Archive of Our Own

Simon has been on the starship called Hail Mary for nearly a year when Grace walks up to him in the projection room with a bundle of cloth in his arms.

“Here,” he says, dumping it into Simon's lap before he can move. “Hide this.” And then he walks away.

Simon blinks after him, then sets his pouch of water down so he can pick the cloth bundle up. He nearly drops it – it's shockingly heavy, and as his fingers dig into it in an attempt to keep it from slipping to the floor, something clatters down the hall. He ignores the sound – probably Rocky messing with something in his tunnels – and focuses on getting a grip on the folded cloth. The texture is strange, sharp fuzz under his fingertips, and the pattern is striking; silver-gray with gunmetal-dark speckles and pale spots like stars spattered across it.

It's only when he gets it unfolded that he realizes it's not a cloth at all. It appears to be some kind of animal pelt. One side is covered in dense fur, and the other side is smooth satiny leather. Intrigued, he runs the backs of his fingers across the buttery-soft surface of the pelt's underside, fascinated by the feeling and the heat he swears he can feel in it. Grace must have had it bundled up near one of the air vents or something.

Recorded birds shriek around him and projected waves wash past his face where he’s leaned up against the ladder. He likes the projections of forests and canyons, deep greens and bright reds, but he's got a special weakness for the recordings of oceans and lakes. Mars never had that much water when he was growing up, and after...well. The largest body of water he'd ever seen was on AT-5, and that wasn't water, so it doesn't count. He glances up, watches the waves roll in, and strokes the marvelous softness of the pelt under his hand.

Footsteps clang in the room below and Grace stalks back into view. He's standing stiffly, both arms wrapped around himself and shoulders hunched. Simon's fingers tighten involuntarily in the pelt's fur at the sight of him, and a full-body shudder runs through Grace before he breathes deeply and leans against the wall.

“What are you doing?” he asks tightly.

“It's soft,” Simon says.

“I asked you to hide it.”

“I forgot what fur felt like,” Simon confesses, laying his weaknesses out for this man he relies on to live. “I haven't seen an animal in decades. I can't remember the last time I petted a dog or a cat, and this is something else. What is it?”

“It's mine,” Grace bites out.

“I'm – I'm sorry.” Simon takes his hand off the pelt, folding his fingers into his palm. “Do you...want it back?”

Grace inhales sharply. From somewhere nearby, Rocky whistles. Grace glares at the wall and makes a quick hand gesture, then looks back at Simon, whose lap is growing hot under the strange skin.

“I want you to...keep it safe,” Grace says slowly. “I want you to hide it. Can you do that for me?”

Simon owes him his life, if he even is alive. He felt himself being torn apart in that sub, and then he woke up in the dormitory with what he later learned was Armando hovering over him and a disembodied woman's voice asking him basic math problems. Grace was the one who made it all make sense – as much sense as it probably can make, when they're pretty sure wormholes and alternate universes and possibly time travel are involved. So maybe Simon's dead, and this is the afterlife – or, more likely, the last dying neurons of his brain are misfiring their way into this bizarre lattice of light and warmth and safety, even as he breathes his last beneath the dark surface of a bloody sea. Either way, he owes Grace everything. He can do this one small task.

“Sure,” Simon says, and Grace nods decisively.

“Thank you.” His voice is stilted as he turns to leave the projection room and pauses, his back to Simon. “Please hide it somewhere I can't find it.”

Then he's gone again, and Simon is alone with the heavy pelt and a host of questions. He's not sure how the fuck he's supposed to hide anything from the guy who helped build this damn ship.

Carefully bundling the pelt back up and scooping it under his arm, he climbs to his feet with a mission in mind. He'll enlist Rocky's help. Surely the alien has some hidey-holes picked out that would fit this precious item.

Twelve hours later, Grace gives an irritated squawk when the pelt tumbles out of an upper cabinet in the lab and falls on his head. Simon hunches his shoulders and Rocky chitters in laughter as Grace tugs the pelt off his face and stomps over to Simon, shoving it into his chest. Simon has to let go of the pliers he was holding to keep the pelt from falling to the floor, but part of it still flops loose, a thickened section of some darker, more leathery appendage dangling near his knees. He tries to gather it up without dropping it with his one remaining arm and nearly loses the whole thing before Grace growls in annoyance and helps him, reaching down to flop the loose end over itself where it smacks Simon in the face with its momentum. He goes cross-eyed to get a better look at what just scratched his cheek. Are those...claws?

“I told you to hide this,” Grace says, and Simon looks away from the bundle in his arms. “You call that hiding?”

“Rocky said –” Simon starts, but Grace gives a shout of sarcastic laughter, throwing his arms up before planting his fists on his hips and spinning to glare at the alien. Rocky's in his ball, swaying back and forth and tapping two claws on the floor in apparent enjoyment.

“Oh, Rocky was involved, I should have known.” Grace scoffs and pinches the bridge of his nose before shoving his glasses up to the top of his head and turning back to pin Simon with a sharp look. “Don't listen to him about this,” he says, jabbing a finger at the pelt over Simon's arm. “Just...hide it, please. Somewhere better, this time.”

“Okay,” Simon says blankly, feeling chastened. Like hell does he know what this is about, but clearly there's something going on that he's not privy to, and he's not sure he wants to get in the middle of it. Grace and Rocky have their own thing. They figured out how to save their worlds together, and he wasn't here for that, so he'll never have the connection they have.

That's okay. He's alive – or feels like he is, most days – and the starship is moving somewhere Rocky says can be their home in the future, and there is light and warmth and soft things. Simon can stand coming in third as long as he gets to be here.

He takes the pelt up to the cockpit to brainstorm where he could try to hide it. Flopping down in the pilot's chair, he hits the button to maintain their course when Mary's voice acknowledges him as a pilot, spreading his legs a little to provide a large enough surface he can use to fold the pelt up more securely. He can't resist stroking his hand over the furry side as he does. It's just so fucking soft.

Something bangs down below in the lab. Simon considers going to see if Grace needs help, but the clicking of Rocky's claws in one of his xenonite tunnels stops him, and he waits instead.

Rocky trots into view a moment later, tilting his carapace at Simon when he observes him sitting in the pilot's chair with the pelt on his lap. When he speaks, his voice comes from the computer tablet Grace reinforced and gave him to strap to his working harness. “Why touch, question?”

“Because it's soft,” Simon says.

“Describe soft.”

Simon feels his mouth quirk up on one side. “I'm no poet.”

“Do not care. Describe soft.”

“It's...” Simon shrugs. How the fuck does he describe a texture to an alien with a limited sense of touch? “It's pleasant. Nice. Touching soft things is comforting, like the blankets we sleep under.”

“Like clothing, question?”

“Clothing can be soft,” Simon acknowledges. “But where I come from, clothes were generally rough, heavy-duty, practical. Soft clothing was usually soft because it was old and worn thin with use. But this...” he trails off, running his palm gently over the pelt in his lap. Something else clatters in the lab. Hopefully Grace doesn't trip on the pliers Simon dropped earlier. “This is soft because it was alive, from a living creature. I'm not sure what kind, but it must have been important, for Grace to keep it.”

“Is important,” Rocky agrees. “Is very important, statement.”

Simon nods. “I don't exactly know what the deal is, but I can take care of it. I just don't know where to put it where he won't find it.”

Rocky taps two claws together, fingers working over each other as he rocks from side to side. “Idea,” he says. “How Simon fear of small spaces, question?”

“Not great,” Simon replies slowly, eyeing Rocky with trepidation and remembering the burning heat of the sub's crawlspace bearing down on him. He'd been fine before that dive – growing up on a space station meant much of his life took place in small spaces, but something had broken in his head under the blood ocean and it's hard for him to be too constrained now. “But I can manage. How small are you thinking?”

“Small small,” Rocky says, which isn't an answer. “Go to dormitory. I distract Grace.” And he clatters off before Simon can ask him how the fuck he's supposed to navigate that many ladders without dropping the pelt.

He ends up wrapping it around his shoulders and tying the ends loosely over his chest as best he can with one arm, using the stump of his left arm to clamp that side in place. Strangely, the heat of it doesn't dissipate. It's like being wrapped in a warm blanket, or a hug. Simon's mouth pinches, and he starts down the ladders as carefully as he can.

Somehow, he doesn't run into Grace. Rocky probably just told him to close his eyes and plug his ears, but Simon doesn't see him before his feet hit the dormitory floor with a thump. Rocky is already there on his side of the partition, pointing at an access hatch to the lower storage compartments where all the gear for the rest of the crew is still haphazardly stuffed.

“Tunnels under storage area,” he says. “For maintenance. Can be for more storage.”

“What if we need to get in there?” Simon asks, eyeing the hatch apprehensively. “What if something breaks?”

“If ship break, I fix,” Rocky says, like he's said a million times before. In his defense, he always has. So Simon finds a canvas bag thick enough to hold the pelt, tucks it carefully inside, and then takes a deep breath and drops into the storage space, shoving the bag behind the first access panel he opens that has enough room to hold it. He's back out and the storage hatch is closed in under sixty seconds, but his heart is still racing and he's lightheaded with stress. This is so stupid. He used to live in maintenance tubes on Eden. It was the only place the kids could hang out, with the unspoken rule that they would report any leaking pipes or other issues they found and help with the repairs if needed. Now, some days he feels the walls closing in while he’s standing in the dormitory itself, even with its fifteen-foot ceiling.

“I'm going to the projection room,” he pants, and leaves Rocky behind for views of wide-open spaces, however artificial they may be.

Six days later, an air line bursts and Grace has to go into the storage compartment to find and remove the busted section for Rocky to fix. Of course, the broken line just happens to be behind the panel with the pelt.

He actually looks confused for a moment when he pulls the bag out, but as soon as he hefts the weight of it, his expression drops. Simon, halfway down the ladder from the lab, really wishes Grace wasn't so fucking accommodating with his claustrophobia and had asked him to do this, instead.

“Oh, c'mon,” Grace groans.

“What?” Simon sighs, dropping the last few steps to the dormitory floor.

“Is this seriously the best you could do?”

“I don't have a lot of options, here. This thing is the size of a fucking courier!” Simon barks in reply, smacking the ladder with the side of his fist. “If it was a reasonable size for a starship – a freighter, or even a trans-station ferry – maybe then I'd have a chance. But this ship's fucking tiny! What do you want from me?”

“I want you to keep it safe!”

Simon flings his arm out in exasperation. “From what?!”

“Anything!” Grace yells. “Everything! I gave it to you; you have to keep it safe!”

“I'm fucking trying,” Simon growls, bewildered and wrong-footed by the intensity of Grace's reaction.

“Try harder!” Grace flings the bag at him and he fumbles, catching it on the descent before it can hit the deck under their feet. Angrily, Grace hauls himself out of the storage compartment and slams the broken section of hose into the transfer box on Rocky's barrier. “Here. Fix this. I'm going upstairs.”

He swarms up the ladder before Simon can stop him – not that he could have done anything more than trip him, with his arm full. And he would never do that. He owes Grace his life. He could never hurt him. Except somehow, he is hurting him by not completing this task, and he doesn't know how to fix it.

“Apology,” Rocky says quietly. “Tried to distract. Could not stop Grace.”

“It's fine,” Simon sighs, still looking up the ladder as the sound of Grace banging around in the lab echoes down from above. With the ship in travel configuration, most machines are sideways and unusable. Not that Simon would know the difference – it's all fancier tech than anything he worked on in Eden. Rocky has helped rotate some equipment, but a lot of space is still taken up by the taumoeba farms Grace is cultivating for Erid, so there's only so much he can do. “Not your fault.”

Rocky's vents clatter and he makes a guilty humming sound. Simon glances over his shoulder and narrows his eyes.

“Hang on...is it your fault?”

Rocky straightens sharply and taps a claw twice in wordless query.

“Did you fuck with the air system so he'd find this?” Simon hefts the pelt, which is slowly sliding out of its bag.

“Oh,” Rocky whistles, slumping a little. “No. Air tube broke alone. Coincidence.”

“Uh-huh,” Simon says slowly, watching as Rocky busies himself with drawing the section of broken line through to his side of the airlock and equalizing the atmosphere. An idea takes root. He's not sure it’ll work, and he's not keen on it, but he's been given a mission, and he doesn't know what other options he has. “Hey, Rocky. What kind of container would this need to survive on your side of the barrier?”

Rocky goes still, then vents air with a wheeze. “What, question?”

“You heard me.” Simon moves forward and drops to a crouch next to the transfer box, closed now that the airlock is cycled for Rocky's atmosphere. He carefully gathers up the pelt to keep it contained in his lap, fingers stroking gently across the soft fur, catching in the bristles when he runs his hand backward too quickly. Rocky twitches the way he does when he hears Grace do or say something in another room, then steps up to the barrier and focuses on the pelt. He tilts his carapace up to regard Simon, who feels pinned by the gaze of a creature with no eyes.

“Can make,” he says. “One week.”

Simon grimaces. “You don't have anything you could use now? I think if Grace finds this again he's gonna strangle me with it.”

“Would not,” Rocky chirps, then sways a little on his claws. “But...might take Grace skin back.”

For some reason, that makes Simon feel sick. “I don't...want that. I don't want him to take it back,” he confesses. “I want to – to keep it safe.”

“Good,” Rocky says firmly. “Will help. Keep Grace skin very safe. One week. Now, hide again.”

Simon sighs and gently folds the skin back into the bag, wracking his brain for another hiding spot where Grace isn't likely to look. He finally ends up stuffing the bag into the locker Grace had cleared everything out of once he'd been able to stand up on his own at last, weeks after he woke up on the ship. He'd been so eager to give Simon something, a space that was his alone that he swore he wouldn't touch. Maybe Simon should have put the pelt there first, but it feels too easy, like it's the first place Grace would look. Still, it works for a week, and at the end of that week, Rocky presents Simon with a flexible mesh of xenonite, a multi-faceted pouch of the same material as the one panel of his ball that he usually uses to reach out and poke Grace through when he's dozing off somewhere other than in bed.

“Plan was to make suit,” Rocky says. “Better than ball. But Grace skin more important.”

“Fuck, really?” Simon hesitates. “This is – that would make things easier for you, right? If you could run around in your own spacesuit?”

“Does not matter. Grace skin more important,” Rocky repeats.

Simon has to agree with that, though he doesn't know why. He just knows this pelt, which always feels warm and is the softest thing on the ship, is as important as Grace himself. And Simon owes Grace his life.

He leaves the pelt in the bag to prevent it from taking on too much of the ammonia-scented atmosphere clinging to the xenonite pouch and seals it inside. Tucking it into the transfer box feels wrong, and for a moment Simon stops with his hand on the barrier, fingers curled over the edge of the box. Something in him rebels at letting it out of his reach. Grace asked him to hide it, to keep it safe. How is giving it to someone else keeping it safe?

“Simon,” Rocky says quietly. “Can change mind. Is okay.”

Surprisingly, that's what firms his resolve. “No,” Simon tells him, pushing the transfer box the rest of the way in until it clicks home in the airlock. “No, I trust you. More importantly, Grace trusts you. Hell, he trusts you more than me. Not sure why he didn't just give it to you in the first place.”

Rocky makes a sound like music played backward and shudders. “Disgust. Too leaky. Rocky have Adrian.”

Simon has no fucking clue what the connection is there, but he shrugs and watches as Rocky purges the airlock and carefully pulls the xenonite pouch out, hurrying over to tuck it into one of his own storage boxes. “How much xenonite do you have left, anyway?”

“Enough,” Rocky says. “Erid one year away. Ship will last. Have enough.”

Simon thinks about him sacrificing his chance to build a flexible suit in order to help his humans and decides that, if he owes Grace his life, he owes Rocky his comfort. He'll remember that. He'll do whatever it takes to keep them both happy.

When Grace crawls into bed that night, he burrows under Simon's arm and yawns before saying “You moved it, didn't you?”

“Hm?” Simon's eyes flick open and he darts a look up to Rocky, motionless in the xenonite bulb above them.

“My...the pelt. You moved it.”

“Uh...maybe?”

“It's fine,” Grace yawns again. “It's warm. I like it.” And within a few breaths, he's asleep.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Simon whispers to Rocky. Rocky wiggles back and forth, which isn't really an answer. But Simon can't push for more without waking Grace, and he doesn't want to do that. Instead, he curls around him, like he used to curl up with his brothers in cold corridors on starships and space stations, and closes his eyes. He'll figure it out later.

Of course, the rest of the journey to Erid isn't perfect. As much as they get along in general, they're at each others' throats some days. How could they not be, on this tiny-ass ship? But whenever it starts to get really bad, both of the humans furious and fuming, Rocky comes up with an engrossing task for Grace to work on and then finds a way to get the pelt through his barrier's airlock. He directs Simon to “do whatever” with it, and Simon usually ends up laying it partially out over his legs and running his hand across it, the sensation of fur under his palm soothing in some primal way. Sometimes he brings it to his face and rubs his cheek against it, letting the bristles rasp against his unshaven jaw before smoothing them out. He wonders if people might have been calmer after the Quiet Rapture if they'd still had animals around – but then he remembers the bleak view of empty portholes where planets once blocked out half the sky, and he knows that nothing could have helped.

Somehow, Grace always seems more relaxed after these forced separations. Simon figures it's a result of just getting away from him, and so tries to make himself scarce more often, but it's hard on a ship the size of a fucking courier drone. And Grace always finds him, anyway, or Rocky does, to ask him to eat or to get his opinion on some engineering thing or to make him taste-test another taumoeba recipe. Eventually, Simon resigns himself to being cared for as he tries to care for them in turn.

And then, many months later and yet somehow in no time at all, they're orbiting a cloud-covered planet with enormous blue rings, and Simon can't stop looking through the airlock window at it. This, more than anything, makes his escape feel real. Maybe he is dead. But right now, looking at an actual planet that intelligent beings live on, he doesn't give a fuck either way.

The first request Rocky has, after the formalities are taken care of, is to build Grace an ocean.

Grace himself seems embarrassed by this, insisting he can wait. They compromise by prioritizing the taumoeba transfer and seeding Erid's star system while a secondary team begins to break ground on a biodome big enough for two humans.

Simon's a bit surprised by that. He'd assumed...well. He'd assumed that Grace would want to be rid of him. He'd hoped they would stay in contact, but he'd been prepared to live out the rest of his days on this tiny-ass ship without complaint, as well. The idea of living on a planet – an actual, real planet in a universe untouched by the Quiet Rapture – seems like too much to ask.

“You're not asking,” Grace tells him when he lets some of this slip. “I'm telling you. You're staying with me.” He stops and bites his lip, suddenly looking hesitant. “I mean...if you want, of course.”

“Of course I want,” Simon replies, nearly stumbling over the words. Grace's smile in response is brighter than the artificial sun in the projection room.

Simon finally gets to see the ship in centrifuge mode once they're in orbit, since they no longer have to be traveling. They'd spent a week in zero-g while things were worked out with the Eridians as they began to upgrade their space elevator that had languished since the departure of their singular spaceship, so having gravity again is a little weird. Even weirder is watching Grace wrap his arms around various large pieces of equipment in the lab, hugging each one in turn and expounding on how much he's missed them. Then he gets to work on making sure he and Simon won't die of starvation.

By the time they've got that figured out, the biodome is almost ready. Grace loses a tooth from something he calls scurvy somewhere in there, and Rocky immediately takes possession of it and hides it away. Simon thinks he's running experiments on it. It’s actually one of the less weird ways the two of them have interacted with each other.

There are a few more nutritional kinks to be worked out – Simon was anemic and didn’t even know it, a condition that seems bleakly ironic – but soon, they’re suited up in Eridian-made exosuits and descending the beanstalk of the space elevator, xenonite strands glittering golden around them and winking out slowly as they drop below the thick atmosphere.

“They really don’t know what this looks like?” Simon murmurs.

“They’ve got no idea,” Grace replies. “But Rocky says it sounds beautiful.”

Rocky himself stayed behind on the Hail Mary, ostensibly to oversee her inspection and inventory by a team of Eridian space engineers. His comments on staying felt very weighted, though, and Simon noticed Grace giving him a look that was so unutterably grateful that Simon himself had to look away.

Because of that, the two humans are alone when they step carefully through the airlock system that cycles them from pitch darkness to the formless glow of an idle computer screen. The biodome is already an impressive piece of engineering, and it isn’t even completed yet. Rocky has been consulting with the designers over architectural models and miniaturized puppets of massive engines. The latter at least makes sense once Simon sees the deep sloping pit to one side of the biodome and the construction of an immense wheel in the middle of it.

“Oh, Rocky,” Grace whispers. “You shouldn’t have.”

“What is it?” Simon tilts his head. He can see the basic lines of it, but it’s still alien technology that he’s slow to wrap his brain around.

“It’s a wave machine,” Grace grins, and then Simon can see it.

“You really like the water, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Grace says quietly, eyes huge behind the clear faceplate of his exosuit. The biodome team is testing the lighting, but they haven’t finished the atmosphere yet and won’t until the main construction is done, for the ease of the Eridians carrying said construction out. Simon’s not looking forward to the smell of ammonia that will surely permeate everything, but with the right filters and O2 scrubbers, the scent probably won’t last too long.

They do a stiff-legged circuit of the biodome so far, commenting on the bands of color in the cliffs and confirming the spot the team had suggested for the house to be built. Simon checks again to make sure that Grace doesn’t want a separate house, but the look Grace turns on him is so wounded that he immediately rescinds his comment.

They return to the elevator, and the ship, and Rocky. The construction crews and scientists work faster. Less than a month later, Rocky is delighted to inform them that the biodome is ready.

Moving everything takes a longer time than Simon had thought it would, even though Grace said Rocky moving in was an endeavor. Grace wants half the lab equipment, so that all has to be removed, packed up, transported, and set up in the house. Simon’s not even sure it can be called a house: it’s closer in size to the mansions the old-Mars families lived in when he was young. For fuck's sake, there are separate rooms for cooking and for eating! Simon doesn’t know what to do with any of it, so he focuses on helping Grace and getting his own shit packed.

He doesn’t have much. His boots survived the blood ocean, as well as his pants and his underharness, but his shirt was a lost cause according to Grace, and his coat was long gone. As a result, his clothing is actually Grace’s clothing mixed up with the rest of the crew’s clothing that Simon modified, letting hems out and stitching fabric together as needed (with much swearing about having to adjust to doing it all one-handed). Grace was surprised at first that he knew such skills, until he explained that with resources so scarce after the Rapture, everyone learned to repair what they had. The other options were dressing in rags or going naked – neither of which were good choices on chilly space stations and starships trying to conserve their fuel.

And then, of course, there’s the pelt.

Rocky pulls him aside while Grace is arguing with the architects about doorway dimensions that he’s sure he specified, because now how is he supposed to get the mass spec in, and yes, of course he needs it in the house, who do they think he is –

“Leave Grace to have fun,” Rocky chirps quietly. “Come come come.”

Simon follows him through the ship, ducking his head to avoid panels that have been partially removed from the walls to allow Eridian scientists to evaluate overuse damage and gain knowledge before building new, smaller ships than their first one, ships they can use to seed more local group stars with taumoeba. Rocky’s design for a flexible suit has been built and replicated a dozen times over in the last few weeks, and he says that some Eridians are even wearing it in their own atmosphere as a fashion statement. Simon doesn’t really get that, but Rocky sounds pleasantly baffled by the idea that he might be a trendsetter.

He scurries through an airlock into his tunnel system but keeps the suit on as he darts to one of his cases and hurries back, this time holding a very familiar flexible xenonite pouch.

“Must take with you,” he says, climbing back into the tunnel airlock and purging it. “Must keep Grace skin safe.”

Simon has to juggle the pouch when Rocky hands it to him – it’s still hot as fuck from the Eridian atmosphere. “How am I supposed to get it into the biodome without anyone asking questions? I already moved my clothes and shit down there.”

Rocky hums in thought, then skitters over to the open storage compartment. “Bag inside with strap,” he says, pointing a claw. “Put Grace skin inside. Put clothes on top, around, under. Disguise shape with more soft things.”

Simon does, stuffing clothing around the xenonite pouch until the embroidered satchel bulges. He has to maneuver himself sideways through doors once he’s got his exosuit back on, but when Grace sees the satchel looped over Simon’s shoulder and resting at his waist, something in his frame unclenches, and he smiles.

Eventually, they get everything moved and settle into a new routine in the biodome. Rocky stays with them more often than not, usually joined by his mate, who is taller than Simon and nearly as tall as Grace, their carapace made of the same gleaming green-blue rock that’s embedded in some of Rocky’s limbs. For their part, Adrian has several sections of russet stone embedded in their own limbs that are visual matches to Rocky’s carapace. Simon hasn’t really been part of the discussions or meetings with the rest of the families of Rocky’s doomed crew – he’s pretty sure Grace and Rocky both kept him out of that – but he can tell that Adrian is the kind of grateful that religion is built from, and he watches them carefully as the days go on. The longer they neglect to become a self-styled prophet singing of destiny and chosen ones returning, the easier it is for Simon to relax.

He’s got the pelt tucked away in a cupboard in the room Rocky said was his. He notes that it’s smaller than Grace’s room, with a smaller bed, and promptly tells Grace that he’s not subtle, and of course he would prefer it if they kept sharing a bed. The only time he slept alone was in prison, and he’s got no desire to go back to that. Even Eden adults piled up to stay warm and keep an eye on each other. Space stations are cold, and nights get long with no planetary glow lighting the portholes. They watched out for each other, like Simon watches out for Grace.

Grace seems extremely relieved by this decision, and he immediately makes room for Simon, who moves half his clothes into Grace’s suspiciously giant closet. Again, he’s not subtle.

It’s Rocky who stops him one day while he’s admiring the tree sculpture the little alien is working on outside the house to ask about the pelt.

“Grace skin safe, question?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s hidden.”

“Good, good, good.” Rocky is still placing pieces of the sculpture together and angling them to be welded in place, but he’s clearly thinking about something else, as well. “Maybe Simon move Grace skin.”

Simon feels his eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe Simon move Grace skin near water,” Rocky says in a rush. “Xenonite pouch safe safe safe, keep Grace skin clean and dry. Better to have near water.”

“Hm.” Simon looks out from the cliff, over the glittering surface of the sea below. It still makes him twitchy, but it looks so visually different from the blood ocean that he’s getting used to it. He even enjoys the sound of the waves washing in and out across the rocky strand, so similar to the soothing recordings he grew accustomed to in the projection room on the Hail Mary. “Is this request coming from you, or from Grace?”

“I ask.” Rocky looks shifty.

“Yeah, but did Grace ask you to ask me?”

“...I ask,” Rocky repeats, and Simon takes pity on him.

“Okay, then. I guess I’ll try to find a spot to hide it,” he begins to say, then startles when Rocky flings the assembly tools off his claws and hurries for the staircase down.

“Rocky have spot. Come come come!”

“Fucking hell, you could have just said that,” Simon grumbles, following him down to the base of the cliff. Sure enough, Rocky presents a section of stone that’s been carved out and placed on hinges that are invisible once the stone door is closed. No key is needed – Rocky shows Simon how to press on a certain spot, and the door panel pops out. With another press, it clicks closed and blends so seamlessly with the cliff face that Simon would never be able to find it if he didn’t already know it was there.

“Hang on, can’t your people see this? Or hear that there’s a space there?” Simon taps at the door panel.

Rocky shakes his carapace in a gesture he picked up from his humans. “No. Is lined with ♫♪♪♬. Cannot hear inside.”

Whatever that word is, it isn’t in the translation program, which means not even Grace knows about it. Simon doesn’t know how to feel about that, but he moves the pelt to the new location anyway, meters away from the hissing waves.

Grace walks the beach every day, and he even swims sometimes, when the biodome team gets the water temperature right. He’s starting to talk about teaching again – half the planet wants to hear him speak about his planet's science, but he's more interested in going back to classroom work with kids. Simon tries to stay out of it. His universe doesn’t have anything to teach this one, except for what not to do.

“Would you tell me?” Grace asks one day as they meander side-by-side along the shoreline. The tree sculpture is done, twisting up toward the dome next to the house on the cliff above its winding staircase. It’s a foggy-lighting day, which always brings out a certain level of introspection in Grace.

“Tell you what?” Simon asks.

“If I asked you where my – where the pelt is,” Grace says, swallowing before continuing, “would you tell me?”

Simon frowns at him. “Yeah, of course. It’s yours.”

Grace stops and takes a deep breath, and when he lets it out, it’s shaky. Simon reaches for him, steadying him with a hand on his arm, not entirely sure what’s going on. Grace smiles at the gesture, patting Simon’s hand with his own, and then starts walking again.

Simon lets his hand drop, but he’s really fucking conscious of the skin that Grace touched, and he flexes his fingers gently as they walk further down the beach. What was that about?

“Do you want to know?” he asks.

“Not now,” Grace replies. “Maybe later.”

It’s three more days before he asks. Simon takes him down the stairs, watching his expression of skepticism grow at the idea of the pelt out in the elements of the biodome. But when he pushes on the cliff wall and the door panel pops open, Grace’s whole face lights up. He has Simon show him several more times how the door is marked and how to open it, and then he slams it closed and grins.

“Thank you,” he says, and it sounds weirdly intense.

Simon nods mutely, and when Grace takes his hand to lead him back up the staircase, he goes without protest.

“You know you don’t have to, right?” Grace’s brow is furrowed with concern, and he looks over the coils of nylon rope salvaged from the Hail Mary lying in the bottom of the xenonite-framed boat with grave suspicion.

“Oh, absolutely,” Simon replies. “But it’ll be fun to pull one over on these guys. They’re all geniuses, but they can’t figure out a seized joint? Please. I got this.”

The floating platform the wave machine team erected isn't actually floating – it's standing on long legs on the seafloor. Simon just has to take the boat out, dock with the platform, and then work on fixing the parts the team dredges up from the depths. Two Eridians are already ensconced in exosuits on the seafloor, removing the seized section of engine. Once he gets his hand on it on the platform, Simon doesn't expect the project to take very long.

For once, he's right and things work out. The little alien engine on the boat smoothly cruises across the water; the platform's dock is solid and easy to moor to; and the ladder is built with an extra length of pipe on the left side that Simon can hook the stump of his arm behind in order to balance better as he climbs. He almost forgoes the rope, but decides better when he thinks of the look on Grace's face if he falls off the platform and the Eridians can't get to him. He's wearing a home-made life vest of cobbled-together cushions and inflated air bladders of some creature that lives in the Eridian wilds, but the aliens can't swim. They're too heavy. Simon can't swim either, but only because he grew up on a desert planet and then a space station. It wasn't high on his list of priorities. He can keep himself afloat – Grace made sure of that over the first few weeks they spent in the biodome – but anything more complex is out of his range. So the rope that's tied to his life vest at one end and the platform ladder on the other end is important, since it would allow an Eridian to reel him in if he were to fall.

He's not going to, of course. The platform is solid, and with the wave machine down, the water is still as a mirror beneath it. Even when the crane pulls a massive piece of machinery up, the platform doesn't tilt or shift in any way. And after Simon gets shoulder-deep in the guts of the seized motor, it only takes him twenty minutes to loosen the joints and point out which parts need replacing and what connection needs work. The Eridians on the platform set about reinforcing the engine with xenonite and their own matte gray metal, and Simon stands and looks out over the water, watching Grace pace back and forth on the shoreline. When he raises his arm to wave, Grace waves back, then sits down on the sand and starts tossing rocks into the water. Simon grins and goes back to watching the alien engineers swarm over the motor until it spins easily, and then helps them hook it up for the crane to lower it back to the seafloor team to reattach.

At first, Simon doesn't realize anything has gone wrong. He's sitting down, now, dangling his feet off the edge of the platform, idly wrapping the rope around his forearm before letting it loosen, then wrapping it up again to feel the gentle pressure against his skin. He thinks he hears something, some deep noise that sounds far away, but nothing happens for a long enough moment that he ignores it.

Then suddenly, the Eridians still on the platform are screeching in alarm. One scrambles to the platform's edge opposite Simon and bugles down at the water. Another is shrieking into a communication device it's clutching in its claw. The third is leaping toward the crane as it begins to bend, its chain still hooked to the motor part on the seafloor. And the fourth is watching the loops of nylon rope whip off the platform and out of sight into the sea.

Wait. The rope is –

Simon's arm snaps out and he yells sharply as the line tightens viciously over his wrist, at the same time going taut where it's connected to his vest. In the space of a breath he's being yanked backward, skidding across the platform and tumbling right over the edge before any of the Eridians can lunge for him.

As he falls, Simon's brain whirls madly. First, the wave machine must have turned on as soon as the repaired part was reconnected. Apparently, aliens don't have lock-out-tag-out safety precautions. Second, the length of nylon rope Simon brought with him is far too long – he hadn't wanted to cut it, since it was good solid rope, and he'd figured he could keep it coiled and out of the way. It must have gotten caught on something and dragged far enough below the surface that it hooked on the crane's chain or even the wave arm itself, and now it's taking him for a ride.

Third: he's absolutely fucked. A life vest is useless if you're being held underwater, and the momentum of the rope pulling Simon down suggests he's on his way to the bottom. With his arm still tangled in the rope that's dragging him, there's no way he can untie himself.

He's going to die here. How fucking stupid.

Just before he hits the water, he thinks he sees Grace on the shoreline. He's not sure, though, because he'd expect Grace to be racing uselessly into the shallows in an attempt to get to the work platform as quickly as possible. But the figure Simon thinks he sees is in a flat-out sprint toward the cliff, and appears to be shedding clothing.

He's hallucinated before. Why not now, at the hour of his death?

The water hits him like a wall, knocking the last bit of breath from his lungs, then closes over him before he can get even the tiniest sip of air in. At least this will be quick – there's no way he has enough air to last long enough for someone to reel him in. The rope is probably tangling further with the crane's chain or the motor or whatever it's caught on right now. Hopefully the tension won't rip the ladder off the platform.

Fuck, hopefully the seafloor team didn't get crushed when the wave arm turned on.

Simon can't see anything. His nose burns, water forced up his nostrils when he hit the surface, and his world is dark and rushing and full of pain and confusion and pants-shitting terror. Head pounding, he tries futilely to wrench his wrist free from the rope, though he's not sure he could even find the knot at this point. But it's no use – his idle wrapping of the nylon length around his arm has irreversibly locked that limb away from his body. It might actually get torn off, too, if this goes on much longer.

Oh, well. If this goes on much longer, he'll be dead.

He's more than halfway there already. It still feels like he's flying through the water, so that rope is well and truly caught. Blood thumps in his skull, his ears ringing from the rushing water and the impact with the surface, and there's a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest. His lungs convulse against his will, and he breathes water that burns like scorching flames down his throat. He thrashes weakly, more out of survival instinct than anything else. Maybe it's his destiny to die in oceans.

As consciousness slips away from him, he wonders where he'll wake up this time. Some other last-ditch mission's starship, maybe? Or will he find himself back in the collapsing sub, monster teeth punching through the metal around him, alarms screaming like he never left? If he had the choice, he'd prefer to wake up in the Hail Mary again.

Maybe this time, he'll get it right.

A sharp-edged vice clamps over his arm. Drifting, flying, lungs burning, he can barely feel anything besides sheer animal fear – but he feels this. And he feels it when the vice grip vanishes, replaced by fierce pinpricks at his shoulder and bicep before the rushing sensation of water pulling past him suddenly ceases. At the edge of awareness, his body gives one last great thrashing heave, but to no avail. The surface is far beyond his reach. And maybe he was imagining the sharp sensations, anyway, because now the water is moving past him again, though it feels softer than before. Before he can understand what that means, the last thin stream of oxygen in his lungs is replaced by solid water that stabs like knives, and everything goes dark.

There is gravel under his cheek, and somewhere nearby, people are yelling.

Simon tries to breathe and coughs instead, curling up involuntarily with wracking heaves as his body protests its recent treatment. He vomits water from his mouth and nose – that burns like a motherfucker – and tries to get his arms under his aching body to figure out what the fuck is going on.

His chest immediately slams into the rocks underneath him again, teeth clacking as his chin hits the ground. Right. Arm, singular. Can't use the left one for anything. Recalibrating, he wrenches his eyes open and pushes with his right arm, managing to flop himself partially over before that arm gives out, which is not fucking cool. He's only got the one – he kind of needs it to keep working.

On his side now, he drags his wrist across something bulky on his chest and squints at the rivulets of blood running down his forearm from several sets of punctures arranged in an elongated U-shape. Blinking weakly and wheezing, Simon tries to make sense of this. Someone must have cut him loose. But who? And how?

And who the fuck is shouting?

Muscles screaming, Simon rolls onto his back and lets his head fall to the side, wet hair bunching under his cheekbone. He thinks he sees Adrian down the beach with a group of smaller Eridians, but much closer, his view is eclipsed by the hazy forms of Rocky and Grace, who are engaged in a full-blown yelling match.

“– can't just leave them down there!” Grace is saying. “I can get to them! There's plenty of rope, thanks to this idiot. I can't carry them to the platform, but I can pull them through the water to the beach, at least!”

“Suits will hold,” Rocky snaps in reply. “Have atmosphere to breathe. Will not die. Grace stay here!”

“They've gotta be terrified.” Grace's blurry shape makes some motion with one arm that Simon's waterlogged vision can't make out. He seems awfully pale, for some reason. “And what if someone hits the wrong button again, huh? You said they're pinned right now. What if the arm starts up again? They'll be crushed!”

“Will not happen,” Rocky bugles.

“It wasn't supposed to happen in the first place, and look at this!” Grace screams.

Simon winces and groans at the shrill noise, and both Grace and Rocky's blurry shapes jump in response. Were they seriously so caught up in their argument that they didn't notice Simon hacking up a lung and flopping around like a beached fish a few feet away from them?

Apparently so, because when Grace crashes to his knees next to Simon's side, he sounds frantic. “Simon? Are you okay? Rocky said there was only a little bit of water left in your lungs. I'm sorry I bit you! What were you thinking, letting the rope fall off the platform like that?”

That's probably a record for how long Grace has been genuinely concerned about him before switching to scolding, Simon thinks wryly as he tries to get his throat and tongue to work in tandem long enough to allow him to shape audible words. “Wha' 'appened?” he croaks. Eh, close enough.

“Rope caught in chain, chain pulled down when motor start,” Rocky butts in. Grace, who's been running both hands across Simon's chest and arm as if checking for injuries, turns to glare at him. There's definitely something going on with his appearance, but the biodome lights are too bright for Simon to focus, and the fact that his head feels like it's going to split open doesn't help. He coughs raggedly, and Grace gets an arm under his back and helps heave him upward so he can brace his elbow on his knees and try to remember how to breathe.

“You fuckers never heard of LOTO, huh?” Simon rasps after a moment.

“What el oh tee oh, question?”

“Lock out, tag out,” Simon replies. “Keeps anyone from starting a machine up while maintenance is being done.” He coughs again and gestures out at the water, where he can see the platform slanting crookedly above the water. “I'm guessing that's what happened here?”

“Actually,” Grace grits out, “they never turned it off in the first place.”

Simon swings his head around and reaches up to shove salt-crusted strands of hair out of his view. “What?” he sputters. “How the fuck –?”

He freezes, blinking. Grace gives him a sheepish look and reaches down to tug the pelt – the pelt – up from around his very naked waist to his just-as-naked shoulders.

“Um. Surprise?”

“What the fuck,” Simon says blankly, because what the fuck? Why is Grace naked? Why does he have the pelt? And why does it look so good against his pale skin?

Before he can say another word, an echoing boom rolls across the water, and every single Eridian present bursts into a cacophony of whistles and hoots.

“Shit,” Rocky says, and Simon is so glad the two of them spent a week plugging every kind of profanity they could think of into the translator back on the Hail Mary, because shit is right.

“Did that fucking thing just start up again?” Simon croaks out. Next to him, Grace stands in one smooth motion, tugging the pelt around his throat like some kind of fucking pagan priest.

Rocky is fluting back and forth with another Eridian further down the beach and doesn't reply.

“I'm going,” Grace says, and starts moving before either Simon or Rocky can react. He steps forward, reaching down and grabbing the loose end of the nylon rope Simon had been using, straightening up and hurling it overarm in the same motion as he keeps walking. It flops wetly onto the surface of the water and starts to sink, but Simon is distracted by Grace curling a hand back to tug the pelt up over his head and then pitching forward into the sea.

A sleek, round head surfaces, and Simon finds himself waiting for Grace to pop up, because that's not the mess of golden hair he's used to seeing wet and waterlogged after a swim. But as the strange shape surges forward, grabbing the rope in its mouth and then arrowing into the depths and out of sight, his oxygen-starved brain begins banging pots and pans behind his eyes, urging him to make connections he'd never even considered as possible before.

Slowly, Simon rotates his arm on his knees until he's looking at the bloody punctures and examines the arrangement they're in. Elongated U-shapes, with deeper punctures to each side of the curve and broader punctures at the open end of the lines. As he rolls his arm further, the matching curve comes into view, lining up perfectly with the first on top of his arm. Fresh blood trickles out of the wounds at the motion, and Simon stares blindly as it runs down his forearm, diluting with the water still soaking his skin and dripping to the ground below.

I'm sorry I bit you, Grace had said earlier, and he’d fucking missed it. This isn't the shape of a human mouth, and no human has teeth like this. But Grace had said I'm sorry I bit you.

“Simon?” Rocky asks carefully, and Simon turns to look at him. He's crouched low in the rocks several feet away from Simon's hip, and he looks as guilty as a creature with no face can possibly look.

“You knew,” Simon croaks, because suddenly he's sure of that. “You knew the whole time.”

“Yes,” Rocky whistles mournfully. “Big secret. Very important.”

“Big secret,” Simon repeats. “From me?” Even though he's spent his entire time with Grace and Rocky tempering his expectations and reminding himself of his place, that still hurts.

“From everyone,” Rocky replies. “Everyone on Erid. Everyone on Earth. Big secret.”

Simon rests his chin on his shoulder and eyes the group of Eridians behind Rocky. Several of them are stock-still, while others are speaking into communication units or scrambling to continue what they were doing before Grace went and fucking shape-shifted in front of them all. Simon wonders what that process sounds like to creatures that are living medical scanners, then decides he doesn’t want to know.

“Secret’s out, now.”

Rocky shivers slightly. “Yes. Do not know what happen next. Grace scared of secret being found.”

“Why?” Simon frowns down at him, clearing his throat roughly. His ribs ache. His fucking eyelids ache.

“Grace explain later,” Rocky says, which is kind of a cop-out.

“What’s he even doing?” Simon pushes wet hair back from his face and squints out at the listing platform, where several Eridians are hurrying to and fro. It looks like they’re reinforcing the crane, which has nearly been torn loose and hangs half-submerged in the water.

“Remember technicians underwater, question?”

Simon swallows, his throat clicking. “Are they...are they still down there?”

“Yes. But,” Rocky adds, tilting his carapace and pausing for a moment. “Grace free first technician. Both free second technician now. Return soon.”

Shoulders slumping, Simon nods, letting his head hang. There’s still a throbbing behind his eyes, and watery blood dribbles from his nose. He swipes it away and makes a face.

“Disgust, disgust, disgust,” Rocky says cheerfully.

“Shut up,” Simon grunts. “You try inhaling half the ocean and see how you feel.”

“Would die,” Rocky replies. “Humans leaky, but strong. Grace say mostly made of water. More water does not kill.”

“Humans, huh?” Simon squints toward the listing platform again. “Is that what he calls himself?”

“Oh,” Rocky says. “Um.”

“What is he, actually?”

“...Big secret.”

“No. Not anymore.” Simon shakes his head.

“Cannot say,” Rocky tries.

Simon scoffs. “You mean you won’t.”

“...Yes.”

“Fine,” he sighs, reaching up and digging his fingers into his hair. “Whatever. I’ll ask him when he gets back.”

“Yes, yes, yes, this good idea.”

It doesn’t take long before that dark round head pops up above the water again, just a few meters out from the shore. Waterlogged red nylon is gripped in its mouth, and it tows the line to the group of Eridians down the beach from Simon and Rocky. For a moment, none of them move, but then Rocky trills quietly and Adrian steps into the shallows, reaching out with careful claws to take the rope from the creature’s jaws and begin hauling it in, a heavy weight clearly on the other end.

The creature snorts, its whiskery snout wrinkling, then ducks under the surface and reappears in front of Simon and Rocky. It regards Simon for a moment with large, dark eyes, and he stares right back, not sure what expression his face is making right now.

“Hello friend Grace,” Rocky says, waving a claw, and the creature snorts again before rolling onto its side and extending a dark, claw-tipped flipper in response. Simon feels phantom pinpricks of pain on his arm and shoulder, and remembers getting whacked in the face by something that looked like that, way back when Grace was first asking him to hide the pelt on Mary.

“Simon,” Rocky sidles over and nudges him. “Say hello to Grace.”

Simon glances down at his arm, still streaked with drying blood, and twists his hand to wiggle his fingers. “Hi, Grace,” he rasps quietly, a bit uncertain still. He wouldn’t put it past the two of them to fuck with him, but this is a bit much even for them.

The creature ducks below the water, another pair of dark flippers visible behind it as its silver-gray body approaches, and then it vanishes completely beneath the surface. A moment later, Grace surges up out of the shallow water in one long, lean movement, shrugging the speckled pelt down over his shoulders. Simon can see the edges of it where it clings unnaturally to his thighs and arms before he shifts his shoulders as he wades forward and it falls more loosely around him. His long pale legs flash in the artificial sunlight, water running off the wet pelt and trickling in rivulets down his calves.

Behind him and to the side, the first of the two seafloor technicians breaches the surface, red nylon wrapped around their dented exosuit. The second technician follows, limping and collapsing in the shallows as others hurry into the water to help them.

Rocky sways indecisively, and Grace glances sideways before smiling at him, his teeth just a bit sharper than normal. “They’ll be fine,” he says. “They got spooked when the arm moved and pinned them. No major damage. Xenonite is amazing.”

“Is best material,” Rocky replies, preening.

Simon watches them silently, breathing shallowly so as to not aggravate his lungs, every muscle aching and his mind spinning. Grace not being human would explain why he was so casual about Simon in general, and the damage done to his body specifically. He’d shrugged when Simon’s left eye stayed a sickening crimson, when the diagonal red streak of stained skin across his face refused to fade, when the skin over the stump of his arm roughened into a bark-like texture and then peeled like dry citrus, when Armando had to file down the teeth on half of his jaw once a week for two months to keep them from cutting through his cheek as they grew faster than any bone should ever grow. Things eventually equalized with Simon’s body, but he never felt like Grace thought he was disgusting or alien – possibly because he was already friends with an alien, one who called him disgusting for doing basic shit like sneezing.

Apparently that wasn't all, though. He knows who Grace is; he's confident about that. He just suddenly doesn’t know what he is.

“Hey, uh...how are you feeling?” Grace is suddenly crouching next to Simon, the pelt still wrapped around his torso. He's holding it closed with one hand, but his other hand is gentle on Simon's shoulder.

“Like shit,” Simon rasps, then clears his tender throat and winces when that action aggravates what feels like half the nerves in his body. Wincing doesn't help – now all the nerves in his body are throbbing, sending electrical signals of pain jolting through him. His next breath comes out as a whine, shaky and involuntary, and Grace's gaze sharpens.

“Can you take a deep breath for me?”

“Don't think so,” Simon grumbles. Truthfully, he doesn't want to try.

Grimacing, Grace glances over his shoulder. “Rocky?”

“Bad bad bad,” Rocky says, and now it's Grace's turn to flinch, spinning more to face Rocky, his fingers clamping down on Simon's shoulder.

“You said he was okay when I dragged him out!”

“Is okay,” Rocky says. “Breathing, moving, talking. Brain okay. Is fine.”

“Debatable,” Simon says, feeling like his head is going to fall off, his arm throbbing in time with his pulse.

“I am so sorry.” Grace turns back to him and lets the pelt pool around his waist so he can get his free hand on Simon's other shoulder. Simon keeps his eyes determinedly on Grace's face. “I'm just – there's a lot going on. I'm sure you have questions, but we should get you back up to the house.”

Simon groans. “Grace, if you try to move me right now, I will puke all over you.”

Rocky chirrups in laughter, and Grace grimaces. “Great. Okay. Let's not do that.”

“I can ask questions?” Simon will take anything to not have to move for a few more minutes. He's pretty sure he'll pass out as soon as he tries to stand up, and he'd like to hold that off as long as possible.

“Of course.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic. First question,” Simon says roughly. “Why are you naked? Second question: what are you?”

Grace huffs out a surprised breath of laughter. “Are you sure those are in the right order?”

“Yep.”

“Okay then.” He leans back and tucks the pelt more securely around his waist. “I'm naked because I can't put my skin on with clothes in the way. It's like trying to plug an electrical cord in with cloth over the outlet. It just doesn't work. And as for what I am...”

He glances sideways at Rocky, who leans against him. He very resolutely does not look over his shoulder, where the other Eridians gathered around the two members of the seafloor team can surely hear him, simply squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath.

“I'm a selkie.”

Simon blinks at him, waiting for more clarification. When Grace just stares defiantly back, he closes his eyes against the too-bright light and rolls his wrist to flick his fingers. “And that means...?”

“Um...” Grace hesitates. “Sealfolk?”

“Sealfolk,” Simon sighs, squinting at him. “Seals, like...watertight seals?”

“Oh. Wow. No. Okay.” Grace brings a hand up to scratch at the scruff on his jaw. “I, um. I'm actually not sure how to explain this to someone who doesn't know what seals are.”

Simon frowns and points at Rocky. “Did he fucking know what seals were when you told him?”

Grace looks cagey. “I may have strategically shown him specific movies and TV shows and talked about the mythology of creatures like that before I told him anything specific. And I only showed him my skin when...well.”

“When Grace thought would die,” Rocky whistles quietly. “Only show Grace skin then. Only show change then.”

Grace tosses his hands up. The pelt shifts in Simon's periphery, but he keeps his eyes on Grace's face. He can do this. “I didn't think it mattered! I thought I was going to die because the ship wasn't designed with enough fuel for a return trip! And then you went and told me you would give me more fuel when I was still a gosh-dang seal laying on the floor!”

Simon snorts at the mental image, then clutches his ribs and groans when a stabbing pain shoots through his chest.

“Oh geez, I'm sorry.” Grace's hands are on him again, and Simon forces his head up to make eye contact. He looks distressed, and at least half as tired as Simon feels. It makes sense, Simon realizes. He swam to the platform, chewed through the rope to free Simon, dragged him to shore, presumably got the rope untangled at some point since he had it on the rocks, then went back out and hauled the two Eridians across the seafloor to the beach. And it sounds like he hasn't shifted in years – not where he could swim, at least, unless he's been sneaking out and putting the pelt on at night.

Somehow, Simon doesn't think so. The way he talks about it, the way he looked at Simon when he asked for it, suggests that there's something more going on here that he doesn't understand. But he's pretty sure it involves Grace ceding some level of possession to him – which is really fucking weird, but also makes something in his chest flutter.

“A seal is an animal, then, huh?” he asks. “You can change into an animal? You should do that more, if you want. Whenever you want.”

Rocky trills quietly as Grace leans back, looking like he's been struck on the head.

“Are you...really? Are you sure?”

Simon nods once. Why wouldn't he be sure? “Does it hurt?”

Grace laughs breathlessly. “No, not at all. It feels – freeing, I guess. Like it's right.”

Simon tilts his head. “Could you do it again? I couldn't see before. I don't really know what you look like.”

“Oh.” Grace shares a glance with Rocky, who appears very smug about something, rocking from side to side like he does when he's got the upper hand in an argument. “Right now?”

“If you want,” Simon shrugs, faux-casually.

“You don't think it's weird?” Grace pushes, and Simon scoffs lightly, grimacing at the sting of pain in his lungs.

“Everything about us is weird,” he says, gesturing to his own face and arm, scarred and mutated with echoes of the blood ocean that tried to kill him, and very well may have in another life. “You being able to shapeshift on command is pretty fucking cool, actually.”

“You think so?” Grace grins, glancing over his shoulder at the other Eridians and then looking down at Rocky. “I guess they all know already, so it doesn't really matter...”

“No one care what Grace shape,” Rocky says in a tone that suggests they've been over this before. “Grace help save Erid. Grace choose to die for Erid. No one care if you stay selkie all day every day forever.”

“I didn't choose to die for Erid,” Grace says, his eyes watery. “I chose to die for you, you doofus. And I'd do it again.” He leans down and wraps his arms around Rocky, who shrieks in joking distress.

“Disgust, disgust, disgust! Grace leaking all over suit! Go be seal for Simon. Go! Shoo!”

Simon can't do anything about the smile on his face as he watches the two of them push at each other. He knows where he stands, and it's one rung below the two of them on any relationship ladder there is. And he's fine with that. It's fine. He gets to be alive.

“I don't normally do this on dry land,” Grace chuckles. “I, uh...I guess the last time was in the Hail Mary.”

“Fuck, that’s right, didn't you wake up with amnesia?” Simon remembers. “How did that go?”

Grace grimaces. “Oh, bad. Very bad. I found the skin in my stuff, and as soon as I touched it I knew I had to wrap myself up in it. I'd only been awake and mobile for less than a day at that point, so I was pretty wobbly. And then suddenly I was a seal, and that – let me tell you, that was jarring.”

Rocky chitters in amusement again. “Very funny,” he says.

Simon squints at him in confusion. “You weren't even there.”

“Mary started filming everything as soon as I woke up,” Grace says sheepishly. “There's video. Rocky's seen it. That's one video that didn't go back to Earth on the beetles. Well...that, and a few others.”

That sounds like something to unpack later. “So, changing on the ground is hard?” Simon shrugs weakly and gestures at the sea. “Okay. There's water right there.”

“No, it's fine,” Grace says. “I'll just –” He grabs the pelt, pulls it up over himself, and then...

Simon's not sure how to describe it even to himself. He almost misses it again because Grace moves so quickly, but he sees Grace tug the pelt over his head like a hood, and then it slides across him, folding over his face, silver-gray fur overtaking pale skin and dark gold hair as Grace leans sideways, his legs drawing up as the pelt wraps around them. It's almost like the way mold grows, but sped up, silver fuzz crawling across his limbs, his torso, until it meets in the middle and fills out and –

There's a creature laying on the sand next to Simon, built like a long torpedo, short dark flippers at its sides and longer flippers at one end. The face at the other end is strange – the snout is short but heavily whiskered, the ears are holes in the side of its head, its nostrils are slit-shaped until they open in a breath and then they're twice as wide and curving to either side, and its eyes...its eyes are round and black and fathomless as deep space.

“What the fuck,” Simon says automatically, then continues as Rocky bristles. “That's fucking incredible.”

“Grace skin important,” Rocky says, and Simon huffs out a painful laugh.

“Yeah, I knew that already. This is on another level, though. Can you...can you talk like this?”

Grace shakes his head, squinting his huge dark eyes, then opening them wide again.

“Can you make any noise at all?”

“ABWABWABLAAAUGH,” Grace barks in a loud, gruff voice, teeth flashing, and Simon jumps – but not half as much as the Eridians down the beach, who were pretending not to be paying close attention to the proceedings and seemingly weren't expecting a loud noise like that. Several of them skitter away before hunkering down in apparent embarrassment as the others shuffle sheepishly. Rocky chirps something, and Adrian rises to their full height, ushering the group away and making sure the two seafloor technicians are supported as they limp their way toward the edge of the biodome and the airlocks where they can go back to their own atmosphere.

Grace twists his head and looks at Simon upside down.

“Open your mouth again,” Simon tells him, then watches as his jaw drops, showing a light pink interior with black-edged lips and thick, round teeth. Simon reaches out and holds his forearm over Grace's open mouth. Grace freezes, his dark eyes wet, and holds very still as Simon slides his arm between the rows of teeth and tilts it to match them up with the corresponding puncture marks. “Hm,” he says. Grace could have bitten him much harder. Those teeth are long enough to meet through the bones of Simon's forearm, but the holes in his skin are shallow. “Good control.” He draws his arm back and Grace rolls onto his belly and reaches out, his neck telescoping until it's twice as long as it had looked before, and nudges Simon's ribs gently, raising up to knock the side of his skull against Simon's dangling fingers.

“What – you need something?”

“Can touch,” Rocky translates. “You say Grace skin is softest thing. Touch now. Compare.”

“Uh...” Simon looks down at Grace, whose head is tucked back into his body. The best word to describe this form is “round” – rounded body, rounded head, round eyes. Grace himself is so angular that it's a strange dichotomy. “Is he okay with that?”

“He ask,” Rocky explains, waving a claw at Simon's hand where Grace had bumped him. “Like dog.”

“There aren't any dogs left,” Simon says absently, curling his fingers into a fist. “There were some, right after the Rapture, but they've all died off. I don't...I don't know anything about...”

Grace pushes his flippers down and surges up, drawing his head back to stick it directly under Simon's hand. That's pretty straightforward. And Simon knows Grace is still Grace like this – he'd shaken his head, and there was the whole executing complex tasks with the multiple rescues thing to boot. So it's not like he doesn't know what he's doing.

And the pelt itself is really fucking soft. It might be even softer when it's alive.

Gently, Simon uncurls his fingers and places his palm on Grace's round head. It's warmer than the pelt was alone, and as he runs his hand down Grace's neck, he feels the muscles under the fur bunch and release under his touch. He traces around one of the larger dark spots on Grace's shoulder that he'd trace on the pelt, and Grace shudders and makes a squeaky noise. Simon blinks at him in surprise – that was a very different sound from the gruff yell earlier – but Grace just shoves his head into Simon's hand again, so apparently they're not commenting on it.

He's not sure if he's happy or upset that the pelt is, in fact, softer now. Maybe it's the added heat of a body inside it, or maybe it's just the fact that it's got pulsing blood and shifting muscles under it this time. However this whole process works, it's even smoother than he could have imagined. He keeps pressing his fingers harder into the short, coarse fur to feel the soft, dense undercoat. It's still damp, and Simon's not sure if that's from the water or if it's just always wet when Grace is wearing it, because this is clearly a creature built for the sea.

He's got more questions by the minute.

Before he can ask any, though, he makes the mistake of twisting his torso to reach for one of Grace's flippers and his chest explodes into fire again. Doubling over, he coughs raggedly, each breath burning his throat. When he pulls his hand away from his mouth, it's speckled pink with watery blood. Simon swallows thickly.

At the same time, Grace unfolds from the pelt, shrugging it off his shoulders and kicking his legs free. Out of the corner of his eye, Simon sees the silver fur retreating in the same swift mold-crawling way until its edges are clean and loose and Grace loops it around his waist as he reaches for Simon.

“Oh heck, I'm sorry. Are you okay? Where does it hurt?”

Simon raises his eyebrows, the scarred skin around the left one pulling like it always does. “Everywhere?”

“Ah, yeah, okay,” Grace nods. “Stupid question. Can you try to take a deep breath, so Rocky can evaluate the level of liquid in your lungs?”

Simon grits his teeth and tries, pushing past the burning pain, the feeling of a thousand tiny needles stabbing every inch of his lungs and the muscles between his ribs peeling apart. He's honestly not sure if he succeeds, because he blacks out for a second, and when he blinks, Grace is suddenly much closer.

“Is it something Armando can fix?” His voice thrums under Simon's cheek, which is on Grace's bare shoulder, damp and warm, his collarbone a hard line against Simon's jaw.

“Do not know,” Rocky says, his tone worried. “Is not something Armando has fixed before.”

“Well, let's start there, at least.” Grace's shoulder shifts and Simon groans as his head jerks as a result. “Oh, hey, back with us?”

“No,” Simon rasps.

“Okay, that's fine.” Grace's fingers comb though his hair, pushing it back from his face. His other hand is around Simon's shoulders, holding him up. A solid warmth on his other side suggests that Rocky is also assisting in the “keep Simon upright” mission.

“Mmng,” Simon says, which is about how he feels. He keeps his eyes closed against the biodome's harsh light.

“Rocky, do you think someone could help us get Simon up to the house?”

Simon loses track of things, then. He gets snatches of awareness – Grace's skin warm under his cheek, breath burning in his lungs, xenonite hard under his legs and back as he's carried by someone large up the steps toward the house. He wrenches his eyes open to make sure Grace and Rocky are nearby, and they are – Grace wearing clothes again, the pelt slung carelessly over one shoulder like a towel, and Rocky trotting ahead of Adrian to open the door. The ocean glitters, as do the distant xenonite suits of various technicians out on the listing platform as they work to stabilize the crane for extraction.

At least, Simon assumes that's what they're doing. He's already drifting again. At least this time, he's pretty sure he'll wake up. That’s an improvement: the last time he lost consciousness, he figured he was dead.

Funny how this keeps happening to him. After everything he's done and all the people he left behind when he got cut loose from his universe, why is he the one who gets to be saved? Awareness flickers, then goes out like a light before Simon can think any more on it.

His recovery is relatively easy, in the end – physically, at least. Armando did, apparently, vacuum residual water from his lungs, which is horrifying and something he's very fucking glad he was unconscious for. He also got some of the good drugs which the Eridians have been synthesizing from the remainder of the Hail Mary's medical store. He's able to confirm to Grace that they work just fine.

Half the bite's punctures need stitches, and Grace is endlessly apologetic, but Simon doesn't mind. As his arm heals, he likes the look of the double semicircle of bruising that fades to a curved set of scabs, then scars. He likes that Grace has left his mark on him. Telling him as much gets him very flustered until Simon points out the blocky burn scar on Grace's right arm where Rocky grabbed him and dragged him to safety on the Hail Mary. As Grace stares at the scar like he's never seen it before, Simon turns to Rocky and raises his brows.

“Technically, it's my turn to leave some mark on you to go full circle, but I don't think anything I have would work.” He shakes off the phantom images of his knife sinking into living flesh that screams. He's done with that shit, now. It's in the past.

“Um,” Rocky says. “Well.”

Then he twists and shifts himself around until he's holding one limb at an uncomfortable-looking angle from his body, and something pale flashes in the crease of the limb, close to where it attaches. There are tiny grooves in his carapace to allow the pale items to brush across his exterior without scratching it or themselves, and Simon squints for several seconds before bursting out in wheezy laughter.

“Are those teeth? Are those my fucking teeth?”

“What? Let me see!” Grace bullies his way in under Simon's arm to peer at Rocky's leg, then gives the alien an accusatory look. “You said you wanted those for analysis!”

“Yes,” Rocky trills. “Analyzed. Then kept.”

“And stuck them in your body like Adrian's marks?” Something in Grace's tone sounds wounded.

Simon nudges Grace out of the way to look again. He can see two curved lines of enamel, and he reaches up to press fingers to the scarred expanse of cheek where the mutated teeth kept cutting through before Armando figured out the right schedule to grind them down. Another speck of white catches his eye, and he tilts his head, knocking his temple against Grace's chin and making both of them wince.

“There's another one,” he says, leaning back so Grace can look. He goes from huffing and puffing to silent in seconds as Rocky rotates his limb further, the exosuit creaking from the strain.

“Is that my scurvy tooth?” Grace asks, his voice almost tearful.

“Yes.”

“That's so sweet! Rocky!” Grace wails and slings his arms around Rocky's carapace, knocking him off balance. All three of them end up on the floor – Rocky from being pushed, Grace from pushing, and Simon from being tangled up with Grace and getting dragged along. It feels familiar in a bone-deep way, and he grins even though Grace elbowed him in the ribs on the way down.

He could get used to this. And maybe, just maybe, he'll get the chance to.

“I’m just lucky that they packed it at all,” Grace admits. They're sitting on the beach in the early evening, the sun low over the water, hazy behind projected clouds. Adrian and Rocky are curled up together, and Simon and Grace each lean against one of Adrian's limbs, large enough to be backrests. “No one knew what I was. I don’t think so, at least. Stratt probably would have used it to her advantage in some way if she did.”

Simon tosses a rock and watches it splash into the lapping waves. The biodome team has been playing with the wave arm settings, and today is a lake day, according to Grace. Ocean waves are bigger, but lake waves are smaller. Simon has to take his word for it. “Why did they pack it? Don’t your spaceships have weight requirements?”

“Mary’s so overengineered we could have taken an elephant and only lost a few weeks of travel time. The astrophage fuel really was revolutionary. But as for why...” Grace sighs. “I don’t know. I can only assume they threw everything of mine that they had in with me. I always kept it close. Never had anyone I trusted with it.”

“No trust Linda, question?” Rocky asks, and Grace snorts.

“God, no. Absolutely not. She was a lovely woman, but not...I mean, she’s an ex for a reason.”

Simon feels his eyebrows rise and forces them down with effort. He's heard the name before, but hadn't known she was an ex. He'd kind of assumed that Grace didn't do that kind of thing. Plenty of people in Eden were like that, either through choice or necessity. They had limited space, and only approved pairs could marry. There was little point in getting together with someone if you knew you wouldn't make a successful bid, so half the people just didn't bother. There were enough other things to worry about.

“Good thing have Simon now,” Rocky says, his tone sly. Adrian shifts slightly, rumbling a low tone, and Rocky ducks a little as if chastened.

Grace either doesn't notice or doesn't care. “Yeah,” he says, smiling gently at the water. “It really is.”

Simon swallows, then clears his throat. “How long had it been since you wore it, before this trip?”

“Oh, years,” Grace sighs, leaning back against Adrian's limb. They shift it slightly to accommodate a better reclining angle for his back. “It wasn't safe to swim alone, or to change alone. We look different from normal seals – our pelts are more like sea otters, so we're fluffier. If someone gets close enough to see us in our seal form, they might get curious and try to chase us down. And if they see us change and we don't see them, or we're too slow to get away...well. That's how my people get caught. Anyone who holds our pelt and hides it has control over us. So it's better to swim with your pod. And I didn't have a pod, so...it wasn't safe to swim.”

“Can we go back to the part where anyone who hides your pelt fucking controls you?” Simon spits, feeling nauseated. His hand trembles and he makes a fist and tucks it against his torso. Has he been fucking up this whole time?

“Oh, fudge, not like that.” Grace looks over at him, his eyes wide. “I just mean if someone hides a selkie's skin, they can't change back to their seal form, so they're stuck on land. But I gave my skin to you. I wanted you to have it. The hiding thing is...traditional. And when I asked you to tell me where it was, you did!”

“So you...you're okay?” Simon asks, his voice faint.

“Simon, I'm fine.” Grace is suddenly next to him, half on top of Rocky, who makes a quiet honking noise in protest. “You did exactly the right thing. I knew my skin would be safe with you, and it was. It was completely safe.”

“You shouldn't trust me like that,” Simon says weakly. His fingers feel abruptly wet, and he has to check to make sure they're not dripping with someone else's blood.

“Well, I do.” Grace's gaze is piercing when Simon meets it, and he looks away. “And I was right to. It was safe, so I was safe.”

Simon breathes deeply at that. The idea that he was holding part of Grace in his hands so many times is a mix of horrifying and exhilarating. The fact that Grace gave it to him, that he wanted Simon to hold onto it like that...well. He'll have to figure out how he feels about that later.

“Was good idea,” Rocky grumbles, pushing Grace off. He returns to his previous spot with good humor. “Kept both humans calm when Simon had Grace skin.”

“Ah, yeah, I figured that's what was going on.” Grace scratches at his neck and smiles at Simon. “When you finally hid it properly it was always warm, but sometimes I could feel you touching it, and it did help.”

“Sorry, what?” Simon blurts. “You could fucking feel that?”

“Oh,” Grace says, abashed. “I haven't really explained the mechanics of it yet, have I?”

“No, you have not,” Simon says stiffly. “And I'd like to think I've been very patient.”

“You have! Absolutely,” Grace says hurriedly, then takes a breath. “It's just...it's my skin, you know? As much as this is.” He pats his arm. “If you cut it, I'd bleed. If you scorched it, I'd burn. When you touch it...uh, well. I can feel it.”

Simon stares at him, icy dread trickling down his spine. He's spent so much time petting the damn thing. “Fuck, I'm so sorry, I had no idea –”

Grace turns toward him and waves his hands. “No, no, no, it's fine! It's actually kind of nice. You were always so careful with it. It's not really something I was used to feeling.”

“Grace touch-starved,” Rocky interrupts, and Grace reaches over and whacks his exosuit several times.

“Shut up, you jerk!”

“That's normal for space travel,” Simon nods, and Grace freezes, staring at him. “What? Why do you think I said we slept in piles? It wasn't just for warmth. People need connection.”

“Huh.” Grace blinks. “That makes sense. Weird that your cult would see it that way.”

Simon feels his mouth twist. “Oh, it was still about control. People will fight for what they have, so you've got to give them something to lose. They'll scrabble over food and resources, but they'll lay down their lives for the people they care about.” He shrugs. “I did, plenty of times. It was a mistake, but...it worked on me.”

“I'm sorry,” Grace says after a moment. The waves lap gently at the shore, water hissing over the rocks. “I'm sorry you had to go through that.”

Simon shrugs again, picking at his pants so he doesn't have to look at Grace. “It's over and done now. I'm sorry you had to deal with me pawing at your skin all the time.”

“That wasn't – that's not an issue,” Grace mumbles. “Like I said, it was...good.”

“Hm.” Simon glances at him, then looks back at the water, wracking his brain for a way to change the subject. “So, did you have a secret society of selkies or something back home?”

Grace barks out a laugh at that. “Ha! No, not at all. Pretty much the opposite, actually.”

Simon hums questioningly, tapping his fingers twice on his knees in what's become a habit now. The Eridian way of denoting queries is honestly kind of handy.

It works, though. Grace stretches his legs out, pushing two grooves in the rocky sand with his heels. “Technically, I’m only a quarter selkie. My mom...well. She couldn’t always change when she wanted to. She got stuck as a seal for two months when I was twelve. And she nearly drowned when I was seven because the pelt wouldn’t fully take.”

“Fuck,” Simon says blankly.

“I saved her,” Grace continues, picking at his nails and very conspicuously not looking at Simon or Rocky. Rocky's probably heard all this anyway, but when Simon sneaks a look at him, he seems just as attentive as Simon feels, hanging onto every word out of Grace's mouth about his past life on an alien world. Adrian is unreadable; it's anyone's guess what they know. “It was the first time she was taking me to swim, and she hadn't even shown me how to put the pelt on, but when I saw her go under, I just knew. So I changed, and I swam out and grabbed her, and I towed her to the shallows where she could stand.”

“Was not happy,” Rocky prompts, and that confirms that Grace has, in fact, already told him all this.

“No,” Grace says, tipping his head back and sniffing. “No, she was not. I think she resented the fact that the change was so easy for me, when it was so hard for her. I don't know why. I've got less of the blood than she had, but...for some reason, she always had a hard time. We only swam together for about five years, then I mostly went on my own.” He shrugs and looks down. “And then I stopped. We don't need it to survive or anything – luckily, or I probably would have died in that coma along with the rest of the crew. It always felt like such a magical thing when I was a kid, but then I got older and didn't have anyone to share it with, and...the magic was gone, I guess.”

He wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand and sniffs again. Simon aches to reach out, but his arm stays where it is, propped across his knees. His fingers twitch, and he notices Rocky shift slightly out of the corner of his eye.

“Have people to share with now,” Rocky says slowly. “Cannot swim like you, but...can swim with you, question?”

“Whoa, hey,” Simon protests. “You're too heavy, and I can't swim.”

“Can learn.”

“Not high on my list of priorities right now,” Simon shudders, remembering the water forcing its way into his lungs.

“Can learn for Grace,” Rocky wheedles. And, hell, that's just unfair.

Simon pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a sigh. “Maybe,” he admits, and Rocky chirrups in victory. When Simon sneaks a glance at him, Grace is smiling at his lap, his fingers laced together. Simon isn't really surprised to realize he'll do just about anything to wring more of those private smiles out of Grace. He's resigned to how he feels, and to the fact that his feelings can never match the depth of what exists between Grace and Rocky. And he's okay with that. He is.

Maybe he should talk to Adrian about how to deal with this – but then again, it's not really the same situation, is it? Grace isn't his, not like Rocky is Adrian's.

“I'll work on him,” Grace grins and elbows Rocky. Simon glances over to see him staring back, his eyes soft. He winks, and Simon has to look away again. The scarred skin on the left side of his face feels hot and tight. Is he smiling? He can't even tell.

He thinks about it again, later, when the Eridians have left and the two of them are curled up in Grace's big bed, legs tangled together. Grace is snoring quietly. Simon stares at him and wonders when this happened, when he became completely lost on this strange man. It wasn't the first time he saw him, yelling at the robot arm that Simon was trying to scramble away from, woozy and injured and terrified. It wasn't even when Grace dropped the bundled-up pelt in his lap and walked away like it was nothing – though in hindsight, Simon marvels at how casual he'd been. He'd literally given his life to Simon, and Simon hadn't even known. How many discussions did Grace have with Rocky about that decision? And why the fuck hadn't he just given the pelt to Rocky in the first place?

Grace snorts and rolls closer, his snoring cutting off as he settles on his side, forehead finding its way to Simon's chest. Simon shifts his arm to give Grace more of a pillow, then pauses at that. He's only got one arm now, and it's pinned. The idea of allowing himself to be so restrained in his previous life would be unthinkable, but here he is, not just letting it happen but encouraging it. He feels safe here, in this bed, with this person. That’s honestly kind of a new feeling.

Maybe there was no single moment when Grace became the most important person in the universe to him. He spent so long on the ship believing he owed him his life, but Simon is still the one who chose to do something with it, to help Grace and Rocky on their mission, to assist in piloting and fixing the ship as needed, to build a life where he has choices. Fuck, he has his own bed, his own room – the Eridians are capable of making him his own biodome if he wanted. He's here because this is where he wants to be.

It shouldn't be a revelation, but somehow it is. Simon lays in the dark, listening to Grace breathe, and realizes he has choices – real choices – and he's choosing this. He wants this: to stay with Grace, to keep learning about him and the aliens whose world they share, to spend the rest of their lives together.

His life has ended twice underwater – once in the blood ocean, and once in the biodome sea – and each time, he's emerged into a new world: first on the Hail Mary, and second to an existence where some people can shapeshift. He'd rather not drown in any kind of liquid again, but it does make him wonder what kind of world he'll find waiting next.

“C'mon,” Grace laughs, his hair shining in the artificial sunlight. “I won't even let your head go under if you don't want it to. Don't you trust me?”

Simon stands knee-deep in the waves, eyeing him doubtfully. “I trust you just fine. I don't trust the fucking water.”

“It's not gonna getcha,” Grace laughs.

“It might,” Simon mutters, kicking a foot and watching the splash of spray glitter in the air. “It did before.”

“Before, I had to run to grab my skin and then swim a hundred yards to get to you,” Grace says. “This time I'll be right with you from the start.”

He's standing deeper in the water and he's naked again, with the pelt slung over his shoulders and looped loosely around his waist. He'd insisted that Simon be the one to take it out of the cliffside cupboard and give it to him, which feels like it has more significance than Simon understands. He'll need to pin Grace down about these “traditions” he's referenced at some point to find out if he's been participating in rituals he doesn't know about.

Now, Simon makes a face and takes another step into the water, reaching up to tug at the rebuilt life vest he's wearing. The canvas covering is scratchy on his bare chest no matter how he adjusts it, so he gives up on comfort and glances over his shoulder toward the beach. Rocky and Adrian are escorting a herd of tiny Eridian children along the cliffs. Simon is honestly not sure if those kids are theirs or not, and he's too afraid to ask. But it means that they're not all watching him, which he prefers.

Heaving out a deep sigh, Simon turns back to Grace and starts wading toward him. As the water level rises to lap at his thighs, then his waist, he feels his chest tightening, his breaths coming faster. He keeps the panic off his face with long practice, but that doesn't mean it's gone – just hidden.

“You're looking a little intense, there,” Grace soothes, hands out to catch or guide him. Fuck. So much for keeping things hidden.

“I need a minute,” Simon confesses, standing chest-deep in the water now. It's another lake day, so the waves are nearly nonexistent out this far. That helps.

“Sure thing. Take all the time you need.” Grace smiles like the sun, and confronted with that, something in Simon snaps.

He reaches out and sinks his fingers into the pelt slung over Grace's shoulder, sliding his hand around to follow it down to his ribcage. He circles his touch around one of the larger dark spots again, and Grace gasps, his face flushing and one hand coming up to latch onto Simon's wrist. That confirms a suspicion he's had ever since he found out Grace can feel it when he touches the pelt: all that shit he heard clattering and banging in the Hail Mary when he petted the skin was definitely Grace dropping things.

Grace's other hand rises to cup Simon's jaw, and he looks up to see Grace giving him a heated look. “I wasn't sure you'd get it,” he says.

“Took me a while,” Simon admits. “You had me at a disadvantage by keeping me in the fucking dark. But a lot more shit makes sense now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Simon smiles, and then Grace surges forward to kiss him.

It's a hard kiss, almost biting, and Simon relaxes under it, opening his mouth to let Grace's teeth find his lips, his tongue. Behind them, someone gives a trilling shriek, followed by the ringing chime of xenonite striking xenonite. Simon grins into the kiss. He's pretty sure he knows what just happened there, and he's grateful to Adrian for keeping Rocky from actually setting off fireworks or whatever he probably wants to do right now.

Sliding his hand across the pelt over Grace's back, he pulls him closer, tugging them flush in the cool water. The fur rasps against his stomach as he tightens his fingers in the coat over Grace's spine, and Grace makes a fantastic noise, something choked and whining and wanting, his breath hot in Simon's mouth.

“You wanna go somewhere drier to continue this?” Simon murmurs against his lips.

Suddenly, Grace pushes him backward with a hand on each shoulder, panting for breath. “Hold on, stop. You're trying to distract me!”

Simon licks his lips and watches Grace's gaze dart down to follow the motion. “Is it working?”

“You – I just –” Grace sputters for a moment, then gathers himself and straightens up, brandishing a finger that almost smacks Simon in the nose. “You're not getting out of swimming lessons. But we are – we will be continuing this. Later.”

Simon grins slowly at Grace's flushed, flustered face. “Later, huh?”

“Yes,” Grace confirms primly. “Later. After swimming.”

“Fine,” Simon rolls his eyes and takes a step back. Water washes around his ribs as he gestures at Grace. “Go on.”

“I hate you,” Grace tells him.

“I know,” Simon says cheerfully.

“You did this on purpose. Now I'm all distracted.”

“There's a fix for that,” Simon reminds him, gesturing back toward the beach. Grace just glares at him.

“No. We agreed. You agreed. We're doing swimming lessons.”

“Uh-huh,” Simon says.

“Oh my god,” Grace snaps, lunging to kiss him again. Simon can't help but laugh and kiss him back, their teeth clacking in a bright spark of grounding pain. This is real. It's not perfect, and that makes it more real.

He's alive, and he's free, and he's happy.

Grace pushes himself away with a frustrated sound and kicks off, basically backflipping away from Simon as he pulls the pelt over his head. When he reemerges from the waves, his huge, dark eyes are narrowed and he gives a gruff barking shout as Simon laughs in his face.

Grace circles him, his dappled silver body arcing in a broad curve that Simon turns slowly to follow. He catches a glimpse of glittering xenonite from the Eridians on the beach, and he knows they'll both have to answer to Rocky later. But right now, he needs to focus on what's in front of him: clear water; the dual safety net of the life vest and Grace's skill; the task of learning to swim.

He's dealt with much worse in his life. He'll figure this out, and then he can join Grace in the water whenever he wants, secure in the knowledge that he can thrive in his world, whatever that consists of.

Another gruff vocalization pulls him from his thoughts, and Simon grins and ducks his head to plant a smacking kiss on Grace's furry forehead. Grace chirps and surges up to shove his whiskery snout against Simon's face, leaving him sputtering at the sensation. The selkie just rolls onto his back, wheezy snorts giving away his laughter before he flips back over and circles Simon again, offering him a dark, clawed flipper.

Simon smiles at him and takes it in his hand, feeling the bones and warm leathery skin shift under his grip. He can't lace their fingers together like this, but he can imagine doing it later, once he's more confident in the water, letting Grace drag him through the waves hand-in-hand.

But he's not there yet. Instead, he pushes off the solid ground and lets the life vest hold him up, leaving behind any thoughts of another life vest just like this, leaving behind as much of the darkness of his past as he can for the moment. Grace takes his weight easily, and on an alien planet under the light of an artificial sun, Simon lets the selkie tow him forward into the sea.