Chapter Text
Eridians never fail to amaze Grace. So far, they’ve managed to recreate more of Earth than he could have ever imagined. Waves, trees, flowers — Grace is grateful for all of it. He knows Simon feels the same, even if he doesn’t say as much. Grace can tell just from how curious Simon has become.
“And this one?” Simon asked, looking up from the pale, papery bark he was tracing under his thumb.
“It’s a birch tree,” Grace explained, trying to control the goofy grin on his face. Starved for human contact in a way he hadn’t fully let himself acknowledge, Grace savored every one of Simon’s reactions.
It was different than teaching kids back on Earth, different than his experiences in the classroom here on Erid. Now that he and Simon had found common ground, a way to communicate, something to connect over — it felt like…like a miracle, maybe. A lifeline. Relief. A deep breath after an eternity underwater.
Answering all of Simon’s questions about plant life had been a breakthrough in their relationship. It got them talking regularly after the tense early days of Simon’s arrival, gave them something to distract each other with when the standard getting-to-know-you pleasantries veered hard into horrors that neither of them wanted to linger on.
Talking about trees was easier. More fun. More fun by far, really. Even now, months into developing a small but mighty forest within their biodome, Grace still occasionally finds Simon wide-eyed with awe over a flourishing sapling or sprawling vine. Few plants make him light up like the tree that grew from the last seed pod from Eden, though.
“Do you think this could still grow into anything?” Simon clenched his jaw and unfurled his hand, holding out an odd medallion attached to a length of cord.
Upon closer inspection, Grace saw that it consisted of two panes of cracked glass. In between them, some sort of seed. Aside from the cracks, the medallion didn’t look too terribly different from many of the other slides Grace had examined under a microscope throughout his life.
Before Grace could say anything, Simon cleared his throat. “I know it’s broken, but —”
“It actually looks pretty well preserved,” Grace interrupted, too excited to rein himself in as he realized exactly what Simon was showing him. “Can I…?” he asked, reaching out for Simon but stopping just shy of touching.
Simon hesitated. “You think you can do something with it?”
“I —” Grace paused, holding back from barreling in with too much enthusiasm. Despite how much working with Rocky on various experiments had bolstered Grace’s confidence, he didn’t want to promise this to Simon and have it fail. “I do. I mean, we’ll have to study it first. It may take a while. But, jeez, Rocky’s been able to clone my muscle tissue. You’ve been able to acclimate and heal up so much faster than we thought. We’ve seen all sorts of miracles here.”
Grace laughed, eyes crinkling shut for a moment. “I think we’ve got a good chance of growing something with this. I really do.” When he opened his eyes, Simon was staring straight into his soul.
The moment ended as quickly as it came. Simon looked away. Took a deep breath. Then —
“Please be careful with it.” Simon placed the medallion in Grace’s palm, then clasped his hand over Grace’s.
There was no conscious thought behind it when Grace squeezed Simon’s hand in his. It just felt right.
The seed had sprouted. Rocky, mad genius that he was, had even helped Grace find a way to clone the original seed. Better yet, by working together with an intensity that led to more than a few long nights between the both of them, they’d found a way to genetically engineer a variant of the seed that could grow nearly ten times faster than usual. Keeping their progress under wraps was an excruciating practice in self-restraint for Grace, but the wait was worth it.
“Simon? You got a minute?”
Sprawled out on the sofa with a book in hand, Simon barely looked up when he answered. “For?”
God. Now that they’d gotten comfortable around each other, Simon could be such a brat sometimes. Grace isn’t completely sure why that makes him smile so much.
“I’ve got news about that seed you gave me.”
Simon went rigid. “Good news or bad news?”
“I mean, if I answer that now, it’d kind of take some of the surprise out of the moment, wouldn’t it?”
Finally, Simon closed his book and glanced over to meet Grace’s eye. He looked unimpressed, but Grace didn’t miss the way his whole body went lax again. “It’s good news. You wouldn’t be this annoying if it wasn’t.”
They managed to keep bickering the whole way to the forest. It stopped as they started walking through the trees, though. Simon looked like he was hardly breathing.
“So, you were right,” Grace said, pausing a few paces ahead of the clearing. “It is good news.” He could feel Simon’s eyes on him as they walked forward another few steps. “Um. Did you know what kind of seed that was?”
Simon shook his head. “No, I — I heard a lot of stories about it. They said it was supposed to be the heart of Eden. I don’t know what the hell they meant by that, but. Yeah. That’s all I knew.”
A squeaky, breathless laugh escaped Grace. “Like – like the garden of Eden? Wow, I – that sort of makes sense, I guess?” Grace took a breath, trying to avoid spoiling the moment with too much talk of the freaky cult Simon grew up in. “It was the seed for an apple tree,” he explained as they finally came upon the hearty little sapling he and Rocky recently planted. “Simon, I don’t know how you kept that thing safe during all you went through, but it survived. This one is the original, and it’s going to take years before it’ll even start looking like a real tree, but it’s healthy and doing amazing so far.”
Frozen in place, Simon didn’t say anything. For a long moment, he just stood there, staring in shock.
Unable to control himself, Grace rambled on. “Um, but! That’s not the only good news!”
This seemed to shake Simon. He faltered, eyes flickering between the sapling and Grace. “W-what?”
“We were able to clone the seed, too.” Grace laughed with delight and scratched his cheek. “So, even if something happens to this one, we can try again. And! While we were working on that, we found a way to manipulate one of the cloned seeds for faster growth. Rocky’s got one sprouting in the lab right now. We want to watch it for a bit longer before bringing it into the forest, but if it keeps growing well, it could bear fruit within the next year.”
Simon looked dazed. Really, Grace should’ve probably stopped there, but…
“Ah, and just one last thing,” he added, reaching into his pocket. On the same length of cord Simon gifted him, Grace presented a medallion almost identical to the original but with uncracked glass. “Since we were able to clone the seed, I figured um. Well. Here.”
Holding it out toward Simon, Grace dropped the medallion into his palm. Before Grace could pull his hand away, Simon caught it in his own and pulled Grace forward into a hug.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, leaning into Grace like he was the only safe, solid being in the universe.
Simon’s curiosity for plants exploded from there. When he first started joining Grace and Rocky in the lab, he was still a little hesitant. Like so many of Grace’s past students, though, Simon flourished when he found his passion, as he came into his own. So far, what that process looked like was Simon splitting his time between researching and planning in the lab and working hands-on in the garden or forest.
Sometimes, Grace joins him. Not to supervise, not to help — this project is all Simon’s, and Grace has no intention of taking that away from him. It’s just nice to be around him, to have company. Simon doesn’t ask as many questions anymore, but Grace still likes hearing him think aloud or share updates on a plant’s progress. And when Simon does have questions, Grace is more than happy to answer.
He’s a teacher, after all. He’s not going to do anything but encourage Simon’s curiosity, his desire to learn.
It’s just that teaching him about this one particular flower they’ve found in their biodome is a little different than any other lesson Grace is used to giving. Weed isn’t exactly the type of thing he could or ever would have discussed in class.
“I – uh. Sorry, how did this one get here?” Grace stumbles over his words as he looks between Simon and the flowering plant that is clearly some strain of cannabis.
Simon furrows his eyebrows and shrugs, gesturing to the garden of other flowers growing alongside this one. “All of these grew out of the seed mix Rocky gave me, so…”
Ah. Right. With some embarrassment, Grace now remembers okaying Rocky’s plan to synthesize a variety mix of flower seeds for Simon. At the time, it’d seemed like a good way to encourage Simon’s fascination with plants. The mix would, if successful, produce a range of species for Simon to study and cultivate. Grace supposes that this is indeed what happened, but — well. He hadn’t really thought of the fact that weed was included in that family of flowering plants.
“So. What is it?” Simon asks.
Grace looks over, finally out of his own head enough to recognize that Simon is starting to get antsy. He tries for a smile to smooth things over.
“It’s cannabis,” Grace explains. “Or, um. Weed. Marijuana. There are a lot of names for it, now that I think about it.”
Simon nods slowly. “Is it dangerous? Why were you acting so weird about it?”
Rude. Grace huffs, but Simon’s blunt comment is too funny for him to be genuinely put out.
“It’s not dangerous,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just, uh. On Earth, it’s used as a drug. A for-fun one, mainly. But it can also help with some medical issues.” Grace distantly recalls reading an article about cannabis helping with PTSD and chronic pain. “You know,” he starts, “if we can find a way to process this, it might be able to help with your recovery a bit.”
“Huh.” Simon looks deep in thought.
“We don’t have to, though,” Grace adds. His excitement tempered by the troubled expression on Simon’s face, Grace tries his best to seem normal. Calm. “It’s up to you. Your call.”
Simon takes a slow, deep breath. “I want to try propagating this one first,” he says, voice firm despite a thread of uncertainty underneath. “If I can get a second plant established, then, maybe, we can try something with the first.” He pauses and looks over at Grace. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Grace smiles again, eyes crinkling shut in delight when he notices Simon trying to fight one back, too. Joy looks good on him.
It takes a while — months, even — for a cutting from Simon’s first cannabis plant to take root. By the time it’s ready to enter the soil, Simon has read so many of the Hail Mary’s materials on the plant that Grace is certain Simon’s understanding of it far outpaces his own. Even so, once the second plant is established, Simon still comes to Grace for help.
“You mentioned something about processing the flowers,” Simon says over breakfast one morning. “Have you done that before? Can you show me?”
Halfway through his first cup of coffee and brain barely online enough for conversation, Grace blinks and thinks back to the handful of times he’d helped prep joints with a shitty plastic grinder during his freshman year of college. “Uh, yeah. I mean. Yes. I’ve done it a few times before, but…I don’t know if we have the equipment for it?”
Simon nods. “Let me or Rocky know what sort of gear we’ll need, and we can figure something out.”
All Grace can do is nod back. Once Simon has a plan, it’s hard to argue with him. Not that Grace often wants to argue anyway. Simon is methodical and determined, especially when it comes to anything with his plants. Grace trusts his judgment.
“So,” Grace sighed, feeling a little shy for some reason, “I guess…the equipment we’ll need sort of depends on what you want to do with the flowers.”
Sat across from Grace in the lab, Simon propped his leg up on his chair and rested his chin on his knee as he scanned his notes. “You said it could help with recovery. I’ve been reading a little about it, but you probably understand it better than I do,” he said, frowning. “A bunch of studies talk about it being used for pain. For stress. But you also said people just use it for fun?” Simon sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Is it like alcohol? I tried looking it up in the entertainment database for reference, but everything that came up about it was sort of…weird.”
Yeah, Grace could imagine. “Right,” he laughed nervously. “So, I guess it’s sort of like alcohol?” It’s the only comparison Grace could think of that would connect for Simon. “But people usually smoke the flowers. You can process them further to make them into edibles — foods that would produce the same effect. That can be sort of intense for people, though. Smoking it is definitely the most common.”
Simon hummed thoughtfully. “Does it make you feel the same way alcohol does?”
“It depends,” Grace explained. “It can hit everyone a little differently. Kind of like alcohol in that way, I guess. It can make you feel sort of loose? And silly. It used to make me hungry, too.”
“So, you’ve used it before, then,” Simon interrupted. Grace could’ve sworn he saw a grin flicker across Simon’s face as he said it.
A little embarrassed, Grace nodded. Talking about this threw him right back to college, to being 18 and making stupid decisions to fit in. “Yes,” he admitted. “It’s been a long time, though.”
“Tell me about it,” Simon said. It wasn’t really a demand, nor a question. The way Simon said it was more like an invitation.
Grace accepted it. And despite the embarrassment that this nostalgic trip down memory lane caused, he didn’t regret a second of it, if only because it made Simon smile and laugh so freely. He had a lovely laugh, it turned out.
This is how Grace ends up in the kitchen one afternoon, carefully grinding the flowers of Simon’s cannabis plant and rolling them into joints. It’s absolutely bonkers that Rocky was able to help them create not just a grinder but also rolling papers. Somehow, it all came together, though.
In an attempt to make Simon’s first experience with marijuana as pleasant as possible, Grace laid out a quilt for them in a shady corner of the garden. Best to keep the smoke outside, Grace thought. Plus, the garden seemed to be Simon’s favorite place on Erid so far. If he had any adverse reaction to smoking, he’d at least be in a safe and controlled environment while it happened. Grace really hopes it won’t be a bad experience, though.
He knows the broad strokes of what Simon went through, saw him fight tooth and nail to recover from the injuries it caused, hears him down the hall on nights when the flashbacks and panic creep in. He has all the reason in the world to be standoffish, but despite his gruff, quiet nature, he’s been remarkably kind to Grace. To Rocky and Adrian, too.
Grace had heard him in the lab one early morning, his low, gentle voice quietly thanking Rocky and Adrian both for all they’d done for him. Thanking Adrian for helping him acclimate to Erid, thanking Rocky for all he’d done to help the Eden seed grow. After braving the horrors of a blood ocean and fighting for survival, Simon was still somehow brave enough to also be gracious and vulnerable. If he could do all of that, giving him this new tool to aid in his recovery felt like the least Grace could do. Simon deserves to have this go well. He deserves to be happy.
Not unlike his college days, Grace also hopes that maybe doing this together could help thaw some of the lingering ice between them. He knows it’s partially his own fault, knows he hasn’t exactly been the perfect host in terms of genuinely opening up to Simon. Even before being sent to die in space, Grace hadn’t excelled at relationships of any kind. For all his wonder and love for the world, forming solid, long-lasting connections with other people felt like a game he’d been losing at for the majority of his life. But befriending Rocky had cracked something open inside Grace. Maybe he was odd and awkward and a little neurotic, but he wasn’t hopeless. He had a friend. A real one, one who valued him as a person rather than a mere colleague or tool to be used for some greater purpose. If he could find that connection once, maybe he could find it again. Maybe Simon would want that, too.
Caught up in his own mind, Grace doesn’t notice Simon come in until he’s right beside him.
“Ryland?”
Grace jumps, startled, and winces when he sees Simon promptly back away. Great first step to this whole connection thing.
“Sorry, sorry,” he offers, laughing self-consciously as he recovers. He smiles, a little strained, and finally focuses his attention on Simon.
He’s just come in from a visit to the forest, his hands (both prosthetic and otherwise) dirty from working with the soil, his hair swept back and out of his face in a ponytail. Still, he manages to look cool and composed. Mostly, at least. Grace’s little freak out does seem to have ruffled him a bit. Frankly, it’s amazing they don’t set off each other’s anxiety like this more often.
“Sorry,” Grace repeats, pushing his glasses up to rub his eyes. It doesn’t do much to soothe the odd ache in his chest that’s started to crop up whenever Simon is nearby, but it does give him a chance to pull himself together a bit. “How, uh, how’s your tree doing?”
Before answering, Simon gives Grace a wary once-over. “Fine. Same as usual,” he says, passing behind Grace to get a glass of water. Once he’s settled, he glances back over to Grace. “What’ve you been up to?”
Grace smiles and holds up one of the carefully rolled joints. “Making use of the grinder Rocky made. Everything’s ready to go now, whenever you want to try it.”
It’s hard to get a full smile out of Simon, but the flash of one he responds with now still lights up a constellation of synapses in Grace’s brain. “Right. Um, give me a minute to go shower first?”
“Sure,” Grace nods and fidgets with the joint in his hands. “I’ll meet you out in the garden when you’re ready.”
The wait isn’t long. By the time Simon arrives, hair damp and starting to curl around his ears, Grace has only just managed to calm his breathing. He sits cross-legged on the quilt, and Simon joins him, mirroring his position while sitting across from him. Unsure how else to start, Grace reaches out to hand Simon the joint, letting him get familiar with it.
Simon raises his eyebrows but accepts it, turning it over in his hands. “You’re going to show me how to do it first, right?” he says, meeting Grace’s eyes as he passes the joint back to him.
“Of course.” Grace smiles, in an attempt to soothe his nerves more than anything else. He fiddles with the joint and lighter in his hands, desperately trying to dig up whatever stoner insight he can recall from his messy undergrad days. In the end, he decides simple is probably the best approach.
Placing the joint between his lips, Grace cups his hand around the end of it and flicks the lighter on. Mercifully, it catches and begins to smolder without a hitch. Grace breathes in a little deeper than he means to, relieved to have not made a fool of himself, then has to use all his willpower not to cough as the first hot licks of smoke curl in his lungs. He’d forgotten exactly how this felt. Looking away, he tries to hide the way his eyes are watering and exhales sharply. Briefly clearing his throat, Grace manages to get through the first hit without disaster.
“It can be a little harsh at first,” Grace says, voice rasping more than he’d like. Holding the joint out, he smiles — a real one this time — as Simon accepts it. “Just go slow. One breath in, one breath out. Careful not to burn your fingers.”
Simon nods, eyes flickering like a flame between Grace and the joint. Following Grace’s advice to a tee, he takes a slow inhale, then lets the smoke go in a sigh.
“Perfect,” Grace says, smiling wider now. “You’re a natural.”
Maybe he spoke too soon. The second the words leave his mouth, Simon jolts and turns to cough into his elbow.
“Oh, whoops, okay, uh –” Reaching to take the joint from Simon and stub it out, Grace leaves it abandoned on the quilt and rests a hand on Simon’s shoulder as he stands up to get him a glass of water. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
When he returns, Simon is lying on his back, glaring up at the sky. “Here,” Grace says, handing Simon the glass of water, “this will help. Sorry, I should’ve warned you better. The smoke can be a lot the first time.”
Simon reluctantly sits up, mumbling a ‘thank you’ as he accepts the glass of water. “Can we try again?” he asks, avoiding eye contact.
“Sure, um. Sure. Are you sure you want to keep going already?” Grace stumbles over his words, unprepared for Simon to recover so quickly.
“Please.” Simon tilts his head to the side and gives Grace a look. “Seriously. I’d rather not have my final attempt at this be me nearly choking to death in front of you.”
Grace laughs and rubs a hand over his cheek. “Hey, nearly everyone does it their first time,” he says, reaching for the joint and putting it between his lips again to relight it. He takes a short, shallow inhale this time and blows it out over his shoulder in a long, thin stream. “I know I did,” he adds, handing the joint over to Simon.
“Oh yeah?” Simon arches an eyebrow as he inhales, more carefully this time. Again, he exhales with a sigh but puts more power behind it to fully clear the smoke from his lungs. “Any particular reason you didn’t choose to tell me that beforehand?”
“I –” Grace flusters, so distracted with watching Simon that he isn’t prepared to process the words coming out of his mouth. “I…forgot,” he mutters, stealing the joint back from where it dangles between Simon’s fingers.
Mercifully, this gets Simon laughing. “Yeah, alright. That’s fair,” he says in between sips of water.
Preoccupied with taking another hit, Grace tries his best to pretend that Simon’s laughter isn’t making his chest go tight. As they trade the joint back and forth a few more times, they both start to loosen up. Grace sees the rigid line of Simon’s shoulders relax, feels his own constant thrum of anxiety start to quiet down.
“I don’t know if I feel anything,” Simon says after a few minutes, handing the joint back to Grace.
A barely audible hum of surprise is all Grace can manage for a moment. From his perspective, the change in Simon is obvious. The usual carefully guarded expression on his face has softened and left him looking doe-eyed. His hands, almost always fidgeting with something, are still in the grass.
Grace should ask if he wants to stop. And he will, he will. But first: “Simon?”
“Hm?”
“What do you do with a sick chemist?”
“What –?”
“You helium,” Grace says, not even trying to hide the dopey, pleased look on his face.
Simon snorts, then groans and laughs again as he buries his face in his hands. “That was – that was probably your worst pun yet.”
“Oh, it was definitely my worst pun yet,” Grace replies, a sunny grin spreading across his face. “But you laughed at it. So, I think we can probably say that the weed is affecting you at least a little bit.”
With that, Grace takes another hit. He can feel Simon watching him as he does it. The smile rising to his face trips up Grace’s heart, sends it skipping as Grace exhales. “We can stop if you want to, though,” he says, holding the joint between them while he waits for Simon to decide.
Simon steals the joint back, and when Grace looks up at him, the hesitant smile on his face has settled in — small and cautious, but definitely there. “Nah. I can keep going. A little while longer, and maybe you can convince me to like those dorky matching ties and socks you wear to class.”
“They’re for the kids!” Grace lies, laughing his way through it.
Before long, they’ve burned through most of their first joint. When Grace realizes this, he stubs it out, insisting they take a break to drink water. Simon goes along with this, patiently accepting the glass Grace thrusts into his hands and drinking deeply before passing it back. While Grace drinks, Simon lies back on the quilt, folding his hands behind his head and humming in contentment. He reminds Grace of a cat stretching out in a sunbeam. The thought nearly gets Grace giggling like an idiot again.
Attempting to get himself under control, Grace sets the glass of water down and decides maybe Simon had the right idea with lying back and getting comfortable. Like Simon, he folds his hands under his head. He opts to lie on his stomach, though, appreciating the soft material of the quilt against his cheek.
He’s not sure how long they stay like that. Every so often, Grace flutters his eyes open to check on Simon. Eventually, he finds Simon looking back to check on him.
Simon doesn’t look away when their eyes meet. Instead, he holds Grace’s gaze like he’s trying to puzzle out a mystery. Grace can’t imagine there’s much about himself that would inspire this kind of curiosity.
“Why doesn’t Rocky call you by your first name?” Simon finally asks.
Grace blinks, unprepared for that question. “Oh,” he starts, thoughts coming in slowly and a little fuzzy around the edges. “Um, I guess that’s just how he first got to know me. All my other colleagues used to call me that. Well, Dr. Grace, actually, but.” It’s not the most elegant explanation, but Grace isn’t sure what more there is to say.
At first, Simon only responds with a hum of acknowledgment. “Does it bother you that I don’t call you that?” he continues after a beat. “That I call you Ryland instead?”
Maybe it’s just the swimminess in Grace’s head, but Simon’s voice — already resonant and beautiful on a normal day — now sounds unbearably soft and lilting. The way he says Ryland, careful and purposeful, makes Grace suddenly very aware of his own heartbeat.
“No,” he says, almost laughing. Grace doesn’t even need to think about his answer. “No, it doesn’t bother me. It sounds nice when you say it.”
And that is perhaps just a bit too honest a statement for Grace to have revealed so casually. Burying his face in the quilt, he takes a deep breath and tries to push forward like nothing happened.
“Um. Do you want to finish this off?” he asks, picking up the joint and twirling it between his fingers.
Simon runs a hand through his hair and sits up, blinking a few times as he adjusts to being upright again. “Sure.”
With that, Grace lights the joint again, more careful about handling it now that it’s burned down so much. This time, as he passes it back to Simon, he distracts himself from staring by leaning back and exhaling slow, trying to imitate the unbearably cool art students he’d attempted to befriend during college. He’s sure he doesn’t pull it off, but he can at least manage a decent French inhale.
“How are you doing that?” Simon says, furrowing his eyebrows as he takes a hit and watches Grace.
Grace rubs a hand across his face and shrugs. “Muscle memory, mostly? I, um. I might’ve had a phase in college where I was desperately trying to impress my friends with stupid stunts like that.”
This fact sparks a glimmer of mischief in Simon’s eyes. “Yeah? Show me another one,” he says, passing the joint back to Grace.
Any embarrassment is overridden by Grace’s satisfaction at seeing Simon so expressive. “Alright, alright,” he agrees, taking the joint and thinking for a second before taking a long hit. Before he can talk himself out of it, he arranges his mouth just so and exhales a ring of smoke. Pulling this off is quite possibly one of the most astounding feats Grace has ever accomplished (world-saving acts of science notwithstanding).
“Fuck off.” Simon throws his head back and laughs. “How the hell did you do that?”
Grace smiles bashfully and passes the joint back to Simon.
“Does it get tiring being so good at everything?” Simon teases, tapping ash off the end of the joint before putting it between his lips again and taking a hit.
All at once, Grace’s mouth goes dry. “I’m not good at everything,” he mumbles, clearing his throat and pointedly ignoring the warmth fizzing in his fingertips, in his cheeks, in his stomach.
Simon rolls his eyes fondly and hands the now nearly-finished joint back to Grace. As Simon exhales, Grace looks down at the smoldering remnants of their weed. They probably only have one good hit left. Grace should let Simon have it, right?
Or, maybe, they could share it.
“Want to see one last trick?” Grace asks, raising the joint to his lips but not yet inhaling.
Simon grins. “Yes, absolutely.”
Grace nods and bites back a smile. “You sure? There’s audience participation involved in this one.”
This gets Simon to knit his eyebrows together in confusion, but his smile remains. “I’m sure. I trust you.”
It takes a monumental effort for Grace not to hiss on the inhale after hearing Simon say that. But he manages. Holding the smoke in his lungs, Grace stubs out the joint for good and leans forward, crawling into Simon’s space.
If getting high had made Simon go doe-eyed earlier, this makes his eyes go wide as dinner plates. He doesn’t pull away, though. He just watches Grace, his gaze dark and deep enough to drown in.
Too late to back out now. Using every ounce of idiotic bravery in his body, Grace raises a hand to frame Simon’s face and traces his thumb across Simon’s lips, urging him to part them. When he does, Grace leans in and exhales slowly, sharing the last of the smoke with Simon. And Simon takes all of it, eyes fluttering shut as he breathes in.
“See?” Grace laughs quietly, his voice shaking the whole time. “You are a natural.”
When Simon opens his eyes, his pupils are blown so wide that Grace almost asks if he’s okay. He barely has time to form that thought before Simon’s hand is cradling his jaw to pull him in closer.
It’s warm. From the heat of Simon’s palm on his cheek to his lips on Grace’s, it’s all so warm and easy that Grace sinks into it without thinking. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, but when they find their way into Simon’s hair, Grace’s breath hitches with how nice it feels. When Simon takes this opportunity to lick into Grace’s mouth, Grace whines, and god that would be embarrassing if not for the way it makes Simon groan and pull Grace in closer.
Desperate. Hungry. Starved.
Grace can’t remember ever wanting this badly before in his life. He can’t remember ever feeling this wanted before, either. If he could take a step back, take a deep breath, maybe he could get a handle on the full-body overwhelm he’s experiencing. Just the idea of pulling away from this makes Grace cling tighter, though. When he does, it’s Simon’s turn to whine.
They can’t let go of each other. Can’t. Won’t. How could they, now that they know they have someone to hold on to?