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The bell rang, signifying the end of the last class period of the day. The kids jumped out of their seats and slung their bags over their shoulders, eager to get home.
“Don’t forget, your project on tectonic plates is due tomorrow!” Grace called after them.
Grace picked up all the papers on his desk that needed to be graded and shoved them into a folder. Typically, he’d stay after school to grade the papers and avoid the traffic, but the first episode of a new TV show he was interested in watching premiered in an hour, and he didn’t want to miss it. When he looked up from his desk, he was startled by the sight of a student standing in front of him, fidgeting with her hands.
“Yes, Harper?”
A kid staying after class to talk to him could mean anything and almost always didn’t lead to a good conversation. Harper was very quiet—she never raised her hand, although she always knew the answer, and the margins of her notebook were covered in doodles. He had no idea what she might need from him. For a second, he worried this might be a conversation he’d be mandated to report, but her soft smile reassured him that this was nothing of the sort.
“I made something for you,” she said meekly.
She took off her backpack and unzipped it, digging through crumpled-up papers at the bottom until she found what she was looking for. She took them out and placed them on the desk, and Grace had no idea what he was looking at. He had been expecting a drawing—the kids gave them to him all the time to hang on the walls of his classroom—but this was something that looked hand-sewn. They were two small, vaguely oval-shaped pieces of fabric with an opening at one end of each of them. It was blue with small green blobs, clearly meant to resemble Earth.
“What is it?” he asked, picking one up and turning it around in the palm of his hand.
“They’re called hearing aid sleeves. You put them on that part that’s behind your ear. It mostly just looks cool, but I looked it up and it also stops the hearing aids from making weird noises when it’s windy out and stuff. You don’t have to wear them, but…”
Grace’s mouth split into a grin, and he even got a bit choked up at the thought. He had only briefly mentioned his hearing aids to his students once, and the kind he wore were discreet, so it was unlikely anyone would’ve noticed otherwise. Harper was just that thoughtful.
“I’m going to be the coolest teacher in the whole school when I wear these, huh? Thank you, Harper. I love them.”
Harper smiled, zipping up her backpack as she headed for the door. “You’re welcome, Mr. Grace.”
Waking up on the Hail Mary without a working pair of hearing aids was the least of Grace’s worries at the time, really. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t have them—he didn’t have all of his memories back yet, but from what he remembered of Stratt, she was prepared for anything and wouldn’t have sent him away without knowing every accommodation he’d need aboard the ship—but he was still able to hear the alarms on the ship when they went off, and that was the most important thing.
Even when Rocky turned up, it didn’t change much. Grace just kept the computer around so he could read what was translated off of the screen. Rocky complained about how poor human hearing was, and although Grace knew he wasn’t a great representation of humanity's hearing capabilities, Rocky was right that Eridians had significantly better hearing, so he never mentioned it.
When Simon came along, it threw Grace off balance in more ways than one. There was the rapidly depleting food supply—Rocky had offered two million kilograms of his astrophage, sure, but that meant nothing if they died of starvation on the way to Earth. Simon carried so much trauma and distrust with him that Grace couldn’t fathom where to begin dealing with it. There were dents in the walls from Simon kicking and throwing things. And to top it all off, Grace was really struggling to hear him.
Simon interpreted everything as a personal offense. Every inside joke between Grace and Rocky was code for betrayal, every sudden movement was with the intent to hurt, and every time Grace tried to explain their mission, it was a lie. Simon hadn’t tried to physically harm either of them since he first woke up, but the unspoken threat of it loomed over them all.
From what Grace had been able to piece together of what happened to Simon, it made sense he would be so on edge. It wasn’t every day that you woke up on a spaceship being asked by a robot what two plus two was—Grace knew that part well, even if he didn’t relate to the whole blood ocean thing.
In the three full days Simon had been awake, there had been an astounding amount of miscommunication. Simon would say something—and wow, he needs to stop mumbling—and Grace would ask him to repeat himself. After being asked to repeat himself for the third time, Simon would storm off into the Mental Health Node.
Grace had been considering creating a closed captioning system on a laptop for English as well. The program he was currently running for Eridian wouldn’t work, because it was designed to decipher musical notes, not human speech. Grace had pulled out one of the other five laptops they had been supplied with—it would have been too complicated to run both the Eridian and English programs on the same laptops—with the intent to get to work. But the mission took precedence, with sleep following close behind, so the captioning idea had been pushed to the backburner.
He very quickly wished he had not prioritized sleep like Rocky had encouraged him to when that decision led to what he could only imagine would be an even bigger rift between him and Simon.
“What the fuck are you getting at?” Simon shouted after Grace had asked him to repeat himself for what was probably the fifth time in the past ten minutes.
“I’m not getting at anything. I just didn’t hear you.”
“That many times?”
Grace winced. He knew this feeling well, the shame that accompanied this sort of situation. His brain said, “Just focus more.” I’m trying, he thought desperately. Brief flashes of memory flitted across his mind. He was left out of conversations on the playground as a child because the other kids didn’t want to have to repeat themselves for him. The same situation occurred in the teacher’s lounge at Grover Cleveland Middle. People got upset when he didn’t wear his hearing aids because it was harder on them, and they don’t understand, they never understand.
His melancholy was interrupted when his eyes landed on the sight of Simon slowly pulling something that looked suspiciously like a hilt out of his waistband, standing to face Grace. The glint of metal caught the light, and, yep, that’s definitely a knife. Grace glanced around the room desperately, hoping for Rocky to come to his aid, before remembering he was asleep, completely oblivious to all of this, right next to him.
“Where did you get that?” Grace asked breathlessly, because he most certainly had not supplied the man who was the walking definition of “danger to himself and others” with a knife.
Simon gave a wave of his hand that didn’t answer the question at all, but the sight of the weapon stopped Grace from pressing further.
“I don’t know what it is, but something’s going on here.” He twirled the knife in a way that was both impressive and made Grace want to scream about knife safety. “And if you and that fucking rock think I won’t find out—”
“I’m hard of hearing!” Grace blurted out.
Simon’s face fell, but his hand didn’t falter. “What?”
“Like, I struggle to hear? That’s why I keep asking you to repeat yourself. I wore hearing aids on Earth, but I don’t have them now, so I’m just stuck like this. I can go into the science of it all, but I didn’t think you’d be interested in hearing about all that.”
Grace’s heart beat wildly in his chest as the knife was slowly lowered. He had been worried for a moment that Simon wouldn’t know what that meant, wouldn’t believe him, or both.
Simon collapsed into one of the rolling chairs in the lab. He did not, however, put his knife away. He spun the chair side to side as he fiddled with the blade. It didn’t hide the way his hand trembled.
“Don’t do that,” said Grace.
“Huh?”
“Don’t—” Grace suddenly felt very silly. “That’s dangerous. Touching the blade like that.”
Simon shrugged like he didn’t think it mattered, but he stopped and moved his grip to the handle anyway.
“Thank you.” Grace sighed with relief. “How did you get that, anyway?”
“Asked the creepy robot for it before you created that ‘Code Simon’ bullshit.”
Grace stiffened. He and Rocky had agreed it would be a bad idea for Simon to get a hold of any weapons aboard the ship, or, God forbid, the heroin, so they had programmed ‘Code Simon’ into the ship. It locked anything notably dangerous away from anyone who wasn’t Grace or Rocky. It was a glorified child lock, really. The only way Simon would have found out about it is if he had asked Mary to give him something dangerous.
“Okay, I’m sorry. That looks bad, doesn’t it?” Grace ran a hand through his hair, a nervous tic of his. “But listen, after somebody goes through something like what you went through, it would be terrible practice to give them access to weapons. I’m not talking about what you could do to us. I’m talking about what you could do to yourself.”
From what Grace had learned of Simon’s mannerisms, that seemed to get through to him. His fidgeting stopped instantly, and he hunched forward slightly.
“What about the other shit, then?” Simon gestured vaguely with the knife.
“What other stuff?”
“The secrecy. Sneaking up on me. What’s that about?” He started to curl in on himself further like he was becoming less sure of himself, but he didn’t let that lack of confidence affect his voice.
Simon spoke louder and clearer, and Grace quickly became more certain it wasn’t about Simon’s convictions, but it was an attempt to help Grace hear him better. He felt a flutter in his chest. He knew Simon was capable of kindness, even if he wanted people to believe he wasn’t, but Grace had never seen it firsthand.
“I don’t… I’m not sneaking up on you! At least not on purpose. Do you want me to wear a bell around my neck so you can hear where I am at all times?”
Simon seemed to seriously consider it.
“That was a joke,” Grace clarified. An ill-timed one, yes, but a joke nonetheless.
“It’s a good idea,” said Simon, letting out a quick breath, which Grace was pretty sure is Simon’s equivalent of a laugh.
Grace tried not to let it show how excited he was about that little victory. “Or maybe I can just announce when I’m walking into a room.”
Simon nodded nonchalantly but didn’t offer any more input on the subject. They sat in a somewhat comfortable silence, a rarity on the ship. Grace pointedly did not say anything when Simon slipped his knife back into his waistband, because he was pretty sure that it was meant to be a display of trust, and he didn’t want to ruin that.
“What’s that thing you mentioned? Hearing aids?” Simon said, and Grace snapped out of his thoughts.
“Yeah! They’re these small devices that go into your ear and, well… aid in your hearing. Really cool stuff. I never really looked into the mechanics of it all, though. I’m sure I can find some stuff about it on the computer if you’re interested.”
Simon shook his head. “I was just thinking… can’t the rock make some for you?”
Grace paused, his brain buffering. Then it hit him, and he put his head in his hands.
“All this time, all the inventions he’s made, and I haven’t thought about asking him to make me hearing aids?”
Through the gaps between his fingers, Grace could see that Simon’s fidgeting had started up again. He was a restless person, unable to sit with his thoughts for even a second. Grace could relate, albeit for different reasons.
“To be fair, I didn’t really need them before you came around,” Grace explained. “I mean, they’d have been nice to have, but I had the screen for when Rocky spoke, so I guess I just didn’t bother thinking about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Grace hadn’t known those words were capable of coming out of Simon’s mouth, and he definitely didn’t think it was possible with the amount of vulnerability they held. Even Simon seemed surprised. He looked like he had swallowed something sour. The words were foreign on his tongue, surely.
“What for?”
Simon grumbled. “For… making you need them.”
Grace wasn’t sure if he was apologizing for lashing out or for taking up space on the Hail Mary at all. Either way, it wasn’t necessary.
“Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.” Grace shook his head. “But if you’re going to be sorry… I’d really appreciate it if you gave me that knife back.”
“I made something for you,” said Simon, thrusting the object towards Grace and pulling his hand back like he was afraid to touch whatever it was.
The tension between Simon and the others had ebbed since their conversation the month before. Grace never explained what happened to Rocky, not wanting him to freak out about the whole knife thing, but Rocky had certainly noticed the change. Rocky and Simon were still wary of each other, but they tolerated it. Rocky had even caught on to Grace’s new habit of announcing he was entering a room and started doing it himself, despite not needing to due to the cacophony of noise he made when he rolled around in his ball. Simon appreciated all of it—he didn’t tell them that directly, but the distinct lack of threats said a lot.
Grace grabbed his glasses that had somehow made their way down to his chin and put them back on his nose. “What is it?”
The two small orange pieces of fabric looked eerily familiar, but Grace just couldn’t put his finger on it.
“I heard you telling Rocky about those things you had for your hearing aids back on Earth, the ones from your student. I thought it sounded like a good idea, so I looked it up on the computer. Then I thought they looked easy to make, and I discovered this thing called YouTube, and I learned how to sew, but we didn’t have any clothes in the right colors for Earth, so I made them like the Sun instead. I hope that’s okay—”
If Grace had thought about it for more than a second, he wouldn’t have shot up out of the chair and yanked Simon into a kiss. So for once, he was grateful for not thinking things through, because Simon’s lips were like nothing else he had ever felt. His lips were soft, contrasting his scarred, ragged body. It was at that moment that Ryland realized he’d never really enjoyed a kiss before now.
Simon stood there, motionless, before pulling back from the kiss. Grace gasped for breath, more out of panic than anything. Did I just ruin my relationship with the only human around for several light years? Simon didn’t look particularly angry, but he was staring at Grace with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. Holy shit, I totally ruined it. I messed up—
Simon pulled Grace back in, effectively making his brain shut up. Grace slipped his eyes shut and sighed in relief, letting himself be completely immersed in the feeling. Without thinking, he brought his hands up to the back of Simon’s head. He had always wanted to run his fingers through his thick hair, but he never had an excuse to before now.
Simon pulled back not too soon after, and Grace mourned the loss, but they were still touching, their foreheads resting against each other. He found that he liked this position as well because he could hear each inhale and exhale that Simon took. He was pretty sure he could also hear Simon’s rapidly beating heart, but it was hard to tell over the noise of his own.
“So… did you like the gift?”
It would have been comedic if Grace didn’t know for a fact that Simon was being totally serious.
“Yeah, I liked the gift.”
Grace thought about his old Oticons that constantly emitted a static noise. He thought of the sleeves he wore over them and the student who made them for him. He thought of his new xenonite hearing aids that had a far crisper sound quality than he was used to. He thought of these new, orange hearing aid sleeves that Simon probably cut up his clothing to make. But most of all, he thought of Simon and the progress he had made.
Just over a month prior, Simon would grab the nearest breakable object and slam it against the floor and use the shards as a makeshift weapon if Grace so much as entered the same room as him. Now, he was apparently watching sewing tutorials to make thoughtful gifts for Grace.
Grace laughed at the absurdity of it all. “I really, really liked them.”