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The first time it happens is three months after Simon was rescued from the SM-13.
He's checking up around the Hail Mary as the only person currently awake, because for some reason both Grace and the weird fucking rock alien (ironically called Rocky) cannot sleep unless someone else is watching over them. He hadn't been entirely sure why, and when he had asked Grace had launched into a spiel on how Eridians apparently can't wake up until their sleep was over and how they evolved this instinct as a survival mechanism which then turned into an hour-long ramble about the biology of Eridians before Grace had abruptly shut up, apologised, and run off to check on the taumoeba farms. Still, it's a relatively easy accommodation to make, and he does have to admit that he prefers this to sleeping alone on the sub, so he's always been content to comply.
Anyways, he's just come back up from checking on the fuel tanks when he notices movement, fast and erratic, from Grace's bunk. The closer he gets, the clearer the view he has of the other man - tossing and turning, uneven, laboured breaths almost deafening in the otherwise quiet room, tears spilling from eyes squeezed shut and mixing with sweat-slick skin.
“Grace?” He tries tentatively. No response, save for a gasping breath that might have been an attempt at a word or a sentence.
“Grace,” he says again, more urgent now. At this point, he's pretty sure that what he's witnessing is a nightmare, but he also can't be sure it's not a seizure or anything, since the symptoms kind of line up with the ones Grace described to him when he was asking about his health.
Just to make sure, he reaches out to shake him awake, but the moment his hand makes contact with Grace's shoulder he flinches violently away and curls further into himself. A stream of “no”s and “please”s and “stop”s spill out from his lips, but Simon can only half pay attention to them through the frantic daze of his own mind (fuck fuck fuck) until-
“You're killing me!”
what?
He almost wishes he misheard him, but Grace is repeating that phrase like a chant, a mantra, a prayer, over and over and over again until there's no doubt in Simon's mind about the sheer desperation in his tone, the genuine fear tinging his voice.
The teeth spearing through the side of his face suddenly feel so much heavier.
“You can't do this!” he continues sobbing, oblivious to the man frozen in place beside him. “Please, I don't want to die!”
fuck, okay, Simon. think logically. what do you do?
His hand is still hovering over where his shoulder was not that long ago. Hesitantly, he pulls it back towards his chest - looks like touch isn't much of a good idea right now.
“Grace,” he says, voice faltering. He clears his throat and keeps going. “It's okay. You're safe here. No one wants to hurt you. You're okay.”
The thrashing and begging seem to calm just a bit, so he continues, less haltingly now that he knows it's helping.
“You're just having a nightmare. You won't die, I'll make sure of it. Oh, and Rocky too - he'll probably flip the fuck out if he lets you die before trying every possible way to extend your lifespan.” He chuckles awkwardly to himself, before looking back at Grace's twitching form. “We're here, Grace. C’mon, wake up.”
At that, Grace shoots awake, clutching at his chest and gasping ragged breaths. His eyes dart frantically around the room before locking onto Simon and his shoulders droop so fast Simon shoots a hand out to catch him.
“Wha-where am I?” He manages, still panting hard. “What's going on?”
“Were you- no, you were having a nightmare. You were shaking and crying and you-” Simon breathes, locking brown eyes onto blue. “You were saying, “you're killing me” over and over again.”
“Oh.” Grace looks away, hugging his arms around each other. A pause, then: “I'm sorry.”
“No- shit, that's not the point right now. Can I ask- who- who were you talking about? Because if it's me I can-”
“No!” The man spins his head back up so quickly he presses a palm to his eyes from the whiplash. “No, Simon, that's- It's not you. I know you won't hurt me, it's just- I- fudge.” He scrubs his hands through blond locks roughly, and Simon winces internally at the growing thinness of his fingers.
Even if he wasn't the monster in Grace's nightmare, he's still the cause of his suffering. The food rations aboard the Mary were barely enough for one person's journey to Erid, but when they picked him up off of the blood moon they also picked up an extra mouth to feed.
Once, while Simon was still bedbound, he had overheard a hushed conversation between his two saviours. The meds he was on had prevented him from getting most of it, but one word had stood out even to his drugged mind.
starvation.
Grace is fucking starving because of him.
Grace would be better off without me-
Ever observant, Grace immediately snaps his head up to frown at him. “Simon,” he chastises. “Whatever’s going on in that head of yours, ignore it, okay? You are somebody I am frankly delighted to have around. Whatever your mind is telling you, it's wrong.”
“Oh.” Simon looks down at his lap, willing his hair to hide his face from the disappointed stare in front of him.
“Hey- hey, look at me. I'm not upset with you, or mad, alright? You're fine. I just-” he sucks in a breath, short but determined. “Okay. There's something I need to tell you.”
At Simon's hesitant nod, he continues, voice shaking. “When I was on Earth, I was part of the Petrova Taskforce, which was the team we assembled to fix the astrophage problem. I was the lead scientist on astrophage, but I wasn't the one originally meant to be in space. The prime scientist was a man named Martin DuBois, and the backup was a woman called Annie Shapiro. They… blew up, in a failed experiment, nine days before launch. I was their last option.”
He takes a shuddering breath. His nails dig angry red crescents into his palms. “I refused. I told them to find someone else - there was a woman from Paraguay who qualified for the mission, but there wasn't enough time to train her, so they wanted me to do it instead.”
Simon's apprehension must show on his face, because Grace takes one look at it and laughs bitterly. “The head of the program, she called me a coward when I told her I wasn't going. And she was right!” Tears are beading at the corners of his eyes again. Simon wants nothing more than to wipe them away. “I ran away, you know. They had to tackle me down and drug me with an amnesia drug because I'd threatened to sabotage the mission. That's how selfish I was. I was going to give up on the entirety of humanity’s survival just for the chance of living longer! God-” he drops his face into his hands.
They sit in an awkward almost-silence for a bit, interrupted by sniffles and gasps from the man in front of him. Eventually, Grace raises red-rimmed eyes to meet Simon's concerned ones.
“I'm sorry,” he mumbles, so different from the near-wailing only a couple of minutes ago. “I haven't been totally honest with you before, and now that you know I understand if you don't want anything to do with me anymore-”
“The fuck? No, of course not!”
Grace flinches, and Simon instantly decides he could have worded that a million times better.
“No- shit, I mean, there's no reason for me to not want to be around you anymore. So what if you didn't want to come? So what if you wanted to live instead of- of- whatever the fuck this is? You were absolutely fucking justified to not want to be sent on a suicide mission! Fuck, sure, it was “bigger than you” and “for the greater good” and shit, but it was still unfair of them to fucking- shoot you into space like that!”
If he had been asked this half an hour ago, he would have hesitated to say that Grace would be shocked at the concept of someone fucking caring enough about him to be angry on his behalf, but in the face of wide blue eyes he's not so sure anymore.
“It was me or the entire human race, Simon,” he objects half-heartedly, his voice tired. “It was more than fair of them to use any means possible to save themselves, even though I got hurt by it. I've made my peace with it. It's fine.”
Simon wants to remark that the almost-grimace tugging at the edges of his lips says otherwise, but he holds his tongue.
Instead: “It’s still wrong,” he protests. “It's- they betrayed you. You said this was a suicide mission.”
“I did.”
you're killing me!
He shoves down the bile rising in his throat. Grits his teeth at the burn, then unclenches his jaw when it hurts.
“It's not fair,” he repeats, because he can't think of anything else to say.
“It was the best choice,” comes the reply. “I should have made it myself, but-”
“Please don't call yourself a coward again.”
Grace blinks, mouth still halfway through forming his next words. “...I wasn't going to say that.”
“Then what were you going to say?”
Silence. It's as deafening as the crash of a skull into metal.
“Grace,” he tries gently, except gently has never been one of his strongest points, so it just tastes like ash at the back of his tongue. He clears his throat and decides on firmly instead. “You aren't a coward. You were just trying to live. There's nothing wrong with that.”
The man in question chuckles cheerlessly. “Using my own words against me now, are we?”
“Since you remember telling me that, shouldn't you, I don't fucking know, be believing it yourself?”
“Yeah, well, you didn't tell them you'd scuttle the ship if they put you on the mission to save your entire planet, did you?”
“...no, but I also wasn't told that I was meant to die from my mission, so that's that.” He gives a deep sigh. “Look, you didn't want to go because you didn't want to die. That just means you have a brain with fucking self-preserving instincts. And,” before Grace can interject, he quickly holds up a finger to stop him. “If you want to argue that that still makes you a coward, you saved Rocky and me even though you didn't need to and it put you at higher risk of death.”
He pointedly does not think of the boniness of Grace's body. Unfortunately, the greatest reminder is currently staring him right in the eye.
“That sounds pretty brave to me, no?”
“You- I- …fair point.” Grace deflates. “Guess Stratt was right when she said all I needed was something to be brave for.”
“Stratt?”
“The project lead.”
“Oh.”
Simon's dislike must have bled through his tone (to be fair, he wasn't trying very hard to hide it), because Grace laughs again, brighter this time.
When he's calmed down slightly, he says: “You know, I don't really hate her.”
“She sent you to die.”
“Yeah, for the good of humanity. It was still the best choice, even if I didn't like it. Plus, it meant I got to meet you and Rocky.” At that, he grins, and though Simon's never quite felt the warmth of the sun in his life, he's sure it must feel something like this.
“Thank you,” he manages when he realises he’s been silent for a while. “…I'm glad I got to meet you, too.”
When Grace smiles again, Simon swallows the bubbling urge to keep that expression on his face forever. Tattoo it into his skin in place of the burnt Eden symbol on his neck - Grace has always been more fitting of the name ‘paradise’ anyways.
That stream of thought is interrupted when Grace lets out a splitting yawn. “As much as I'd love to keep chatting with you, I don't think I'd be able to stay awake long enough for that, sorry. You'll watch?”
“Always.”
“Thanks.” He shoots him a small smile, full of relief and gratefulness and something that his traitorous brain wants to label as love
greed is a sin. haven't you taken enough already?
before lying back into his pod and pulling the covers up.
“Good night,” Simon offers. He hears a muffled “g’night” from the small mound of blankets and duvets, before the room falls quiet and soft snoring takes over, and Simon is alone again.
When he's absolutely sure that Grace is definitely asleep, he holds his one remaining hand to his forehead, the motion unfamiliar from disuse and the lack of another to clasp.
Thank you, he mouths barely, a silent prayer of gratitude, thank you for allowing me to live. Thank you for giving me this chance at repentance. Thank you for leading me to Grace. I swear I will do my best to deserve it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It may just be his imagination, but the ever-present rumbling of the Hail Mary seems to murmur “you're welcome,” in response.