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The session’s been going for all of ten minutes when Grian is hit by Joel’s stupid fucking car. It’s an accident, probably, though he doesn’t get very long to contemplate it before he’s slamming against the hood and being violently thrown into the river nearby. He thinks he hears Joel curse. He better have heard Joel curse, or he’s going to be mad.
He tries to claw his way to the surface, except when he tries to swim he realizes he can’t feel any water. With a strange, sinking feeling that he doesn’t think has anything to do with the potential-drowning, Grian opens his eyes.
The ceiling is warm, red wood. Sunlight streams in gently from the open window, curtains fluttering in the breeze. He can hear a cat purring. He thinks he’s in bed — soft blankets and pillows. Not sure he’ll like what he finds, Grian turns his head to the side.
“You’re kidding,” Grian says.
“Morning, sunshine,” says Scar, the wrong Scar. He’s sitting up, Jellie sitting happily in his lap. He’s not wearing a shirt, of course, because even if this entire situation is an objectively bad, time wasting trap, it is still a trap. On a chain around his neck is a shining, silver ring. “Sleep okay?”
“You’re kidding.”
Scar looks at him, then. He squints a bit, and he must read something in Grian’s face because his eyebrows climb clear to his hairline. His mouth hangs open. Grian can count all his teeth.
“You’re back? That is you, right?”
“It’s me,” Grian says with no small amount of exasperation.
“What are you doing back?! Did it not go well? It’s been weeks here, I was so sure—”
“It went fine.” Grian slowly sits up, dragging a hand down his face. “I don’t even know what happened this time.”
“Uh,” Scar says. “Look, I’m happy to help you figure it out, but do you think we can keep this visit on the shorter side?”
Grian glares, but there’s not much heat. “I was in the middle of something too, you know. This isn’t exactly my idea of a casual vacation.”
“I get that,” Scar says. “But I’m getting married tomorrow, and as nice as you are, birdie, I’m not supposed to be saying my vows to you.”
A lump the size of a boulder sinks straight to the bottom of Grian’s stomach. “I see.”
“So what’s your problem this time?” Scar asks, flashing him a grin. “At this rate I should look into becoming a life coach.”
Grian wracks his brain. Wild Life hasn’t been going perfect, necessarily, but it hasn’t been going bad enough that Grian’s considered trying to escape to another universe. At least not on purpose. Things have been pretty good with Scar, too, so he doubts that’s the problem.
Chewing on his lip, he says, “Genuinely I have no idea.”
Scar’s smile dims a fraction. “There’s gotta be something, Gri, c’mon. Retrace your steps.”
“Er,” Grian says, finding it a little hard to think around his headache. Headache. Drowning. Right. “I think I got hit by a car?”
“Don’t you live in a death game show? Who the hell has a car?”
“Joel.”
Scar considers this for a minute and then shrugs, as though the car being Joel’s magically makes the entire concept make sense.
“And I got knocked into a river,” Grian adds. “So we better hope your Grian wakes up this time, otherwise I’m gonna drown.”
Grian is pulled out of the water by the back of his heavy, soaking wet sweater.
“That looked bad,” someone says, sounding guilty. “Oh, jeez, he’s gonna knock you out—”
“Quit flailing, G, c’mon,” says someone else.
It’s a voice that Grian’s always thought he’d recognized, even half drowned — he’s pleased that it seems he was correct. He doesn’t stop flailing, though, and his wing knocks solidly against someone’s arm until he’s deposited sitting on the ground.
When Grian opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Gem’s orange hair and freckly face a few inches from his own. She looks mildly disappointed.
“That totally should’ve killed him,” she says. “You could’ve gotten a kill, Joel!”
“I’m still green!” Joel defends, voice rising.
Grian blinks up at them. He has a feeling he knows where he is, and he doesn’t like it.
Joel crosses his arms. “It’s not like either of us need the life!”
They keep bickering. A warm, familiar hand rubs comforting circles between Grian’s wings.
“It’s like you’re trying to give me a heart attack,” Scar says.
It’s with no small amount of hysteria that Grian peeks at him from the corner of his eye. He’s crouched low, leaning in close, with a near enough copy of the face that Grian wakes up to every morning that it’s deeply disorienting.
Grian’s going to kill the other version of himself. At least this time he’s awake.
“Scar,” Grian whispers, eyes flicking between Gem and Joel, who seem satisfied to keep yelling about not-killing Grian.
“You should eat,” Scar says. “That had to have hurt.”
It did, but Grian hadn’t really realized until just now.
“Scar,” Grian whispers again. “It happened again.”
“What happened?”
“The thing.” Grian slowly gets to his feet. Scar catches his elbow when he wobbles.
“What thing?” Scar looks worried. His hair is a little longer than Grian’s used to, and his nose is ever so slightly crooked. His eyes are green but not the right green. He is, rather comfortingly, still very handsome. Grian tries to focus on that.
“The thing,” Grian hisses. “You know. We switched again.”
“Who switched? You’re freaking me out, sweetheart.”
It occurs to Grian, then, that if he had to accidentally send himself to another universe in order to be capable of talking about his problems, he probably wouldn’t go shouting it from the rooftops. His fingers itch to hit someone — someone short, probably wearing a red sweater. Someone who’s humiliatingly gone for a man objectively out of his league.
“I didn’t tell you, did I?” Grian says.
Scar blinks. “Tell me what?”
And Grian thinks well, there you go.
He’s disappointed when Scar makes him climb a mountain, especially when he realizes the staircase is a trap-infested wreck. Scar gives him an odd look when he wonders aloud why he can’t just fly up to the top, and then Grian realizes that for whatever game this version of him is trapped in to be fair, his wings must be clipped. It’s nice on top of the mountain, at least, falling cherry petals and bright green grass. Grian can almost convince himself he’s back on Hermitcraft.
“Run that by me one more time, G.”
Grian takes a deep breath.
“I’m Grian but I’m not your Grian. I don’t know why it happened this time, but somehow your Grian and I switched spots in reality and now I’m stuck in his body. This happened before but the timing didn’t line up properly and I slept through it completely, so you wouldn’t have noticed. And he didn’t tell you, I guess.”
Scar gets the same funny look on his face that he got the first time Grian tried to explain this. “Right. And remind me again how exactly you got switched?”
He likes explaining this part much, much less. “I’m— look, the details aren’t important. I’ve got… magic powers, is the easiest way to put it. Reality bending, sort of. Only your Grian must suck at using them if he’s pulling this kind of shit by accident.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I know I sound crazy, but I’m begging you, just go with it, I don’t have time to sit around here waiting for your Grian to come to another big emotional revelation—”
Scar frowns. “You don’t sound crazy. Actually, that…” and then his eyes go wide, “that’s how you saved me from the wither.”
Grian, unsurprisingly, has no idea what he’s talking about. “Probably.”
“And when time froze the other day when my snail was about to get me—”
“Your what?”
“You said I was just imagining things but that had to be you, right? One second it was climbing up my pant leg and then everything stopped moving and it was gone.”
“Maybe,” Grian says. “Probably. Yeah. Sounds like me.”
Scar’s face melts into a familiar, soft smile. Grian shifts his weight, suddenly feeling a little warm. “This whole time you’ve been using your creepy powers to keep me alive?”
Grian lets his mouth fall into a line. “Lot less romantic when you put it like that. And I haven’t done anything. Different Grians, remember?”
“Still.”
“The switching thing has to be some kind of bug. I just need an hour or two to sort through it and find a fix. Your Grian will be back in time for your weird bloodbath and I’ll be back in time to get married.”
“Married?”
Abruptly, peppy music floats down from the sky. Both of them lift their heads in time to see a strange, boxy little robot drift to the ground via umbrella. It lands a few feet away and cheerfully bounces to a stop in front of Scar, holding out a little microphone.
“What the hell is that?” Grian asks.
“I think you’re supposed to know,” Scar replies, a tentative note in his voice. “It wants to ask me a question.”
“What? Like trivia? You’re joking.”
“Oh, come on,” Scar frowns, really frowns, something hard tugging at the corners of his mouth. “What kind of a question is that?”
“What’s the question?”
Scar glances at Grian with a complicated, unhappy look. “It’s asking me who your secret soulmate was.”
Now that Scar’s brought it up, Grian does remember the cheating. Vaguely. He knows it happened, though he’s pretty sure he’s never had a dream about it specifically. The closest it’s ever gotten is Scar’s face when he finds out — disappointed but not nearly surprised enough.
Scar stares down at the little robot, brows furrowing. “You said my Grian was hanging out in your world for three whole days?”
Grian shrugs. “I wasn’t there. From what I heard he was pretending to be me for most of it. Probably was hoping it’d fix itself, but. It didn’t.”
“And you’re with your Scar?”
“You make that sound like a bad thing,” Grian jokes. Something sharp and uncomfortable settles in his stomach.
Scar glances at him apologetically. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Oh,” Grian says, realizing what he’s getting at. He bites at his lip. “If it makes you feel any better, he was definitely pretending it was you the whole time. I would’ve been, anyway.”
The face Scar makes isn’t one Grian’s ever seen before. The robot is still spinning in the air, waving its microphone. It repeats its question.
Scar picks the right answer, of course. Grian squirms.
Grian’s own robot comes eventually, and he gets the answer wrong, though he hardly thinks it’s his fault. The little devil spawns a ravager as soon as he inputs the wrong answer, and then Scar’s tearing down the mountain with Grian’s hand held too-tightly in his own.
“I think the secret soulmate thing is crazy, by the way,” Grian wheezes, fighting to keep up with Scar’s long legs. Poor Scar, poor Bigb, even poor Ren.
“It’s definitely not my favorite thing that’s ever happened,” Scar says.
They manage to lose the ravager somewhere at the base of the mountain, running it between other people’s houses. Scar tugs Grian to the side so they can catch their breath, but then a few people realize that Grian’s still got plenty of lives left over and suddenly Scar’s dragging him along again, something about how Grian will thank him later.
They must do four laps around the entire server, dodging people looking to move up a color and the bad side effects of everyone else’s wrong answers.
“This is ridiculous,” Grian pants. “Why are they all after me?”
“Would you want to try your luck against Gem and Joel?”
Fair enough, Grian supposes.
“I should’ve been back an hour ago,” Scar says, ducking into a space in the cliffside. They’ve looped back around, so far as Grian can tell, hiding off to the side of the cherry mountain. “Jimmy and Lizzie are gonna kill me.”
“You’ve got Jimmy on this server? How come you’re not teamed with me?”
“Been there done that, songbird,” Scar teases.
Distantly, a voice that Grian thinks might belong to Bdubs yells, “They went over here!”
“They’re not gonna stop chasing us.” Scar drags a hand down his face, clearly exhausted.
“You have to make them stop!” Grian pokes his head out to glance nervously at the sun. It’s high, just passing its peak. Grian’s been here for hours. “I have to get back to my server. They can’t go forever!”
Scar gives him a strange look, like maybe he has an idea that isn’t actually any good. “There’s always Plan D.”
“Why’d you say it like that?” Grian asks suspiciously. “What’s Plan D?”
“I need that life, Skizz!” Tango shrieks, closer than Grian’s entirely comfortable with. “Let me at ‘im!”
He looks back and Scar’s in front of him, now, close in their little corner. Mouth in a line, he says, “If you push me, we’ll keep running, okay?”
“You’re as bad my Scar, just tell me what the hell the—” is all Grian manages to get out before Scar is pulling him in by the hips and curving down to kiss him. It’s careful, there’s no tongue, but Scar’s hands are sliding up to disappear under his sweater — it’s meant to look more scandalous than it really is, Grian realizes. Not one to be outdone, he throws his arms around Scar’s neck.
“Oh, gross,” says Bdubs, apparently having found them. Louder, over his shoulder, he calls, “They’re at it again!”
“Come on!” Tango whines. “That’s not fair, how’s anyone supposed to kill them? Nobody wants to get in the middle of that!”
Grian works very hard to ignore them. The longer the others stand there gawking, the messier the kiss gets — no doubt Scar’s desperate attempt to find and cross the line that’ll make everyone else walk away.
“He knows he’s supposed to be on a team with me and Mumbo, right?” Skizz asks, catching up with the other two. Determined, Grian reaches up to tangle his fingers in Scar’s hair. That’ll show them.
There are footsteps as they start to walk away. Bdubs says, “This is almost worse than when they were at each other’s throats.”
Another few seconds and the voices fade out. It takes a few seconds longer for Scar to back off.
“This has to make me a hypocrite,” he says on an awkward, low laugh.
“You’re rather good at that,” Grian manages, feeling a little dazed. “And why is it called Plan D?”
“You came up with it during Third Life. Sometimes we’d get… carried away. If I tell you it stands for desert will you drop it?”
“Yes,” Grian says. “Let’s go with that.”
“You understand why I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this,” Scar says, confused in the middle of his train caboose. He’s put a shirt on, at least. “Your Scar shot you off a cliff just the other day but you’re telling me that the two of you are doing fine?”
“We are.” Grian takes a bite of his sandwich. “You didn’t even really think it would work and honestly, I was kind of asking for it, you needed the life. I was mad for, like, fifteen minutes and then you pouted and it was fine.”
“So it’s fun and games now?” Scar asks, eyes narrowed. His own food is sitting neglected on the counter. Grian considers stealing his sandwich, too. “All for laughs?”
“It’s about context,” Grian says, feeling very smart about it. “I’m not looking forward to dying, or you dying, but the game’s just started. Nothing’s high stakes yet, anyway. We worked it out, Scar, I promise.”
“Then what happened? How’d you get here?”
Grian shrugs. “Last time was an accident, definitely, but at least I did something. I just didn’t know what it was. I swear, the last thing I remember is getting hit by Joel’s car.”
“Then how do we send you back?” Scar asks, voice pitching up, a little panicked. “I’m not trying to get rid of you, birdie, honest, but the wedding’s tomorrow.”
“You could postpone it?”
Scar shakes his head. “My Grian would kill me. Do you know how intense you got about planning this whole thing? He might prefer me marrying the wrong Grian to having to do it over again.”
“Well, I didn’t send myself here,” Grian says, certain. “Maybe this time it wasn’t me. Maybe your Grian did it by accident. You know, falling asleep or something.”
“So we just have to sit here and hope he’s figuring it out?”
And when he puts it like that, yeah, it doesn’t sound very good at all.
“How’s it coming?” Scar asks, sitting against the cave wall.
“Shh.” Grian’s trying to focus, elbow deep in incomprehensible code and game files. “I can’t think if you keep talking.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Scar says, a smile in his voice. Only another minute goes by before he opens his mouth again. “What’s it like? Your world?”
“Better than this,” Grian snorts. “We’ve got infinite lives. There aren’t any weird death games. There are more people, too, but there’s a lot of overlap. We don’t have Jimmy.”
“Aw, no Bad Boys?”
Grian wrinkles his nose. “What’s a Bad Boy?”
Scar tuts, sounding disappointed. “That’s too bad. I liked you in the leather jacket.”
A beat.
“And you’re getting married, right? That’s what you said?”
Hesitantly, Grian blinks back into the cave enough to see the look on Scar’s face, faraway and a little hopeful. “If I get back in time, yeah. It’s supposed to be tomorrow.”
“What’s your ring look like?”
“Uh,” Grian says, attention split again. “I haven’t seen it. I only proposed a little bit ago. He said he wanted to get me mine. I’ll find out tomorrow.”
“You proposed?”
“Well, yeah,” Grian says. “You kept playing it up like you had to beg me to do it, but I think you knew I was always planning to eventually.”
Another lull while Scar thinks that over. Grian’s getting close to the bug, now, he can feel it.
“You don’t look that much like him, actually.” Scar’s head is tilted, his eyes squinted. “I mean, you do, but now that you’re just sitting here I can tell.”
“Yeah? What’s different?”
Scar points at his hair. “You push your hair back in a weird way, it never sticks up like that when he does it. And you slouch more, somehow. You stick your tongue out when you’re concentrating.”
“Tell him he needs a haircut,” Grian advises. “It keeps sticking to my neck.”
“He’s not allowed to cut it.” Scar grins, something about it a little dangerous. It’s a look Grian knows very well. “I like it longer.”
Grian’s neck burns, a little flustered despite himself.
“You don’t look right either, you know. Your nose is crooked.”
Scar barks out a laugh. “I bet! Can’t imagine when Martyn would’ve had the chance to break it in a world with no death game.”
“And I’m sorry, but what the hell are you wearing? You look like an old-timey bank teller.”
“I’m a carnival barker! See, we’re supposed to be building an amusement park up on the mountain, but we haven’t exactly had time. You cooked up some busy wildcards, sweetheart.”
Of course it’s a theme park. Grian’s heart squeezes. He misses his Scar, even though it’s only been a few hours. For him, anyway. Who knows how long it’s been back home.
This new Scar’s been happy enough to follow him around, helpful and smiling at nearly every turn, even though Grian hasn’t exactly been trying to return the favor.
“I’m sorry,” Grian says again, but this time he means it. “I’ve been short with you all day. I’m making a bad impression.”
Scar waves a dismissive hand. “Don’t apologize. This server’s crazy even without the weird reality-swapping shenanigans. If I didn’t like it when you snapped at me we never would’ve gotten this far.”
Grian hums in response, taking the cue to turn back to the code. He feels like his brain is going a bit numb just sorting through all of this, but this bit looks familiar, at least. The patch he’d put in after the first time he and the other Grian had switched is the way he left it — an attempt to fill in whatever gap had let the other Grian screw up so royally in the first place. Only right in the middle of it, glaringly obvious now that he’s looking again, is the bug in question.
Ah.
“Found it,” Grian says.
“You don’t sound very excited.”
“Well.” Grian scrunches up his nose, disappointed and half-way embarrassed. “It sort of looks like this entire thing might be my fault.”
“Didn’t double check before hitting submit, huh?”
“Something like that,” he grumbles. “I see what happened but I don’t really get why. There’s no reason why it should’ve reacted like that, it’s not like I’m under that much stress.”
“Now, I don’t really know how any of this works,” Scar says. There’s a weird tone to his voice. “But you are getting hitched tomorrow.”
Grian narrows his eyes. “What are you getting at.”
“If you’re stressed enough to accidentally send yourself to the wrong universe,” Scar stares at him with a strange, quiet resignation in his eyes. “You sure you aren’t getting cold feet?
“No.” It comes out more forcefully than Grian’s expecting. “I know what I want.”
“Okay!” Scar puts his hands up. “I was just making sure!”
“I know what I want,” Grian repeats. “Sometimes I wonder if you know what you’re getting yourself into, but I want this. It’s not a question.”
“Of course I know,” Scar says. “Of course he knows. You don’t have to wonder about that, songbird, I can’t imagine wanting anything else.”
And Grian didn’t really know he needed to hear it, but he feels his feathers smooth themselves out. When he takes a breath, it’s the most air he’s gotten in a week.
“I wasn’t worried,” he lies.
Scar smiles. “There’s nothing wrong with being nervous. It’s just jitters! It’ll be great.”
“Yeah,” Grian smiles back. “Now shh, I have to fix this bug before the next trivia bot comes or we’ll be back to dodging ravagers.”
“Wanna practice your vows first?”
“No.”
Scar laughs at him. Then, suddenly a little more serious, “What do we have to do?”
“Well.” Grian can’t help frowning. His initial headache had only just started to fade, too. “I think I have to get hit by the car again.”
Turns out, Scar had only giggled before. Now he laughs.
“Why are you two back?” Joel asks with a nervous glance between the two of them. “It was an accident. If you’re here for revenge—”
“Nah,” Scar says with a smile. “We have a favor to ask.”
It takes some convincing and a bit of bribery, but eventually Joel agrees. With a confused look on his face that makes Grian think that Joel’s never going to let him live this down, he strides toward the driver’s side door, spinning the car keys on one finger. At least it’ll be the other Grian’s problem.
“You sure this’ll work?” Scar asks.
“Eighty-percent sure,” Grian says. “Which will have to be good enough.”
“Well, in that case, it’s been a pleasure.” Scar bends at the waist, pulling Grian’s hand up to kiss the back of it with a grin. “You’re welcome back anytime, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, right.” Grian rolls his eyes and looks away, because when this Scar is doing stuff like that it’s a bit harder to ignore that he’s as handsome as the Scar back home.
“Don’t miss me too much,” he says with a wink, stepping back.
Grian looks back at Joel, who’s confused and annoyed in the front seat of his car. He revs the engine. There’s a dent on the hood from earlier this morning. In the reflection on the windshield, Grian’s wings are wide, ruffled and… pink?
Hang on a minute.
He whips his head around to squint at Scar. “Have I been a flamingo this whole time?!”
Joel drives.
“It looks good, but you have to actually tie the tie when you’re at the altar,” Grian says with his head tilted, a hand on his chin. “And you have to button the shirt all the way.”
“What’s the point if you’re just going to undo it as soon as we’re by ourselves?” Scar whines, tying the tie in the mirror.
“You have to go to your own reception first, surely?”
“There’s twenty minutes in between,” Scar says slyly, shooting him a wink. “Everything’s been meticulously planned by you, Gri, quit trying to poke holes.”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to see you in the outfit, actually,” Grian says. “Isn’t that a thing? You’re supposed to wait, make it a surprise?”
Scar shrugs. “You aren’t going to be there. Seems like a good enough reason for a sneak peek to me. But don’t go digging around for your clothes, I want that to be a surprise.”
Grian reaches up to tighten the knot on Scar’s tie, half giddy and half jealous. This Scar’s perfectly nice, of course, and Grian would be lying if he said he didn’t have a little crush, but all this is making him think about his Scar. If they wanted to, would they ever find a chance to get married? Would Scar even say yes?
“Can I see the ring?” he asks.
Scar lights up. “Oh, good idea. Nobody’s seen it yet except Pearl and Mumbo, I had to get their approval. They know you the best besides me.”
He digs a tiny box out of a drawer and cracks it open, holding it out for Grian to inspect. It’s simple silver, a slow, winding pattern Grian can’t quite identify engraved in the metal. Nothing too fancy, not overdone.
“It shouldn’t catch on anything,” Scar says, “but with all the building you do I got a chain for it just in case, so you can make it a necklace if you have to. You don’t wear any jewelry, usually, so I figured basic might be better, but I’m a little worried it might be too plain—”
“Scar,” Grian says, staring down at it. He can tell, now, what the pattern is. Of course it’s flowers. Poppies and lilacs twisting along the outside. “It’s perfect, Scar, you don’t need to worry.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely.” Grian lifts onto his toes to kiss the end of Scar’s nose. “You nailed it.”
“Oh, say it again, Gri, you never say anything that nice to me.”
Grian shoves his shoulder, laughing. “Don’t push it,” he says, and then his eyes are rolling back and his knees are giving out and he’s falling on the ground.
“You hit him again? And he still didn’t die?”
“He told me to! I wasn’t trying to kill him!”
Grian has a headache. A pounding, violent headache. Gem and Joel’s bickering voices aren’t exactly helping. The hand on his shoulder is, though, warm and familiar. “I feel like I got hit by a car.”
“You did,” Scar says gently. “Twice. Did it work?”
“Did what work,” Grian groans, and then he opens his eyes and realizes he’s in the middle of Gem and Joel’s base. The offending car is idling a few feet away. “Oh.”
“That you, sweetheart?” Scar asks, very carefully helping Grian to his feet.
Grian pinches at the bridge of his nose. “I’m me.”
Scar lights up, a grin splitting his face. “There’s my pretty bird!”
Someone gags. Grian can’t really tell who it is, too busy being smothered in a hug by Scar. His Scar. Only a little bothered by their audience, Grian sinks into it properly.
“There’s gotta be a rule about PDA,” Gem says, and then she gags again.
“I think Grian’s moping was worse,” Joel replies. “I’d rather this over all his sighing.”
Gem makes a vague noise that might be an agreement. “And what’s with getting hit by a car? Second time they’ve been by today! If it’s a sex thing, Scar, I swear to god—”
Joel starts yelling at that, hysteria increasing by the second, and all it does is make Grian’s headache worse. He buries his face into Scar’s shoulder.
Scar cranes his neck, leaning close to Grian’s ear. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
When Grian opens his eyes, he is thankfully met with the roof of Scar’s train. He sits up, glancing around. “Scar?”
“Just a second,” Scar hisses, frantic, from behind the bathroom door. “Stay there. You— bad timing, sunshine, seriously—”
Grian’s eyes stick on a pile of clothes on the floor, stacked haphazardly next to the base of the mirror. It’s with some small amount of relief that he notes that he’s still dressed. “Are you changing?”
Scar pokes his head out, then. “Okay, I know this looks pretty bad—”
“But?”
“You wanted to see the wedding stuff, that’s all.”
Oh. That makes sense. “So he was here?”
“Yeah!” Scar shuts the bathroom door behind him, mostly dressed again, though Grian can’t say he minds the missing shirt. He grabs the hand Scar offers him and is hauled to his feet. “We couldn’t figure out what happened this time, though. He went back in the middle of a sentence.”
Grian looks sheepishly to the side. “It might’ve been my fault, actually. How long has it been? I didn’t miss anything, right?”
“Nope,” Scar smiles. “Not a thing. You came back just in time for dinner.”
He really feels like he could collapse again, just from the relief. Scar leans in to kiss him quickly.
“I spent the whole time trying to figure out the glitch, took all day,” Grian says. “Sorry for worrying you. I think I have it fixed now. Everyone should stay put.”
“So you were awake this time? Running around on the wrong server?” Scar grins, maybe a little evilly. “Hanging out with the wrong people?”
Grian rolls his eyes. “Only ever saw you, honestly. It really is a death game over there, everyone wanted my head.”
“What’s he like?”
“Who?”
“You knoooow,” Scar pouts. Grian does know. “Him. Me.”
“Mostly like you,” Grian says, shrugging. He thinks about the other Scar grabbing him and running without hesitating. “Competent.”
“I’m competent! How dare you!” Scar laughs, disbelieving. He nudges Grian into a sitting position on the end of the bed and flops down next to him. “Competent.”
“I don’t know! You aren’t that different!”
“But he was nice?” Scar waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Did you kiss him?”
Grian freezes, just for a split second, but Scar catches it.
“You did!” A grin stretches across his face. “What happened? Was he any good?”
“You’re so weird.” Grian buries his face in his hands. “It wasn’t my idea! They were chasing us, he just grabbed me!”
“But it was good?”
Another pause. Scar breaks out into a delighted cackle.
“It was fine!” Grian insists. “It— he’s not you.”
“I mean, I think he’s close enough. Can’t imagine I have an alternate universe kissing technique over there.”
“No, I mean— you’re the only Scar I want to kiss.” Grian crosses his arms. “He could’ve blown my mind and it still would’ve been just fine.”
“Aww, birdie,” Scar says. “I love you too.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
There’s a lull while Jellie emerges from the closest to demand scratches. Grian pulls her up into his lap while Scar watches.
“I hate to say it, sunshine, but you better get going,” Scar says. “You’re staying at Pearl’s tonight, remember? We aren’t supposed to see each other until tomorrow.”
Grian’s nose wrinkles. “Fuck that. I just spent the entire day running for my life with a weird copy of you. That has to count, right?”
“You sure?”
Grian shoots Scar an unimpressed look. “Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep over there, anyway.”
Scar just smiles.
“For future reference, songbird, getting switched into an alternate universe is definitely the kind of thing I want you to tell me about.”
“Yeah,” Grian says, head in his hands. They’re back at the Bamboozlers base, alone by the fire. Jimmy and Lizzie are off running errands, like they always tend to when Scar brings Grian around. “I didn’t really know where to start.”
“The weird magic powers, too.”
“Didn’t really think it would come up. And there’s no way you would’ve believed me.”
Scar shrugs. “Sounded like the other Scar believes you.”
And it’s with a familiar, cold jolt that Grian feels like he’s been caught. “I, look— about that—”
“Hey, no.” Scar scoots closer to Grian. “That’s not what I meant. Or, well— maybe I meant that a little bit, but the more I think about it the less I mind.”
Grian’s only half listening. “I didn’t know how to fix it, I was just trying not to raise any suspicion and then, well— they were together. And I thought you wanted nothing to do with me, I figured it couldn’t hurt anything.”
“G, it’s fine.”
“I missed you. And he kept being so nice to me—"
A finger hooks lightly under Grian’s chin and drags his face up to look at Scar. He doesn’t look upset. Or bothered. He just looks worried.
“It’s fine,” Scar says. “He’s just another me, right? It’s not a big deal, bird, I promise. I’m just glad you’re back.”
“Okay.”
“And you can call us even, anyway.”
Grian squints at him. “What does that mean?”
Scar flushes, a bit. “We’re both still green. Tango’s pretty bloodthirsty. We were getting chased up and down, and then they had us cornered. I couldn’t think of anything else, so… Plan D.”
“Plan D?!”
“Only the first part!”
Grian makes a very purposeful effort to smooth his feathers. “Okay. So it’s— we’re fine?”
“Of course we are. I just got you back, songbird, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“And you don’t mind that I’m…”
“A little weird? Hate to break it to you, but you’ve always been a little weird.” Grian frowns. Scar smiles, teasing. “Feel free to keep up the mysterious magic rescues. Certainly don’t mind that.”
“That would be what you focus on,” Grian grumbles, but then Scar’s pulling him in for a kiss and he finds it pretty hard to stay annoyed. It’s even harder when Scar reaches over to drag Grian into his lap. They lose a few minutes, but mostly Grian just wants to be held. He rests his chin on Scar’s shoulder. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” Scar says, a smile in his voice.
There’s a beat. The only sound is the wind in the cherry petals and the crickets in the bushes.
Then, Scar is pushing Grian back to face him. There’s a weird light in his eye that makes Grian nervous.
“Hey, do you think we should get married?”
“What?”
Scar shrugs, handsome and perfect. “Apparently everyone else is doing it! When was the last time anyone had a party on this server, anyway? If we time it right we can put TNT under the dance floor, get some kills at the reception.”
Grian stares. His heart feels too big for his ribs. He can’t imagine a reality where he isn’t hopelessly, totally in love with the man in front of him.
“Sure,” he says. “But you’ve got to ask me properly.”
Scar grins. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”