Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Scar knew that being a hero would entail many things and he made sure to anticipate everything. He expected the criticism and hate and death threats and he applied, anyway, because he knew that he was capable of taking it all. Words coming out of a stranger's mouth would never hurt as much as the ones he grew up with at home, the ones he heard from every corner until he moved to a city that accepted people like him.

It's one thing to talk to annoying reporters and read internet posts, though. When your best friend shares those opinions, then it becomes quite another.

He didn't notice at first, or maybe he didn't want to notice—the little comments, the sideways glances, the way Grian would always go quiet whenever anyone mentioned his persona. Scar assumed that Grian just didn't care for the publicity that society assigned to doing good deeds, and he could understand that—he never exactly planned on becoming famous, either.

When Grian was promoted in his job as a reporter and started appearing at crime scenes, Scar couldn't lie to himself any longer. 

The first time Grian talked to him directly, he wanted to reveal himself right then and there. He couldn't stand the noise, the piercing questions, the unnatural coldness in his friend's gaze. For the first time, Grian looked at him as if he was nothing, and Scar would have revealed his best-kept secret to the whole world, only to become something once again.

That day, he stayed out late, sitting on his favourite rooftop, turning an arrow over in his hands and wondering what he did to inspire a look of such hatred from someone he called his best friend. He came home, tired, fully intent on confronting Grian—

And Grian met him with an embrace and a caress to his cheek. And his voice was gentle, so gentle as he asked where he'd been. And oh stars, Scar was selfish.

He couldn't bear to be honest that day, and he's been lying by omission ever since. Every time he talks to reporters and every time he looks Grian in the eyes and every time he lets himself be held while the remnants of angry words run through his head. Every time he returns to their shared flat, confused and upset, only to forget everything at the slightest hint of his breaker's touch.

Scar is a liar and he doesn't know if it's for his benefit or Grian's, but sometimes he can't help but think that there's only one loser in this situation. And it's not Grian.

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Sometimes, when he feels betrayed and abandoned as never before, Scar starts to wonder whom Grian's sharp words are actually addressed to—the hero he despises, or the man behind the visor that he calls his best friend. 

Talking to Grian on those days, answering his questions about things that are not true— it makes him fucking mad. He just wants this to stop, he wants Grian to be upfront and clear with him for once—

And then he comes home and Grian is good to him, so good—and Scar is a fool. What does it matter if his friend hates one part of him when he adores the other? Scar doesn't deserve to be something when half the time he wishes they never met. Doesn't deserve to die when Grian doesn't even know that it's him he's killing. 

Grian makes him happy, and he makes him miserable. And Scar can't blame him for any of it because he doesn't know. 

He doesn't know and Scar can't tell him, and the truth is that he's scared. He's scared of what illusions might fall if he directly confronts Grian. Because Grian hates Hotguy, and Scar doesn't know what he would do with himself if he hated him, too. He'd rather be hated unknowingly than find out that even the part of him that Grian said he loved is just as abhorred. 

Whenever he's at home he's flying, and whenever he's Hotguy he wants to fucking die, and he still comes back every time. Being stuck in a cycle of losing hope, finding it and losing it all over again is exhausting—and still, he stays.  

Because through all the nights, all the crying, all the cuts, Scar would still let Grian burn him a thousand times over, only to feel the cool of his fingertips as they put out the flames. He'd rather watch the cracks spread through his skin than let himself be shattered like glass—rather believe that he is loved for who he is, than be hated for who he's not.

Scar has been putting off what he can't bear to face. But the breaking point will come eventually. And he's afraid of what will happen when it does.

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Mumbo approaches him once, after they've both finished listening to another of Grian's rants. He finds him in the kitchen, face hidden in trembling hands, the dishes he said he was going to do lying abandoned in the sink. 

"Hey, Scar," he begins, fiddling nervously with his tie, "why do you always get...like that?"

Immediately, Scar's head shoots up, "Like what?" 

"Well, you know," Mumbo stammers, "whenever Grian starts ranting about Hotguy, you go all quiet and everything."

Oh. Scar did expect Mumbo to notice eventually. For all that the man's a spoon, Scar's never been able to hide from him for long. He was bound to notice that something was up at some point.

Still, his friend could never know the true reason for his misery. And he intends on keeping it that way.

"I just don't understand hating someone for trying to do the right thing," Scar says, trying to sound calm and unaffected. He raises his chin defensively, "Is that a problem?"

"No, of course not, it's just...you know you can tell Grian if you don't agree with him, right?"

Mumbo looks so uncertain that Scar almost laughs. 

"You think he would listen to me?" 

"I—yeah, no, he wouldn't."

"Exactly. I can deal with this, Mumbo."

"Yeah, of course, just...you've been pulling away lately and—you know you don't have to do it alone, right? Like, this is clearly upsetting you, so if there's anything I can—"

"Mumbo," Scar interrupts and repeats slowly, "I can deal with this. Alone." 

Mumbo stares at him pleadingly. Scar does not waver. They both know that there's nothing he can do to help. Scar only has himself to blame for his current predicament, and soon enough his friend will realise it as well. That what Scar is going through is his fault and his fault only.

His fault for being so oblivious. For having wasted so much time pretending that everything was fine. That being loved as only half of himself was enough, that he didn't die inside every time his hero name came out of his best friend's mouth, that the most important person in his life didn't hate and adore him at the same time. 

The hard truth would have hurt less than the sweet lie, and Scar should have realised that before letting himself wither away. If he'd seen things for what they were, he could have cut off the heartbreak at the root and he wouldn't have had to get hurt. Wouldn't have spent all these years pretending.

He stares at Mumbo until he leaves. Mumbo never brings it up again. 

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When the breaking point finally comes, Scar isn't ready. Looking back later, he thinks that they could have spent another decade in this awkward dance, and he still wouldn’t have been ready.

It's a weekend and Mumbo is over and they're having their traditional Saturday dinner, the three of them, and Scar doesn't really want to be there. Saturdays used to be his favourite days of the week, hanging out with his two friends would bring him so much joy—

It's all bleak now. 

Mumbo serves the main course, but Scar doesn't touch it, half-heartedly nibbling on a piece of pineapple and glaring holes in the table. As has become the custom, Grian is taking up most of the conversation, with Mumbo occasionally asking questions that only get him to talk more. 

Scar doesn't say anything. He has nothing to say to either of them. 

“Have you guys seen the news?”

"No, I haven't actually," Mumbo replies after a moment. "What news?" 

Grian takes a bite out of his chicken and explains, waving his fork in the air, “Hotguy fucked up a mission and almost killed a bunch of people.”

Here they go again. 

Under the table, scarred hands interlock, fingers gripping tightly onto each other to the point of pain.

Mumbo shifts in his seat, shooting an uncertain glance at Scar before asking, "Really, he did that?" 

"Yeah. Honestly, I don’t understand why they’re still letting him stay as a hero. It’s clear that he doesn’t give two shits about anything that isn’t his fucking hair.”

“Are you sure? I mean, everyone can mess up. And he’s a hero, why wouldn’t he care about missions?”

“Mumbo, I see him every day. Trust me, the only thing that man cares about is publicity. He doesn’t care about being a hero, only looking like one.”

Mumbo sends Scar another nervous glance.

“You’re definitely sure? Like, you don’t actually—know him. You know him as a hero, you don’t know what he’s like as a person.”

Grian snorts, “I don’t need to know him personally to know that he’s a piece of shit. Look, just trust me—Hotguy isn’t a good hero or person. Having any sort of faith in him whatsoever will only lead to disappointment and more deaths.”

Shaking his head, he sighs and pastes a smile on his face.

“So anyway, last week—“

"Why do you hate Hotguy so much?”

A pause.

“What?”

“You heard me,” Scar snaps, throwing his pineapple down on his plate. “Why do you hate Hotguy? What’s he ever done to you?”

“Uh, I just explained why? I've talked about this before. You know why I hate him. Why are you asking this now?” 

Looking at his friend’s face, confused and surprised and unaware, it’s like something within him has clicked. Suddenly, Scar finds that he is done.

"I don't know, actually, mind repeating yourself? I think I missed it under the constant stream of insults."

"Scar, are you okay? What's the matter with you?" 

There’s no point in trying to keep something he could never have. He’s tried to make Hotguy a separate person, and Grian’s words have continued to cut straight through his own scarred heart, and Scar can’t live like this anymore. Let the illusion fall. Let the force of his betrayal be the ticking time bomb that will drive Grian six feet underground. He’s tired of pretending.

"Answer the damn question." 

"No, you tell me, why are you so mad all of a sudden?" 

“Because you’re hating on a person who’s done absolutely nothing to you,” his voice quivers with an anguished kind of fury, “for no good reason.”

Grian gapes for a moment, then his expression closes off. 

“I’m allowed to have an opinion,” he states, annoyance in his tone, and barbed wire grows spikes in Scar’s throat. Even now, after everything Grian's said to him, to Scar, his words are worth nothing. After all the touches, the looks, he still doesn’t know, he still doesn't care—

“Trash-talking someone is not an opinion. Have you ever considered how Hotguy feels being insulted constantly behind his back?”

“It's not like he can hear it. And besides, if Hotguy is that upset by a single person whom he doesn’t even know, then it’s his fault for being so damn sensitive. I’m not going to apologise for saying what I think.”

"Hotguy doesn’t deserve that,” Scar argues desperately, faltering, feeling the breath slowly leave his lungs. “All he’s ever done is try to save people, try to save you—" 

"You know he doesn't give a shit about you, right?” Grian cuts in, mouth lifting up in a condescending smile. “He says he does, but he doesn't. He doesn't care about actually saving lives. If he did, he would be doing it quietly, not putting it on display and expecting a pat on the back for every last sneeze. He'd be doing his job instead of chatting with interviewers and flipping that fucking braid."

He’s not listening. He’s not listening.

“You—you can’t just—“

"Look, he deserves it, okay? If he's going to make a mockery out of every mission, then I think I'm well within my rights to make a mockery out of him."

Scar closes his eyes for a moment, sucking air in through his nose. He doesn't know what he expected, but this is going so wrong. 

"When did I—I mean, he—when did he make a mockery out of a mission?"

"The other day? When people literally almost died because he refused to take things seriously?"

A gasp escapes him against his will. 

"In what—“ he blinks rapidly, fingers curling into fists against his knees, “—in what part of that mission did Hotguy not take things seriously?" 

Instead of answering, Grian retorts, "Since when do you keep up with Hotguy's missions?"

"I—" 

"And actually, since when do you care about Hotguy in general? You've never let me vent about my work properly, yet now you're suddenly willing to talk?" 

"Hey, uh, guys?" Mumbo tries to interject, seemingly realising that this argument is getting out of hand. "Maybe we should just agree to disagree—"

"I'll agree to disagree when Scar agrees to lay the fuck off and just accept that the only thing that Hotguy has ever cared about is having a fucking audience."

"Grian, come on—"

“Hotguy never asked for any of that!” Scar bursts out, shaking. “All that Hotguy ever wanted was to help people, it’s not his fault that—“

Grian slams his hands down on the table, voice rising in pitch, "Oh yeah? Then why did he become a hero? Why not become a doctor or a cop or something? Do something that actually helps people instead of engaging in this circus? Hell, Hotguy could just make yearly donations to some charity and that would be more helpful than this farce. Hotguy could have done literally anything else and he would still be helping people.”

Pushing past his flinch, Scar leans forward as well, gripping the edge of his seat, “You have no idea—“

“But he didn’t, and you know why?” Grian snaps his fingers, “That’s right. Because he’s a publicity-loving jerk who would kill someone with his bare hands if it would bring him more attention.”

Point made, he leans back in his chair and continues talking without sparing him another glance. 

The sentences blend together, a muffled buzz blanketing his mind, and Scar tries his hardest not to start crying. Grian is talking about how much he hates Hotguy, and Scar is realising how much he hates him, and he wants it gone, wants it gone, wants him gone—

“—not to mention, the way he chooses to present himself, with that necklace and those hipbones and everything—”

All of a sudden, dread coating his insides, he thinks he would rather be gone himself. 

"What's wrong with his looks?" Mumbo pipes up, and Grian groans in frustration.

"You too? I swear to fucking God," he mumbles under his breath, then says loudly, "I don't know, okay? I just hate it. He's like...weirdly feminine or something."

Every biochemical process in Scar's body stutters to a halt. Suddenly, the air is too thick and his cheeks are burning and he can't catch his breath. Grian is the one who told him that it was okay to grow out his hair and wear dresses and cry easily, he’s the one who taught him to love what he saw in his reflection—

Loving himself has never hurt more. 

Ears ringing, Scar barely notices that Mumbo’s stare is now also fixed on their friend. Everything Grian’s ever said to him is in front of his eyes, every time he made him feel like someone worthy of being loved, and it means nothing, it means nothing, he’s nothing—

"—anyway, are we done here?"

For a long moment, no one speaks.

"You think you're right about Hotguy," Scar utters quietly past the suffocating lump in his throat. "But you're not. I know you're not."

"How? You don't know him like I know him. You've never actually talked to him in person."

"How do you know that?"

"What, you're saying that you and Hotguy are, what, secret buds?"  

"I just mean—"

"Scar, you're being ridiculous," Grian says, and he’s laughing. Laughing as if he's not the one who breaks Scar's heart over and over, only to stick it together with nails and duct tape and pretend that it was never broken in the first place. As if he doesn't throw him in the mud, over and over again, every single day—

"You can't do this,” his voice breaks.

"Can't do what?" 

"You're being a dick."

"To whom? To Hotguy?"

"To me."

Grian scoffs, "Well, you're assuming that you're right in something you don't know shit about and being overly emotional over nothing."

Scar feels his eyes grow warm. He doesn't care. He doesn't care.

"I'm not being emotional, why won't you just listen—"

"Listen to what? Listen to you attacking me over a stranger?"

"I'm not attacking you, you're the one—"

"Do you have a crush on Hotguy?" 

His head snaps up, the abruptness of the question making him forget about the tears in his eyes. 

"What? No." 

What on earth...?

"Then why is this so important to you?" 

Oh. Oh stars.

"I—it's not." 

"Really? Because right now you're being awfully defensive over someone you don't even know." 

"N-no, I'm not, I just—"

"Prove it."

"What?"

"Prove it. If you don't have a crush on Hotguy, then stop acting like some fucking teenage girl and prove it."

"I—I—" 

Scar can't breathe.

"I'm not a girl," he chokes out, vision blurring.

"Then why are you crying like one?"

"I—I'm not," he insists, even as his voice breaks again and tears trail down his cheeks. 

"Sure you're not. Are we done here? Are you done interrogating me?"

Screwing up his face, Scar shakes his head, more tears slipping out. The liquid pooling in his eyes is hot and Grian and Mumbo are right there and Scar may not be a girl, but Grian doesn't love him, he doesn't love him, and he understands now, finally, that worthless is all he'll ever be.

"Oh, for fuck's sake—why is this so important to you?"

"I—I can't—"

"You can't? Yet you can have a go at me apparently, over nothing. What the fuck is your problem?"

"I can't tell you," he moans, curling in on himself. He wishes Grian would stop asking questions he can't answer. He needs everything to go away.

"We're supposed to be friends, and yet here you are, falling over yourself for someone whom, I repeat, you don't even know. So I'll ask you again—why is this so important to you?" 

Woe is constricting his chest, his cheeks becoming ever wetter, and he's burning. The illusion is crashing down around him, trapping him under its weight, shards digging into his back, and Grian is cold, cold, cold, and Scar—Scar can't take this anymore.

Dropping his head, hair covering his tear-soaked face, he sobs, “Cause I’m—I am—I’m Hotguy. I’m Hotguy.”

The room is thrown into silence. 

"...What?" 

"I'm Hotguy."

It's not the grand reveal he always imagined at all. 

He thought he'd dramatically announce it and Grian would be bamboozled and then he'd get to laugh and make jokes and sweep him off his feet.

In reality, he's sitting at the dinner table, crying miserably into his plate, and Grian just spent a solid half an hour insulting him, and all Scar wants is to just fucking die and make all this stop. 

There is nothing grand about this. 

It's pathetic.

The silence stretches, Scar's sobs the only sound echoing in the open space. Somewhere beyond his despair, he's very aware of the eyes on him, and it makes him want to disappear. Grian hates him, he might as well already be dead—

"No, you're not."

Scar freezes. Slowly, he raises his head, uncaring of the tears that drip off his chin.

"What?" he breathes, and if he expected sympathy, it’s nowhere to be found. Grian's gaze is impassive and he—he looks mad. 

"I said no. I know you're not Hotguy, so stop fucking lying."

“What?” Scar asks again, and a shudder runs through him. “I'm not—I'm not lying."

"Oh yeah?" Grian snaps. "Then why only reveal this now? To make us feel sorry for you?" 

He leans back in his chair, "Just accept that you're wrong and drop it."

"No, I—" Scar hiccups, his voice pitches up, "I'm not lying. What do I—" his features contort, "—what do I have to do to make you believe me?"

Closing his fingers into fists, he thrusts them up and down and repeats, "I'm Hotguy. I'm Hotguy." 

"No, you're not. Stop lying." 

Grey hollowness builds up inside. He doesn't understand. He just told Grian his biggest secret—and it still isn't enough. 

"I am," he reiterates, water leaking out of the corners of his eyes, hands flying to his face. "I am Hotguy."

"Stop lying," Grian's voice wavers. "Stop lying."

"No," Scar says, and his tone gains a hint of something wild. Shivering with a frenzied kind of torment, he speaks faster, louder, “What do I have to do to make you believe me? What do I have to do to make you listen?”

The tears continue to roll down his face and Scar wipes them away roughly with his palms, smearing water and snot all over his hair. 

"I'm Hotguy," he pleads, leaning forward, jabbing a hand into his chest. "I'm Hotguy, I'm Hotguy."

"You're—you're not," Grian stammers out, something desperate entering his voice. "You can't be. You can't be."

A laugh that sounds like a whine tears itself from Scar's windpipe. They've been at this for minutes, and it might as well have been eons, and nothing has changed—

And suddenly, he finds that he doesn't care anymore. Grian doesn’t believe him? He’ll make him believe him.

Pushing back his chair, Scar stumbles upright and walks rapidly across the flat to his room. His fingers shake when he unlocks the secret compartment in his closet, but his shoulders are set and his hold on his bow is steady as he stands in front of his friends and aims at the chandelier. His arrow lodges itself in the ceiling above Grian’s head and shards of glass rain down on the table. 

“Do you believe me now?" he spits, voice shaking. "Or was that not attention-seeking enough for you?”

“I—“

"How rude—" a second arrow hits Grian's favourite mug, sending porcelain spilling out all over the floor, "—do I have to be for you to believe me?"

A third arrow shoots clean through a photograph of the three of them, nailing it to the wall, "Am I not arrogant enough?!"

Another hits the vase standing on the counter, "Am I not vile enough?!" 

Scar tosses his bow across the room. It slams into the wall and leaves a dent in the plaster, but he pays it no mind. Whirling around to face Grian, he grabs his hair and pulls it together in a crude attempt at a braid. 

"Am I not—" he laughs hysterically through his tears, "—am I not fucking feminine enough?!"  

The braid falls apart in his hands and Scar screams. Bending over, hands gripping his head, he sobs loudly and feels like he's cracking in two. 

"Fuck you," he cries. "Fuck you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you." 

His world is dividing in front of his very eyes and Grian doesn't love him and Scar is wrecked. 

Over and over, he’s watched himself get burned and bruised and beaten down. He’s been hit by the back of a hand that was never there, and he's continued to press kisses to Grian's knuckles through the blood coating his lips. He let the cracks spread until there was no space left and now he’s devastated, and finally he understands why what he gets is no less than what he deserves.

He could never live like a king. He was always meant to rest on the ground.

Scar does not wait for Grian to tell him what he already knows. He grabs his wallet and his phone and storms out of the flat. Tears soak into his sleeves and he lets the hopelessness sink into his bones, familiar like it never left.   

Through weak stammering, he's been driven to lay bare a secret that will kill him, and between pitiful weeping he's realised that it has killed him. He's a liar and he lies for nothing, and the truth has never mattered less. He is hated more than he was ever loved, and it's too late. 

Hotguy isn't the only one who's nothing in Grian's eyes. Scar was never something, either.

Chapter Text

When Scar leaves, there is silence. 

It's calming yet devastating—the kind of silence found in charred remains and broken plates, the silence that settles down slowly like a blanket over the aftermath of destruction as everyone tries to come to terms with what's been  done. This silence persists, hangs over them like a shadow in the wake of Scar's tearful confession and makes it its own. Then—

"Grian, are you fucking serious?"

Unblinking gaze lingering on the flowers strewn around the dining room, Grian slowly raises his head.

"What?"

"I said," Mumbo replies through gritted teeth, "are you fucking serious. What the fuck was that."

The way the sentences are phrased, they sound like they should be questions.

They're not.

Because both Grian and Mumbo know exactly what that was, and yet neither of them have a clue. Because everything that just happened is so far away it might  have been a dream, and yet the repercussions are right there, hanging hauntingly in the air above their heads. 

Because Grian hates Hotguy with every last cell in his body, and yet. And yet.

Grian doesn't know what to say, what he could possibly say to fix the wreckage surrounding them and seeping into the overwhelming emptiness of his flat—their flat. Numbly, he shakes his head, still glued to his seat. 

Mumbo laughs slightly hysterically, "I'm leaving."

Without another word, he storms out as well. 

Shards of glass and rose petals cover the floor. 

Grian is left sitting at the table. 

Alone.

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Scar hasn't stopped crying since he ran out of that flat. 

The events of the past hour have blurred in his mind and if he does not think he can almost pretend that nothing has happened at all—but the tears just keep coming. It makes paying for a room at a nearby hotel that much more difficult, though luckily the staff there are understanding and don't ask too many questions.

Scar doesn't think he could have answered them, anyway. If asked, he'd probably say something disjointed and incoherent that would hint at an explanation but ultimately boil down to Grian, Grian, Grian.

Sat on an uncomfortable bed in an unfamiliar room, he stares off into space as his mind runs wild. Tears weigh down his eyelashes and he lets them, uncaring as they roll down his cheeks and collect on his bare thighs. His clothes lie on the floor beside him—an attempt to go to sleep, leave the heartbreak until tomorrow and forget everything for just a few hours. 

Tomorrow doesn't feel like it'll ever come.

As alien darkness drifts above his head, a numb, hopeless shock shakes his body in barely visible tremors. Throat threatening to choke him from the inside, Scar sits. And, against his wish, he thinks. 

He should have expected this. He should have expected this. 

Lying only gets one so far, and lying to himself was never going to be any different. Scar was a fool to lie and he was a fool to think that the truth would bring anything other than more misery in its wake. Grian doesn't love him, he never will, and the sooner he comes to terms with this realisation, the better. The sooner he stops falling apart at every last look—

Scar has hid and ran and after years of this sweet agony, here, away from the world but locked in with his own self, it's time to face the reality that nothing will ever fucking change.

Angry words echoing through his head, he curls in on himself, nails digging into his upper arms. The tears on his face might as well be fire with the sentences they're branding into his skin. A strand of hair tickles his elbow and he grabs it, tugging at it in a desperate attempt to make himself understand. 

I don't know. He's like...weirdly feminine or something. 

"Shut up," he says out loud. 

Icy sorrow climbing up his windpipe, Scar tugs harder as pathetic whimpers make his shoulders jump. Breath is unfathomable, and all he can see is Grian's face, and all he can hear is his loathing voice.

He's like...weirdly feminine or something. 

A whine wrenches itself from his threadbare throat. He wants to forget Grian, and he wants to be held, and he never wants to see that fatal expression again.

He's like...weirdly feminine or something. 

"Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up—"

He's like...weirdly feminine or something. He's like...weirdly feminine or something. He's like...weirdly feminine—

Something frayed and torn ripping itself from his mouth, Scar throws himself from the bed. His fists connect with his skull; Grian's voice is writing line after line on repeat and memories are carving diamonds into the canvas of his brain and Scar just needs it to stop. 

Weirdly feminine or something.

"Shut up," he cries, bending over and pressing his forehead into his knees. "Shut up," he begs as towers fall and stone rains down on the rotten remains of everything he thought he knew, everything he thought he could keep.

Long brown tresses fall in front of his eyes. He can't take this anymore. 

Weirdly feminine.

Fingers quivering, Scar rummages blindly through the pockets of his jeans. He needs it to stop. He needs it to stop. 

Feminine.

The knife is heavy in his shaking grip. Scar grabs a handful of hair—

Feminine. Feminine. Feminine. Feminine—

Slice. 

The first strand flutters down to rest beside his thigh. It's soft and pretty and for a moment he goes still, staring at it with an uncomprehending, surprised kind of wonder. Thoughts flit past in a split second, abrupt as the uncontrollable weeping squeezing his chest. Something inside tells him, he will regret this. 

Scar keeps going. 

The cut off locks are a feather-light sensation as they fall on his shoulders, on his knees, on the floor. Somewhere within the recesses of his brain, Scar is aware of wanting to stop, but his hands keep moving for him—hair that took him years to grow out being chopped away in a matter of minutes until—

Until it's all gone. Until there's nothing left but a bare back, an empty room and a floor covered in a sea of brown. 

It's silent save for his panting breaths, but the pain in his throat might as well have come from unrepressed screaming. As the fog recedes from his heavy head, a bitter pressure settles over his heart.

He's not feminine anymore.

Defeated, Scar collapses on the floor, hugging himself, cheek pressed into the dirty carpet, and sobs.

He wishes someone would come take him away. 

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After Mumbo exits Grian's flat, he doesn't know what to do with himself. 

Walking up and down the floor, it does not take him long to figure out that Scar has left the building. He has no idea where he might have gone, no clue if his friend would even want to talk to him right now—so, for lack of anywhere else to be, Mumbo goes to sit in his car. 

He does not drive. Instead, he leans back into the comfortable leather and tries to make sense of the tangled mess of thoughts inside his head.

Scar is Hotguy. Scar is Hotguy. 

Mumbo...can't say he is surprised. After all the evenings, the despondent looks and the dishes that never got washed in the end—there had to be a reason why every word spoken against the hero added up as if it was Scar's own name being dragged through through thorns on the muddy ground. Scar is Hotguy, and the only thing shocking about that revelation is the way it happened.

Thinking back to the venom and the scabs on Scar's fingers, maybe it's not so shocking after all.  

Raised voices, the smack of a bow against a wall and the shattering of glass still play in his head as Mumbo twirls his moustache just to feel the sting of it above his upper lip. Having spent years watching the war behind Scar's eyes grow and leaving it be because Scar promised that he could control the flames, he now finds hollow guilt burdening his ribcage.

He does not regret walking out on Grian. He only regrets not doing it earlier. 

After what feels like hours of sitting in his car and dwelling on everything and nothing at all, Mumbo's ringtone interrupts the quiet. Half a mind to ignore it, he picks up the call anyway—and almost drops it in his haste to answer when he sees that it's Scar. 

"Hello? Scar? Where are you?"

Pressing his phone to his ear, his fingers go back to yanking at his moustache as he anxiously waits for a response. His friend speaks then, and something within him shrivels when he hears his voice—shaky and broken and so, so small.

"Mumbo, can you—can you come over?"

Already putting his phone on speaker, Mumbo asks, "Come over where?"

Fingers tightly gripping the steering wheel, he starts the engine and begins to move out of his parking spot. Scar hangs up after giving the address and Mumbo doesn't question it, doing everything in his power to drive as fast as he can instead.  

Soon enough, Mumbo is knocking at the door to Scar's hotel room—scared of what he'll find inside.

It takes a while for the lock to click open—long enough that he starts to question if he's got the right room by the time it finally does. The door swings inward and Mumbo has only a moment to step inside and close it behind him before a weight falls against his chest. 

Scar is trembling, chill seeping from his uncovered skin, but Mumbo knows that the temperature has little to do with the quiver of his arms. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the pitch dark of the room, he runs his hand up Scar's back, a comforting movement so instinctive that it might as well be branded into his bones—

And freezes. Because something is very wrong.

Where a silky mane used to be, emptiness resides now, emptiness and a scarred back that feels impossibly naked without the abundance of hair to shelter it from the cool night breeze. With trepidation, Mumbo raises his hand until it's cupping the back of Scar's head—and feels it.

The short ends that shouldn't be there. 

And as growing horror reaches his consciousness, Scar starts crying, helpless tears stifled into Mumbo's lapels. 

And Mumbo understands. 

Anger, bubbling hot anger simmers in his chest. Grian is his friend, will always be his friend—but this is too much. Scar is his friend, too, and he's Grian's friend, they're friends—and he's crying and cutting his hair and shooting the walls. And Grian doesn't care. 

Inhaling past clenched teeth, Mumbo cards his fingers through what remains of Scar's hair. He wants to hide and he wants to be mad at himself and he wants to go back to Grian right now and give him a piece of his mind—but he lets the rage wash away and puts every last scrap of emotion into his embrace.

Mumbo breathes in the sob-filled stillness. And he holds Scar tight. 

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Later, when they've moved to the bed, Scar asks Mumbo if he can cut his hair again. 

It's as much to make it more presentable as it is to get rid of the sensation of strands being pulled taut and going slack in his own hold. Mumbo sits behind him in a cross-legged position without saying a word and his fingers are gentle as they stroke the back of his neck—far gentler than Scar could ever be. 

Scissors given to them by the hotel staff are accurate the way his knife never was as they snip snip snip at the evidence of his mistakes. With each strand that tickles his nape, years float down to grace his skin—years spent running and lying, tripping and falling and realising that none of it mattered in the end. 

As brown flakes litter the bed around him, Scar stares off into space, his gaze as bottomless as the ocean inside. Something is pulling him down—dread, maybe? He's not sure.

But sitting here, feeling the coldness of the scissors against his neck, Scar feels just as cold inside.

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Grian wakes up after a night sleepless with conflict to a ringing of the doorbell. 

Mumbo is standing on the other side of the door when he opens it and relief is quickly extinguished when, instead of saying hello, his friend walks past him to Scar's room and begins to shove clothes into a bag. 

"Mumbo, I—"

"I don't want to hear it."

"No—can you please listen?" Grian begs as he watches his friend look at his phone, no doubt checking a list, before walking across the room and carefully slotting a sketchbook and pencils into another compartment.

Anxiety and shame gnaw at his trachea. Scar is god-knows-where and Mumbo's gaze won't meet his own and he—he doesn't know what to do. He never meant for any of this to happen and it did, and now he has no idea how to feel.

Lacking anything genuine, real to say, Grian blurts out the only excuse he has left. 

"I didn't know it was him."

From where he's beating a code into a keypad somewhere inside Scar's closet, Mumbo stops. Stiffly, he replies, "And that makes a difference." 

"I—it does. I didn't—I never meant to hurt him."

Pale fingers tense their grip on arrows as they pack them into a dark grey quiver. Torn petals bestrew the shard-covered floor and holes tinged with blue and orange poke out atop the walls.

The silence persists, still. 

"The feminine thing?" Mumbo asks eventually, and his voice trembles with suppressed anger. "Please do tell me what you were thinking when you decided to spout transphobic bullshit." 

Razor-sharp fire laces down Grian's spine. 

"I—I didn't mean it."

"You didn't mean it? You didn't mean it?"

"I didn't," his voice is weak as the words coming out of his mouth. "I didn't know he was Hotguy. I didn't." 

"And yet you still hurt Scar."

"No, really," he pleads. "If I knew it was him, I never—I never would've—"

"Look, it's more than just how you feel about Hotguy," Mumbo finally snaps, at last meeting his eyes. "It's about how you treated him. And I don't just mean yesterday. There's a reason why he stayed silent about this for as long as he did."

Grian shuts his mouth, overcome with a sudden regret. 

Bow slung over his shoulder, the moustached man pushes past him and walks back to the front door, halting for a moment with his hand on the doorknob. Imperceptibly, his glare softens.

"You hate Hotguy, I understand. But you never loved Scar, either."

Pink yarn snakes its way around Grian's throat. A last-ditch attempt at repairing this mess that he made, he asks, "Mumbo, what do I do?"

"Figure your shit out and apologise. Scar won't be seeing you until you do."

Chapter Text

Grian doesn't know exactly why he hates Hotguy.

Or, well. He has a whole list of reasons and if anyone asked him, they'd be in for an hour long rant. Mumbo does ask him, often, so much that at this point Grian has almost memorised his arguments down to the letter. He's a show off, makes a spectacle out of every mission and isn't even that good—they're all things Grian will tell to anyone who cares to listen, all things he staunchly believes.

And still, when it comes down to it—he's really not sure what Hotguy did to inspire such strong emotions. Just that whenever he sees that stupid face with that stupid visor, it makes him want to rip his fucking hair out. 

He doesn't know what exactly he hates about Hotguy, but he hates everything about him. 

The way he struts around the city like he owns the place, his voice, that fucking smile that looks as though he's laughing at the universe for being beneath him—Grian hates it all. He hates that Hotguy's taken a job that's supposed to be all about doing good things and turned it into a display of his skills. He hates that someone who's meant to save them is only doing it for the glory, and not out of any real desire to be a decent fucking human being. 

He especially hates the way Hotguy dresses. Like he doesn't care, like it's okay to subject them all to his bare hipbones—

Grian doesn't know what he hates about Hotguy. But his clothes and general attitude certainly don't help matters.

Moving upwards in his position as a reporter did nothing to curb his feelings, either. Being promoted to field work, moving from hearing about Hotguy on the news to having to look at his face constantly—Grian ranted for months to anyone who would listen. About how much he hated Hotguy and wanted nothing to do with him, thank you very much.

Deep down, though, in the privacy of his own mind, he can admit to being a little satisfied with the way things turned out. After all, he wished for years to be able to give Hotguy a piece of his mind, and now that he's in a position where he can actually do that—it's like he can't stop. Being able to vent his frustrations on a daily basis is intoxicating, and despite himself Grian finds that he actually likes Hotguy—simply for how fun it is to hate him.

It's always fun to hate someone, anyone will agree, even if they won't say it out loud. And Hotguy is a celebrity with a giant following—nothing Grian says will ever even scratch a dent in his no-doubt enormous ego.

Lately, Grian has taken to annoying Hotguy on purpose—dragging out interviews, asking really personal questions just to make him falter, playing dumb when he starts to show signs of being upset. It's fun to watch him stumble over his words and anyway, Hotguy knew what he was signing up for when he decided to become famous. If he can't deal with the opinion of a single person, well, then that's on him for biting off more than he could chew.

Grian hates Hotguy. And he's not sorry.

After all, it's not like Hotguy is real.

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Grian never knew why he hated Hotguy. 

Maybe if he did, he wouldn't have gotten himself into this predicament.

Maybe if he could just be honest for once in his life, then none of this would have happened. He'd live without senseless hate colouring his days and Scar's world wouldn't be dividing and everything would be fine.

Beneath all the self-assured rationality, Grian doesn't think he's ever been anything more than a liar.

It's a quick time to start to question everything he thought he knew, barely a few days. And yet it's fitting somehow—that for the years spent living a life of deception, it would take scarcely a breath to flip his worldview on its head and send all his convictions tumbling down into the pit of shattered dreams.

All this time, he was sure that he was the bigger person. Alone in a spacious flat, he's never felt more small.

Still uncertain and worried and reeling, he sits on a sofa meant for two and replays every word he can remember saying that night. Every arrogant and attention-seeking and feminine that ever came out of his mouth in front of the very man whom he was so wrathfully describing.

Scar never said anything. Grian wishes he had. Everything is muddled in his mind and he has no idea how to feel, but he's sure—if he'd just known, none of this would have happened. 

Regardless, though, all flowers wilt. And Scar's arrows are sharp. 

Grian isn't sure at what point his thoughts became something to be found abhorrent and foul. But he hurt Scar. And that's something he can't forgive. 

Because Hotguy may not be real. But Scar is. 

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They don't stay at the hotel for long.

After Mumbo brings his things, Scar doesn't want to see that place again. Something within him still quakes at the thought of going back home, however, so Mumbo takes him to his own place, tidy and organised and nothing like the life he shared with Grian.

Scar doesn't thank him. By the faithful tilt of Mumbo's brows, he seems to understand, anyway.

The flat he's indefinitely invited to is spacious, more so than even his own, yet he doesn't take a guest room. Something about no longer needing to comb his hair renders Scar reluctant to face the darkness on his own, and so the very first night he finds himself curling up at the foot of Mumbo's bed. 

Lying in bed together is something they've done before at sleepovers, but it's gained a new meaning since that final dinner. The comfort Mumbo gives him is different from Grian's all-healing touch, and he prefers it that way.

He doesn't need to be healed. He just needs to forget.

Neither of them speak of what happened until a few days later, when, as they're holding on to each other, Mumbo hesitantly starts, "So...are you going to see him again?"

In his arms, Scar tenses. 

"I mean, I'll have to," he says eventually, voice deliberately level. "We live in the same place."

He doesn't say that the thought of looking into those eyes fills him with dread, that he doesn't want to think, that he wishes it would all be over already. That one of them being gone is the only thing that could fix this, and he's not sure he'd rather it be Grian.

Mumbo seems to get that, anyway, and he simply says, "You know you can stay here for as long as you'd like, right?"

"The flat is under my name, Mumbo. I'll have to come back eventually. But I appreciate the thought."

They talk about what happened, and they talk about nothing at all.

Scar slips out of Mumbo's arms eventually and rolls over on his side, facing the wall. Closes his eyes and doesn't fall asleep and pretends it's not Grian he sees on the back of his eyelids. 

Maybe if he just ignores the piercing of shame and despair, then it will set him free. But again, maybe he just has to accept this.

He can't change what happened.

There's nothing to do. 

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The next time Grian is called to a crime scene, he almost doesn't come.

His coworker grins at him, says, "I think you'll like this one," and he feels sick. He hasn't thought about work at all since the dinner, but, well—there's only one type of crime scene he gets called to, isn't there?

He's not ready to see him yet. He's not sure he ever will be.

He shows up there, anyway. Against the stiffness in his limbs, Grian pushes through, shoving past people in practiced movements until he gets to the front, preparing his usual questions—

And Scar—Scar, Scar, Scar—is there. 

He expected him to be there, of course, and yet. Scar is there and he's dressed as Hotguy, and Grian wonders how he never saw it before. That tilt of his lips, the scars that he ingrained into his mind years ago, memorising the paths they made like his own name—

By the time Grian remembers that he's there to do his job, all the questions regarding whatever happened have been answered and the reporters have moved on to asking more personal ones, Scar indulging them with a bored look on his face.

"Do the people in your civilian life know that you're Hotguy?"

Scar pauses for a moment. Grian can't help but pause with him.

"Some."

"Is it difficult to balance the two separate lives?"

"It is, yeah."

He doesn't elaborate more. The reporter presses on, "Your loved ones must have their own opinions on Hotguy as well. How do you cope with that?"

Scar's eyes are obscured, but Grian gets the feeling that he is looking straight at him as he replies, "Many tears."

The reporters laugh. Scar doesn't. Neither does Grian.

The unending, hypnotic swirl of the ever-growing crowds surrounds him, forces him back, and he doesn't resist. Scar's face is drowned out of view by the multitude of heads and bobbing microphones—all people clamouring to get a turn to ask something rude and invasive for a sense of enjoyment that they will undoubtedly try to disguise as a self-righteous yearning for the truth. 

Standing on the outskirts of a group that just a week ago he'd have stepped on countless toes to be in the centre of, Grian tries to catch his breath. 

Scar's hair was short. 

The air in this place is a prison and Scar's hair is short and—he doesn't want to be here.

As his feet are tripping over themselves in their haste to take him away, he looks back. Scar is still standing there, answering questions with a small but open smile. 

For the first time, Grian looks at Hotguy and feels something other than hate. 

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When Scar next shows up at home—his actual home, not whatever cocoon of comfort and denial he and Mumbo made—it's with the afterimage of Grian's shocked expression and the microphone hanging slack in his hand.

He does not announce himself or make a single move to walk past a few short steps. Instead, he stands there in the hall, and Grian turns around, and all of his carefully prepared sentences wilt on his lips. 

His mind is a flurry of dancing letters and half-completed conclusions that he never gets to finish before the other man stumbles upwards. He walks towards him at a fast pace, and Scar feels he might collapse. There's holes in the wall and torn petals still poke out from under a surface-level attempt at cleaning up that resembles the calm he's made in his own head—

Maybe he's not the only one whose eyelids have known no peace.

Grian stops just before him, and the closeness is achingly familiar. More hesitant than Scar's ever seen him, he reaches out. His hand meets the spot just behind his ear.

"Scar, your hair...what happened?"

Of course it's the first thing he brings up. Fingering the short strands, Grian asks the question like he still has a right to, like it's normal, like it's fine—

He asks like he cares. And Scar hates it. 

He hates how, after every stab Grian's words have done to his heart, his caress is still the softest thing he's ever felt. He hates how, after all the tears, there's still only one person he can imagine wiping them away. He hates that he loved his hair and he hates that Grian did, too. 

He hates that Grian never knew him, and yet knows him better than anyone else ever could. 

Forcing himself to move takes more effort than any fight ever did, and still Grian gasps and winces as Scar's strong fingers snap around his wrist. 

"Leave."

"What?"

"I said leave," Scar hisses out, and he wishes Mumbo was here, but if he doesn't do this now, he's not sure he ever will. "The flat is mine. Pack your shit and leave."

Grian freezes in his grip, the tips of his toes find the floor. Scar pulls him higher, ignoring his pained whimper, glares into his black eyes as though if he dives deep enough then he'll find a wisp of a solution in the murky abyss—

And lets him go. 

Throws him back down on his feet and does not spare him another glance and trembles and sways as he listens to the most important person in his life preparing to abandon it forever at his own request.

Neither of them breaks the silence. Right up until the clatter of suitcase wheels across the threshold and the clink of keys on the table signify the end of something that never truly began. Scar locks the front door and doesn't look in the peephole and pretends that his flat is only unnaturally empty to reflect the emptiness inside.

He doesn't cry. 

Somewhere underneath it all, he's aware that Grian isn't worth it. 

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Mumbo doesn't argue when Scar leaves. 

He does offer to go with him, senses the need for second-hand courage in the jerky teetering of his leaden shoulders, but respects his determination to be brave on his own when he declines. He asks him to call once it's all done, and doesn't comment when Scar's quiet voice graces his ears in the middle of the night, reassuring him that everything is okay way past when it should have all been sorted.

His other friend calls him right after that. 

"Grian?" Mumbo begins against the silence, against all the previous calls that he made that were never returned, against the simmering of anger that's long lost its colour, and immediately the warmth of all-too-familiar worry and concern brings him home. "Are you all right?"

Nothing.

After a while of listening to wavering breaths, his vocal cords ask for him, "Do you need a place to stay?"

"Mumbo, I—"

Grian breaks off. Over the phone, Mumbo can imagine him rocking on his heels, fiddling with the hem of his sweater the way he always does when he's regretting something he didn't mean to do. 

"Yeah?" he prompts, and his friend doesn't answer. "What is it, Grian?"

He hangs up.

Two weeks after that is when Mumbo finally hears from him again.

Scar has a press conference with a few other heroes and sounds the most confident he's been in a while. For the first time, his hair looks like it's meant to hang the way it does off his head, his voice present in his throat as if it fits in, as if he fits in—

Maybe that's what causes Grian to call once more, giving up days of nothing for an assurance that only his remaining friend can grant him. 

"Hey, Mumbo."

He sounds tired.

"Hi, Grian."

Mumbo doesn't know what else to say. There's nothing to say, really, except that they haven't spoken for longer than he's stayed mad and Scar told him that he doesn't care anymore and he understands and all he really wants is for things between the three of them to be okay. 

"Is he all right?" is what Grian says eventually, and it doesn't take Mumbo's degree to know what he means.

"He will be."

Pause.

"Are you?"

Grian takes an uncertain breath. Mumbo suddenly finds that he cares in ways he thought he no longer did.

"I don't know."

Chapter Text

Grian hasn't stopped thinking.

After it all, it took him all of a few days to find a flat to rent. Undoubtedly smaller than Scar's but still possessed of all the benefits that a reporter's salary offers, it should feel like home.

It feels like purgatory.

Caught in the endless in-between, wooden mattress beneath him, he sits on a stranger's bed and watches the lights coalesce on the striped wallpaper. Unopened suitcases lie on the floor; as drab butterflies dance a minor pattern atop the blistering green, something dark grey settles down the slope of his throat.

Last month, he got kicked out of a home that was never his, and he didn't say a single word. Packed his bags in twenty-odd minutes and was in a hotel room within an hour, and doesn't it say something about him that it took almost less minutes than he has years to cut himself out of his best friend's life? You can't cut yourself out of a newspaper if you never made it past the ad column. Grian knows this; he's not sure he knows much else.

All his bags were packed since their last dinner. He can't decide whether that makes him brave or a coward.

If minutes are years, then the last time he saw him, Scar looked like he'd aged a day. Strong and straight-backed and unyielding, Grian still feels the phantom grip of long fingers on his wrist; it hurts and turns his skin blue, and yet he thinks he'd shower in gloves to keep the coldness in his cells. Something about the curl of that short hair made him smaller than he'd ever been before, and it shouldn't mean so much to have memorised the way someone's right hand works, but it does.

Scar is Hotguy, and Grian hates him for it, and more than that he hates himself.

It's like a broken record, this thing between them; there's no other way it could be. Not when all his arguments followed a different script, yet amounted to the same opinion, the same person, the same dislike that he built his life on and that never meant a thing in the end when his friend tugged the first brick out from under his flimsy foundation.

Grian would apologise to Scar; he has so much to say, yet still, he thinks that he'd be apologising for everything and nothing all at once.

So he does the next best thing—he does his best to never be seen again.

He attends crime scenes and turns tail at the first hint of blue and orange and does not buy a TV for his new flat. He calls Mumbo once or twice and immediately forgets what he said, and knows only that his best friend would be better off if he never called again. At night, he plays make-believe and thinks of a world where Hotguy never existed; it's bleak and the visor keeps glitching in and out of sight atop Scar's face, and Scar doesn't smile, he never does, and it stays the same, everything stays the same—

Ignoring the blood rushing to his head, Grian stands up.

He did not allow himself to take much from the flat—didn't deserve it, to treasure memories sullied by his own ink-stained hands. The one photograph he did pull from an arrow stuck in a wall, he now frames and puts on his bedside table; depicting him and Scar side by side, hugging and laughing like nothing was real, it's equal parts a goodbye and a reminder.

A hole splits the space between their heads.

His life might as well have been torn in half.

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Gradually, everything seems to lose its colour.

Scar leaves the roses on the floor to wilt for as long as it takes to wash the roses from his hands, and not a moment longer. He cleans up—collects all the petals, cuts himself with the glass shards and hangs picture frames over the holes in the walls.

After, it takes a while to get used to living alone. The first day, he sets the breakfast table for two and gets as far as pouring Grian's favourite cereal into his favourite bowl before he realises. He throws out the cereal; he can't bring himself to shatter the bowl, is too afraid to hear Grian's voice in the loud cracks, so he places it in the back corner of his closet instead.

Dust settles over it then, and his vision becomes clearer.

His friend would paint his world in all kinds of hues; with him gone, Scar now finds that there is beauty to be had in the blankest grey. He lies awake thinking most nights, and yet manages to wake up without the blades slicing up his chest, the dichotomy between pain and salvation pulling his heartstrings apart. The cuts on his fingers sting; but he washes the blood down the drain and watches as his tears swirl away with it.

His hair tickles his nape and he does not wear a skirt until the very tips of it have reached his shoulders. He clips it with flowers; Mumbo buys him hair ties, and eventually he stops feeling spikes digging into the back of his neck.

He does not see Grian at an interview again, but he answers hundreds of meaningless questions and sees blond curls in every single one. Out of sight, out of mind—that's how the saying goes, and Scar waits for it to be true for more than just bedsheets and books. Grian's words follow him, his touch paints memories on his skin; he lets it all and does not notice when the sensations start to grow faint.

One day, he decides to go through all his things. That evening, his room a mess, he tapes a plastic bag to the smoke detector in his kitchen and starts a small fire in his sink. Every note and letter that Grian ever gave him is burnt; as satisfaction drifts out of his window, he cups the ashes in his hands and hates himself for letting his past get away.

The next morning, he wakes up with the waft of smoke still in the air and breathes a little easier.

The walls speak Grian's name and he listens, but does not give them his voice. He tells Mumbo that he doesn't care anymore; he is a liar, but for the first time he manages to hope that one day he might be telling the truth.

Scar burns, and cold indifference douses the flame of his resentment.

Amidst a charred wasteland, he calls himself king.

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Things get better, and they get worse, and nothing really changes at all.

It takes Grian making his friend cry to work out that there's something wrong with him, and being kicked out of his home and everything he used to know to understand that it goes deeper than pineapple slices and secret identities ever did. After months of uncertainty, it feels like being dunked in cold water, like waking up after a long night to realise—he has always been the fool.

"You hate Hotguy, I understand. But you never loved Scar, either."

Is it really love when it takes years to gather the desperation to call someone out on their shit?

Grian can try and lie to himself all he wants, can pretend that all his problems start and end where Hotguy begins, burn every blue and orange piece of clothing he ever owned—and none of that will change the truth. That it means fuck all that Scar was ever Hotguy, and that Hotguy might as well be dead, and nothing would change.

Thinking back to every argument they ever had, he can't remember the last time Scar won, and it makes him wonder—was the silence really worth it for a bandage given by the person who inflicted the wounds?

He can't answer that, and so he douses himself in shame instead. His new flat grows around him like a hospital room, and the stillness stings him with unfamiliarity that is nothing if not deserved. He spends hours staring at the photograph on his bedside table; the place where Scar's arrow pierced it never looked more like a bullet hole, and in those nights he finds that fitting more than anything he's ever had.

Mumbo calls him often, and Grian hangs up each time; Scar's tear-stained cheeks haunt his mind, yet it's his friend's disappointed glare that cuts deeper than anything else. He understands now that he never did more than wither every flower he ever held, and it blackens the tips of his fingers to let anyone else in to tell him what he already knew.

When he hangs up on his friend exactly two months after the last night that things were okay, it's both impulse and a long-nurtured throbbing of regret alike that make him scroll down his contact list and click on Scar's name.

Immediately, he wants to throw his phone across the room—but he perseveres and lets it ring out, and shudders with his entire body when the person on the other end of the line picks up.

For a while, silence lasts; Grian knows his old friend, though, even after all this time, and he knows that he's waiting for him to explain why the fuck he's calling after—all of it. It's not a big revelation that he has no idea what he's hoping for, either—he can't remember the last time he did something that made sense.

"Scar?" he eventually says, and suddenly everything in him begs to hear the other man's voice.

A long moment passes and the silence flows on; then Scar sighs. "What do you want?"

Minuscule icicles grow in his upper arms and shuffle their way down to his toes. Scar's voice is every bit the way he remembers; warm and gravelly, it envelops him like everything that's missing from his current life, and Grian is surprised to feel a prickling at the back of his throat.

Of the many realisations he's had, this is the cherry on top of the cake—everything has gone to shit.

"So, uh," and he has no idea what the fuck he's supposed to say. "I know you probably don't want to talk to me, and you don't have to, really, but it's been a while and I was just wondering if—"

Scar interrupts, “Go fuck yourself, Grian.”

Grian blinks.

"Oh, that's—okay then."

He puts the phone down. The wall holds his slightly shocked gaze, and his eyes don't stray from the peeling vinyl. Faintly, he thinks that he should have apologised, and the burning in his throat grows, yet somehow he feels lighter.

Maybe the best thing he can do now is to do nothing at all.

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At some point it stops hurting.

Scar almost doesn't notice it, when it comes. But the night Grian calls, he goes to Mumbo's place and just breathes, and it takes no more than a pinch of air to glance down at his scars and recognise them for what they are—healing. He hides his face in his friend's shoulder and laughs, and Mumbo joins him, and his heart feels like it might burst, not with shrapnel, but with bloodstained confetti, and everything is fine.

The days slow and they speed up, taut like the string of his bow, and it's like his last arrow finally hitting its mark when he stops looking for two sides of the same coin in every shooting of the star-spangled sky. He's nothing; having shed years in the span of a day, he finds that being something never mattered as much as being himself.

Mumbo makes him feel good, but he isn't good to him, and Scar thinks—the sun was always overrated, anyway.

For the longest time, he measured his life in Grian and the divide between love and hate and a lack of anything at all, and it feels like freedom to finally let go of colours and phases and let himself just be. For months, he turned years of his life into a blank spot, and that felt all right, and it feels even better when he lets all the pain be, too.

Scar looks at Mumbo and sees his world explode in black and turquoise and the most vibrant of all greens.

He doesn't need Grian. And maybe that's okay.

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"How've you been?"

It's a simple question, yet one that begs to be asked. They text every day, but Mumbo understands well enough the things a screen can hide, the secrets that seeing someone's eyes can unveil. Sometimes it's just easier to say something, or to not have to put it into words and let your face do the talking for you.

Words. Words, words, words. Looking at Scar, he thinks that they both must be so tired of words.

The man sitting in front of him shrugs, smiles.

"Well enough. I've started drawing more again."

He slides his sketchbook across the table and Mumbo flips through it, insides warming in ever-present awe at his friend's skills. He can't help but notice the growing lack of colour with every page that he turns, and he looks up curiously and with a hint of concern.

"Love the new style," he says, and Scar glances down, smile growing at something only he understands. "It's very—uh—the, the shading, it's very—"

Their waitress comes at that moment with their coffee, and Mumbo shuts up before he can further embarrass himself with his decided lack of knowledge when it comes to all things art.

Looking out the window, he can see the sun falling down in branches on the outside tables of their cafe. It's a beautiful day, and the rays glint a pretty tune as they come into contact with the pin in Scar's hair. Something sparkly, it's far from his usual style, but goes quite well with the shiny elements in his new dress.

He looks different, yet not in a bad way. Maybe that's what prompts Mumbo to ask, "Have you talked to Grian?"

"Not really," Scar replies, and the carefully neutral note in his voice seems realer than it did before. He clears his throat, "I haven't seen him at all actually."

"Me neither. I've called him a couple of times," Mumbo admits, and then hastens to clarify, "after you said you were fine with it all. He called me twice and hasn't answered any of my calls since."

Scar hums and trails his fork around his plate absent-mindedly as he takes his turn to stare out the window. Mumbo feels bad for putting a damper on the mood of their meeting, but he does not regret it. He knows all too well what thinking about something alone does to a person, and he knows that Scar appreciates this opportunity to be honest out loud.

And if he's being truthful with himself, he needs this just as much.

When the haze of anger and betrayal and shame fell off, when the very man who got hurt the most in this situation let that hurt float away, Mumbo found that more than everything else, he missed the way things used to be. And he knows nothing can be the same again, he knows that he'll have to count them in twos instead of threes now, he understands that there are some things that he can no longer have—

But he can have his friend. And now that Scar has made it clear that he doesn't mind, he can allow himself to have both.

"I hope he's all right."

Mumbo jerks into awareness, and finds himself surprised by the earnest lift of the corners of Scar's mouth, the suddenly very apparent lack of that old heaviness in his tone. He's being sincere, and Mumbo has always trusted him, and something soft starts to spread beneath his skin.

His friend is telling the truth. And he believes him.

"Are you okay?" he still asks just to be sure, and Scar looks up—and nods. A cowlick falls on his forehead, the pin in his hair shimmers in the approaching sunset.

Everything that happened hangs over them like a shadow, yet now Mumbo thinks—a shadow might be all it is. A dark cloud, rather than a solar eclipse.

That day he calls his other friend, and keeps calling him until he stops hanging up.

Chapter Text

The day after he calls Scar, Grian quits his job.

It's a spur of the moment decision, yet something that was coming as sure as his own solitude. His coworker asks why and he doesn't know what to tell her, except that he got tired. She asks, "What of?" and he thinks, everything. 

Days come and go after that, and he finds that he has but strands of long-cut hair to hold on to and only a map of constellations carved into tanned skin to remember. He goes nowhere from here, and it's no less than an expectation to know that there is nowhere that would take him, either. Of the puzzle pieces that make up his life, he fits into a different jigsaw; it's not a surprise, then, to have always been an indent too short, after all. 

He does find a new job eventually, one that has nothing to do with crime scenes and heroes and arrows shot into walls, and it never felt so good to be unknown. Everything he let go weighs on him; he lets it and can't imagine what he would be otherwise. His guilt is all he has to call his own, nowadays, yet even in his shameful silence he would be considered little more than a guest.

(In committing his life to a hatred of a man who never existed, Grian created a legacy for himself; now he is dead and nothing after all, and as he lies in his bed of thorns, he thinks that maybe nothing is all he ever was.)

Talking to Mumbo helps to set some things back into place. 

When his friend calls him for the first and millionth time all at once, he stares at the phone in his hand for what must be eons before he picks up, and it only takes Mumbo saying his name before it all comes tumbling out—every self-directed insult and every apology that's a few years too late and every last plea that would leave his lips, but for the stark awareness that it's nothing that he deserves. 

Mumbo listens with more patience than Grian could hope for and, when he's done, simply says, "He's all right. Are you?"

Grian stops, stares at the wall. For the first time, the peeling wallpaper starts to seem the tiniest bit familiar. 

The words escape him almost without his notice. 

"I...think I will be."

That night his head doesn't stop hurting, but he takes no pills to lessen the ache. Drums beating dark red inside his skull, he closes his eyes against the pressure and enjoys the silence that prevents his thoughts from running rampant. He has no idea what to do now, he realises. Then, with a numbing kind of shock, he goes on to realise that not knowing who he's supposed to be is the best he's been in months. 

Scarred cheeks streaked with tears continue to play in front of his eyes, and he gives them every echo and every high ceiling in his mind, but little present thought. Those scars are no longer his to remember, he knows; for all that his hands only ever healed self-inflicted bruises, it does not feel like betrayal to let them now hold freedom, instead. 

Without Hotguy dictating his every moment, he feels like he's becoming himself again, and Grian is surprised to find that, after everything, he might finally be at peace. 

He can never forgive himself for what happened. 

One day he wakes up and thinks, maybe he can live with it all despite that. 

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The next time Scar sees Grian, the other man is wearing a skirt. 

Once the crushing weight of contrast fell away and he stopped looking for specks of dirt in every bleeding bouquet, he realised that some things were just as worth holding on to as they were letting go. And it wasn't that he needed an apology, it wasn't that he would hurt both Grian and himself by letting before fester in his chest—

But doors left ajar stay in the back of your mind even when there's a field of spikes past the threshold. And Mumbo mentioned off-handedly that they were speaking again, and he thought, if he could do that, if he could keep the good things in his life without giving up his own identity—

In the end, it's his call, his idea to see each other face-to-face, and Scar would want nothing to do with Grian otherwise. After years of silence and months spent sending arrows down never-ending waterfalls, it's like dipping his fingers in a mirror that stretches on for miles and miles to finally be the one calling the shots.

(Hearing the absence of weight in his old friend's tinny voice, he thinks that maybe the past months have made them understand some of the same things, after all.)

When the agreed-upon day arrives, it is a light one, sun and a smattering of clouds coming together to grant them the clearest sky yet. The leaves whistle out a gentle tune as they ripple through the warm air; everything is calm, and the tranquility of it all almost matches the serenity of the occasion, the peace nestled deep within Scar's lungs. 

It's a park, where they're meeting, and he spots Grian first, standing there and looking a bit lost amidst all the trees that surround him. 

"Hey! Hey—hey!"

Scar waves and breaks into a light jog while still calling out, and the other man turns. His face breaks into an easy smile.

"Hi there," he says as he reaches him. "I see you still run like a chicken in heels."

Breathless, Scar cracks up. Teasing him after months of not seeing each other is so Grian, and his laughter lasts a few seconds longer than the tentative joke would merit. And then Grian joins in and they're both laughing over nothing, and it's—it's them as time has made sure he would forget.

Once their laughter tapers off, Grian is the first to ask, "So how've you been?"

Scar shrugs. 

"Well. Been coming to terms with it all, with who I am after—everything."

He doesn't say more. A few weeks ago he would have, he knows; would have wanted nothing more than to grab the person who hurt him more than anyone else ever had by the neck and make him suffer through every single thing he ever went through until he felt alive again. 

The anger is gone now, though, as is the regret, and so Scar doesn't allow their space to descend into memories and bitter guilt and instead asks, "What about you?"

The corner of Grian's mouth lifts. 

"Well," he echoes. "I quit my job."

"I noticed."

"I'm sure you did, yeah."

Grian pauses, casts his gaze about the crack-drawn pavement.

"I've—I've also been thinking a lot." His expression turns serious then, "I'm sorry."

"I know," Scar says. He does know; from Mumbo's words, but also from seeing Grian himself, from talking to a man whose period of penance shines through in every long-due phrase. 

"I would try to explain myself, but, well—there's no explanation. I was horrible to you and I'm sorry."

"I know," he repeats, not unkindly. Grian meets his eyes for a split second and looks away again, hands fidgeting with his skirt. For all the tears he shed, one would expect Scar to press, to twist and pull the words out until every incision matched the cracks that he spent years collecting—

But maybe this is why he doesn't. Why he takes a smidgen of a heartbeat and infuses it with gold and lets it seal every fracture until the very last trace of air is gone. With those years on his back, it takes no more than a single breath to decide—he'll be damned if he lets the past keep him down any longer. 

Being loved in halves could never be enough—but, well. Scar is unchained now. And he decides for himself what enough really is.

In the wake of the final chapter of an epitaph inked in petals and blood, silence falls. Flowing through their veins, it beats, lives as no absence of words previously did. 

Scar waits until it reaches the soil beneath their feet before he breaks it. 

"I love the skirt."

"I realised some things about myself." Grian momentarily squeezes his eyes shut, then chuckles, "Realised it wasn't normal for me to be so offended by someone's hair."

Scar nods, and his small braid is light on his head. He understands, and he knows that Grian wouldn't expect any less of him, and it does not surprise him when the other man carries on with his truth, anyway. 

"It's just, you'd do all these things and—well, there'd be some bad responses, of course—but mostly you'd get praised for it all. And then you as Scar also had it all figured out, and I know I helped with that, which makes it all make even less sense. Because I'd talk to you and somehow know exactly what to say, but then I just always felt as if something was missing. And I just—I don't know. It all clashed with my already existing feelings and spiralled way out of control."

Scar nods again. He understands that, too.

"You don't have to be able to explain these things. It doesn't make it any less real."

He's repeating the words that once upon a time a young man said to a best friend who felt anything but; they both know it, and it unties knots he never knew held him to finally hear what he's been telling himself just loud enough to drown out the noise, but never to turn it off.

(A man crying at the dinner table called himself worthless; he knows now that worth never meant a thing.)

Uncertainly, Grian reaches out. His hand freezes in midair, as though asking for permission, and Scar grants it, leaning into the touch as his friend drags his nails down his braid and sifts through the ends. 

"I like the new hair. It suits you."

His fingertips stutter then and, as if afraid of a response that he expects to hear, he continues, "It was something to do with what I said, wasn't it? You loved your hair."

Scar looks away, can't stop the familiar old pang from flitting through his chest—not because it hurts that Grian did this to him, but because it hurts that this had to happen at all. 

"Yeah," he eventually admits. "It was." Sudden pins stinging his throat, he adds, "And I did."

Grian's brows scrunch up on his forehead, "I'm sorry."

It might be the most honest apology anyone's ever given him, and the burning lessens. 

"It's okay," Scar says, and he means it. And they both know what he's talking about—not that it was okay for Grian to hurt him, but that in the here and now, with Grian standing in front of him like every star he ever dropped, it's okay.

Just to make sure, he speaks up one final time, "You know it's okay to dislike celebrities, right? Like, not everyone is obligated to like Hotguy, not everyone will like him. That's not how you hurt me."

"Yeah, I know," Grian says, and Scar can tell that he has spent as many hours thinking about it all as the folds of his skirt would suggest. 

"I still feel horrible though. For how I treated Hotguy, and how I treated Scar."

And he believes that, too.

"Well, we've both forgiven you."

Grian nods, and there's something so vulnerable in his expression. And they both know that this is nowhere near it, that there's so many words they would still say, but for sentences they could weave them into until the string no longer itched and bled them through—

But they're not throwing knives while blindfolded anymore. And as the man in front of him goes on to rant about his new job with none of the whips and lashes from before, as Scar talks about showing Grian his recent art with the promise of later shining through, as they speak of things that matter, yet don't mean anything at all—

They both know that they can never have what they did. That a friendship built on the difference between love and hate is one that was always meant to fall apart at the seams. Their story is one that was always meant to end—and yet. 

They can never have what they did. But they can have something new.