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“I know what being red feels like, Scar.” Grian swallowed his words, talking about that desert always left a sour taste in his mouth. “How did you not kill me? How were you more focused on stealing cookies than taking lives?”
Scar paused for a moment, thinking over all the strings of sentences he could put together into a paragraph. He hung his head in resignation, breathing out a sigh. “I didn’t want you to be scared of me.”
“Scared of you?” Grian asked, whispered to himself. He let it settle into his thoughts. He shook his head, looking back at Scar, who was avoiding his eyes. “Scar,” it sounded a bit deflated, any anger or tension subsided in favour of sympathy. He reached out for one of Scar’s hands, cradling it in his own. “Scar. I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been for you.”
Scar’s chest felt tight as he took a breath in. “There were quite a few times where I thought about it, I won’t lie to you. It felt like I needed your blood on my hands,” Scar confessed, voice shaking a bit. He shut his eyes tightly, trying to rid himself of the images the desert ingrained into his mind. “But I couldn’t.”
Grian brought his hand up to Scar’s face, softly caressing his cheekbone with his thumb. Scar leaned into the touch. “Did you want to?” Grian asked, Scar’s eyes were green, a deep calming green. They weren’t red, or yellow, they were as they always should’ve been; unaffected by a death game that cost them each other. “When you gave me those flowers.”
Scar shook his head, “maybe?” It was a question, as if not even Scar knew. “I don’t think I did, at least.” He said. “There was an urge to, almost like a craving. When I got back to you, it was still there.” Scar raised his hand to his face, covering Grian’s hand, holding it like a lifeline. “But you looked so worried about me, my heart hurt, and I swore that I’d never hurt you.”
“The kill slip,” Grian mumbled, rising intonation at the end of the phrase, almost asking, not quite. Scar inhaled sharply, the mere thought of it causing a visceral reaction. “I don’t blame you for it,” Grian remedied quickly. “I’m just confused.”
“Bdubs and I,” Scar started, seeing no point in lying in trying to get out of it. He hoped it would lessen the weight in his chest, right above his heart. “We were red, you were yellow. You were always going to win, no matter what.”
“But what about the cactus ring?” Grian let out a little laugh, devoid of any humour but eager to convince it wasn’t. “I mean, you fought back there, right? I could’ve still lost.”
Scar looked down, shifting his focus off of Grian, onto the blades of grass beside his feet. Grian followed his line of sight, their hands still holding onto each other. “Scar,” Grian ducked down a little, catching Scar’s attention, who hummed and looked back at Grian as if the conversation had never happened. “You fought back, right?”
Scar slowly closed his eyes, it was enough of an answer for both of them. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. His hand fell off of Grian’s, resigned. It felt cold, hanging in the night air, but it wasn’t long until Grian’s chased after it, finding their rightful places, intertwined.
“No,” Grian shook his head. The movement made him dizzy, he felt sick to his stomach knowing that he had hurt Scar. He had hurt the person he had loved most, and they didn’t even hurt him back. “ I’m sorry.” He leaned in, resting his forehead on Scar’s shoulder. The fabric was soft, Scar smelled like honey, it was comforting. “I should’ve noticed, done something. I shouldn’t have killed you.”
“Hey,” Scar nudged Grian’s head with his chin, Grian looked up, their gazes colliding. “I was going to die anyway,” he lightly shrugged, careful not to jostle Grian who was still leaning on him. “And if anyone was going to kill me, I’m beyond grateful that it was you.”
“What?” Grian tried to joke, his voice quiet and small, like he didn’t know if he wanted anyone to hear it, notice that there were words falling out of his lips. “Was it on your bucket list to be betrayed by your greatest ally?”
Scar took a moment, to let silence settle between them, to let his thoughts be arranged, to let the breeze flow around them and the grass softly move to its tethered tune. “I know you,” he said. “And I knew—that moment in the pond, where I said that you could kill me and you didn’t—I knew that you wouldn’t hurt me if you had any other choice.”
“I lured that creeper towards you,” Grian argued. He was almost sure it was falling on deaf ears, Scar was just as stubborn as he was. It’s what made them so unstoppable. They did anything, everything they set their minds to, it was beautiful, it was terrifying, it was destructive. “I could’ve simply decided not to.”
“You didn’t realise,” Scar rubbed circles into Grian’s hand. A comforting gesture, familiar in a way that made both of their chests ache with a horrible sense of nostalgia. They missed the desert, even if all it did was tear them apart, it was also the thing that brought them together. they hated it, loved it, missed it all the same. “I don’t blame you.”
“I blame myself.” Grian could feel the chill of the night at his back, but Scar was there, and that meant he was safe. He carefully let go of Scar’s hand and snaked his arms around his waist, needing to be closer to him, needing them to become coalesced.
“I know,” Scar nodded, slowly and solemnly, like the words hurt him to say. They were knives crawling up his throat, an explosion at his back. “I hope someday you don’t.”
“Yeah,” Grian breathed out. He paused, opening his mouth to speak and closing it again. He looked up at Scar with a calm intensity. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more for you.”
Scar inhaled sharply, matching Grian’s intensity. “You did so much for me.” He lifted his hand up to cup Grian’s face, to bring them even closer together, they always felt so far apart. “Grian, you were my everything.” He rested their foreheads against each other, they were breathing each other’s air, it still didn’t feel like enough. “You still are.”
“You’re mine too,” Grian whispered, lips ghosting over Scar’s. “I may have kept you safe, but you kept me sane.”
“Sane?” Scar jokingly asked, immediately the air felt lighter. Grian didn’t know how he always knew what to say. “I think we might be remembering things a bit differently.”
Grian scoffed, “as sane as I could be during a death game.”
Scar hummed, seemingly accepting the correction. He leaned forwards, closing the small gap that always felt too big. It was less desperate than it had been in the desert, it was sweeter, softer, safer.