Work Text:
It was a bad idea to come here, and he knew it. Along a winding and broken path, hidden behind a crumbling and derelict cobblestone wall, surrounded in miles upon miles of dark and eerie swamp. Lit by low torches, their flames half burned out, and jack o’ lanterns that have seen better days with their faces beginning to melt into the earth with decay, there are long shadows clinging to the nooks between graves. The darkness makes him wary, staring into the depths and not knowing whether something may be staring back. He wouldn’t be able to see them, if they were; their monochromatic bodies disappear so fully into the shadows, the living can never see them until they’re inescapably close. It was a bad idea to come here, and yet, his curiosity drives him forward, begging to be sated with the knowledge he’s sure the graveyard of his friends holds.
The graves make the chills running down his spine feel that much colder, seeing the names of everyone he knows etched into the stone, all the way up until he sees his own name. It’s the most jagged one, the letters furiously scratched into the surface in a nearly illegible way that distinctly gives him a feeling of creeping doom. All of the other names are neat, carefully and methodically carved in, but his is frantic, angry, scratched into the stone with the frenzied conviction of someone wronged. It makes his stomach twist; he knows why.
Most of the graves are not yet dug, undisturbed grass fully grown over them without any hint of a buried mound of a coffin below. But others are not so normal, the grass and dirt messily overturned from them in a splayed out pattern that gives no doubt it was created from the inside out. There are only a few of them, but he can still see the handprints in the wet soil from the most recent addition to the growing dead. There’s a third type, as well; cleanly dug holes, coffins patiently waiting beside them to be filled and lowered until the magic of Demise can take hold of the bodies within and awaken them, the locations betraying who the dead’s next targets are.
His is one of those. The coffin that will be his, waiting for him beside the grave dug just for him, under his frantically scratched name. It’s a sight that would chill anyone to the bone, knowing what’s waiting for him once he makes a mistake, once he lets down his guard. The graveyard is quiet, seemingly empty and peaceful; but for all he knows, he may have already sealed his fate just by coming here, and he’ll become acquainted with that coffin this very night.
Carefully stepping around both the awaiting graves and the ones that have already spawned their dead, he knows he should leave. He’s seen the graves, he knows now who is dead and who is targeted, and he knows he isn’t safe here.
After all, the first to rise has a grudge against him; and for good reason, he has to admit.
But his curiosity pulls at him, stronger than he has will to resist. There’s light faintly glowing from within the crypt, something that fills him with morbid interest and dread all at once. Lights mean activity, someone going about their existence down there, and he’s pretty damn sure it isn’t going to be anyone alive. And yet, he can’t resist creeping closer, edging into the crypt and peering down the ladder leading into the depths below.
The angle doesn’t show him much of what’s inside, nothing more than a dimly lit stone floor, and it doesn’t sate his burning curiosity in the least. He’s terrified to step inside, to climb down and potentially come face to face with the person this all started with, but he wants to see what’s down there. Easing down to the floor, he listens carefully for several long minutes, straining to hear anything that may give away the presence of the crypt’s lone occupant; but he hears nothing. The dead make noises, don’t they? Shuffling about, groaning in the muted pain of their undead existence? That’s normal undead, though, not the risen bodies of his friends in the name of this dark game. He doesn’t know if his friends make any noise, or if they’re as silent and deadly as he and all of the others still alive so fear.
Either way, he has the silence that might be a sign that it’s all clear, an overwhelming sense of morbid curiosity, and not an ounce of impulse control in sight. He climbs down the ladder.
It’s a small room, cut out of the solid stone beneath the graveyard. Cobwebs cling to the corners, specks of what might be old blood splattered across the floor, and a concerningly detailed map on the far wall. There are pins stuck into it, marking points of interest, and he can feel a wave of fear as he recognizes all of the pins as places he regularly visits. There’s nothing else to give away any sort of plans, though, and he turns away to the remaining corner.
It leads into a smaller room cut just off the side of the first, with nothing more than a nice stone casket inside. He doesn’t need to read the epitaph to know whose it is, but he approaches anyway, setting his hands gently on the polished surface. “I’m sorry, Ren.” He whispers to the air, tracing his fingers over the heavy stone lid. He didn’t know it would go this far, he didn’t know how ominous the game would really be, how much it would change those on the dead team.
“Hello there, Grian.” Dread washes over him like a tidal wave of ice cold water, chilling him down to the bone at the sound of none other than the voice of Ren himself. Grian doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare turn around to face him. He’s trapped here, he’s sure, with the ladder somewhere behind him and Ren standing between him and it from the sound of his voice. Even if he could reach it in time to escape, he has no doubt Ren could either tackle him or just kill him before he could escape the graveyard itself. “And what are you doing in my crypt?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even have an answer, because really, he doesn’t know himself. Ever since the game started, ever since he’d watched Ren fall to his death by fault of his very own, the graveyard had called to him, beckoning him out here. He’d always resisted, distracting himself with other things and avoiding everything involving the quickly-growing team of dead once Ren rose to lead it, afraid of seeing what would happen if he encountered what he had started face to face.
And today, he couldn’t resist any longer. He couldn’t brush it off, or get the call of the dead out of his mind, until he came here. No matter what the risk was, he had to do it, had to see what it was that was drawing him here so strongly.
But it looks like it was just the call of his own death, if the way all of the signs point to Ren having it out for him mean anything.
“I’m not hearing an answer.” Ren steps closer, the only sign being his voice growing ever so slightly louder. His footsteps are completely silent on the stone floor. “You may want to fix that. I find those of us that are dead have much less patience, these days.”
“I don’t know.” Grian answers, truthfully. His heart is hammering away in his chest, betraying his growing terror. Still refusing to turn around, glancing frantically around at the casket room in his field of vision shows him nothing he can use to escape, and he’s becoming more and more sure there’s no getting out of this one. “I swear, I don’t know.”
“Hmmmm…” The sound of Ren’s low, ethereally echoing voice humming in thought does nothing for Grian’s anxiety, the sound a perfect combination of a haunting ghost and the weight of an unknown reaction he has yet to experience. He doesn’t know what Ren is thinking, if that explanation is good enough for him, and how or when he’s going to forcibly drag Grian into his meticulously prepared grave. He’s so focused on the horror of that thought, and the continuing hopeless search for an escape that he nearly jumps out of his skin when a set of ice cold hands press into his back. The touch is firm and freezing, unnaturally cold in a way his instincts scream a human touch shouldn’t be. He hasn’t even met any of his dead friends face to face yet, looked into their lifeless eyes, and yet he now knows exactly what the touch of the dead is like.
Ren’s hands smooth suspiciously gently over his back, slowly moving to his sides and around to his front, the undead Hermit’s arms circling around him in what almost feels like a hug. But it’s wrong, every inch of his skin as cold and firm as ice, and when Grian dares to glance down at the hands pressing firm against his chest, the completely grayed tone of them only serves to further ring the warning bells in his head. There’s no breath against his neck like he knows there should be, no heartbeat thrumming faintly in the chest against his back, a stark contrast to his own hammering away like it’s trying to escape.
“It’s much quieter without this, you know.” Ren murmurs to him, cold hands tracing idly over Grian’s beating heart. “You don’t realize how loud and bothersome it is until you’re free of it.”
“I like--” His voice catches in his throat, cutting him off, and he has to swallow his nerves to try again. “I like being alive, thank you.”
“Oh, but you haven’t experienced being dead. You might like it more.” Ren’s hands trace up from his chest to his throat, and Grian can only hold still and hope his mind’s wild imaginative thoughts of the dead Hermit choosing to strangle him don’t turn out to be true. But Ren only holds his cold fingers over the pulse beating in tune with his heart, nothing in his eerily still body language giving any hint of murderous intent away. “I could help you, Grian. I promise it only hurts at first.”
“I’d really rather not.” He practically squeaks, mentally cursing how timid he sounds. Ren laughs, quietly, right into his ear. The dead Hermit doesn’t breathe, but the air from his laugh is just as cold as the rest of him, and Grian shivers.
“You’re no fun. Why would you come here if not to join us?” Before he can answer, Ren’s grip turns firm for a moment, spiking Grian’s anxiety through the roof at what he may do. But all he does is take hold of the living Hermit’s shoulders and spin him in place, forcing Grian to face him. Not that the living Hermit does much to hold his ground, too afraid of setting off his scorned friend’s impatience.
Just as he’d expected, Ren’s body is entirely in grayscale, not an ounce of color to him. His eyes are obscured by the dark of his sunglasses, but Grian knows they’re white and lifeless behind the lenses, just as dead as the cold grip still holding him in place. Instinctively, he starts glancing around behind Ren, searching for anything that could give him a way out, much to the dead Hermit’s amusement.
“Oh, you’re not getting out of here unless I say so.” He informs him, with a smile too wide to be genuine. Then he leans in close, inches from Grian’s face, and the increase in his heart rate is for a new reason entirely. “Y’know, I have to wonder… if you didn’t come here for help dying, then maybe you just wanted to see your good old pal Grimdog?”
Grian opens his mouth to retort, or to deny, or anything, but-- he can’t. Not a single word of denial comes out, the truth of what Ren is saying clicking into his head. After all, he doesn’t want to die, but he’s been feeling drawn here ever since Ren did, and he’d never considered that maybe it was to Ren himself.
The question is, why?
At his silence, Ren’s eerily wide smile falls, some of his ghostly bravado going with it. “No, really?” He asks, sounding nearly human again with the surprised shock in his voice. It makes some of Grian’s fear melt away, reminded again that at the core of all of this death and the sometimes strange behaviors the dead have exhibited, they’re still his friends.
Continuing to say nothing, Grian does his best to stare off into the corner of the ceiling, avoiding the gaze of Ren’s shades. He doesn’t really know why it’s making heat rise to his face, the way Ren has latched onto the possibility that he may have come here just to see the dead Hermit, and the undead stare he can feel burning into him doesn’t help.
“Why did you come here, Grian?” Ren asks, all manner of taunting vanished from his tone, replaced with only the genuine curiosity of a friend. With the fear subsiding by the minute, the tension easing out of him as he becomes more comfortable that Ren won’t suddenly kill him, Grian is able to brush away the panicked survival instincts. It clears up his head to consider, again, why he’s felt so drawn here, why he kept finding himself subconsciously trying to wander out here whenever he wasn’t paying attention. He kept chalking it up to guilt for causing Ren to die, but now that he thinks about it, here with the undead Hermit himself, it almost feels like…
“I missed you.” He finally admits, the quiet of his voice sounding too loud in the echoing stone of Ren’s crypt. And it’s true; he feels guilty about getting Ren killed, but it wasn’t so long ago that they were running around throwing daisies at Doc and Scar together. He’d been so afraid of the dead that he hadn’t considered how much he was missing his friends, especially the one in front of him now.
“Is that… all that it is?” Ren questions, not in an unkind way. It’s like he’s sure there’s more to it, especially as he slides his sunglasses off and sets them aside to more clearly scrutinize the living Hermit. From Grian’s perspective, though, he suddenly finds himself staring into Ren’s eerily white gaze. It gives him a strange feeling that’s somewhere between guilt, fear and fondness, and it’s more than a little confusing to figure out what that means.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” He finally says back, managing to draw his attention back out of his undead friend’s ghostly stare to remember they were having a conversation. Ren says nothing back, contemplating him for a few moments, before taking another step into his personal space and setting his hands on the surface of the stone sarcophagus, effectively caging Grian between his arms. It sends a rush of something that could be either fear or anticipation through him, and he can’t quite place his finger on which it is, at least until Ren leans in again. There’s no breath to ghost over his face no matter how close he gets, but Grian can’t help the urge to close his eyes as he waits for… something.
“Now I get it.” The undead Hermit murmurs quietly, and when Grian manages to blink open his eyes to look at him again, he can see a soft sort of thoughtful look in that white gaze.
“Get what?”
Ren doesn’t answer, only continuing to look at him for a few moments more before finally leaning in fully. Grian isn’t sure what he was consciously expecting, but the moment Ren’s lips connect with his in such a delicate and gentle touch, it all makes sense. At least, he thinks it probably does; he’s more interested in focusing on the sensation than in sorting out his exact feelings, and the cold of Ren’s skin is surprisingly thrilling. He reaches up and takes hold of the undead Hermit’s shoulders, his hands trailing up and into his hair before pulling him closer, relishing in his presence. He really has missed Ren’s company, and though he hadn’t considered this might be what he wanted most out of it, he’s more than pleased with it. The call tugging him here has gone silent, leaving him in peace to enjoy whatever this is between them.
Only a moment later Ren pulls away with a faint noise, a cold hand on Grian’s chest preventing him from instinctively chasing after him. He doesn’t need air, and he doesn’t have a beating heart, but somehow he looks to be in nearly the same breathless state as Grian is.
“Y’know dude, I kinda feel the need to remind you that I'm slightly dead, just in case you might’ve forgotten.” He points out, explaining why he pulled away. But he looks more human now in this moment than he has since before he died, not an ounce of that eerie and dangerous vibe he’s carried since then, and it makes something in Grian’s chest feel warm.
“You’re still you.” Grian just shrugs back after a moment, resisting the urge to look away and he doesn’t miss the genuine smile that crosses the other Hermit’s face because of it. It makes it easy to forget about the game, like this; with Ren speaking in his normal voice again, the same one he’d used to tell stories over their shared campfire for so many late nights after tunneling together, and with his white eyes softened with such lively emotion he could almost convince himself he’s not dead. That he hadn’t accidentally caused his death, or started this game at all, created this thing that’s led to not seeing his dear friend for so long or how it’s caused him to turn ice cold to the touch. Like Ren said though, he is dead, and he’s the leader of the team. He’s out for Grian’s blood, by basis of what the game stands for, no matter how much they may like each other.
And still, despite that, and despite the faint nagging fear he’s pushed down in the back of his mind that this is dangerous, he doesn’t want to leave. Ren would probably let him go right now if he tried, the warm look of affection clearly having overwritten any murderous intent for the time being. The dead have an instinct to kill, an urge to bring their friends over to the other side to join them, he knows; it was in the book, a rule to make the game go faster and preventing the dead just choosing to leave the living alone. But right now, the undead Hermit shows none of that, his body language relaxed and nearly human, and it only makes Grian want to appreciate it while it’s there.
The game has barely started, with only a small number of dead so far, and there’s no way of telling how long it will last. The longer it does, as well, the more Ren will feel the need to help the living join them, and the more dangerous it will be to see him again after this, no matter how much Grian may feel the need to come find him and repeat this moment. Between that, and the newfound realization of the warm feelings in his chest that he hadn’t been able to identify before Ren did for him, Grian isn’t going anywhere.
It’s with that potentially foolish logic in mind that he pulls Ren in again, this time being the one to press his lips to those ice cold ones. Ren doesn’t say anything more, only melting into his touch and bringing his hands up to gently cradle Grian’s face, and the combination of the undead Hermit’s stone skin and delicate touch make him feel weak in the knees. He knows Ren could absolutely hurt him without even trying, his strength much more than it had been while alive because of the game, and because of that the softness of his grip make his heart do flips all the more. It’s so loud he knows the other can hear it.
He doesn’t expect the way Ren bites his lip out of nowhere, a stark difference to the ever so gentle touch on his face, and it sends a shiver down his spine along with a squeaky gasp he’d never admit to making later. It gives the other the chance to take over, control shifting right back into his grasp as he presses more fully against Grian and pins him to the stone sarcophagus behind him. It’s a shift he’s more than willing to accept, going pliant as Ren ravages his mouth and lets his cold hands wander, down to press against the erratic beating of his heart as it hammers away like a caged hummingbird in his chest.
“So loud,” Ren mumbles against his lips, and Grian isn’t sure whether to be amused, embarrassed, or more intelligently, afraid. He breaks away just enough to nuzzle down the living Hermit’s neck, stopping when he finds his pulse again, and Grian’s breath catches in his throat when he presses his tongue to it.
It’s cold and the unwavering attention on his living characteristics should send fear through him, but instead he just makes a noise that might be a whimper, earning him a low chuckle. Ren doesn’t move his mouth from the spot on his neck, but his hand wanders under his sweater, making Grian jump with the suddenly cold contact directly on his heated skin.
“I forget how warm you living people are.” He says, before wrapping that arm around Grian under his sweater and pulling him flush against Ren’s chest, almost desperately. His other arm follows it, effectively hugging Grian close and making him feel like the temperature of the room has dropped considerably with the way Ren draws the warmth from him. “That’s one thing I do miss.”
It sinks in, then, that Ren probably feels cold with no body heat of his own. The way he’s clinging to Grian as closely as possible, his arms wrapped around him underneath his sweater, as if he’s trying to chase away the perpetual chill sunk deep into his own limbs. It brings back the faintest feeling of guilt, knowing Ren is this way because of him, and Grian returns the embrace to pull him closer, wrapping him in as much of his warmth as he can. It earns him a pleased hum, along with a gentle kiss when the undead Hermit raises his head back up from Grian’s neck again.
“I’m sorry, Ren.” Grian says again, even though Ren probably heard him say it to what he thought was an empty room earlier anyway. “It’s my fau--”
“Shhhh,” Ren hisses under his breath suddenly, his voice taking on a slightly more ghostly tone for a split second and sounding like more of a phantom screech than a human hiss, at the same time his grip tightens like a vice and he wrenches them both to the ground. Grian finds himself pinned to the floor before he can figure out what’s happened, staring up at the ceiling past Ren’s hair, and he can feel his heart rate spike from fear this time. But nothing happens; Ren just holds him there, pinned to the floor, with his face pressed against Grian’s neck, unmoving and saying nothing.
“Ren?!” Grian asks, startled at the way Ren’s demeanor has so suddenly changed. But the undead Hermit just takes a deep breath he doesn’t need, breathing out a puff of cold air against Grian’s neck and raising goosebumps over the skin there.
“Don’t say it. Don’t say anything like that. Don’t you dare.” Despite the grave tone to his words, his voice wavering between ghostlike and normal, Ren eases up on his grasp, his touch returning to something soft and gentle as he unwraps Grian’s arms from around himself. He doesn’t let go of them or back away though, only gently moving his hands over Grian’s skin until he reaches his wrists and pins them to the floor in a way that seems more sensual than it should. It’s almost like he’s distracting himself, his actions extremely slow and controlled. “Don’t take responsibility for it. Don’t. I can’t control it if you do, and I don’t want to kill you.”
It makes sense, then, how Ren’s disposition swung so suddenly from almost entirely human and coherent to slipping nearly back into being the reaper he’s become. The undead don’t necessarily want to kill their friends, but the game forces them to, latching onto anything it can to take over their ability to make decisions and limiting their patience until they lash out for any reason. He wants Ren to know he never knew it would go this far, or turn out to be this grim of a game, but he understands the other’s point; if he takes responsibility, if he apologizes for causing Ren to die, the urge to kill will become something he can’t control no matter how much he consciously wants to because the game will only make him see the chance for revenge.
With a faint nod to show he understands, Grian wills the fear to subside as he waits for Ren to regain his control. Realistically, it would be best for him to just leave, but even if he wanted to he knows that would also set off Ren’s urge to kill. But he also doesn’t want to, despite how much he’s literally in the lion’s den right now, he doesn’t want to leave Ren and go back to not daring to face him for the rest of the game just yet. He’s only just discovered why he’s felt so drawn here, why he’s missed being allied together against Doc and Scar so much, and he doesn’t want to go back to having this distance of being on other sides again until he has to.
The moments tick on into minutes, both of them counting time by Grian’s breaths, and he can feel the way Ren slowly relaxes again. It’s hard to tell with the stiffness of his muscles and the cold of his skin, but he goes right back to melting into Grian’s warmth, his hands tracing idly over the living Hermit’s wrists where he has them pinned to the floor.
“I do know, y’know.” He says, finally, murmuring against Grian’s neck. A questioning hum makes him continue. “That you feel bad. I know you didn’t mean to-- you didn’t know, it wasn’t you. I’m the one that slipped.”
It’s all he can say without setting himself off, and Grian isn’t sure what he can reply back with or not, so he just settles for nodding again. It does make him feel better to know Ren, the real Ren and not the one driven by bloodlust, doesn’t blame him. That’s the Ren he knows and has missed so much, the same Ren plastered to the entirety of his body and stealing his body heat right now, the same Ren that he’s already looking forward to dragging straight back to their old commune after this game is over and he doesn’t have to worry anymore. He wants to go back to those late nights staring up at the sky, talking about anything and everything and with a freedom of having nothing to fear except a couple of narcoleptic foxes, back when Ren would grab his hand and drag him off to see some new garden he’d planted and Grian wouldn’t hear a word of it over the hammering of his heart.
“Damn, I’m in deep.” Grian says after a while, beginning to realize the extent of what he feels for the undead Hermit on top of him. He doesn’t even realize he said it out loud until Ren sits up, staring down at him with a confused look, and the living Hermit feels his face burn. It only seems to make Ren more confused, his white eyes darting back and forth across Grian’s face and investigating his expression, until he finally breaks into a knowing smirk.
“Of all the places to realize you have a crush, and it’s in a crypt with a dangerous undead.” Ren teases, laughing, and though it makes Grian’s face burn even warmer, he’s more than happy to accept this teasing with the way it seems to make Ren completely forget about Demise and the strings pulling at his control. It’s been ages since he’s heard the other’s proper, human laugh, and it makes a warm feeling bloom in his chest that he’s starting to think just happens whenever Ren is around.
“Hey, you started it.” He ends up huffing back, pretending to glare at him. “I was having a perfectly good time being completely oblivious until you figured it out, thanks.”
Ren doesn’t say anything at first, only freeing one of his hands to take him by the chin, tilting the living Hermit’s head up toward him. He leans down just a bit as he does, clearly enjoying the way it makes Grian squirm in his grip. “You’re the one that came here.” He points out, and really, Grian can’t argue. Not that he particularly wants to, either, with Ren so close to his face and his wrists restrained against the floor, or the soft way Ren is looking at him, his ghostly eyes easing closed as he leans down to erase the space between them. There’s just the barest of contact, Ren brushing a feather light kiss to his lips that so well matches the absurdly gentle grip on his wrists, and he doesn’t think he can find it in himself to be afraid of him at all after this. The way he’s stamped down his instincts, forced away the magic pull of Demise through nothing but sheer willpower, and now holds Grian like he’s something precious and delicate, all feed right back into making his heart flutter like it did when Ren first came to join up with him what feels like a lifetime ago.
The undead Hermit smirks into the kiss, no doubt fully aware of everything Grian’s heart does with how easily he can hear it, and he just pushes up more firmly into the contact before Ren can tease him about it. Ren doesn’t complain, only moving his free hand from Grian’s chin to hold him firmly behind the neck, fingers just barely threading into his hair while his other continues to keep his own hands restrained. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of his head, Grian wonders if the control Ren has kept throughout this encounter with an iron fist has anything to do with Demise; if maybe that’s where he’s channeling his instincts to keep them away from anything deadly, the thrill of being in charge enough to appease the game for now.
Regardless of the reason, he enjoys it more than he probably should, more than content to stay here just like this for as long as Ren would allow. Really, he has even less intention of leaving now than he did before, especially as the other tugs on his hair just enough to tilt his head more comfortably into reach, his weight pressing down on him in just the right way to--
“Am I interrupting something?”
A voice that is decidedly not either of their own cuts in out of nowhere, causing Ren to wrench away with a low, territorial growl, while Grian nearly jumps out of his own skin, turning in a panic to see who’s just stumbled in on them. There, standing by the ladder with something between shock and amusement on his face, is Doc, holding back a smirk.
“Listen, I don’t judge, but I didn’t know you were into that, Grian.” He says, gesturing vaguely at Ren and then the crypt around them and effectively doubling whatever embarrassment Grian was feeling in an instant. He knows exactly what Doc is implying, and he doesn’t like it, even if he isn’t technically wrong considering the scene he just found.
“Get out.” Ren growls at him again, his voice slipping well and fully back into something otherworldly and ominous. He doesn’t move from his place on top of Grian, seemingly unashamed and just wanting the uninvited intruder out of his space more than anything else. But with how close they are, Grian can feel the faint hum that seems to emanate from Ren himself as he passes back over to being the powerful undead he is, the ever so subtle air of magic from the game manifesting in him with his anger. Even Doc, who has a tendency to look deadly things right in the eye and not flinch, takes a few steps back with his hands raised at Ren’s instant aggression, knowing as well as Grian does that he can and will make Doc leave one way or another even if it’s in a coffin.
“Okay, okay, I’ll come back later and leave you to your…” Doc pauses, seemingly trying to find the right words. “... debatable methods of trying to get Grian onto your side.”
“Doc. Out.”
“Okay.” Doc turns and vanishes up the ladder without another word, clearly having more common sense than Grian does and knowing when to leave. The two are left alone again in the silence of the crypt, with nothing but Ren’s angry magical thrumming to fill the air, and Grian’s faint wondering of whether or not he should be afraid for his own safety.
“Ren?” He hesitantly asks after a few more moments, and watches as the other instantly deflates, his stare falling from the entrance to the crypt to look at Grian instead. The energy around him dies down, leaving him looking just a bit tired instead of angry, and when Grian wiggles his hands free of his grip still holding them in place, he doesn’t stop him. It’s all he needs in order to wrap his arms around Ren again and pull him back down into a hug, the undead Hermit melting into the contact in an instant. It’s almost like he expected Grian to be afraid, to want to back away, and had expected a stalemate of uncertainty as neither dared to move; but with the hug, Grian can see that worry dissipate just as quickly as Ren goes right back to stealing his body heat.
“You should probably go soon.” Ren sighs, though he just nuzzles deeper into the warmth of Grian’s sweater. “Before someone who isn’t alive comes wandering down here and finds you.”
Grian knows he’s right, and he knows this is Ren giving him the clear chance to get out of here alive while he still can. It’s yet another thing that shows just how much the other cares, just how much he wants to keep Grian alive as best he can despite everything in the game’s power probably pulling at him to do the opposite, and it just makes the feeling of not wanting to move all the stronger. He came here, following the feeling of wanting to see Ren without knowing what it was, and fully expecting to die if he was caught; but now, after seeing the other for the first time since his death, a good amount of his previous fear for the undead is long gone. Or at least for Ren, anyway, because he now knows he can trust him even with the influence of Demise, and he’s in no hurry to get up and leave. Especially not now, not when he can feel the slightest bit of temperate warmth in Ren’s skin where it’s been in contact with his own, and the way he seems so comfortable as he clings to Grian.
“Soon,” He agrees begrudgingly, after a few moments. “But not yet.”
And Ren doesn’t argue, just gives a fond chuckle and holds him that much closer, relishing in their time together for as long as it may last.