can you tell i love drawing a person holding a moon? this is literally my own self-portrait, the engie fanart will probably look a lot like this drawing OR AT LEAST I HOPE IT WILL

trauma buddies ! Simon had to live most of his life in a world with no stars and almost no life. Engi... well Engi caused the death of all stars and life there for a minute, but my point is that aside from the Captain they're the only ones that know what expierencing that is like so they bond over the... horror of it all.

on that same train of thought, they both suffer from the whole "i killed people, so im terrible person" mindset even though they both regret everything. they kind of end up making a deal along the lines of "if you dont think that i'm a bad person, then you can't think that you're a bad person because we're in the same boat" deal

once Simon finally warms up to him, he follows Engi around like a lost puppy. he doesn't know his way around the ship well, and doesn't trust anyone so he just tends to stick with Engi where ever he goes

Engi has been secretly working on designs for a prosthetic for Simon ! he's never worked on something like that so it's a little hard, it's also hard to know what Simon would like because well... Simon doen't even know what he likes since he's never really had an opportunity to be picky

Engi almost cried the first time he made Simon laugh. it wasn't even anything big, a tiny sound easy to miss, a slight uptick of Simon's lips from watching Engi fumble through another squabble with Celci. He did hear it though, eyes misting over [i'll cut it there i've thought about this too much and this is supposed to be hcs-]

Engi is a really good and patient teacher when it comes to showing Simon all of the things that they didn't have/no longer had in his universe. even though he does get frustrated easily, Simon is a pretty good student

Engi specially programmed Simon into the computer's handprint recognition thing

Simon is, understandably, horrifically touch starved, mean while Engi is just naturally a touchy person. At first, Simon hated all of the casual contact but almost without him realizing it became something he would search out on his own

they're both the most oblivious people i've ever seen, they wouldn't actually get together unless practically forced *cough* Cleci and Captain pls help them they're idiots *cough*

really the reason that Simon started to come around to Engi and start trusting him is because of how damaged Engi is from the whole almost destroying the multiverse thing. Simon and Engi both have horrible nightmares from everything they went through and would repeatedly stumble across each other on the ship when everyone else was fast asleep. neither of them would talk about why they were awake, instead there was this kind of understanding between them and they would keep each other company