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It takes no time at all for Scott to realize, which is probably the unfortunate part.
Grian breaks eye contact the moment Scott’s expression twists into a smirk of recognition, cheeks burning. Unfortunately for him Scar is standing right there so he can’t exactly say anything, just shoot Scott a pleading death glare.
Etho’s snickering behind him. Grian doesn’t need to look at him to see he and Joel are extremely entertained by this turn of events, and reaches out to smack the two of them with one of his wings without looking. If anything, it only makes the snickering worse.
(It’s his own fault. His fault they had too much to drink, his fault their friends all had to deal with the fallout of the second messiest divorce to ever take place in their friend group, his fault that he and Scar got married the first time anyway… the list of reasons why it’s his fault is long. He deserves the raw throat from the scream he let out this morning when Cleo sent him the photos and the laughter that’s been trailing him all day.
Leave it to Grian to drunkenly remarry his ex-husband on a group vacation. Leave it to Grian to be the only one who remembers the next morning.)
Bdubs and Impulse are waiting for them at the bar and the second Scar comes up Bdubs is grinning, eyebrows starting to rise. “Could it be?” he asks, turning the full force of his smirk on Grian. “Is it true?”
“I did a full circuit!” Grian yelps, trying to derail the conversation before Scar can ask about it. Impulse raises an eyebrow— he and Bdubs are always freakishly in sync, it’s awful— and Grian makes a frantic slashing motion across his throat. “Progress is looking incredible, honestly.”
“Hey!” Bdubs laughs. “We’re going ultra modern mid-century— just wait, it’ll look good! You’ll see!”
Grian exhales slowly. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he snorts. Crisis averted.
Cleo manages to rope Scar into another argument about his Allay, which leaves Grian free to be cornered by both Scott and Impulse.
“So is it true?” Impulse asks. There’s no judgment in his voice, just a knowing twinkle in his eye. Scott is, of course, fully smirking, because he’s awful.
“Yes,” Grian says, through gritted teeth. “Apparently Scar and I got married last night. Again. Etho and Joel witnessed, Cleo found the officiant— I’m surprised she didn’t tell you first thing,” Grian adds to Scott. “Scar doesn’t remember it though.”
Impulse actually winces, because he’s the only person on this server with any tact. “You haven’t told him?” Scott says.
“I tried!” Grian snaps. “He wasn’t listening— he’s been distracted by that Allay the whole day. I swear I’m going to have to hit him in the head with dripstone to get him to realize what’s happened!” Scott snorts. “If you start laughing I swear I will also hit you with dripstone, Scott—,”
“Well, the good news is that Scar is probably the nicest person on the entire server,” Impulse says, slinging an arm around Grian’s shoulder. Grian glances over to Scar in time to catch him looking back; Scar shoots him a sunny smile and goes back to his conversation with Cleo and Joel, both of whom so far are perfectly happy to let him stay in the dark. “I mean even with the mess that was your last divorce he still forgave you— Void only knows why— so this one will probably be even smoother sailing. Tell him what happened, get it annulled. Easy.”
“Apart from the humiliation of divorcing the same man twice,” Scott says, and Grian punches him so hard Scott yelps. “Hey! I was on low hearts!”
“Serves you right,” Grian snaps back, and buries his head in his hands. “I’m so screwed.”
“There, there,” Impulse says, but now it sounds like he’s holding back laughter too, and Grian honestly can’t blame him. This entire situation has circled back around to ridiculous from awful.
Impulse’s arm is pulled from around his shoulders to be replaced by someone else’s. “These two guys bothering you?” Scar asks, voice warm and laughing right in Grian’s ear.
“No worries man,” Impulse says, holding his hands up with a grin. “Just offering some friendly advice. No plans to steal your man away from you.”
Grian can feel his cheeks heat up and glares at Scott, who just winks and fishes an apple from his inventory.
“Well, good,” Scar says brightly, “because I really, really want a goat horn. Grian, you know how to get one, right?”
Finally, an out. “Yeah, bud, we can get you a goat horn,” Grian says, and lets Scar steer him away towards the mountain, hoping no one else is there to make faces at them.
(Mercifully, no one is. He’s not sure he can put up with the knowing looks as he shows Scar how to let a goat charge him, as he laughs over Scar slipping off the edge of the block, as he lets himself forget about the weight of the previous evening to spend some time with one of his closest friends before he comes clean and changes everything.
He ignores all the pings on his communicator. If anyone actually needs him, they can probably hear his and Scar’s laughter from the other side of the map. They can come find him themselves.)
The thing is, Scar has to realize. He has to. He’s wearing a wedding ring on his left hand— Grian can see it glinting in the sunlight as Scar opens his chest and starts rifling around looking for bamboo. Which means he’s deliberately not speaking about it. Which means when Grian turns around and Scar is already over the hill, it’s him avoiding the conversation.
“I had something to tell you,” Grian says weakly, to Scar’s laughing back, and then sighs.
Whatever. He’ll just grab Scar before night falls, tell him, and let him stay in the half-finished base for the night. Sighing, he fishes around for more wool, letting his fingers brush over the lilacs and poppies he mindlessly gathered on his way over, to craft up a second bed.
(He knows— he knows everyone was surprised when they got the divorce. No one was surprised when they got married the first time, but everyone gave Grian weird looks when Scar vanished up the mountain after everything was finalized. Grian was giving himself weird looks when Scar vanished up the mountain. When people asked him what happened he doesn’t have an answer for them. It happened. It broke his heart. They figured it out, went back to being good friends like nothing happened, and Grian thought that would be the end of it.
And then they hopped off the server for a weekend, got married again, and Grian has no idea where to go from here.)
The sun is starting to go down when Grian finally rolls his eyes and sets off in the direction of the Jellies, where he knows Scar is going to be. It doesn’t take long to find him, settled on the ground with his cane leaning against a mangrove trunk, giggling as a Jellie bats at the bamboo he’s dangling just out of its reach. It’s ridiculously cute. Grian has to take a deep breath for a moment to rein in his feelings before they end up all over his face.
“Scar!” he calls, and Scar hurriedly shushes him. “I have something really important to show you, Scar!”
“Hold on!” Scar impatiently waves him off. “Look at how cute she is! I don’t think she’s my Jellie, I think I still have to find her, but she’s just like her!”
“Scar—,” Grian sighs. “Listen, I’ll help you find Jellie, but this is really important. Can you just come over here please?”
There’s a branch hanging over Scar’s head that would be perfect to use to threaten him with some dripstone, but it turns out to not be needed; Scar just stands up with the Jellie in his arms, plopping her around his neck as he comes over.
“Right, um,” Grian says. “What do you remember about two nights ago? When we were on that weekend trip with Etho and Joel and Cleo?”
Scar rubs at his chin with one hand and giggles again when the Jellie smacks him in the face with her tail. “Not very much,” he says. “I remember we teased Joel and Etho about rebounds and then I… think we encouraged Cleo to… ditch Martyn? Oops.” He grins a little. “After that it’s pretty blurry.”
He sounds sincere enough that Grian… actually believes him. He doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than the alternative. “Well,” he says, “as it turns out, we happened to get married that night.”
There is five seconds of dead silence where Scar stares at him with an expression so blank Grian’s almost afraid he’s completely broken him. Then, Scar says, “Oh my god,” in such a flat tone that Grian can’t help but burst into hysterical laughter.
“We got married?!” Scar asks. “What— how? Who—?”
“Apparently Cleo found the officiant— I can’t believe this! You really had no idea!”
“No!” Scar waves his arms, nearly dislodging the Jellie in the process. “We’ve been running around the server for two days and you didn’t tell me— oh my God, is that what Bdubs was talking about?!”
“I tried to tell you when I found out!” Grian says. “And then we weren’t alone and I didn’t— genuinely, I didn’t think you’d like to find out in front of a bunch of our friends, all of whom were making fun of me I might add— Scar, how on Earth did you not realize? You’re literally wearing a wedding ring!”
Scar holds up his hand to stare at his ring finger, and then blushes. “Well,” he says, and extends his hand so Grian can see it closer. “I guess I’m just… still used to wearing it.”
Grian’s breath catches in his throat— it’s not just any ring, any silly ring from a gumball machine or an old Ring pop. It’s Scar’s original wedding ring, the one Grian made out of the wing of a broken Elytra from the very first hardcore server they ever finished.
“You kept this?” he says quietly, and Scar looks away. All thoughts of asking for an annulment flee from his head. There is only this.
“Okay,” Grian says. “I think there’s a lot we should talk about, and maybe we shouldn’t do it here? The sun’s going down and I don’t see a base anywhere—,”
“Oh, I have a base in a cave!” Scar says. “It’s right over there! I’ve got wheat, too!”
“I have sheep,” Grian says. “Uh, and chicken, and wheat, and a really sick wall.”
“It’s a great wall,” Scar agrees. “Can I bring Jellie with me?”
“Uh—,” The real Jellie, yes, of course; Grian wouldn’t separate Scar from Jellie any more than he’d give up his own wings. All of the Jellies is a lot of cats. “Tomorrow, Scar— we’ll find her tomorrow, yeah?”
Scar shrugs. “Sure,” he says, and follows Grian up the hill, still with a Jellie draped over his neck. “I’m still not over this, Grian— you knew this whole time?”
“Yeah, uh…” Grian hesitates. “Remember in the ravine on the way back? You were chasing your Allay, Cleo sent me some photo messages, I screamed ‘NO’ at the top of my lungs?”
“What did you scream ‘no’ for?” It’s an innocent enough question, but Grian knows Scar’s not an idiot, knows Scar will be putting the pieces together in his head. He has to tread carefully around this to make sure they’re not miscommunicating any more than they probably already have.
“Well… it’s a little embarrassing to remarry the guy you’ve already divorced once, right?” Grian says, and instantly knows it’s the wrong thing to say when Scar flinches.
“I changed my mind,” Scar says, backing away. “We don’t really need to base together, right?”
“It would be nice?” Grian tries, and grabs for the fishing pole in his inventory to hook around Scar’s wrist when he goes to turn away. “Scar, come on, please. Can we at least talk about this?”
Scar sighs, but stops. “If you want another divorce, we can take care of that tomorrow,” he says tonelessly. “I’m sure something else will happen on the server that will overshadow this soon enough, and then everyone will stop laughing. Is that the talking you want?”
“I don’t want another divorce!” Grian blurts out, and realizes it’s true the second the words fall in the space between them. Scar freezes, staring at him. “I— I didn’t even really want the first one,” he admits, softer, and Scar’s eyes widen. “Why did we get divorced, Scar? Because I don’t even know. I don’t remember.”
“You said,” Scar says, “you said you wanted to try new things, you said—,”
Grian stares at him, and then he does place dripstone directly above Scar to drop it on his head. Scar yelps; the Jellie leaps from his neck with a little disdainful mrow. “What was that for?!”
“I meant I wanted to hang out with other people for a little bit!” Grian says, waving his arms around and almost throwing his pickaxe. “Mumbo was gonna be here! And Jimmy and Martyn— we spent all that time the last time they were here on our honeymoon in that stupid desert, I barely got to see them— I didn’t want to leave you for permanent, you absolute dingus!”
Scar stares at him. “So when I—,”
“Are you serious?” Grian’s on a roll, even though he’s smiling and near hysterical laughter. How can he be mad about this— this is par for the course with them as far as terrible communication. This is why they shouldn’t be left alone together— neither of Grian’s braincells work. “You thought that meant— oh, no, and then you gave me the paperwork and I just assumed you were unhappy, and I didn’t ask— no wonder everyone was looking at me weird after you went up the mountain.” Grian sits down on the ground and flops back. The sun’s almost completely set by now and he hasn’t slept since they came back to the server. He kind of hopes the phantoms strike now and save him from this revelation. “I’m an idiot.”
Scar pats him on the shoulder. “We can be idiots together,” he says. “Come on. Let’s go to your really cool wall.”
“I made you a bed,” Grian mumbles, letting Scar tug him back up, letting Scar tangle their fingers together. “Don’t divorce me again, okay?”
“It would be really embarrassing to get a second divorce after remarrying my ex-husband,” Scar agrees, but when Grian looks at him he’s got that fond little smile he only gives to Jellie and Grian himself, and Grian knows he’ll tolerate months of teasing from their friends if it means he gets to keep this.