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The shower has been running for a while now, too long now, past the point where Ryland can still say that he's letting the water warm up and actually mean that.
“Well.”
Ryland starts, then stops.
He glances at Simon.
Simon doesn't look at him.
He stares at the shower, at the closed shower curtain that’s just barely keeping the water in the tub and off the bathroom floor, jaw clenched so tightly Ryland is half expecting to hear the cracking of cartilage and the splitting of a tooth.
“I'll…leave you to it, I guess.”
It doesn’t feel like the right thing to say.
He knows it’s not the right thing to say.
Because Simon looks at Ryland.
It's fast–Simon snaps his head around quickly enough that Ryland does hear the pop and crack of cartilage. It’s not, however, from the complicated mechanisms of his jaw, but rather the soft disks of squishy bits that live between the hardened calcium of the vertebrae in his spine. 36 vertebrae, to be exact. Ryland has counted the ridges of them a few times over, just to be sure.
Simon’s eyes are wide, deep and dark and rich in soil and carbon and coal and panic.
“Or not.” Ryland quickly corrects.
Simon swallows.
His throat clicks.
“I'm sorry,” he whispers.
“Hey–no, it's fine, you don't gotta–” Ryland holds his hands up like he’s going to reach for Simon, but he draws back at the last second when he sees Simon flinch. Ryland doesn’t take it personally, even if it stings. “It's okay.”
Simon looks away from him again.
Ryland stays quiet for a moment.
“Do you…” he starts, trailing off while he searches for the words he wants to use.
He wishes he could just spirit Simon out of the bathroom and call it a day, but, well.
Simon needs a proper wash, and they already knew that a bath was out. They’d tried one a few days ago and it…hadn’t gone the way either of them had planned, if Ryland wanted to be nice about it.
The moment Simon sunk into the water Ryland knew something was wrong. Simon had grown distant the exact nanosecond that that warm water had touched his skin, his eyes going glassy and vacant, muscles locking in a deeply instinctual prey response so primitive that it hadn’t looked in the least little bit natural, and when Ryland called out to him in alarm Simon didn't seem to hear it. He didn't offer a reply. He didn’t react at all, not even to give Ryland one of those surprised glances he always seemed to toss his way every time he called Simon by his name.
Simon was just…gone.
Somewhere Ryland couldn't follow.
So he pulled Simon out of the water, wrapped him in a towel, and sat on the bathroom floor with him until Simon found his way back to him.
Ryland hadn't asked then.
And he still doesn't ask now.
“...I can sit in here with you?” Ryland offers, because it seems like the easiest solution.
Simon lifts his arm to hug across his chest–a self soothing gesture Ryland’s been noticing him doing more and more–fingers curling into the loose empty sleeve of his shirt that’s been pinned up to his shoulder to be mostly out of the way.
His silence is answer enough.
“Okay,” Ryland nods. He can work with this. It’s baby steps, but it’s steps. It’s a direction to go when he hasn’t really had any sort of direction at all. “I'll just turn around and you can–”
Ryland waves his hands in a loose gesture vaguely resembling something akin to jazz hands, makes an odd sound that’s a mix of a cut off yup and a buzzing hum, then he clicks his heels together and spins around on the tile sharply enough that he almost faceplants into the wall.
“Careful,” Simon mutters.
And that's good.
It's good.
Because it means Simon is still here with Ryland.
“I'm always careful.” Ryland says cheerfully.
Simon makes a soft sound. A scoff, maybe. A noise of disagreement, perhaps. Something in between, probably. Something that means nothing at all, most likely.
Ryland hums, rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, and fills the tiny space of the bathroom with some nonsensical song before the pitter patter of the water can fill it for him. It’s…not good. Ryland’s musical talents haven’t spontaneously gotten better, even though it seems like they maybe should have improved just a smidge with how much time he spends with Rocky. But Ryland has not picked up on the musicality of his best friend’s language, and his humming really is pretty poopy, but Simon doesn’t say anything about it so Ryland keeps going.
What Simon does do, however, is add his own countermelody.
It comes in the quiet thwump of his clothes hitting the floor, in the grating shinnnk of the shower curtain being pulled back, in the shaky breath Simon takes that rattles all 28 of his ribs like a wind chime. Ryland had counted these too, over and over, fingers skipping along the slightly distended skin above each rib, certain he was counting wrong. He never was. It continues in the steps Simon takes, in the quiet muffling of the water once it hits skin instead of tiled floor, in another far more violent shinnnk of the shower curtain being pulled shut, and then it ends rather abruptly by a sharp hitch of Simon’s chest and the stilling of his heavy breathing.
Ryland hadn’t realized Simon’s breathing had grown so heavy.
“Do you know what the three different types of rocks are?” He asks before he can think about the words coming out of his mouth.
Ryland immediately cringes after, because what the fudge was that?
For a moment, there's only silence.
“...do I fucking what?”
“Types of rocks.” Ryland says, and he's doubling down on it while moving to go sit on the toilet seat, apparently. Great. Cool. Sitting in the bathroom with your new-ish roommate while he's taking a shower because he was on the verge of a panic attack just thinking about it and talking about rocks. Nothing out of the ordinary there. “Do you know them?”
“No.” Simon says after a beat.
“Oh, well–”
And then Ryland just…
…talks about rocks.
Igneous. Metamorphic. Sedimentary. What his favorite is (igneous). What his least favorite is (sedimentary). How maybe they could go take a walk later if Simon was feeling up to it and maybe–well, it was 50/50 on whether or not they’d find real rocks in their little biome, but they could at least find rock adjacent things. And did Simon know that there are certain species of penguins that spent ages looking for the perfect rock to give to a potential mate? And it’s kind of funny how humans sort of do the same thing. Kind of. People spend a lot of time looking at engagement rings and wedding rings and diamonds, and diamonds aren’t technically rocks but they’re found in rocks, igneous ones, actually–
The water cuts off abruptly.
Ryland snaps his eyes down to the ground.
The shower curtain slides back open
“You talk a lot,” Simon says without any particular kind of inflation to his tone.
“Sorry.” Ryland says quickly.
“No, I–”
Simon falls silent.
Ryland waits what he deems to be a respectable amount of time before he risks a glance up.
Simon’s face is already dry, hair pushed back and cheeks rubbed almost raw from how vigorously he must have been scrubbing the towel across his face. He’s slipped back into the sweatpants he’d been wearing, but hasn’t bothered with the shirt, and Ryland takes the opportunity to give Simon a quick once over. There is not much in the way of privacy between them. Not when they share such close quarters. Not when Ryland spent far more days than either of them wants to admit to cleaning and bandaging wounds that Simon refused to explain. Modesty is respected, of course, but not when Ryland is checking on the puncture marks in Simon’s stomach, or counting the distended bumps of his ribs to be sure that yes, he’s still counting right, or sweeping over the stump where Simon’s left arm used to be to see that it hasn’t gotten any worse.
Simon’s arm does not look any worse.
He still has 28 ribs.
The puncture marks are shiny and red, but not inflamed.
“I…like hearing you talk.” Simon finishes quietly.
“Oh.” Ryland blinks, genuinely surprised. “You do?”
Simon nods.
“Even if I'm talking about igneous rocks?” Ryland asks, because the only people who actually liked listening to him talk about rocks were his students, and even then it was a hit or miss.
“Yeah.” Simon lifts his hand, dragging his fingers through his hair to pull back the few strands that had slipped back into his face. “Even if you're talking about igneous rocks.”
Ryland blinks again.
“Oh. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Good.” Then, “Good good good.”
Simon’s lips twitch up into something that might be the beginnings of a smile.