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Chapter Text

"Grian-" The words are breathless, almost on the run, and he can feel the tell-tale signs of Scar flying a little too close - a loud woosh followed by the sounds of crushed gravel.

With a practiced ease, Grian steadies him, rolling his eyes as Scar dusts himself off. As distinguished as he wants to be, he couldn't really fool anyone.

"Just the man I wanted to see!" His eyes sparkle as he smiles, and there's that familiar feeling in his stomach - a roll and a twist all at once, a rollercoaster ending right into the vulnerable flesh of his belly - and Grian already knows he'll fall for whatever scam the other is preparing.

-

"You want me to cook for you?" Grian can't erase the incredulity out of his tone, and Scar winces in turn.

"No! Not really!" His hands dance, waiving in and out of his space as if he could convince him further by speaking with his whole body instead of his only words. "We would be cooking together."

The grass crumples against his shoes when he wordlessly starts to walk, and Grian doesn't have to wait for the tip tap of Scar's cane to know the other will follow. The two of them are like that sometimes, human-sized stars waiting to collide.

Still, the whole ordeal fails to make sense in his eyes - and even if it's Scar, there are not many of his ideas that so completely escape his sense of understanding. "You want me to help you cook... for you and someone else?"

"Well..." The word trails off, and in the ill-fitted silence his mind tries to picture this nebulous person, the one worth this much effort on a Friday night.

If Grian's honest with himself, in the quick second it takes to remember Scar's earnest face as he'd asked for help, he's just the tiniest bit jealous. And pissed. The two emotions mix in his guts and leave him with an acidic aftertaste.

Scar fumbles through an explanation all the way to his base.

-

"So. What was your idea?"

"For?"

Grian can already feel himself grow irritated at his future cooking assistant - big green eyes blinking in confusion at him. There's something he does not dare name stirring in his chest: it feels awfully like drowning. "For cooking obviously. Unless you need me to clean the place too?"

It sounds defensive. Scar is quick to pick up on it too, and Grian tries not to let the analytical look resting on his back win.

"Are you okay? You look... tired." It's a kind way of describing his frown. Feeling the tiny claws of culpability sink into his heart, Grian swallows any leftover irritation and clears his throat, just to be sure. "Sorry. I'm assuming you have a meal in mind?"

It's only when he turns to speak face to face that Grian realizes - Scar is close, skirting the edges of his personal space, and there's a hesitating hand stretched his way. It hangs in the air for a heavy moment, and in the time it takes for an unsteady breath to rattle his lungs, it retreats back to its owner. Grian shudders all the same, and hopes the weather is cold enough to justify it.

Continuing as if nothing happened, Scar answers. "Well, at first no, but then I asked around for the best dish to make for a date and-"

Grian almost chokes. "You're having a date?"

Right here and then, the need to turn back and bury himself at the bottom of the sea is almost strong enough for him to run away.

-

"You had to ask my help for pasta?"

Scar smiles, a sheepish expression on his face that would be cute if Grian could stop picturing the very same face lit up by candlelight, smiling at someone that wasn't him. He hates, hates the situation this impossible man has put him in, and yet his heart softens as Scar speaks.

As much as he despises what's happening, there's no denying that Scar is hard to hate. He's annoying, sure. A bit careless, definitely. But at the end of the day, when the dying sun hits his face just right - molten gold staining the brown halo of his hair, emerald eyes looking at him as if Grian was something precious - well. There's only so much a man can handle before his fingers shake with the need to reach out and touch.

(Nobody blames the sea for kissing the white sand of the shore: nobody stops a volcano from erupting. Those things just happen.)

Grian only tunes back in at the end of Scar's speech, something about judging people and trying out new things. Half of it derails from the original point, but Scar smiles confidently through it all. Even then, Grian kind of wants to punch him in his perfect little teeth, for giving him a taste of something he will not get to have.

-

"Void help me, if you put this spoon into your mouth, I will kick you out of this kitchen."

Scar pouts. "I don't see why it's such a big deal, the water is boiling, so it's gonna get disintegrated anyways!"

Unyielding, he does not stop glaring until the aforementioned spoon is well away from the steaming pot of pasta. "I don't care about disinfecting the spoon, it is disgusting, and I'm sure that your date will agree with me here."

Something in Scar's eyes sparkles, and his stomach twists unhappily at his own reminder that Scar won't be alone tonight. "You think?" It sounds happy, and Grian hates himself for the burning need to twist the knife deeper.

"Do I know them?"

There's a second of confusion on Scar's face, before an easy smile overtakes it. "You can say that, yeah."

Frustration bubbles in his chest. If only Scar would stop being so damn deliberately obtuse about the identity of that mysterious date! It's not like he'd do something drastic about it. Too much of a coward to willingly expose himself like that.

I don't want you to date anyone, he swallows back again and again as the meal shapes itself together. I wanted to be the one you chose. None of the words pass the airtight wall of his teeth. Instead, all that comes out of it is a forced "Let's work on that sauce."

He'd said it himself: Grian was a coward.

-

He feels dumb, standing in the middle of the kitchen as they wait for the food to cool down.

Untying the knot of his apron - aiming for nonchalant and landing quite a few meters away, right into something like dread, Grian asks. "So. When are they getting here?"

For the first time of the night, Scar's face morphs into something anxious, like he's not quite sure of where to go from now on.

Gently, he sets the plates on the table, watching Grian in the corner of his eyes all the while. "About that."

There's a hopeful smile on his face, looking slightly strained around the edges. There's a hopeful smile on his face as Scar looks straight at him.

A horribly promising realization starts to tickle the back of his head. All at once, the dots connect, as fast as it takes for the electrical impulse in his brain to reach his heart and make it skip a beat. There are a million words fleeting through his mind, an entire vocabulary flying out the window, and all that comes out of his gobsmacked mouth is "You."

"I thought. You know. You, me, and a meal I-" Sensing the murderous intent forms before his eyes, Scar corrects himself. "We cooked, I thought it would be a good idea?"

Grian stands still, eyes flickering in between the two plates set on the table and Scar. Truly, there's no words to be had. His hand grips the back of the chair a bit too tight, and Scar grimaces. "It doesn't have to be a date, of course, it could be a totally platonic dinner with candles in between- friends."

It's enough to snap Grian back into reality. "Oh no you don't! You- Yo made me cook a meal for an hour-" Cutting Scar short with an accusatory finger against his chest, he continues. "Don't pretend you were anything remotely close to useful."

Getting closer, he tries to muster all the damned annoyance and self-control it took to go this far. Scar doesn't look very assured. Good. "You made me miserable, and now you're trying to back out?"

The other's face does some strange gymnastics then, but Scar had always been quick to understand the underlying thought in his words, and Grian, despite the way fury ran through his veins, couldn't help but mirror the slow smile on his face.

Hesitancy fading away as Grian gripped the front of his shirt, Scar held both his cheeks in his hands, as gentle as he'd imagined it to be, in the dark of the night, burning from the embers of a forgotten dream.

The smile on Scar's face looks awfully close to a confession, and the raw feeling in his chest melts into something much more pleasant. "I'm sorry. Let me make it up to you?"

"You better."

Chapter Text

"Have you ever thought about doors?"

"What?"

"The way they open and close. People make metaphors out of that, you know?"

"I don't know where you're going with that."

"Uh. I guess I don't either."

"..."

"Wouldn't it be amazing though? If one door didn't open exactly where it closed?"

-

The question follows him into the waking world. He used to wake up all at once, before the Dreams. But now he lays still, the weight of confusion heavy on his chest. Grian opens his eyes, sunlight shyly reaching out through the curtains, and tries to say a name he does not remember learning.

He never succeeds.

-

"You look cold."

"You're one to talk. You don't look like anything."

"Excuse me? Don't you see that handsome face? I bet you'd eat your words if you would look."

"I am trying!"

"No, you're not."

"I..."

"It's alright."

-

Almost all his pictures are off-center. That's something he notices halfway through intensively cleaning his flat - strangely, it takes him twice as much time as usual. The photo he took on his annual camping trip has him leaning too much on the left, and the one at Jimmy's birthday party makes him rest his elbow at an unnatural angle.

None of them looks quite right.

There's a thought stuck in the back of his head, stuck where he can't quite reach. When he puts on his shoes in front of the door, when he drowns the last of his cereal in the morning, when he hands his clothes out to dry, whenever he does so much as breathe - it comes to him, a gnawing hunger with no end in sight: loneliness.

-

"Can you stop it?"

"Stop what?"

"I'm not talking to you."

"Who else then?"

"My- my idiotic brain who keeps ruining my nights!"

"You think I'm made up?"

"Of course. What else could you be?"

"I could be a ghost! Ohh spooky."

"A ghost that haunts dreams? Couldn't you choose anything else?"

"Well, I could help you convince people you're a Jedi! You'd do all the handy crafty thing with your hands and I'd move stuff around, like the Force."

"Of course, you would do that. I don't see you moving stuff around the house, you great Jedi Master."

"Maybe you don't open your eyes enough"

"What does that even mean?"

"I don't know. I'm the one you 'made up'."

"Eurgh. Fine. How do I do that then? Open my eyes?"

"You need to stop believing in the dark."

-

He can't be considering this. That's- that's straight-up madman stuff. Talking to the strange man stalking his dreams is fine, but listening to him? It feels like Grian has to draw some lines.

But still. The day is young, and while his body stays firmly sank into the sharpness of reality and this shitty fifty-dollar mattress he can't remember buying - his mind flies over the edge of the world, right into the realm of unseen possibilities.

How does one stop believing in the dark? It's the first fear you learn, or rather, the one that comes pre-built with you on your first breath in this big open place they call Earth.

There's barely any light. Shadows stretch and twist into a compact core of nothingness. His eyes burn from the strain of watching it unfold before him - there's bound to be more, it has to mean something, and Grian can feel it in his bones, the shiver and the anticipation as if the next second could make him free-fall into the abyss of the unknown.

Into the void of unlearning.

He blinks, and the sun almost blinds him in its fury. Groaning, feet stomping on the ground in a futile attempt at dispelling his annoyance - Grian stands up and goes to make himself breakfast.

The corner of his drawer does him no mercy, and he swears as the top of his toes bumps violently against the stupid furniture. But the pain is not the reason for the sharp intake of his breath, nor the instinctual shiver going down his spine.

His kitchen, while pristine clean, is a right-down mess.

All the plates are upside down, calmly stuck on the ceiling.

-

"Was that you?"

"... Hello?"

"That's not a dumb plot to make me annoyed, is it?"

"..."

"I guess even ghosts get tired."

-

"What's the opposite of an exorcist?" In fairness to her character, Pearl does not stumble.

"Isn't it a summoner?" She's been busy lately, but they still try to make time for a coffee outing or two. Their meeting is one of the only things in his life that does not feel like it was moved two centimeters to the left.

"I guess? Internet isn't really clear when I try to search for one."

She rests her head on her hand, interested. "You could try an Ouija board. Ghosts loveee those."

It doesn't sit right with him. "I don't think it's a ghost. He could be- I don't know." Grian sighs. "He's infuriating."

A chuckle is all he gets for his troubles. He raises the cup to his lips so she doesn't see him frown - and promptly burns his tongue, making her laugh for real this time.

"You know, the more you speak about this mysterious man, the more I can see him." Her voice sounds like it's starting to become teasing, and he is quick to the defense, trying to speak over her words.

"I don't talk that often about- What did you say?"

She blinks at him, surprised by the edge in his voice. "Hm, something about his green eyes and charming smile? That he'd totally be your type?"

Instead of the warm embarrassment she'd probably wanted him to feel, there's a sick feeling crawling up his throat. "I never- I didn't describe him. Pearl, I can't see his face when I dream."

She narrows her eyes. "Are you sure? Doesn't seem like it to me, I can totally picture your guy. I mean, maybe you just forgot."

The wrongness doesn't stop. It spreads, to his limbs and his heart, leaving him shaking and lost. The word forgot stabs into the depths of his flesh, right in his guts, and judging by the way Pearl hastily shoves a plastic bag in his direction, it's not far from reality.

"Grian?" She sounds worried, which is probably not a good sign, but he can't hear - can't anything, really, and it takes him all he has not to throw up on the spot.

"I need to go." He mumbles, already half-way through standing. Pearl does not stop him.

This time, it's the dream that takes him, as soon as the door of his flat closes behind him.

-

"Well, hello there! You look like you might need some help."

"I just... I just need a minute."

"Ah, good old time... I think it has it out for me, you know?"

"What?"

"You should stay on the floor a little bit more. You do look quite pale G."

"I think- I think I forgot something. Something important."

"... If you forgot it, then it mustn't have been that important in the first place, don't you think?"

"Shut up. It was. There's something missing. I wake up and my bed is cold. I buy food I know I don't like, and- Why am I even talking about this stuff, none of it makes sense!"

"You think too much of sense as something that is right, when it is just a silly word. Sense, sensible, sensational, nonsense... All of it is made up!"

"Stop speaking."

"You just know I'm right. I've thought about it- Oh. So that's what you meant by 'stop speaking.' Whoops."

"I... hate you."

"Thanks for not puking on my shoes! That'd be awful to clean. Can't find a dry cleaner around here. Can't find much of anything, to be honest. They're clearly lacking some hospitality!"

"Where even are you?"

"I already told you. It's not my fault you don't listen. Anyways, did you like my magic trick?"

"The one where you messed up all my plates or the one where you disappeared on me for a week straight?"

"Well- That's fair. I personally wouldn't call it disappearing, more something like an improvu vacation."

"Impromptu?"

"That's what I said!"

"You're lying."

"I-"

"..."

"It hurts me too, you know? It's like there's a-"

"Part of you missing?"

"Yeah. All in one. Grian, it hurts."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm the one who should say sorry. I didn't mean to. It has always been my mistake, hasn't it?"

The ground shook. With it came the low rumble of stones collapsing on themselves. It felt as if someone had taken the world, and decided to rip it apart at the seams. "Wait, what's happening?"

The stranger-that-wasn't smiled. "I think it's gonna be the last Dream for a while. The world is waking up." He twirled his cane with a familiar ease. "Or maybe it's going to sleep. Who knows?"

Grian tried to speak, but the ground had already started the process of swallowing him whole. There was sand in his throat, on his tongue, and it felt as inescapable as a tomb.

The last thing he saw was a pair of bright green eyes, too sad for his taste. "My name is Scar. If you felt like searching for what's missing."

-

Grian wakes up all at once, adrenaline coursing through his veins. Scar. The name feels True, in a way that deserved a capital T.

Have you ever thought about doors?

In his dreams - the ones underneath the Dreams, leftover of a too-long night - there is a man smiling at him. He has the most beautiful eyes Grian has ever seen, and a smile twice as pretty.

In his dreams, Grian kisses him. There wasn't any other choice left, was it?

Wouldn't it be amazing though?

The door to his room is closed. A slow realization takes root in his brain, following the numerous nerves out of it, right into the curve of his fingers. Grian might not be missing something, but rather missing someone.

His hand closes around the doorknob, and he prays to whatever good stars he can find that it will not open exactly where it closed.

He had a not-stranger to find.

Chapter Text

The day July ends, the sky starts to cry.

Grian feels the drops of water hit the edge of his shoes - it hits the socks too, and he hates the feeling of wet fabric, but there's something too fascinating about the way the droplets slide off the smooth plastic.

Somehow, in all their planning, they hadn't accounted for the weather. The crystal-clear feeling in his guts intensifies until anxiety is all he can breathe. In and out. None of it helps in the suffocating heat.

It's gonna make the travel difficult. The first thought comes, unbidden, following the unsteady stream of worries clouding up his head.

If he ever comes at all. A second, bitter part of him answers. When you live in a town like this, there's a part of you that rots, right here against the white-painted fences and even whiter smiles. When you live in a town like this one, you don't live at all.

But Scar had swore on his life he'd be there, million-dollar smile tucked away in favor of a lopsided grin, and Grian had chosen to believe him - the other had this kind of effect, like a light.

So now Grian's here, wet socks and a grimace, waiting for either the executioner or the heart.

His chest stands still even as the rain parts to welcome a beat-up car into the land of the living, spat out of the dreamlike state all things tended to look like under the unyielding curtains of lukewarm tears.

It's only when a familiar face steps out of the engine that the moment breaks and his lungs suddenly cave in. "Scar." It's punched out, drowned under the concerto of raindrops, but he hears him all the same, tipping his hat in greetings.

He is- well, completely drenched. His hair droops clumsily on his forehead, and he looks like the human version of that sad cat you see hiding under a cardboard box during a storm. It's a lovely sight, if a bit funny.

"Hello there! Looking for a ride?" Scar grins, and the anxiety attacking his guts doesn't lift per se, but it does lighten, the heavy burden of what he's about to do hissing like a cornered animal in the face of Scar's self-assured smile.

It doesn't mean Grian will let this go to his big head. He rolls his eyes. "You look like you fought a pool. And lost. Quite terribly."

Closing the distance between them in three long strides to shelter himself from the rain that doesn't stop, Scar pouts. "Hey, it's not my fault I couldn't check the weather because your town-"

"Not my town anymore." He cuts, with a venom that almost surprises him. Deep down, if you'd look into his soul, you could probably see it - a hairline fracture that keeps getting bigger and bigger, the burning bridge in between the Grian that was and the Grian that is now.

Scar looks taken aback, mouth still open on eaten words, but it's quickly replaced by a satisfied smile.

It's too much. Too telling. Grian averts his eyes and changes the conversation to a subject that is less brittle. "We should get going." A quick look back at the house. "I made them sleep, but I don't how long."

Following his gaze into the curtained windows hiding what Grian has done, Scar bows, with the sort of flourish that meant he'd practiced it in front of a mirror. "After you, angel." It's endearing, and Grian allows himself a little smile before hastily walking towards the car, succumbing to the childish thinking that if he'd move quick enough, the rain would not be able to get him.

Scar follows suit, nearly slipping on the wet stairs, and Grian watches him run through the rear window with something like laughter in his throat.

Once inside, the door slamming with a resounding clack, Scar looks at him, truly looks at him and says, with his whole chest. "You're sure about it?"

There's the split second of panic, that dumb little part of him that still doubts - the record screeches and sputters some off-beat noises: ARE YOU SURE? But it only takes one look into Scar's open eyes to set his mind back on the right track.

"Certain." The silence continues, and the car very obviously doesn’t start.

"One hundred percent, absolutely-never-regretting-it sure?"

The insistence makes his teeth clench. "Drive the car, Scar, or I'm throwing you out to do it myself."

He laughs as if he was just making some kind of joke, the comic de repetition, but Grian can see the way his fingers relax around the steering wheel. "Good try. I know you don't have a driving license. You still need good old Scar around!"

It hits true. Truer than he'd like to admit. At least, there's some level of detachment from it, born from the notion of necessity- I need you to drive me around, I need you to teach me how to be human, I need. But then, Grian can already feel the four-letter word assigned to Scar shift, becoming something less like need and something more like want.

I want you around, he thinks, eyes running away from the danger, so much that it hurts.

As the town's buildings start to blur away into a faraway shape, Scar's right hand leaves the wheel so it can squeeze Grian's own. It's warm and solid against the pale of his skin, and most importantly it feels real.

Maybe the wanting can go both ways.

-

He'd thought he'd feel them leaving the town, like an elastic band that stretches too far, but in the end, it is very anticlimactic. They drive that long stretched road, and there's a sign that says goodbye flashing through the windows and that's it.

The asphalt feels endless. They must have noticed now - no one answering the door, the upstairs room with barred windows empty. Maybe if Grian listens closely he can hear those sharp bell noises, warning everyone that the bird has flown away from its cage.

It's too late now. He already feels himself becoming whole again, piece by piece.

Outside, thunder rumbles.

"It's gonna be the end of the world, isn't it?"

Scar, knuckles tight against the faux leather, doesn't stray his eyes from the road. "I honestly don't know. We've been hanging pretty well around here. But Grian, the people in your town... They can rot."

The memories of Sunday mass and broken bones filter through the cracks in his guard. Looking at Scar, he cannot bring himself to regret any of this. The first human emotion he had been taught was fear, and the second hatred. They both understand the weight of his silence. "They will."

Scar doesn't ask about the assurance steeling his words. He doesn't need to.

Some people believe in fate. Grian, for himself, mostly believes in coincidences. There's a string of hazards and dice rolls that leads you straight into the path you walk, and no amount of cosmic energy can explain all those tidbits of stuff slipping through the cracks.

In the end, Scar had been a thief looking for something precious, and Grian had been something precious looking for a thief.

He'd been a little bit of a Goldberg machine that way, sinking his claws into the concept of freedom while abiding by a lot of their stupid rules. Scar had been the hammer to his glass case, and it's a debt he doesn't know how to repay.

The town had always worked to prevent an angel from escaping, but they had forgotten to ward against the glaringly obvious: Grian had simply done it the human way, and walked out the door.

Life loved to string up all those little coincidences, and meeting Scar had been Grian's big win against the casino machine of Fate.

-

At their first stop at a gas station, Grian halts him - gripping the flesh of his arm maybe a bit too tight - and kisses him, eyes closed teeth smashed against each other, the whole shebang.

Scar startles, the hand still on the door handle going lax, and Grian can see the surprise in his big round eyes. "I want you. Is that-" He stumbles, unsure of which path to tread. "Is that alright?"

There's a bit of silence that rings way too loud in his head, and he's sure he's fucked up everything before Scar blinks back to life with a smile so bright it burns. His voice is soft. "Of course."

Slowly, Scar lifts his hand up until it meets his lips, gentle. "Look at me," He boasts, already insufferable. "Told you I was an amazing thief, I even stole your heart."

It's so corny it gets a giggle out of him, and Scar looks so proud Grian has to shove that stupid man's hat against his eyes so that he doesn’t see him blush.

It's embarrassing, really. But it's not a bad way to go into the end of the world.