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Grian doesn’t remember the last time he managed to get out of bed for something other than needing to use the bathroom.
It’s gross, probably, but he doesn’t remember the last time that he showered, or ate something, or stepped outside. Almost every second of his life recently has been spent staring at the same four, dark walls, under a too-hot pile of dirty blankets.
Getting up takes too much energy. Shucking off a few blankets so that he isn’t sweating like a pig takes up too much energy. He feels empty, like a poorly carved marionette on limp strings, unable to do anything for himself. Unable to do anything but lie there, pinned in place under the weight of his thoughts.
It's as if his heart is too much for his chest. Every breath he takes feels like it’s too shallow, like his heart has grown four sizes too big until it’s taking up the space that his lungs once could. It makes him too sensitive- his awful, big heart that weighs heavily in his ribcage, aching and throbbing under every inch of hurt. It makes it hard to breathe. It makes it hard to do anything but lie there in silence, staring up at the blank ceiling, thinking the same awful, spiralling thoughts and convincing himself that he’s a burden to everyone he’s ever loved.
He rolls over every once in a while, like that’s going to make him any more comfortable as he lies in his own filth, and tries to avoid thinking about how silly he’s being. How stupid and childish.
After all, it’s not like he’s been trying to get up unless he needs to, it’s not like he’s trying to do anything to make this better. Maybe he should try to wash his face or talk to his friends. Maybe he should just get out of bed, in that same way that everyone else seems to be able to do with such ease, and ask the people that he cares about if they hate him. Maybe he should just start feeling okay again, simply because he wants to, but-
It seems impossible. It feels like there should be a switch that he can flip from unhappy to happy, yet he’s fumbling in the dark, hands running over every inch of the wall, searching with all his might but he still can’t find it- nevermind the strength to pull it down. The days have begun to blur together, since he locked himself in that dark room, blending until Grian doesn’t even have the energy to search anymore. He’s so scared of the dark, but finding any light seems impossible.
God, there’s no point in fighting to get up, is there? There’s nothing to go outside for? There’s nothing to search for his comm to say, right?
Right.
So he stays in bed, where pain has become a new constant, bound by nothing except his awful, detestable, too-big heart that beats a rhythm of pain and rejection that Grian barely understands anymore.
After all, it’s his fault everything stays exactly as awful as it has always been, agonising and numb and hopeless. It’s his fault that he never gets better, no matter how many times they go through these same motions. It’s his fault, because he always falls back into bed, waiting for someone to pull him out and make him pretend to be okay again.
It’s a cycle that forces his friends to act as his unwilling babysitters to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid. It’s a cycle that continues as predictably as always, when his moping in bed is interrupted by-
Ah, perfect timing.
It begins with the occasional pings from his comm, and knocks on his front door. Both are too far away for Grian to be able to summon the energy to respond, but they manage to break up the monotony of lying thoughtlessly in bed, head filled with static, either way.
He doesn’t know how long it takes, as the days blur together and he spends every second rotting away in bed, but eventually, the messages graduate into calls. They ring unanswered through the house like the distant chiming of a church bell, claustrophobic in the way that they resound off every wall. The knocks on the front door become more frequent too, accompanied by voices and questions that Grian can never quite make out.
He only hears the doorknob rattling obsessively a few times before whoever is out there, trying to talk to him, tries something larger. Something that begins with a series of loud thuds, yelling, and finishes with an almighty splintering sound as the front door is broken down.
All he can do, as the noise echoes through his mind like something derelict and empty, is sigh.
It’s time.
There is talking in his house that Grian can’t manage to focus on, and it’s steadily getting louder as the people downstairs move around, muffled by fewer walls than they were before.
“Grian?” Someone calls, and it might be Scar… who Grian is pretty certain has a key. Why on earth did he go through the trouble of breaking down the door if he has a key?
… The avian astutely ignores the way that somehow feels like the most conscious thought that he’s had in months.
“Grian!” Mumbo’s voice joins the calling shortly after, and the chorus of worried questions sends endearment jolting through his chest like a javelin.
It makes him sink further back into his mattress as he listens to his lovers’ worried yells, dwelling helplessly on how awful he is for forcing them to come here and check on him again. It’s almost a shame, hearing how upset they are- over someone like him. Over someone so incapable and pathetic. Over someone who doesn’t deserve their love, or their concern.
He should break free from the chains of this cycle. He should drag himself out of bed and put on a happy face until they’re convinced that he’s just been busy, or storm downstairs and scream at them until they leave. He needs to break something, to pretend that he isn’t broken, all to get them to see they’d be better off without him trapping them in this torturous routine.
“Songbird, are you here?” Scar’s voice is low and tender, and somehow far closer than it was before even though it feels like barely a second has passed. It sounds like he’s upstairs now, like he’s right outside of Grian’s bedroom door, and the proximity mingled with the constant loss of time unwillingly brings hot tears to his eyes.
Grian opens his mouth, something that saps far too much of his energy for being such a small motion, and he thinks that he should say something. Maybe he should just tell them to go away, that he’s sick or he’s sleeping. Maybe they’d actually leave, or - more likely, perhaps - they’d come in and lie beside him, offering him comfort with no questions asked.
Even as his thoughts scream at him that he wouldn’t deserve that, that they can’t keep up this charade of recovery and relapse, Grian has to admit that he’s tempted by the idea of their warmth.
Still, he can’t muster the strength to say a single word. His eyes slide closed like there’s weights attached to his lashes, and he sinks into the sweat-slick sheets of his bed. They clamp around him like shackles, and he’s helpless to the constant replay of being a burden.
“Love?” Scar pushes open the door with a creak and filters into the room, Mumbo following soon after.
Neither of their gazes land on Grian right away, burrowed under the mountain of blankets as he is, and Mumbo takes the split second without a response to anxiously ask, “Is he here?”
Grian feels himself shrink a little smaller, something instinctual and unthinking as he cowers under their shadows and prays that they’ll leave him be. But, of course, he can’t be granted a mercy even that small. Fate has never been kind to him, Grian supposes, why would it start now?
He sees the exact moment that their eyes land on him, as Mumbo sucks in a sharp breath and Scar’s shoulder slump inwards, and Grian wishes hopelessly that the bed around him would swallow him up. That the ground would split open and kill him.
“Gri?” Scar asks cautiously, taking a step towards him at the same time that Mumbo makes a little gasping noise.
“Oh-” the redstoner whispers like he doesn’t quite realise that he’s speaking, still standing half behind Scar, “Oh, gosh, you look awful–”
Scar might shoot him a glare at that, but the avian can’t quite tell as suddenly his vision is obscured by the tears coming so much faster than before. Someone whines, something high and pitiful, and it could honestly be any of the three of them making the noise. It’s all so much, and Grian just wishes that he could fix whatever is wrong with him. He wishes that his loved ones would leave, that he could abandon them and remove the stress that he causes.
“-hey! Hey!” Someone yells, and suddenly Grian can feel that there are hands on him, and can see eyes level with his own. They’re green and blurry, and so filled with love that it feels like it’s killing him. Like it’s smothering him.
He might be sobbing, he might be gasping and scratching at every overheated inch of his own skin that he can reach, as other hands begin to peel away the awful, suffocating layers of blankets that have been his only company for so long. Everything is cooler now, the stuffy air of the room actually meeting his skin after such a long time wrapped in his terrible cocoon, but he still feels like he’s being boiled alive.
Gods, how long has it been since the grated door of this cell first slid shut and trapped him here? How long has it been since Grian has seen anyone other than himself, unwilling glances caught in the uncovered slivers of the bathroom mirror? How many times have they been here before? How many times will it happen again?-
“Grian-!”
It’s so intense, it’s so much, and after all these weeks (Months?) of nothing at all, it makes him wish that he could shed his skin like a snake. He’s scratching at himself almost viscerally, barely aware of his own surroundings as he digs and tears until blood is beading against sickly pale skin. He needs to hurt, he needs to stop this in any way that he can- any way at all–
He’s pulled into sitting up, then there’s a soft, hazy thump as the blankets hit the floor and Mumbo is holding his wrists in his icy grip. If Grian were more aware of himself, he would probably detest just how automatic the actions are. They’ve done this song and dance so many times before that, even in his adrenaline-fuelled panic, he is predictable.
God, he’s such a burden.
“Don’t hurt yourself, oh Void,” Mumbo begs, clutching his arms tightly as Grian tries to tear them away. “Please stop, Gri- I know you can, c’mon. Come back to me.”
His hands are soft and his words are grounding, in a way that is almost sickeningly familiar, and it brings a new sort of clarity to whatever is going on around him even as Grian’s vision is blurred by wetness. Scar has seated himself behind Grian just enough that the avian is leaning on him and propped up by his broad shoulder, he notices, and Mumbo has crawled onto the other end of the bed, eyes flickering up and down his body as if assessing the damage.
Through his hazy thoughts and blurry eyes, Grian might even be able to convince himself that Mumbo looks bored.
God.
“You’re okay, lovely,” Scar murmurs pointlessly, as Grian swallows around the lump in his throat.
He looks pitying, as if he had already known what to expect when he came to find Grian here, and that only serves to make the avian feel worse. They shouldn’t be here, they’ll give up at some point and Grian only wishes that it would happen soon- why are they still here? Why are they still trying to fix him?
He has to ask.
“What-“ Grian sputters between heavy breaths, avoiding eye contact with both of them and staring at the sweat-stained pile of blankets that has been thrown onto the floor, “-Are you doing here?”
There’s a little bit of shuffling around him, and probably some wordless communication that he’s missing out on, before Scar begins, “Sweetheart.” He sounds… more than a little frantic, an edge of desperation soaked into his voice like it’s been stewing there for ages. “We haven’t- we haven’t seen you in- in weeks, Gri. We’re worried. What’s going on?”
Answering seems like a fool’s errand, honestly. There are no words that Grian can offer that are any different to the ones he’s given before, and he finds himself wondering if he’s the only one who remembers all those previous times. Do the others think of them in the same way? As inevitable cycles of ignoring everything that’s wrong, being unable to maintain that forever, and then being offered the same, repetitive comfort? The same dangling carrot to coax him into pretending again?
Grian thinks that he hates the pretending. He thinks that he hates the way they all still cling onto some sort of hope that he’s going to change, he’s going to get better.
He’s a responsibility, something to be maintained and obliged, but Grian doesn’t want to keep feeding into that cycle.
With a pointless sort of desperation, as he prays to finally be abandoned in the way that he deserves, Grian manages to force himself to command, “Go- go away.”
Scar smiles sadly, something creeping and resigned, before he chuckles and murmurs, “We can’t do that, sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” Mumbo echoes without a second thought, like it’s second nature, and Grian wishes that it didn't feel like such a punch in the gut. “We’re not going anywhere, not until you’re alright.”
His partners sound so soft as they murmur at him - gorgeous, careful words and declarations of love and support that dig into his skin like ticks- because it all sounds fake to him. It sounds fake in a way that makes him question if he’s sane, if he’s just making it all up or seeing something where there’s nothing. It sounds fake in a way that is agonising, like a fire, like an explosion or a flood. Something disastrous and painful and unavoidable.
So Grian sobs, “Please go,” before he even knows that he’s speaking. “Ple-ase leave me alone. I don’t want- I don’t want you here.”
He cries like there is a hand around his throat, or smoke in his lungs. He cries like he is burning alive. Like he is being torn limb from limb by angry, ruthless hands. Like a swelling storm or a devouring hurricane, something that sings with an insatiable hunger, taking and taking and taking.
It takes the breath from his lungs. The sound from his ears. The colour from his cheeks.
Grian cries like the presence of his lovers is killing him, in a way that is disgusting. It leaves snot trailing down his red, puffy face as he soaks his stained sweater with tears. It should make them leave.
It should, but it doesn’t. They don’t. As always.
And that’s probably the worst part of all.
Instead, what happens is Mumbo relinquishes his grip on Grian’s wrists and wraps them around the man’s waist. He pulls him close, and brings a hand to the back of his head, tucking his tear-stained face into the warm crook of his neck. All the while, Scar runs his fingers through the space between his wings, threading gently through greasy, dishevelled feathers without a single ounce of hesitancy.
He’s so tired. Void, he’s so exhausted of fighting this war, of battling against the ease of just allowing the others to win. It would be so much easier to let them fix him for a few weeks, then fall back into the same place as always. He doesn’t want to fight anymore, even though he knows he’ll end up here again next time.
Sandwiched between them, in an undeserved cocoon of love and safety, Grian cries until he can’t anymore. He cries until his throat is raw and his eyes are bloodshot as he sobs, and his partners whisper words of care to him all the while. It feels alien, like they’re speaking in a different language that Grian could never hope to understand. So, he doesn’t try to. Not as they treat him so carefully, cradling him like he’s something undeservedly precious; like he’s something to be protected. Instead, he tries to focus on the movement of their hands, on the sounds of their heartbeats and the rise and fall of their chests against his own.
He cries, and feels as himself wavering under the weight of fighting against the cycle. Against the fate that binds him to reliving these moments over and over.
It takes a while, some indeterminate amount of time that feels partway between an hour and a week, before Grian’s tears run dry. He sniffles pathetically, slumped like a doll against Mumbo’s warm chest, and finally hears as the others murmur, “We love you, you’re alright. Take all the time you need, we’ll be here no matter what.”
It almost sets him off again, leaving him heaving like he’s been shot in the chest, but somehow Grian manages to hold himself together long enough to sit up. Scar, who has practically draped himself across the avian’s back, follows suit until all three of them are upright and staring at each other. Strangely enough, it’s almost… awkward. Grian doesn’t know what to say, and it’s like the others are trying to give him a chance to speak, so instead… they’re all just quiet.
It’s nice, honestly. But it can’t last forever.
“Grian,” Scar breaks the silence first, “Gri, talk to us. What’s the matter, darling?”
The avian squeezes his eyes shut, tightly enough that it makes his head pound, and whispers, “I- I-” He doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t want to get better from this. That he wants to wade through this sadness forever, to die here. He doesn’t know how to tell them that the only way this cycle will ever break is by them stopping helping him.
“I don’t know,” is what he says instead, and it tastes like defeat.
Mumbo exhales shakily beside him, and begins, “You-”
Grian interrupts, speaking far louder than either of them have dared so far. “Why- why are you here?” He asks, searching blindly for something to hold onto. His hand lands on something solid and warm, clearly muscular even beneath a layer of clothing - Scar’s thigh, perhaps?
He runs his thumb tightly along the shape of the man’s tendons, pressing hard enough that his talon might break through skin. Scar hisses slightly at the pain, and Grian wishes that it would be enough to make them leave.
He knows, certainly and defeated, that it won’t be. Even as he rips his hand away as if he’s been burned, eyes still pressed closed harshly enough that staticky shapes and colours are dancing behind his eyelids.
“Grian,” Scar begins again, and the word feels blurry, like it’s just out of reach. “I’m okay, birdy,” Scar continues, and it sounds like a lie to all of their ears. “You just surprised me, it’s okay.”
Someone’s hand - Scar’s, based on the thickness of the fingers - wraps around his balled fist and guides it gently back to where it was before. It’s an invitation, but the avian just can’t allow himself to take it. He keeps his arm tense, hovering just inches away from the places that he cannot manage to lay a gentle finger.
“Grian,” one of them says again, with a tenure like they’d keep at this forever if they needed to. It makes Grian’s expression crumple up, screwing together like a discarded piece of paper.
He’s lost, the moment that Mumbo asks, “C-can you look at us? Please?”
Grian sucks in a shaky breath that waves like a white flag on a battlefield, before peeling his eyes open obediently.
“There’s those lovely eyes,” Scar says. “Welcome back, love.”
“Sorry,” Grian mutters, leaning bodily against Mumbo and shoving his face into the man’s shirt. He feels somewhat like a monster, sandwiched between them like this. Like he’s the ugliest pearl of the bunch, and his partners are trying to pretend they’re looking past his discoloration, his non uniform shape. They’re trying to ignore that he’s not disgusting and worthless and imperfect.
Scar takes the opportunity to press his hand atop Grian’s, which is honestly starting to ache from being hovered so close over Scar’s leg for such a long time. He guides the avian’s hand down until his splayed palm is pressed against the warmth of his thigh, and gently strokes up and down the length of his hand as if it isn’t awful and sickly pale and gaunt.
“Are you feeling any better?” Mumbo asks, something naive and hopeful shining through in his tone as Grian dries his tears in his chest, and doesn’t fight against Scar putting his hand back in the sluggish stream of blood from his thigh.
It makes Grian grit his teeth, biting back a comment about how they’ve not actually done anything since they got here, not really. His jaw clenches tightly enough to ache as he nods.
“Yeah,” Grian lies, because he knows that they’re going to end up here again. No matter how many times they try to comfort him, try to show their support through saccharine words or simply being here, it’s never going to work.
No matter what, they’re going to end up here again. No matter how much he fights against that inevitability, Grian isn’t sure if he’ll ever come out victorious.
His lovers cheer at his reply, something forced and performative as they squeeze him tight, and, once again, all that Grian can think is it’s time.
The next stage of this endless cycle has arrived once again.