Work Text:
Scar's killed him.
Scar's killed him, and Grian's fucking fuming, because he should've seen it coming but he didn't. Scar was there with a fishing rod and Grian was standing on the precipice and he didn't even bother to look behind him; that's how much he trusted Scar.
Well. That might not be exactly true.
If he's being entirely honest, it wasn't trust in Scar's good faith that made Grian so mistakenly assured. He doesn't trust Scar, hasn't in a long time. He's unpredictable. He's a liar. He can be counted on for nothing.
And yet.
Was it simply because Mumbo and Skizz were there? Was it because he thought himself out of reach? Was he not thinking at all? But that's not like Grian; he's never been one to sit back and let fate take the wheel.
It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's down another life, and Scar is to blame.
He wakes up on top of the cherry mountain, limbs still tingling with the phantom ache of bones crunching against rock. It's a familiar feeling. But the mattress beneath him is not his own. Grian throws himself off Scar's bed before anyone can see his shame.
Someone is already cresting the mountain as he scrambles to his feet on shaky legs - none other than the archer himself.
Scar takes one look at him and his mouth stretches into a wide grin. "I got you," he says. His eyes are, once again, lime green. They match, the two of them.
Grian is fuming. "You killed me! Scar, you—you killed me."
"Well, yes."
"Fuck you," Grian spits. "You've made yourself an enemy, I hope you know that."
But Scar only rolls his eyes, unwavering in the face of Grian's wrath. "Don't take it so personally. I needed a life. And you were practically inviting it, standing on a ledge like that."
The wave of anger that rolls of him is frankly concerning in its intensity. He doesn't understand it. No one else has the ability to rile him up like this. No one else has this strange power over him.
He turns away before he drives his sword through Scar's heart, as he so longs to do, and catches sight of that godforsaken reputation board.
There is something burning inside him, a flame steadily smoldering since those days in the desert, a different mountain, a different board. It demands a release. Grian is not, has never been, one to deny himself.
It does not take him long to craft the TNT, for the materials are already in his inventory. He chucks them against the wood frames and flicks a lighter to life in his palm.
Scar says, "Oh, come on, G—"
"You did this to yourself."
He drops the lighter and doesn't bother to turn his face away as the board is blown to pieces. The force of it pushes him back a step, a stray shard of wood nicking him across the forehead. The sting feels distant, the warm trickle of blood nearly imperceptible. Nothing compared to the pain of a death from fall damage.
The smile has slid of Scar's face, but as he stares down at the remnants of his carefully curated board, his face is void of sorrow or anger. Curiously calm, curiously blank, but with a glint in his eyes that makes him look somehow more alive. Like it's Grian's furious attention that's given him new life instead of the arrow he fired through his heart.
He says, "Now, that was just unnecessary. There's not even anything left of it."
"That's how little that board meant," Grian says. "I was in good favor, Scar."
That gets Scar to blink at him. "Wh—no you weren't, you were at zero with a frowny face."
What? Time stretches out before him, blending together, and everything's all wrong. He feels like he's in the fucking desert again. He never left that goddamn desert.
"I—well, whatever. It doesn't matter." He turns away, trying to hide whatever his face must be doing right now.
They descend the mountain together, and Grian announces that Scar's dead to him, but Scar's laughing again, grinning wide, like it's all a joke. Like it doesn't mean a thing.
He thinks back to earlier, Scar's failed attempt at killing him, when he brushed off Grian's outrage with a simple "oh, you were never afraid of me."
I may not be afraid of you, Grian thinks, but you're not afraid of me either.
That's a dangerous thing, if they're going to be enemies. (They aren't meant to be enemies. Why do they keep ending up enemies?)
Later that day, when the session's ended and everyone is taking advantage of the brief reprieve to catch up on sleep, Grian lays awake in bed, hallucinating a purple glow. He can hear the steady rise and fall of Mumbo and Skizz's breathing nearby. It should settle his mind, but it only puts him on edge.
He really needs to sleep in his own bed, tonight. The game is beginning to get serious. If he dies unexpectedly, he cannot afford to respawn in Scar's bed. People will see and they'll know, immediately, everything he's tried to suppress for the past 5 games.
Unwillingly, his thoughts drift upward, to the man sleeping somewhere above him. He doesn't have to hear Scar's breath to replicate its rhythm in his mind; he can recall it effortlessly. If he focuses hard enough, he can almost feel a puff of warmth against his cheek. The press of another body beside his own.
He gives in. Grian, after all, is not known for his self restraint.
It might've been hard to navigate the steep terrain in the dark, but the whole mountainside is lit with enough torches that he can see just fine. He finds Scar lying flat on his back, eyes open. He doesn't even turn his head when he hears Grian's approaching footsteps. He just shimmies over to make room.
The anger from the day has not faded so much as congealed. He feels it sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach, tangled in a messy ball of a million other emotions he won't even attempt to decode.
He is angry, but he is tired, and he hasn't been able to sleep through the night on his own since that first game, like his body still carries the muscle memory and refuses to let it go.
He slips into Scar's bed.
Curls on his side, like always, so he doesn't have to see Scar's face. (So he doesn't do something stupid. Like trace the outline of his jaw. Like kiss him.) The rustling sound of shifting blankets behind him, and then Scar fits his body against Grian's like it was meant to do. Slots their legs together. Presses his cold nose to Grian's shoulder blade.
All the tension drains out of him at once. How is it that he feels the most safe in the arms of the one who pushed him to his death? How is that fair?
Against his back, his breath a puff of warm air, Scar whispers: "I'm sorry."
Grian exhales deeply. Inhales, exhales again. "No, you're not."
Scar huffs a quiet laugh, careful not to wake Jimmy or Lizzie. "No, I'm not. But I'm glad you're here."
"Yeah," Grian murmurs, and—for once—lets some honesty seep out. "Me too."
He sleeps like a baby, waking just early enough to extract himself from beneath Scar's sleep-heavy limbs before the other occupants of the mountain notice he's out of place.
In the light of day, he and Scar are again at each other's throats. But even with weapons drawn and teeth bared, their eyes still linger in shared understanding: tonight, you will again be mine.