Simon was acting different.
"Mm," Simon hummed in response, taking a small step closer to him, crowding him against the side of the lab table, almost standing in the space between his knees. "I know a thing or two about breaking bad habits."
Oh, he was definitely flirting. This sounded like textbook flirting!
"R—really?" He squeaked. What was he even supposed to do here? There wasn't exactly a user's manual for navigating flirting with the only living, breathing person for light years. In some weird, twisted way, he felt more out of depth here, with Simon looming over him with something unfathomably soft and yearning written all over his face than he did coming up with a plan to scoop up particles in an alien atmosphere on an alien planet in order to save Earth from an alien species.
Ryland's thought it for a while, but there has to be something wrong with him. How can romance possibly be more difficult than getting a PhD? Than being blacklisted from his community to the point of borderline poverty? Than being sent on a suicide mission to save not one, but two planets? There's surely a screw loose somewhere if nearly every human in the history of his planet has figured it out but he's traversed multiple star systems and still hasn't found the answer.
"Ryland?"
He let out a pathetic gasp as Simon's breath ghosted over his face. Clutching the pencil harder between his fingers, his eyes snapped up to meet Simon's searching gaze. What he saw there stole any possible words from his mind and turned them into a shaky exhale.
Simon looked…god, the only word he could think of was reverent.
A few strands of hair fell from behind the headband to dangle in front of the unscarred side of his face as he moved centimeters closer. Ryland felt something tighten harder in his chest at the warm press of one of Simon's legs to the inside of his right knee, and he could only attempt not to choke on air that smelled of generic shampoo and a steady sharp metallic must that lingered everywhere Simon went as he leaned forward, placing his hand on the table behind Ryland and partially caging him in with a fleece covered arm.
Maybe it was a mistake, but Ryland couldn't help the way his eyes darted to look at Simon's lips. They were parted ever so slightly and a little chapped, the echo of his name still lingering on them. Distantly, Ryland thought that he couldn't even remember the last time he kissed somebody. Did he even know how to do it anymore? Maybe Simon could teach him something for once.
"Tell me to stop." Simon's head was tilted so their noses didn't collide, his breath lingering in the scant space between them. Ryland isn't sure when or how they got this close.
Blinking, he slowly dragged his gaze away from Simon's lips to meet his eyes. The deep yearning look was still there, but now it was mixed with a pleading, almost desperate lilt. Ryland wasn't quite sure how to translate that.
"What if…" he trailed off, his throat still so dry that he had to swallow around the stickiness of it. "What if I don't want you to?" It felt like a jump, a leap across a gaping stretch of nothing and everything at the same time. It was a sensation he was starting to know quite intimately.
There was only enough time for a sharp exhale to punch out of Simon's lungs along with an imploring keen-like sound before warm lips were colliding with his.
Somehow stunned by the force and clumsiness of it, Ryland's eyes widened for a fraction of a second and the pencil slipped from his fingers, clattering against the lab's floor. The sound seemed to startle Simon, his shoulders hunching as he started to pull away, but Ryland reached out, tightly wrapping his fingers around the hem of the fleece Simon was wearing and pinching his eyes closed as he pressed back into the kiss.
It was far from well coordinated, and Ryland, in the back of his mind, felt a little silly just pressing his mouth back against Simon's. The rough feeling of his stubble against Simon's beard reminded him how truly out of his depth he was, but he knew that he didn't want it to end. Not yet.
His hand tightened into the fabric of the fleece, and Simon hummed. It was this deep, rumbling sound that vibrated against Ryland's lips as Simon pulled away. He didn't go far, but Ryland still felt his eyebrows crease as he leaned forward, chasing after him.
"Sorry, I just—Can I…try something?" His voice sounded light, almost like he found something funny, and Ryland didn't really want to think too hard about what. All he could do was nod emphatically, eyes still resolutely shut.
Soft air brushed against Ryland's lips as Simon quietly chuckled, and he felt a hand cradle the back of his head, carding through the hair that was starting to get a touch too long there. Just as he was starting to lean back into the touch, Simon's lips met his for a second time.
It was softer now, more gentle. And Simon must've adjusted the angle because his mouth was carefully slotted against Ryland's own. It felt like…nothing he had ever experienced before. The few ex-girlfriends that he had never kissed him like this, like they cherished the very breath that filled his lungs.
The realization struck him in a way that made his head spin. He leaned back into Simon, into the kiss, his free hand coming up to gently cradle the side of Simon's face.
He couldn't believe this was actually happening. In this tiny lab on a spaceship that was built with the hopes and dreams of those whose only saving grace was a one way journey and a man who taught middle school science, there was a spark, a connection that rivaled the odds of the mission itself.
Ryland pressed more desperately against Simon, the tips of his fingers slipping under the soft fabric of the headband hugging his temple. An encouraging hum answered him, and he felt something warm and wet ghost across his mouth. Some sort of muscle memory guided him to part his lips, and he would have to thank whoever taught him to do that because Simon's fingers tightened in his hair, lightly pulling at the strands as he pushed his tongue into Ryland's mouth, muffling a groan.
If there was ever a time for him to break his no cursing rule, now would probably be it. His back pressed a little uncomfortably against the lip of the lab table as Simon pressed closer to him, exploring the inside of his mouth with his tongue. Ryland huffed, his glasses digging into his cheek as Simon tugged his head backwards by the hair in order to get a better angle. It caused a surprised, very manly, squeak-like noise to escape his throat.
Mortified, he tried to press back into the kiss to distract from it. He slid his own tongue over Simon's, an obscenely wet sound filling the silent lab air around them. Thank god Rocky wasn't awake. He'd never hear the end of it.
Despite Ryland's best efforts to keep the kiss going, Simon still managed to separate himself from him. Their breaths came hard and fast between them, and Ryland finally let his eyes flutter open.
What he saw was like a swift punch to the chest, sweeping the air out of him. Simon's pupil was blown, the deep brown of his iris hardly visible, and his lips were red and slick with what could only be their combined spit. He looked…well, really hot. With his chest rising and falling as he struggled to even his breathing, and the way he was so focused on Ryland, it felt like something out of a dirty dream that he would never be creative enough to dream up on his own.
His fingers twitched against the side of Simon's face, anxiously fluttering through his hair and under his hairband. If he couldn't distract Simon through actions, maybe words would be better. He was good at words. Saying something at any given moment was his strong suit.
"You—uh, you've done this before, huh?"
Okay, words were not his strong suit. Why would he ask that? Of all the things he could've said, he went with the one thing that is historically known to start fights and end relationships. What was he even thinking—
Simon laughed. It was this full-body, toothy thing that shook Ryland along with him, and all he could do was stare owlishly as it happened.
"Yeah. A long time ago. Feels like a lifetime away now," he said around a smile.
Ryland wasn't sure what compelled him. It could've been the way Simon's eye crinkled and sparkled with his laugher. Or the way he still caressed his fingers through Ryland's hair, ever so gently. Really, some tucked away part of Ryland knew it was the humanity of it all. Simon was just so…human.
"Ryland? Are you—mmfgh!"
Without much hesitation at all, Ryland ripped the headband from Simon's hair, tossing it to some unknown corner of the lab. It didn't matter. He tangled his fingers deeply into Simon's hair and dragged his head forward, their mouths clashing together hard enough their teeth clacked.
Ryland pushed his tongue into Simon's mouth, only to be immediately met with Simon pressing back so harshly that he bent backwards over the table, Simon crushing against every part of him. He was like a man possessed. His breath leaving him in fast puffs of air and his fingers clawing at the back of Ryland's head, desperate.
All he could do was let out a much more dignified groan into Simon's mouth, Simon's teeth catching against his lips as his tongue delved deeper. It spurred Simon into responding in kind, leaning heavily against him as a deeper moan echoed in his throat.
A soft clatter interrupted the heavy breathing and slick sounds of their mouths meeting. Pulling away just enough to see what caused it, Ryland sighed a light huff of laughter when he saw a ruler and eraser haphazardly laying on the floor.
He turned back to Simon, some stupid quip already loaded to leave his mouth when he was interrupted by a sound that could only be described as a frustrated growl and he felt Simon's hand leave his hair.
"Fuck this," he grumbled before very pointedly sweeping his arm across the table and sending the rest of the contents atop it to fall to the floor.
"Simon—woah!" His scolding tone didn't hold much water when he was being lifted with Simon's one very muscular arm and was promptly deposited onto the table's surface.
Simon filled the space between his knees in seconds. Ryland, now towering over Simon, lifted his hands to cradle his face. He'd tried to keep his touching to the non-scarred side of Simon's face up until this point, but he couldn't help the way his fingers lightly grazed over the mutated teeth lining his left cheekbone, awed.
He didn't miss the way Simon slightly flinched away from the touch, his demeanor shifting from borderline cocky to hesitantly anxious within moments. Ryland knew that Simon was ashamed of this part of himself. It was something that wasn't so easily forgotten and packed away in neat little boxes in one's mind. But Ryland was borderline reverential of it.
Simon had been through so much. He'd witnessed and experienced horrors that Ryland still couldn't fully comprehend. To him, these scars and abnormalities just proved that Simon was a man who, against all odds, lived.
"Sorry. I know it's…bad," Simon whispered, his eyes downcast.
Ryland smiled sadly, caressing his thumb more firmly around the gnarled skin weaving between the pointed teeth. "I don't think so."
Simon scoffed, clearly disbelieving as he lifted his hand to grab at the wrist closest to his unscarred side.
"I don't think any part of you is bad, Simon."
They both paused, those words hanging in the air between them.
And then, ever so hesitantly, Simon lifted his eyes to meet Ryland's own and asked, "…really?"
The corners of Ryland's eyes creased with a smile, and instead of saying something in response, he curled forward and placed a gentle kiss to the mutations still lingering on Simon's face. A shaky breath escaped next to his ear as he pulled back and placed a kiss between Simon's eyes, against the pink radiation scar crossing over the bridge of his nose.
Finally, he leaned down to press his lips firmly against Simon's. They both lingered for only a moment, Ryland's hands firmly holding Simon's face steady and Simon's fingers digging into the skin of Ryland's wrist, before Ryland pulled back and smiled resolutely down at the marvel of a man before him.
"Really."
The word was like a trigger pulled, because for the second time this hour, Simon rushed to press his mouth against Ryland's like a man starved. His hand clutched desperately at Ryland's wrist, like he would disappear from underneath him if he didn't hold on tight enough.
Ryland met him in the middle this time as their tongues pressed against each other, mouths meeting wetly as they both clung to any part of the other they could reach.
Ryland felt Simon's hand move from his wrist, his pulse pounded in the space where Simon's tight grip had been. Slightly panicked, he pressed the pads of his fingers more firmly against Simon's face, as if he could hold him there. A sharp pinprick of pain throbbed against his right hand, and he shoved his mouth resolutely forward, crashing against and into Simon with all the grace of his first EVA walk.
Simon groaned against him as Ryland tried to trace every one of his teeth with his tongue, and suddenly his glasses were being lifted from his face, no longer digging into his skin and probably fogged up with the way they were breathing all heavy against each other.
He made a questioning noise in the back of his throat that veered a little too close to sounding like a pathetic whimper, and Simon, instead of answering him, pushed him back until he felt the cold surface of the lab table through his shirt. Maybe that was an answer in and of itself.
The back of his head connected hard with the aluminum surface, making an offensively hollow thunk noise that echoed throughout the small room.
"Sorry, sorry, should've—-mm—" Simon was muttering something against his lips, something apologetic sounding as he carefully pet the side of Ryland's face with an open, calloused palm. His mouth moved to press firm, open-mouthed kisses down his jawline, stopping just below his ear. "You okay?" He whispered, husky and deep.
"Hah," Ryland panted, a full-body shiver making him clam up and dig his fingers tighter into the front of the fleece jacket Simon was wearing. How was he supposed to answer that? How is anyone supposed to answer a question in a normal, rational way when they're pinned to a table and have a very attractive man whispering in their ear in a voice that was made for dirty late night calls.
God.
Instead of actually answering with anything intelligent, Ryland moved one of his hands up to tug at the thick strands of Simon's hair at the back of his head, urging him to get back to kissing down his neck and making every coherent brain cell leak out of his ears.
Simon just chuckled in response before pressing a firm kiss to the bolt of his jaw and trailing his mouth down his face, grazing against the short hairs of Ryland's beard that he really needed to trim before he got to "stealing and drinking all of Ilyukhina's vodka" levels again.
The feeling of Simon's hand slid off his face, and Ryland had all of half a second to miss its warm weight before he felt fingertips ghosting underneath the hem of his shirt and tickling the sensitive skin stretched taut over his hip bones.
A bone-deep shiver ran through his whole body at the touch, and a sharp shaky inhale filled his lungs. It felt electric. He's never felt this way when somebody has touched him before. All his past girlfriends and brief heated interactions with assorted people at undergrad frat parties were either lackluster at best or too hazy to remember. This was…different.
"Ryland. Is…is it okay if I touch you here? I don't wanna—"
Ryland cut him off with an emphatic nod. He had lifted a hand to cover his face, trying desperately to corral his thoughts into some semblance of sense. He liked Simon's hands on him. He wanted Simon to continue touching him. He felt like he was about to have a heart attack and his lungs felt like they were too small to take in a full breath.
Simon's palm flattened against his side and that punch of electricity zapped through him again, causing him to flinch like some sort of virgin and not a grown man who was pushing middle-age.
He felt Simon's hand still and cringed into his palm. Why did he have to be so bad at this? He's a savior of the universe and he can't handle a man's hand caressing his stomach. He wanted this. He wanted to make out with Simon and he wanted Simon to touch him, but…
"Hey…are you…sure you're okay?" Simon's hand pulled out from under his shirt and Ryland's breath hitched. The warmth that was almost smothering him just a moment ago was now gone, and the sudden loss of it made him pinch his eyes shut behind his hand, a last ditch attempt to hold himself together. "Ryland."
He clasped his hand tighter to his face, too many thoughts flying through his mind and not nearly enough time to sort through them and pick out what was important. Ryland was fine two seconds ago when they were making out, so why now was he acting like this was some world-altering never-before-seen event?
"Ryland, did I go too far? I'm sorry, I—"
A delicate hand gently touched Ryland's wrist, fingertips barely grazing the jut of bone. The feather-light touch paired with the increasingly anxious tone of Simon's voice had him sliding his hand away from his eyes. It took a little bit of work to gather the courage to fully look at him, so he let one of his hands rest on his shoulder in a way that he hoped was reassuring.
"No, no I'm sorry. You didn't…overstep." His tongue felt dry as chalk against the inside of his mouth.
"…really." Simon didn't sound convinced in the slightest.
"I just…I haven't done this in a while and I don't know if I even remember how to do it, really. I mean, this part was never exactly my strong suit. Relationships were never my strong suit." He couldn't look at Simon. He just couldn't do it. Not now. Not when he was sharing a part of himself that he's never shared with anyone.
"Oh."
Shit.
That sounded like a bad 'oh.' It sounded like Simon was…disappointed?
Frantically, he scanned Simon's face for any hint as to what he was feeling. He saw the downturn of his brows and the way the corners of his lips were just slightly lowered.
"Not—! Not that I don't want a relationship! With you! That's not what I'm saying. I think I'm really fudging this up and I don't really know what I'm trying to say actually."
How the heck had this gone from mind-bendingly amazing to world-alteringly messy in mere moments? Ryland felt like he was about to puke, which would not be a good look.
"You…liked the kissing though?"
Simon's voice sliced through his thoughts with a sharpness that caught him entirely off guard. All he was able to do was blink owlishly back at the man.
"Right? You seemed fine with the kissing."
"Yeah…yeah I really liked the kissing. Simon, I—"
"Then let's only do that for now. We can talk about all the other stuff later," Simon smiled, soft and unfathomably understanding.
It felt like a million doors had just opened up down a hallway that Ryland had never even known existed. His thoughts finally all decided to agree on one solid path, which was firmly paved with the idea that Simon might be the best thing that ever happened to him.
"Yeah, okay. Later." Ryland smiled, hesitantly, back up at him.
With a helping hand, Simon hoisted Ryland back up into a sitting position on the edge of the table. Ryland tried to hide the pitiable old man groan he let out as one too many of his bones creaked and popped with the movement.
As he straightened out his back, he felt Simon's hand rest on his thigh and looked up just in time for Simon's lips to quickly press against his. It was chaste, lingering for only a moment, but it made his heart thump erratically inside his chest. Ryland didn't realize how much he needed that small kiss to reassure him.
"Good. Especially since we now have someone listening in," Simon said as he pulled away, dragging his hand down to Ryland's knee before it fell away completely.
"Listening…what—?"
"Rocky not listening in! Rocky just woke up and Simon and Grace were talking so loud. Not Rocky fault!"
Ryland had to get better about his guttural reaction not being a high-pitched drawn out screech. It at the very least made Simon laugh, toothy and open as he walked out of the room, leaving Ryland to pick up his belongings scattered across the floor with his sensitive feelings and questionably intact dignity.
"What Rocky miss?"