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Grace wasn’t a stranger to attraction, per say.
Okay, so maybe on Earth he hadn’t been the most experienced with relationships or physical attraction, but he didn’t need to experience the Large Hadron Super Collider for himself to understand how it worked either (as cool as that would’ve been).
From what little bits and pieces of his memory he managed to recover and could now recall easier (thanks, Stratt…) he had only ever been in two relationships in his thirty something years of life. One of which wasn’t really much of a relationship as much as it was a “situationship”, if that. And the other that was…well…just based on what he could recall, Grace honestly preferred not knowing much about Linda, if he were being completely honest.
But he understood the idea! He understood what it was about a person that could be attractive. He wasn’t that oblivious (God, he hoped he wasn’t that oblivious). And he also understood what he found attractive.
And oh boy was Simon attractive.
Obviously, Simon was a very physically attractive man (a very unfairly physically attractive man, great googly moogly). He was built like a tank, with thick muscles, a broad chest and biceps that Grace never fully realized he was staring at until he would feel Rocky’s xenonite ball dig painfully into his leg, his friend’s shrill (and clearly frustrated) repetition of his question finally coming into focus in Grace’s mind.
Simon often reminded Grace of a phrase he had read in all those super market trade paperback romance books he collected. “Tall, dark and handsome”; with his tanned skin and thick, dark hair that never seemed to fully get swept up into his ponytail, always framing his face in some way and accentuating the deep brown of his unscarred eye. And okay, sure, maybe he wasn’t taller than Grace but with Grace being six foot that was kind of a losing battle for anyone (not that the height really mattered with how easily Simon could manage to manhandle him with just one arm).
And the scars, Grace could easily deduce that those were also physically attractive as well. He recalled a conversation he had once had with Marissa during one of their routine dinners together when she had, off-handedly, mentioned her new beau at the time.
“He’s got a motorcycle, which is hot enough on its own, you know? But I guess he crashed it pretty bad once when he was in his early twenties. He’s got this scar all the way from his wrist and up to his bicep and shoulder blade from where he skidded and tore the skin up something bad. And, my God, Ry, when I tell you what that does to me–”
“You don’t need to tell me, I think I can venture a guess,” Grace had said with a grin, watching his friend’s face flush from both the alcohol and the topic at hand.
Marissa must’ve really liked this guy. She usually never babbled to Grace about her dating escapades unless they had gone poorly. Grace remembered that it made his heart feel warm.
It was good, he had remembered thinking. Marissa deserved someone she was finally crazy about.
“It’s just so…” Marissa paused, her mind struggling through a haze of whiskey to capture the right word. Eventually, she settled for “lived. Like, when I see his scar it feels like ‘wow, here’s a guy who’s lived’. God, that sounds stupid. Like that hokey thing about how every scar has a ‘cool story’ but it’s true, you know? It doesn’t feel like he’s putting up a front to be what he thinks I’ll like when he went on our first date with that scar right on display. He’s coming as he is, his entire past right there for me to see…or maybe I’m just talking out my ass and it’s just the fact I have a thing for the ‘bad boy’ type, I don’t know.”
They had laughed at the time, but Grace now understood what Marissa meant entirely.
He understood every time he saw the myriad of scars littering Simon’s chest and back, some older and faded and some newer and deeper. When he saw the rough tissue spreading up from underneath the connector port for his prosthetic, wrapping around his shoulder as if Simon had been burned by tree roots as hot as the sun. When he saw the scar that spread from the corner of his mouth up almost to his ear or the one that sliced over his nose, a nose which sat just slightly crooked from some old break.
Marissa had been right. Everything about Simon, from his scars to his face to how he carried himself felt…lived. A tapestry to a life that Grace couldn’t help but be fascinated and humbled by.
And okay, sure, maybe it also helped with the “bad boy” aesthetic and that was really hot too, though he would never say that aloud. Some, thankfully, still rational part in Grace’s brain told him maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tell your ex-convict (boyfriend? Lover? Partner??) that he had a really good “bad boy” image.
But it was more than just the physical aspect; Grace had always been able to understand what made someone physically attractive but what really made someone desirable? Now that was a different beast entirely but God, it was like Simon had been tailor made for Grace.
There were the obvious things, sure; Simon was kinder than Grace suspected others would believe. Grace had found that out quickly when he saw how tenderly Simon cared for the seedlings in the Plant Room, watching the younger man talk to the plants so gently, even going so far as to lightly scold them on occasion.
“Rosmarinus, you have to work with me here, any more drainage and your soil is going to be entirely fuckin’ rocks.”
And then there was the way Simon spoke to the Hail Mary. Grace remembered, after an especially harrowing moment where they had nearly been pulled into a passing planet’s orbit due to a malfunction with the trajectory systems, how Simon had breathed a sigh of relief after they had made their escape. After manually correcting their course and fixing the trajectory system issue, Grace had watched as Simon’s hand had come up to rub the roof of the cockpit, as if Simon were affectionately scratching the underbelly of some great beast.
“Atta girl, Mary. Knew you’d pull through.”
“You’re welcome, Simon,” came Mary’s cheery, synthetic voice, automatically responding to the address.
Something about the entire exchange had ignited Grace’s heart in a way he couldn’t quite describe. After he had finished pulling said heart out of his stomach from the whole ordeal.
And Simon was a lot more jovial than Grace had initially expected. Grace, he would admit with a fair amount of shame, had fully expected Simon to fit into the mold of the stereotypical “brooding man with a dark past who would barely speak and roll his eyes at every corny joke that would ever escape Grace’s mouth”.
But that was fine! That would be totally fine! Grace could work with that! Grace remembered getting on well with Carl, after all, and Carl had been a similar type of personality; not really talking much unless prompted by Grace and not particularly fond of joking beyond the occasional sardonic one-liner.
Even if that friendship had ended…poorly, to say the least. Again, thanks Stratt.
Grace remembered being so nervous the first time he had offered some of his clothes for Simon to wear after Armando had released him from the medical bay. Grace would try to see if they could salvage what remained of Simon’s old clothes but that was going to take time between the sheer volume of blood soaked into the fabric alongside trying to avoid aggravating the tears and holes in the material that seemed to have been pre-existing.
Would they even have enough cold water to salvage those clothes, Grace had thought, sifting through his bag for anything that wasn’t some goofy science pun. Ilyukhina, Grace remembered thinking imploringly, you couldn’t have packed me just a plain t-shirt or something?
Realizing he was probably taking way too long to complete a task that probably should’ve taken five minutes at most, Grace saw something that seemed plain enough and snatched it quickly, bringing it to Simon alongside a pair of gray sweatpants and some boots from the uniform storage.
It wasn’t until Simon held up the shirt to look it over and read the writing on it aloud did Grace realize how much he had really bungled things.
“‘I Had Potential’?” Simon said as Grace stared, mouth agape.
Oh. Oh fudge. Ryland Grace you absolute walnut, sure, go ahead and give the ex-convict, former child soldier and cult-member a self-deprecating shirt about peaking early.
“I-It’s a physics joke!,” Grace stated, his voice louder than he anticipated as his hands moved frantically alongside his words. “S-See the little ball? You know, like ‘potential energy’? The energy an object has when elevated, like when the ball was at the top of the slope. B-But now it’s at the bottom of the slope s-so it’s ‘potential energy’ was converted to–”
Grace’s stammering and flailing of his hands froze when he heard Simon let out an amused snicker, mismatched eyes meeting Grace’s, a crooked grin starting to form on his face.
“Converted to kinetic energy, yeah, I get it,” Simon said with a lightness to his voice that made Grace’s head spin pleasantly. “Do all scientists on Earth dress this goofy, or are you the exception?”
The entire interaction, between Simon’s teasing and his smile and his understanding of the stupid joke on the silly shirt Colt had gotten him years ago left Grace feeling a type of full body warmth and giddiness he wasn’t sure he had ever felt in his life. And later when Grace thought about the interaction again, replaying it over and over in his mind, was when it hit him.
Yes, the playful teasing had been nice. And yes, Simon’s smile combined with his snickering had left Grace feeling like his insides were melting pleasantly into a puddle of goo. But it was the fact that Simon was smart that stood out to Grace the most, that Simon had understood the pun beyond a surface level at all.
Simon was intelligent. And that…Oh, it might be a stereotype for a scientist to be infatuated with someone else’s intellect but Grace wasn’t going to lie and say it didn’t do something for him.
It’s not that Grace hadn’t thought Simon was smart, far from it! In fact, Grace had thought Simon impressively intelligent when the younger man had once explained to Grace how he had maneuvered around an entire cavern system submersed in an ocean of blood effectively blind, with nothing but coordinates and a mounted camera to guide his way. Rocky, in particular, had seemed gobsmacked by the idea, immediately launching into dozens of questions to try and ascertain just how exactly Simon had managed the feat.
And Simon was clearly an exceptional mechanic; Grace was positive that the Hail Mary was functioning at a level Stratt and her team could never have dreamed of thanks to all of Simon’s improvements to the systems and machinery. Simon had managed to optimize the Hail Mary’s engines to the point they were expending less Astrophage to move while somehow increasing their velocity.
Grace still wasn’t sure how Simon had managed that, his prompting to the other man just going unanswered but with a shrug, a mischievous grin and a comment of “can’t tell you that, gotta have some kind of insurance you’ll keep me on this clipper.”
God, did Grace mention that it was somehow both frustrating when Simon didn’t answer his questions directly but also so unbelievably hot when Simon was clearly egging him on to figure it out for himself?
And to add to it, Simon’s memory was practically that of a steel trap. Grace was continuously amazed by how perfectly Simon could recall things he had read or looked over, how much he was capable of remembering and how quickly Simon picked up and learned new things. Half the time when Grace was working in the lab he rarely ever needed to refer back to any of his old notes, simply asking Simon for help and the man responding as if he had Grace’s notes right in front of him.
Maybe Simon had an eidetic memory? Grace would have to put a pin in that for later.
But Lord help him, it wasn’t just that Simon was smart that was so attractive.
It’s that Simon was clever. A similar trait but far harder to come by, Grace had learnt. Plenty of people could be smart, but so few could actually be clever.
And something about that in particular really just got Grace’s heart racing, his head swimming and his thoughts running a little more rated-R than they really ought to be.
“Hey Mary?” Simon had prompted once, sitting easily into the pilot chair, flicking a few switches that Grace still wasn’t entirely sure what they did, despite Simon explaining to him several times at this point. “How ‘bout you take a break, ol’ girl? I’ll fly for a bit.”
Grace learnt quickly that one thing Simon seemed to love more than fixing machinery or tending to the little seedlings was flying the Hail Mary. Grace supposed it made sense; Simon had told him he had been born on Mars before moving to live aboard a space station for most of his life. Simon came from a world where space travel was simply the norm, as ubiquitous to Simon as it was for Grace to drive a car. Or, well, would have been had Grace ever owned a car or kept his license renewed past getting it at sixteen during his high school years.
But Grace imagined Simon must have loved flying even more than most, even if it were the norm in his world. He could just tell by how Simon’s entire mood would change the moment he was in the pilot’s seat.
It was in the way his eyes would light up when he took the controls in hand, the way a grin always seemed to spread onto his face when the ship took off, speeding past stars and planets and space dust. It was in the way his frame almost seemed lighter when he was looking out the windows ahead of their path, following some invisible trail Grace couldn’t see but Simon seemed to know like the back of his hand, regardless of if he even recognized the sector of space they were in.
This was right where Simon was always supposed to be; charting his way through the cosmos, a captain of his crew exploring new corners of the universe unseen by anyone before. Like an infinitely (and devastatingly) more charming and handsome Captain Kirk.
Grace still remembered how Simon looked when Grace had offered to let him take the controls, Rocky’s immediate insistence that “yes yes Simon pilot ship, much better maneuvering through space, much better than Grace!” not withstanding. The man had so clearly been in his element, so at ease, the actions and motions clearly second nature to him regardless of never having flown Mary herself before.
When piloting the Hail Mary, Simon looked every bit like what Grace imagined Simon would have been had his world been just a tad bit as kind to him as Simon was deep within his very being. God, Grace wanted to give Simon the world just to see the man at peace like that always.
He hoped making him the Hail Mary’s official pilot would have to suffice as a meager offering in exchange.
“Please verbally confirm for manual flight controls to be engaged,” came Mary’s ever cheery voice. Simon sighed but did as requested.
“Confirm,” he said, flicking on a few more switches, his brow furrowing when the controller for both the RHC and THC were still locked and unmoving.
“Please confirm manual flight controls by typing into the control system Y-E-S,” Mary responded.
“...You serious?” Simon had asked, incredulously.
“Oh, she’s very serious,” Grace had commented from the seat next to Simon, barely looking up from the book he had been reading, his legs tucked up close to his chest to prop his book up and open.
When Simon had mentioned earlier getting the itch to fly the ship himself, Grace had offered to come with Simon to keep him company. It’s not like Simon needed to fly the ship; that’s the entire reason why the Hail Mary came with pre-programmed trajectory paths and cruise control features in the first place, to avoid needing her crew to have to pilot her themselves unless necessary.
But Grace had learned quickly that Simon enjoyed flying the ship himself. Sometimes Simon would get the urge to fly when he was stressed, unsure of what to do with himself so he went to the one thing he knew made sense. Other times, Simon just had what Grace could only attribute as a form of “cabin fever”, the kind that could only be remedied by Simon sitting in the pilot seat, plotting out a course for the ship and guiding them himself.
But what Grace loved best about when Simon wanted to pilot was the fact it always came with a question.
“I’m gonna give Mary a break for a bit,” Simon would say, his mismatched eyes then locking with Grace’s as a smile would overtake his features. “Want to keep me company, angel?”
God, just imagining it and Grace could feel his face start to heat up.
It was…pleasantly strange, having someone who wanted Grace to spend time with them.
In true Ryland Grace fashion, it had been awkward the first time Simon had offered and Grace accepted, sliding into the co-pilot seat. Mostly just because Grace kept yammering about anything he thought would be remotely helpful, doing his best to recall what each instrument was, telling Simon about and trying to recall their last flight path.
It wasn’t until Grace was struggling to remember what each of the differences were in the display screens for the various maps that Simon had, mercifully, put Grace out of his misery.
“I don’t mind the lecture, babe,” Simon had said, the pet name falling from his tongue so easily it made Grace’s brain short-circuit still. “But this isn’t quite what I meant when I asked if you wanted to keep my company.”
“Well, what did you mean then?” Grace asked somewhat dejectedly. God, at this rate Simon would never ask him to keep him company in the cockpit ever again.
Oh god, was this one of those things about being a couple that Grace was just supposed to understand? Or wait–had it been an innuendo of some kind? Had Grace just gone and completely ruined some kind of mood Simon was trying to establish or–
“Just keep me company,” Simon said, as if that should be obvious alone before he made a noise that was half a sigh and half a grunt.
It was a noise Grace recognized as Simon trying to find the right words to explain what he meant, the man searching his mind to find the best words and in the best order to convey exactly what he was trying to capture.
That was another thing Grace loved about Simon. Simon always worked so hard to make sure there was as little miscommunication between the two of them as he could manage.
“You don’t…have to do anything,” Simon seemed to settle on, looking over at Grace. “I’m not expecting you to entertain me. It’s just nice having you with me, even if you’re doing something else. I just like being around you, angel.”
Simon might not have had any expectation of Grace doing anything for him. But after a confession like that, well, how could Grace have not grabbed the man by his shirt and reached over to kiss the daylights out of him?
And thus had begun their little routine; Simon would go to pilot the ship and Grace would tag along, sometimes with pieces of his own research he was still working through, other times with a book he was working his way through.
Sometimes Rocky would join them, Grace and the Eridian talking and bickering back and forth while Simon listened with an amused smirk on his face, chiming in here and there with both valid counterpoints and incendiary comments. And other times Grace would bring his camera and record while in the cockpit, Simon flying the ship while Grace kept the Beetles’ datalog up to date with latest developments of the mission.
It was times like that where Grace could almost imagine this might have been what a road-trip across the country may have looked like for the two of them; Grace recording video of them while Simon drove, Simon occasionally quipping back to some of Grace’s comments, his boisterous laugh sounding when Grace felt especially daring as to reach across and plant a kiss right onto Simon’s cheek.
The normalcy of it all, the quaint banality and domesticity, never failed to make Grace giddy.
“She’s also a stickler for refusing to fully explain what an ‘angular anomaly’ is,” Grace added, flipping to the next page in his book.
“No angular anomalies detected at this time, Doctor Grace.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
Grace smiled as he heard Simon mutter something under his breath. While Grace didn’t recognize the Korean words used, given Simon’s colorful vocabulary, he could probably guess it was something along the lines of cursing out Mary’s programmers as he reached across to the keyboard on the dashboard and typed out Y-E-S before hitting the enter key.
“You have entered Y-E-S into the control terminal. Please confirm this is for the purposes of manual flight controls.”
“Confirm,” Simon said, his tone a little more clipped now than when this process had begun. “Of all the fuckin’--I thought I fixed this shit.”
Grace simply turned the page in his book.
“Maybe she’s still mad we almost got blasted with that CME off of Procyon.”
Simon’s nose scrunched at that, shaking his head.
“Not likely, she’s not smart enough to ‘know’ something like that.”
Grace looked over at Simon, his face that of mock indignation as he gasped.
“Simon!”
“What?”
“You of all people!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I can’t believe you’re calling Mary dumb!”
“I’m not calling her dumb, I’m just saying her ‘artificial intelligence’ is lacking in any actual intelligence. She’s not exactly making her own determinations based on anything other than the parameters of her own coding, let alone recalling past events in order to make decisions–”
“To confirm for manual flight releases please type C-O-N-F-I-R-M into the control panel and then hit ‘enter’.”
“Oh are you fuckin’ kidding me?!”
Grace couldn’t help himself as he buried his face in his book, his shoulders shaking with the effort to not completely dissolve into laughter while Simon glared up at the voicebox speaker Mary’s automated chirp emitted from. Grace looked up when he heard the clinking of the seat’s harness belt buckles knocking together as Simon stood from the pilot’s chair finally.
“Alright, that’s enough with the child safety locks,” he said, throwing his hair up in a quick ponytail, wincing as some of the hairs caught in the joints of his metal prosthetic hand.
Simon moved, sliding underneath the dashboard for the Hail Mary’s controls and got to work popping open an access panel.
“Ry? Babe?” Simon called from the floor by Grace’s chair.
“Yeah?”
“Think you could grab me a couple things from the lab?”
Grace smiled, setting his book aside and hugging his legs to his chest.
“Mmyeah, like what?”
Simon sighed, his fingers tapping a brief melody into the steel of Mary’s access panel while he mentally catalogued. His xenonite fingers, however, were still inside the control panel and plucking at wires, the sparks skittering but never taking hold on the xenonite.
“The dikes and pliers for sure. Might want to grab the wire strippers just in case. Don’t think I need to move too many cables in here just to bypass these fuckin’ stupid safety protocols again but I don’t want to make you get up a second time.”
Grace smiled, his heart swelling with Simon’s consideration.
“That’s sweet, thank you,” Grace said. “Anything else?”
Simon clicked his tongue against his teeth as he muttered to himself.
“Two, no…maybe…eh, but the multi-bit should be…Yeah, just the multi-bit screwdriver,” Simon called again.
Grace stood from his chair, nodding before remembering Simon wouldn’t be able to see him do that from his current vantage point.
“You got it, boss,” Grace replied cheerily, heading down the passage from the cockpit to the rest of the ship, making his way to the lab.
“What Simon and Grace doing?” Rocky asked from behind his xenonite barrier as Grace stepped inside the lab, strolling over to the floor mounted tool chest. The Eridian seemed hard at work on his own project, welding pens (extruders, Grace mentally corrected, lest the Eridian hear his thoughts and berate him again) attached to both of his forelimbs.
“Mm, Simon’s hotwiring Mary again,” Grace responded, opening one of the drawers on the tool chest up before grabbing the diagonal cutting and Lineman’s pliers.
Rocky’s carapace shifted quizzically, the individual cap segments for venting air clacking as the Eridian thought.
“Mmm no understand word. What word mean?” Rocky chimed.
“What, hotwiring?” Grace asked, closing the first drawer to open a second one, grabbing the wire strippers. “It usually means bypassing an ignition switch in order to start an engine for a car without needing the key. So…kind of stretching the usage here since Mary’s not a car but it’s the same sort of idea. Simon’s trying to bypass her manual flight restrictions.”
Rocky hummed, satisfied as he focused back on what he was working on.
“Rocky understand.”
A beat.
Then.
“Grace?”
“Yeah, buddy?” Grace said happily, grabbing the multi-bit tool from the deepest drawer in the tool chest, closing it with a satisfying clunk.
“Mary manual flight restriction protocols,” Rocky ventured cautiously. “Rocky helped Grace reset those.”
“Yeah, you did, bud.”
“Yes yes, Rocky remember. Rocky have very good memory. Rocky help Grace reset those after last time Simon ‘hotwire’ them.”
“Mhm!”
“Grace.”
“Yeah, Rock?”
“Why Grace letting Simon hotwire Mary again after Grace get Rocky to help reset protocols?”
Grace simply hummed happily, turning on his heel and bounding out of the lab as Rocky called after him.
“Grace? Grace??”
Okay, so, maybe Rocky had helped Grace patch back into place the manual safety protocols Simon had, impressively and quickly, dismantled a while back. And maybe they had done it behind Simon’s back and maybe, just maybe, Grace had gone to the effort just so he could see Simon undo all Rocky and Grace’s hard work.
And Grace was under no illusions that Simon wasn’t aware of the fact he had dismantled those same “child safety protocols” he was fighting with now. There was a pretty strong likelihood that Simon had noticed when he first muttered in Korean under his breath.
Simon was, after all, very smart. And very clever.
But could Grace be blamed for wanting to see his (boyfriend? Lover? Partner??) Simon doing what he did best, second only to flying the Hail Mary?
After all, if there was one thing Simon loved it was a problem to solve. And Grace loved nothing more than getting to watch Simon solve said problem. Even if it was a “problem” Grace created all on his own with a little help from his well-meaning Eridian friend.
And besides…Simon always seemed so willing to indulge Grace in his various peculiarities.
They could workshop how Grace could get his competency kink filled in other ways later.