Chapter Text
Someone once told Grace that when you run, if something were to be chasing you, you never look back. He didn’t remember who told him that or why, only that he should not look behind him. It slows you down, makes you trip, changes nothing about the trivial distance between you and them. But against all his better judgement, he could not resist the urge to look over his shoulder and what he saw stopped his rabbit heart and he stumbled and it slowed his pace down just enough.
Simon.
Simon was chasing him.
1,328 days til Hail Mary Launch
Grace was still in that dumb flight suit, tethers hanging limply around his hips and buckles strapped tightly across his shoulders. The back of his throat was slightly raw from throwing up. The only thing keeping him moving forward was the buzz of adrenaline thrumming through his veins, despite the way his legs were a bit weak beneath him and his stomach was flipped inside out, and the breathlessness that came from the Project Hail Mary conference. Mind slightly reeling, he followed Stratt and Carl through the large ship like an obedient dog scared of being left behind.
Beneath his feet, the ship moved almost imperceptibly. The Vat was so large that it’d take some seriously rough waters for the boat to seriously rock, but Grace was still a little unbalanced from the whole fighter jet thing. Soldiers and sailors and engineers bustled by in the long corridors, each of them busy, each of them mobilizing on humanity’s last chance. Grace wondered how many people were on this ship–it had to be thousands of people all working towards one goal.
It was like Grace was dropped onto an alien planet, overwhelmed and out of control.
They were on some kind of rapid fire tour, Stratt promising that any sailor or soldier would take him anywhere he wanted to go should he get lost. Finally, she brought him to the lab—his lab—only allowing Grace a moment of excited gawking at the most expensive equipment he had ever seen in one place before leading him towards his office. That was a weird thought. He had an office now.
Back at Grover Cleveland Middle School, he had the teachers’ lounge or his classroom, and his apartment had only one bedroom. Any work that Grace brought home was done at his kitchen table or on the couch. Even when he was still in academia…and he hadn’t been paying attention.
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Stratt said and he blinked back into focus. She pointedly glanced to her left, directing his gaze towards a soldier standing at a casual parade rest in front of what he guessed was Grace’s office door.
The face that stared back at him was raising an eyebrow but was otherwise completely professional.
“Oh! Hi, I’m sorry, got lost in my head for a moment,” he quickly explained. Grace held out a polite hand, grinning when the man dropped the parade rest to shake it firmly. “I’m Dr. Ryland Grace, but everyone calls me Grace.”
Hands no longer behind his back, Grace saw that his left hand was a prosthetic. The man was decently tall, just barely shorter than Grace, with black hair pulled back into a neat bun. Running up nearly the entire left side of his face, stopping just short of his eye and disappearing into his collar, were valleyed and pale scars stark against his tan skin. Grace’s eyes flitted over the man, taking in the way the long-since healed flesh twisted and curved in almost delicate whorls, and the dark gaze studying him back. The nametag on his camouflaged uniform read ‘FISCHER’ in big bold letters, framed by a few patches and pins whose meaning was lost on him. Likely representative of his rank and achievements, if he had to guess, but Grace had never been one for military trivia.
“Lieutenant Simon Fischer, Navy Seal,” was the reply and his voice was somehow deeper than Grace might’ve expected, a smooth warm timbre. “Just Simon will be fine.”
“Alright, Just Simon, nice to meet you,” Grace shot back before he could help himself. There was a brief moment of silence where Grace swore he could hear Stratt’s eyes rolling and Carl’s tiny exhale of not quite amusement. Embarrassment crawled up his shoulders because here he was, on the most important mission in world history, talking as if he were still in the classroom.
But Simon’s lips twitched upwards into a smile, teeth briefly flashing, and a small surprised chuckle escaped him. Grace smiled back brightly.
Unperturbed by his joke, Stratt explained, “Dr. Grace, Lieutenant Fischer will be the head of your security personnel, alongside Carl of course. You’ve worked with Carl, you understand how this works.”
Grace looked at Simon once again, eyes catching on the pistol innocently sitting on his hip and the rather large knife strapped to his thigh. Simon was clearly stronger than Grace, with broad shoulders and biceps that were noticeable despite the long sleeves of his fatigues. It wasn’t as if Grace was weak, either—he worked out, thank you very much—but Simon was a flipping Navy Seal! A thought came to him then, not for the first time since Stratt appeared in his classroom, that none of this was completely, 100%, voluntary. He had no idea he lived on a boat for the foreseeable future until three hours ago. He wondered if Simon’s job was less like a bodyguard and more like a prison warden.
Grace cleared his throat, casting a dubious glance around their semicircle. “Am I really in so much danger that I need a bodyguard?” he nervously laughed. “And I’m already on the boat…I’m not exactly going anywhere. Kinda seems like overkill.”
The slight furrow of Simon’s eyebrows provided him with no answer.
Stratt waved this off, her auburn hair sliding down her shoulder as she looked down at one of her many phones. Always busy, always tending to fifty problems at once. When she spoke, her tone of voice was stern and even, leaving no room for argument. “This is a safety precaution, no matter if you’re on a boat. There are many people around the world that would like to see us fail. Some are of the mind that we are playing God and you, Dr. Grace, are the lead biologist in charge of breeding astrophage. Are you following?”
Throat suddenly dry, a vague dread crawling up over his shoulders, Grace nodded. It hadn't really occurred to him that there were people in the world that viewed the Sun dimming as some ancient prophecy coming to pass or the natural and timely end to their species. It startled him to think that someone would be willing to murder him just for trying to survive.
Carl cleared his throat, alleviating some of the tension that was starting to settle in the space between Grace and Stratt’s eyes. “There isn’t anyone else I’d trust more with your life, Grace. I asked for Simon myself. Just do your job, make more astrophage, and everything will be fine.”
Once again, Grace found himself nodding dumbly. Maybe it was the fact he trusted Carl, that he was currently the only soul on this ship that he could consider a friend. Maybe he had been awake for the past twenty hours, been on two private jets, had to speak in front of the most powerful people in the world, threw up, and just really wanted to go to sleep. “Sure, okay, man,” Grace replied.
Simon looked a bit awkward, standing there in a gentle parade rest, and it made Grace feel a slight twinge of guilt. He gave the man what he hoped was a reassuring smile but it came out closer to a grimace.
Simon tipped his head in acknowledgement but otherwise said nothing.
Good going, Grace, you’ve made it weird.
Stratt nodded, satisfied that this conversation could be over. “The Lieutenant will show you to your dormitory. Housekeep will be by with something for you to wear until your bags arrive. Send me a list of anything specific you want from your apartment and I will have it picked up along with your clothes. Goodnight, Dr. Grace, be ready to begin your work tomorrow.”
Then, she and Carl were gone before Grace could fully process the fact she was sending someone to break into his apartment. With a long suffering sigh and for the umpteenth time that day, Grace allowed himself to be led through the sterile, opposing corridors of the Vat. The halls were all the same, save for the new myriad of faces that passed as impassive specters, blurring together into a featureless mob of humanity.
In the elevator, Grace leaned against the wall and stared at the side of Simon’s head. Neither of them had said much as Grace was about thirty minutes away from a total system failure and Simon just didn’t seem very eager to talk. The bright white overhead lights glinted off his dark hair and snagged on the silver chain on the back of his neck.
“So, the Navy Seals. That’s cool. Hardcore,” Grace said in a pretty weak attempt at small talk, even for him. The elevator hummed.
Simon met his gaze and Grace noticed that when the light hit them, his eyes were a deep and soft shade of burnt umber. They were intense, piercing, as they studied him, and Grace couldn’t help but think they looked like two gemstones. The faintest edge of his scar was visible as he tilted his head. “Yeah, you could say that,” Simon mumbled back.
Grace shifted on his aching feet, feeling a flower of anxiety bloom in his throat. “I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. I was just a bit blindsided by—”
The elevator doors slid open, revealing a hall that was not dissimilar from every other hall he’d been down that day. This hall was just a long line of evenly spaced doors, the dim lighting casting an eerie, uncanny glow. It looked straight out of ‘The Shining.’ Simon brought him to room #42.
“This is you.” Simon gestured to the door. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out four key cards. He gave two to Grace, one emblazoned with a #42 and the other with a #43 in little green text. “I’m right next door. For your safety, I’ll have a key to your room and you, mine.”
Grace nodded, resigning himself to his fate. Yeah, sure, this stranger could get in his room at any point in the night. Why was he surprised? He clipped the new cards to his lanyard alongside his security clearance badge. He definitely wasn’t going to get those keycards mixed up every time he tried to enter a room.
The door clicked open with a quiet beep and Grace already had one foot in the dorm with a hollow ‘goodbye’ on his tongue, when Simon spoke.
“Grace?” Simon began, voice oddly quiet and soft, as if cautious to disturb the silence that had befallen the hall. Looking up, he found that Simon’s face was serious yet surprisingly sincere, a divot between his brows as if he were fighting an unseen battle behind his eyes. “You didn’t offend me,” was what he settled on saying.
Faint surprise, then a small smile bloomed on his face. A swell of relief hit him at the realization he hadn’t already screwed up the possibility of friendship with the one guy he had to be with every single day. “Good, that’s good, seeing as we’ll be joined at the hip,” he joked.
The corners of Simon’s lips twitched, fighting a smile. Twice now, Grace had threatened his composure. Grace took that as a good sign.
“Night, Simon.”
“Goodnight, Grace.”
The door swept shut behind him with a creaking groan and Grace was alone. With a monumental sigh, Grace’s shoulders slumped down and he put his face in his hands, knocking his glasses all askew. A weight had settled on his shoulders, a crushing pressure on his sternum in the shape of the nauseating realization that if he failed the world would die and Grace gave himself thirty seconds to let that crush him, standing half hunched over in his little bedroom. Then he straightened himself.
He was still in that freaking flight suit.
Grace slept twelve hours straight.
Honestly, he was surprised that Stratt allowed him the luxury of sleeping past six in the morning. In neon green lettering, the alarm clock on his bedside table was flashing a reasonable ‘9:17 A.M.’ when he finally managed to pull himself from the inky abyss of a well earned night’s rest. Grace showered and threw on the set of clothes housekeeping had procured for him—it was a plain white t-shirt, black sweatpants, and white socks to go with his Converse. It wasn’t the most interesting of outfits, but it’d have to do until his apartment could be burglarized.
Grace left his room and hesitated outside Simon’s door. He never said if Grace had to wait for him. Surely, the threat on his life wasn’t so severe that Simon had to escort him around a top secret ship in the middle of the ocean, right? Grace could have knocked, he guessed, but after a moment of internal debate he walked away. He’s a grown man, he can eat breakfast without being babysat. It took him a bit longer than he’d have liked to find the cafeteria but in his defense, he was on zombie planet last night. There were others in the cafeteria, chatting in a myriad of languages that created a low buzz of noise that had his thoughts drifting back to his students.
The wall to his left was one long window. The sun had already crawled over the horizon by the time Grace settled down to eat his bacon and eggs, only the faintest hint of honey orange in the calm blue sky. Beneath them and stretching out into the distant horizon, the navy waters were still and shimmering.
Despite the calmness of the world outside and the amicable buzz of crewmates around him, Grace scarfed down his food. He was eager to get to work, to make progress on the mission that’s deadline was already beginning to loom over him like a skeletal grim reaper in the corner of a hospital room. Also, eager to discover. Eager to discover all that astrophage had to offer, to crack open the alien cells that spelled both their disaster and deliverance and study life that did not hail from this planet.
Grabbing yet another coffee in a to-go cup, Grace made his way to the astrophage lab. The area of the ship dedicated to the study and breeding of astrophage took up an entire deck, easily taking the cake for the largest laboratory Grace had ever laid his eyes on. It was buzzing with activity and by the time he made it to his little corner, he’d already been stopped three times and asked questions. Simon was there, standing by his designated section of the lab. Same as the day before, Simon wore his fatigues and his hair was in an airtight bun. Those brown eyes were already locked onto Grace by the time Grace noticed him.
“Oh, hey, Simon,” Grace greeted lightly. He settled down onto a rolly chair, eyes boggling at the sheer girth of the manilla folder someone (Stratt) had left on his desk.
“Morning,” Simon replied from the doorway, on the threshold of Grace’s space and the rest of the Vat.
Ignoring the mountain of paperwork for a second, Grace started rolling around the sectioned off lab in the chair, familiarizing himself with the placement of his equipment and inspecting the contents of the drawers and cabinets. There was genuinely anything he could’ve asked for as a molecular biologist in that room and his area wasn’t even the entire lab. He felt like a kid in a candy store that was given their dad’s credit card. When he was done flitting around, he rolled himself back to his desk. Glancing up, he found Simon still by the door, idly watching him. Grace flipped open the folder and managed to read one sentence before the tingling sensation of eyes on him proved to be unignorable. Grace leaned his head on his hand, turning to Simon.
For a moment, they simply watched each other. Unable to resist the urge and hoping to break the awkward silence, Grace asked, “Hey, um, are you just gonna…you know…stand there?”
Simon raised an eyebrow. “Do you plan on leaving?”
“Uh, no?” Grace replied.
“Then yes.”
Grace adjusted his glasses, swaying the chair from side to side with his toes. They fell into a lapse of silence, seemingly at an impasse. It really wasn’t that surprising, he was his bodyguard. Grace honestly thought the whole situation would be worse, but Simon had let him wander off to the cafeteria on his own and hadn’t told him off for it yet. Anyway, he wasn’t about to let him stand there like a statue for the next uncountable hours. “At least sit.”
“That’s not necessary," Simon immediately declined.
Grace grabbed a nearby stool and pushed it in his direction. “Simon, I’m gonna be in this lab for God knows how long. While I’m sure you could stand the whole time, it’d make me feel a whole lot better knowing your feet weren’t about to melt off. I seriously doubt I’m in any imminent danger and besides, with those muscles of yours, we’ll be fine.”
Simon blinked at Grace.
Grace blinked at Simon.
Did you seriously just say that?
Before Grace could wilt out of his seat in embarrassment, Simon took the stool and sat down with a teasing smile. “Guess you’re right,” he hummed, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. Simon’s legs kicked out and braced against the floor, head tilted ever so slightly in a small challenge, and Grace had to force his eyes away.
Grace couldn’t be sure, but he swore there was a hint of amusement in his voice.
Grace tried to get to work.
All in all, it took only about two hours to get through all the necessary paperwork before he could actually begin the fun part.
A scientist assigned to his team brought him the sample of astrophage bred in the first test run based on the Carl Hypothesis. Holding up the small little vial of black goo, a viscous puddle of death and life, Grace couldn’t help but smile. “Say hello to the second batch of astrophage born on planet Earth!” he cheered to mostly himself. “Does this make me your godfather? Grandfather?” he asked the astrophage, which did not respond.
Grace bustled around the lab, gathering the appropriate tools he’d need to check for any genetic deviations in the newest generation. They couldn’t have the astrophage developing some insane mutation that set back their progress before it ever really began. “What do you know about astrophage, Simon?” he called out, rolling across the floor towards his microscope.
The paperback book in his hand hit his lap with a small thud as he dropped his hand, metal fingers tucked between the crisp pages. Grace had no idea where he’d been keeping that book up until now or when he’d even started reading, but decided not to question it. “Just the average amount, I guess. It’s an alien cell that’s killing the sun,” Simon mused.
“You’re right on the money, but there is so much more to these little guys,” Grace said as he extracted the astrophage from their containment. “So, basically, these guys absorb tons and tons of energy—what we’ve estimated to be around 1.5 million joules—in one single cell. It’s nothing like anything we’ve ever seen before. They convert the energy of stars, or in this case, the Sun, directly into mass. Hence the name ‘star-eater.’ I came up with that, by the way. They convert energy to mass with no loss. Just like that!”
The glob of cells gently settled onto the slide as Grace squeezed the pipette. “It moves through space by converting that mass back into energy, again with no loss. So it gobbles up all this energy, then toots to scoot. That’s what the Petrova Line is. And no matter what I did to it, no visible light passed through it, it always remained at 96.415 degrees Celsius. They’re actual marvels of evolution! Mind-boggling stuff. Oh, and they’re going to Venus to breed. They search for the spectral signature of CO2, fly across space, do the devil’s tango, then are right back on their merry way to the Sun. Rinse and repeat.” Grace clipped the sample slide into place and peered into the microscope, adjusting the focus until black dots danced across his vision. “And there they are,” he breathed.
There was a brief lapse of silence, the ghost of his own voice haunting the space between himself and Simon, and he grimaced. He kept his eyes on the astrophage as the silence elongated and grew barbs of embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m prone to rambling. This is…really exciting for me. And I’m not trying to talk down to you, either, I’m just used to teaching kids. I’m actually a middle school teacher, believe it or not. Sorry, rambling, I know it can be annoying, feel free to tell me to stuff a sock in it—”
“I don’t find you annoying,” Simon cut in, voice slightly startling Grace despite its steady smoothness. Grace spared a glance and Simon was looking at him with an expression that he didn’t quite understand, especially when directed at him. Something surprisingly open, intrigued. “I thought it was interesting.”
“Really? I wasn’t bothering you?” Grace asked, incredulous.
Simon leveled him with a flat look. “No, Grace, but your repeated fucking insistence that you are is.”
That pulled a smile from Grace, his hackles settling. Looking down at the astrophage idly gliding around the slide, he thought for a moment, then he looked back up at Simon, whose eyes were glancing around the array of instruments scattered before Grace. “Do you wanna see them? It’s much cooler in person than on the TV,” he asked, gesturing to the microscope.
It was the first time he’d seen Simon hesitate, something akin to distrust sharpening in his eyes as if there was a wrong answer here. Grace kept his face neutral, waiting for Simon to come to him if he so chose. They stared at each other from across the room for a moment longer, Grace spinning his chair to be face to face with the Lieutenant, then Simon silently rose from his seat and dropped his book on the counter.
The cushioned back of Grace’s chair gave slightly beneath Simon’s grip, fingers divoting the fabric and thumb brushing against Grace’s back. With his other hand braced on the counter, Simon leaned over Grace’s shoulder and lap and peered into the eye piece. They weren’t touching but it was a near thing. Grace sat stock-still in the chair, staring at the space where the chain of Simon’s dogtags disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.
“That’s amazing…holy shit,” Simon whispered, almost to himself, and Grace was just relieved he was distracted enough to not notice the flush rising on Grace’s neck.
The next two weeks or so passed in a similar fashion, with the two of them in a strange semi-orbit of each other. Proximity without closeness and for the most part that generous breadth of space between them remained undisturbed and unchallenged. Grace would go down to the lab and Simon would be waiting or join him soon after and their day would pass by in a blur of science and spreadsheets and schematics. They spoke, mostly Grace rambling, but never about anything of note.
They’d moved past the awkward stage, leaving them in a strange middle ground between friends and acquaintances.
When Grace left to use the restroom or grab a coffee, Simon would remain in the lab reading at his stool. Sometimes Simon would get up and leave, taking his lunch or dinner or mid-afternoon coffee break. They weren’t handcuffed together—Simon had explained after a bit of prodding that his duty as a bodyguard was mostly required for when Grace ventured off the ship or whenever Simon deemed his involvement necessary. Simon stayed in the lab most of the time in case any unauthorized personnel attempted to weasel their way in, not practically due to a serious threat of any insider assassination attempts.
Also, it wasn’t like he had much of anything else to do.
It wasn’t always Simon that stood guard over him, though it was most days. Sometimes Carl would join him in the lab instead. Grace privately theorized that Stratt also had a guard in there to make sure work was getting done but he decided to keep that thought to himself. As the days passed, Grace found himself increasingly comfortable with the consistent presence of another person in his space. The sound of boots echoing his footsteps down the busy halls became welcome to his ears, a familiar call and response. He got used to bouncing ideas off a listening ear.
Familiarity but not friendship.
Grace decided he was going to do something about that and knocked on Simon’s door one morning. Nothing ever came from idleness.
It was a fine day, nothing special, based on what Grace could tell from his tiny porthole window. A light drizzle was over the water, not enough of a storm to roughen the waves but refracting the sunlight that slipped through the gray clouds and making a nice pitter-patter against his window. Grace dressed in his favorite fox cardigan and a San Francisco t-shirt. His clothes and items had been delivered a few days ago, which was a huge moral booster and he felt much more like himself. Leaving his room, something in him had his eyes wondering to door #43. He found himself, selfishly, maybe, wanting more. This wasn’t usually like him. Usually he was perfectly content to leave up that wall of impersonalness, leaving a six foot gap between him and anyone that tried to get too close. There was something different about this, though, something different about Simon that had his knuckles gently rapping on door #43. He couldn’t explain it yet.
Grace wasn’t even sure if he was still in his room, he very well could’ve been gone already and Grace was just standing out there like an…but the door violently swung open.
Simon stood in the doorway, hand resting on the pistol on his hip. “Grace, everything okay?” he immediately barked, his gaze hard as stone as he looked up and down the hallway.
“Woah! Yeah, I’m fine. No need to go all Rambo,” Grace yelped, holding up his hands in surrender. “I just wanted to ask if you’d like to join me for breakfast.”
Simon blinked and his hackles visibly lowered. He wasn’t wearing his usual uniform and Grace realized he’d never seen the man in anything else. Simon was wearing camo pants, as usual, and just a short-sleeved tan shirt. Grace noticed a few things all at once.
Simon’s prosthetic hand was actually a prosthetic arm.
And on his right arm, an intricate sleeve of tattoos that stopped just before his wrist bone and disappeared beneath his t-shirt. Curving over the swell of his bicep and trailing along the sharp lines of his forearm, were flowers and vines; marigolds, poppies, forget-me-nots, hibiscuses, and flowers that Grace could not name bloomed across the expanse of tan skin, interspersed by what looked to be spiraling black tree branches. It was beautiful in its delicacy, the thoughtful attention to detail, and the way that when his muscles flexed, the flora seemed to ripple and blossom.
Grace had been staring. The door creaked as Simon pulled it closer, forming a small barrier between them, eyes sharp. Grace snapped his gaze away from the tattoos, shame curdling in his gut.
“You want me to eat with you?” was Simon’s dry reply.
It was Grace’s turn to shift on his feet. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t want to. I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but yeah.”
That was how they ended up at Grace’s little corner table in the cafeteria.
Simon did not put on his overshirt, leaving his arms bare, and somehow that felt like a tiny victory. They sat in companionable silence, taking turns watching each other and pretending to not notice. Grace looked between the churning blue waves of the sea and the waves of dark hair framing Simon’s face. With his hair down like that, he looked softer, less rigid.
Clearing his throat to break the silence, Grace began to offer a piece of himself, a sliver of vulnerability, in the hopes that his trust is not misplaced. Moreso, in the hope that trust will be given in return. “You know, I wasn’t always a teacher,” he said, pushing his eggs around his plate absently. “I worked in research for a while. My, um, my thesis for my PhD wasn’t very popular with my colleagues. I just believe it’s stupid to think that all life in the universe must come from water just because life on Earth does. The idea that a planet must meet specific conditions to be habitable is even more absurd,” he huffed. Simon had lost interest in his food, focused on Grace. “Anyway, I was fired for standing by what I wrote…well, calling the leading doctor at the UNESCO Conference a ‘staggering waste of carbon’ sure didn’t help.”
Simon blinked at him for a moment, then a Cheshire grin began to crawl over his face. He smiled with all his teeth. “You called someone a ‘staggering waste of carbon?’” he asked, incredulous, amusement dripping from his words.
Grace buried his face in his hands. It was hot to the touch. “Yes.”
Simon laughed—a real guffaw of a laugh that crinkled the skin around his eyes. It was short but sweet and right then Grace decided he’d stop at nothing to hear it again, to be the cause of it again. It made Grace giggle with him, peeking through his fingers, though the UNESCO Conference was something he’d never laughed at before. It’d never been anything but a bitter concoction of anger and regret and relief.
When Simon quelled his laughing at his expense, he said, tone much more controlled this time, “Sorry—sorry, I just didn't expect that from you. Do you miss research?”
“God, no. I don’t have the patience for that,” he scoffed. “I love teaching, it’s what I was meant to do. But what about you?” he redirected, tilting his head to study the man before him. “Did you always want to join the Navy?”
Simon sobered, his grin fading to something more bittersweet. Dark hair shielded eyes trained on the sea and unconsciously his hand drifted up to grab the pendant resting on his collar just above his dogtags. It was maybe about the size of a silver dollar, a flat disk of glass or resin that preserved a small, germinating seed. It was cracked. When his gaze returned to Grace, he had the distinct impression he was being evaluated. Simon rubbed his thumb across the cracked glass as he came to a decision. Simon sighed, then said, “No. Joining the Navy was initially a means to an end but I ended up staying. I never really had a dream job, never done much of anything else. Where I’m from, people were assigned duties to carry out and that was what you did. Simple as that.” His tone was even and unwavering despite the undeniable intensity of his words. “The military was a way out, after what happened.”
There was a weight to his words, a guilt that slithered through his voice like a snake in the grass.
Grace’s brows furrowed. “After what happened?” he prodded.
Simon’s gaze hardened, fingers tightening around his fork. “Let’s not get into that,” he warned. The words hung in the air for a moment, an apology forming on Grace’s tongue but Simon exhaled a deep breath and beat him to it. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. That was nosy of me.”
They returned to picking at their food, wrapped in a blanket of awkward silence. Grace wanted to say something, anything, but remained frozen with the fear of ruining their morning more than he already had.
When Simon spoke, it was unexpected. “I’ve always loved plants. Like, I think it’d be nice to work in a plant nursery one day.” The admission was quiet, almost bashful, as if there was some deep-seated expectation that ridicule would follow.
Grace smiled gently. “Plants are awesome. I actually took a few botany classes in undergrad but I still have a black-thumb when it comes to keeping anything alive, even succulents,” he laughed lightly and to his delight, Simon tentatively smiled. “Maybe when this is all over, you can retire and open a shop of your own.”
“Yeah, maybe. As long as you're my first customer,” he drawled.
“You wouldn’t want me near your plants,” Grace shot back.
There it was—that laugh. They grinned at each other, two quiet smiles that were seeped in the fresh blossoms of fondness, and Grace felt something warm begin to grow in his chest.