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Grace is odd.
For someone who survived what he would consider hell, he isn’t acting the way he would normally. Though, maybe not acting normal is what he would consider a ‘normal’ reaction. Regardless, if he had been trapped in an iron box floating around the middle of a blood ocean to study it with nothing but a few cameras and radiation, he wouldn’t dare trust anything ever again. Let alone humans, whom from what he gathered from the man, sent him down into the ocean by force.
Adrian insists that it’s his way of coping, but Simon doesn’t believe that. Even when they had found the Hail Mary on their journey back to Erid and dragged Grace onto their own ship, covered in blood and missing a leg, the man had just sobbed and mumbled phrases like ‘I'm finally free’ over and over again. Simon took liberty in making sure the man, well, survived. Cleaned him, fed him, all the work. Grace, however, seemed to take that as an invitation to follow Simon around like he was a duckling.
If Simon was in the control room, Grace was right beside him. If Simon was eating, Grace was eating. If Simon was out on the space walk fixing up some of the ship, Grace was right there floating beside him. It would be sweet if it wasn’t so…invasive. Even if Adrian had no ability to give Simon alone time with their echolocation hearing, the eridian had always given him the illusion of privacy. Grace, despite having full ability, would not.
Simon was used to isolation. He grew up in it. His parents always left him alone in the church, he would spend hours locked in a room to read the scriptures back to back. ‘Father guides and protects the ones of impure intentions’ was the first thing he could recite even when waking up from his amnesiac coma. Isolation was comfortable. A built in safety bubble he could extend and shrink as much as he wanted. Grace did not care for that carefully crafted bubble, and in fact, he seemed all keen on learning how to make it pop.
Now it’s not to say that Simon didn’t like Grace. He appreciated the man’s presence, he was happy he was alive and somewhat healthy, happy that the burns and the radioactivity and the loss of his leg haven’t caused too much permanent destruction yet. He didn’t wish any harm on him, he just…wishes he wasn’t so clingy.
They were in the lab, one day, testing out a sample of taumeba. Adrian had been so grateful for Grace’s contributions, the man actually knowing how to use the devices given to him. Molecular biologist, he called himself a scientist when he was back on his version of Earth. They had mostly bullshitted their way to find a containment, and that was before the xenonite designs failed. Despite their successes, Grace seemed excited to get to test an alien predator that wasn’t trying to kill him. Simon, while happy that they could finally get some extra hands to get work done, wasn’t too keen on listening while the man worked.
Grace talked. A lot. He seemed to never know when and how to stop a train of thought from leaving his mouth. One minute it was about the actual lab and astrophage, and the next it was about Earth and how much he misses his students (yes, students, because even if Grace calls them his kids, they’re not) or whatever other topics he could come up with. Simon would usually tune him out, but the man seems adamant on his opinion.
“I don’t really think that the bean bags were a horrible idea, but I constantly got admin telling me it was a waste of time and resources, but the kids deserved the best, don’t you think?” Grace’s blue eyes met Simon’s, almost like a lost puppy looking for a release command to get a treat of some kind. Adrian called the comparison endearing, but Simon had never been a fan of dogs.
“I guess. They weren’t yours, though,” Simon mumbles out, swiveling in the chair as Grace gets back to placing the samples, softly nodding.
“I mean, no, they weren’t, but they still deserved to have an educator who cared about them, and what better way than playing games? Kids love games, it gets them more engaged. Didn’t your teachers ever give out little prizes?”
“No, I was homeschooled. I learned everything on my own,” Simon replied, causing Grace to look up at Simon like he just said he’d murder his parents.
“What!? No teachers? You learned how to read and write and do all this cool math stuff on your own? That’s…wow, I mean, that’s really impressive! I mean, granted, there weren't many teachers on Eden either, but I still saw the beauty in education. Though, the All-Father hated it when I taught them they shouldn’t blindly follow him just because he said so, but I always said…”
Simon genuinely wanted to tune the scientist out so badly. He was usually able to. When he worked next to Stratt in meetings, he was able to tune her and all the other pompous engineers in the room trying to get their input on the mission out until he was needed. He couldn’t tune out Grace, no matter how much he tried.
It got to a point, though. Grace just kept going on and on, mostly about the cult he grew up with and how much he disdained it. Maybe it was the fact that Simon hasn’t gotten a wink of proper sleep in a few days. Maybe he was sick of how much Grace and Adrian would chatter away while he was just desperate to work. Maybe he was just always quick to anger in ways he never got the handle on, but something irritated him the more Grace spoke. He was just trying to work in peace, was that so wrong?
“Christ, could you just shut up?! You’ve been blabbering about the same topic for thirty minutes now! Do you have a lid to your cap, man?”
And oh…Grace’s eyes blinked away shocked tears as his shoulders practically dropped to the floor. Simon could even hear the way his teeth clicked together from how hard he snapped his jaw shut. Simon didn’t want to imagine the pinched expression on his face as an abused puppy, but that was the only thing that came to the engineer’s mind.
“O-oh, jeez, I'm sorry, I-I do kinda go on tangents without realizing…” Grace tried to explain, but it was as if Simon couldn’t stop being a jerk.
“Well, stop it. It’s annoying.”
Simon looked away so he didn’t have to see the effects of his anger. He knew Grace was emotional, overly sensitive, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care at that moment. Not when it resulted in the sweet silence he’s been craving since they found the man.
It didn’t stop him from feeling the pit of guilt in his stomach, though, but it was okay. He will live in silence for a bit, then Grace will get over it soon and they’ll go back to how they were. He just needs a few, selfish hours.
***
Grace knew he was completely in the wrong. He had messed up once again, and only he was to blame for it. He knew, even as a young kid, he was a bother. The Father would constantly tell him to be quiet, to hold room for silence and to let it purify his soul or whatever else. Even his guardians had to repeatedly warn him to just not open his mouth.
No matter how much Grace tried, he always seemed to fail. He failed to keep his mouth shut and instead asked the educators too many questions. He failed and he just had to go beyond the other kids his age and study science. He failed to keep friends, to keep his voice in his never ending crusade to convince people the cult was wrong. He failed time and time again, all the way up until his forced capture onto the sub.
He doesn’t know why he thought he could change. He doesn’t know why this ship, with his saviors, would be any different. Maybe he liked Adrian’s willingness, the eridian was so much kinder than the eel he had to deal with back in the ocean. They were kind and always so attentive when he talked about science and the processes back home. Maybe it was because they had given him so much in medicine, food, sleep, hydration, the list could go on and on.
Maybe it was because Grace liked Simon so much. Simon, the man who pulled him out of the depths of hell. Simon, who gave him care and helped make a prosthetic leg for him. Simon, who would sit and answer his questions when he asked and who wouldn’t ever judge him.
At least, that was the Simon Grace wanted to believe was real. In the cold reality, all Grace had done was push Simon to annoyance once more. It wasn’t the man’s fault, of course not! Simon was only human, it was Grace who was too much. Grace who constantly asked for his time, his attention, even when the man had already given so much. It wasn’t Simon’s fault, no. It was all his.
Why did he have to be so selfish? Why couldn’t he just be a normal friend, a normal person? Why did he have to ruin the first real relationship he had ever known? Why did Grace have to keep his mouth open? Why did his body have to ache for touch and another person’s voice?
Why couldn’t he just be good?
Grace had a mission, now. He would make the journey to Erid as peaceful for Simon as possible. He can keep to himself, he did it for years! He just had to be quiet so Simon didn't sedate him. Not that Simon was cruel like that, oh no, but Grace knows what happens when people push their luck. He can’t be a bother, not to the people that granted him another chance of life.
Grace can be quiet. Grace can be good, and he swears he will be.
***
Simon knows he was too harsh on the scientist, and every day he looks, he just feels the stone in his stomach get deeper and deeper. Grace has been so quiet for the past few days, Simon can almost feel his teeth grind when he tries to sleep at night. Is this what Adrian hears constantly? It must be torture. Simon tries to relish in the silence he basically demanded, but all he finds is emptiness.
It isn’t the same quiet he’s used to. It’s not the quiet he wants. He wants the quiet that comes with a cup of coffee in the morning when the sun rises, or the few moments he gets between Stratt’s meetings and building the ship. He wants the quiet where he can smile at the person entering the room and get the same treatment.
The quiet he’s been gifted now? It’s cruel. It’s like the silence of the closet his mother used to put him in as he kept his prayers in his head. The silence that comes with the priest waiting for you to spit out a confession. It’s the silence that has pitiful, ocean blue eyes losing their spark when doing something they used to light up about.
Simon doesn’t like Grace being quiet. He thought he would. He thought the problem was Grace’s constant chatter, or the way the man would cling when he was tired, or the way he tried so desperately to get attention. Maybe it was then, but now? He isn’t so sure. He knows one thing, and that is he hates the quiet that he asked for, and he doesn’t know how to get the chatter back.
Simon misses Grace. Isn’t that a horrifying thought.
Adrian seems pretty annoyed by it, too. They try to make conversation with Grace, only to be shrugged off with a half assed reply or ignored entirely. Simon could see the way Grace was itching to share, though, and it made his heart clench in a way he wasn’t used to.
“Why Grace no talk, question? Grace angry at Adrian, question?” Adrian mumbles, their quiet notes almost undetected by the translator. They don’t want to wake Grace up, who was finally face first on one of the lab tables. Simon crossed his arms, a deep sigh pushing out of his lungs.
“No, bud, he’s…he’s just doing what I asked him to do,” he replies solemnly, the words tasting like iron in his mouth. An awful taste he’d rather do without.
“Simon ask Grace to be quiet, question?”
“Yeah, I did.”
Adrian lets out a lot of chitters with the ends fading up into a higher pitch that Simon nor the translator could pick up.
“I know..”
“Why Simon so mean to Grace, question?!”
“I know, Adrian.”
“Simon bad! Bad bad bad! Simon mean to Grace! Simon apologize!”
“Yes, I’ll apologize, I promise, it's not the right time to do it,” Simon tries to reason, looking for any excuse in the book to not allow the crushing weight of guilt every time the name of the man is mentioned. Adrian sees right through his bullshit, unfortunately, as they stamp their foot against the ball.
“No! Simon go tell Grace now! No better time, no worse time!” Adrian rolled their ball over to Simon and roughly hit it against the back of his legs. Simon lets out a surprised yelp, but Adrian doesn’t seem too keen on stopping.
“Okay, okay! I’ll go, right now, promise!”
“Simon stupid, dumb, mean! Simon fix Grace!” Adrian didn’t stop their raid on his legs until Simon reached the bottom hatch of the ‘Don’t-Go-Insane’ room. Only then did the Eridian had the sense to leave the area. Simon looked up at the latch, the soft sounds of a screen showing birds chirping was the only thing playing. Simon almost ran away, certain that if he just waited, this whole thing could blow over, but he knows that Grace deserves better than the cold shoulder.
He makes his way up the ladder. His heart nearly gives out when he hears the soft sobs from the room.
Simon doesn’t say a word as he sits beside Grace. Grace didn’t pay any mind to acknowledge him, keeping his head tucked deep between his legs as his shoulders gave away his cries. It’s painful, and Simon doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know why the sight of Grace crying made his stomach clench uncomfortably. Maybe it was because it was him who placed that hurt there.
They were quiet for a while, neither of them willing to strike up any conversation. The projector makes soft chirping noises to imitate the birds, but that’s all it was for a long while. Simon still hated the silence. It was daunting, and he could cut through the tension with a knife.
“...I was wrong,” he settled on. The admission caused Grace’s head to turn up and face him. The man’s blue eyes were reddened, holding puffiness that spread all the way down to his cheeks. His chest still heaved with quiet sobs, but he looked more curious than angry.
“I was wrong when I thought I needed the silence like I used to. It was unfair of me to ask that of you, and I'm..” his voice trials off. It was always so difficult for him to apologize, it always got his throat choked up in the worst way. Grace seemed to take that the wrong way, though, as he shook his head and placed his chin back on his knee.
“No, don’t…don’t say it, please don’t say it. It–you have every right to demand silence from me, I was…I am annoying, I know I am. It always gets me in trouble, so I get it! I get it, I promise!” Grace said, and Simon was going to have a heart attack, or something of its equivalence, if he had to look into those teary, baby blues any longer.
“No. No, don’t make any excuses for me. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, I shouldn’t have demanded you to change who you are just because it made me slightly uncomfortable.”
“I should! I was asking for so much of your time when you already gave me everything. I-i was being selfish, I was..”
“No. You weren’t. And even if you were, I still shouldn’t have been so awful to you.”
“It’s fine, Simon, really!” Simon was getting angry again. Not at Grace, no, he learned from his mistake big time. He was really mad at whoever made this man believe that he should have to change himself in order to be accepted somewhere. Grace looked ready to continue ranting, demanding to make himself seem more like the person in the wrong when it was only Simon who was. To combat this, Simon did something he didn’t think he would ever do.
He raised both his hands to cup Grace’s cheeks, lightly pressing them in to make the man unable to interrupt.
“Grace, listen to me. No, listen. I was wrong. I was so wrong to treat you the way I did. I was just unused to the noise, but…it wasn’t bad noise. It was never a bad noise, not to me. Not in the way I said it was. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Grace’s eyes welled with tears again, and Simon thought he had gone right back to fucking it all up, but he was welcomed with the slight upward of his puckered lips.
“You…you mean that? I didn’t…I'm not…I'm not a bother to you?” Grace’s voice hitched up at the last few words of his sentence, and Simon’s heart once again felt like it was about to collapse. He shook his head.
“No. No, no you’re not a bother, Grace. You’re…frankly, you’re the best thing on this ship.”
There’s a soft dust of pink that resides on Grace’s cheeks, different from the one that formed from his tears. Simon liked the look of that much better, but he pockets that thought deep into somewhere else. The man let go of Grace’s cheeks, to which the other quickly responded by resting his head on Simon’s shoulder as he looked up at the trees projected. For once, Simon doesn’t mind the gentle contact, and with each deeper breath of Grace’s body calming after what was definitely an emotional roller coaster for him, he feels more at ease. For now, he can ignore the skip of his heart when Grace’s stubble brushes against his neck, or the way the man is leaning deeper and deeper into him.
He doesn't need to address that, now. He can just live in this moment, for that’s all he wants.