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His 36th assassination attempt isn't grandiose. It isn't even him, charging forward with a sharp hunting knife - wooden stakes had always been way too overrated and difficult to handle.
But this plan, spinning in motion with as much force as Sisyphus' rock leaping off the mountain tip with a hungry gallop, this plan had Grian's fingerprints all over it, smudges of ink from when he'd had the time to sneak a letter or two out of Scar's manor.
Learning the intricacies of everyone's schedule had taken him time, foreign sweetness prickling his tongue and threatening to rot his teeth - and all these efforts for nothing, because Scar had pushed and pushed until thorns spilled all over his words in lush overgrown brambles, and the vampire had simply smiled, like peeling back a layer of Grian's mask was enough.
All these careful preparations mean he can't get rid of the nervous energy buried deep in his veins, sneaking glances at the clock every minute like he was a beginner all over again.
Awareness darkens Scar's eyes into a somber forest green, but it doesn't stop him from complaining about paperwork and taking pleasure in twisting his pen right out of Grian's grip. It's a usual scene, dangerously close to slipping into domesticity, and he snaps back to reason in the middle of their squabbling, sandbox arguing immediately set aside in the favour of a two feet distance. Scar notices, but says nothing.
The conversation continues, but it's stilted - stiff, an imminent sprain hanging over them, bringing with it the sweet pungent smell of ozone.
Scar makes a joke. Grian wonders about the when. Always the when, not the how, or gods forbid the why.
As they always tend to do when the matter of Scar's death comes up, his emotions writhe in his grip, his body a burning kettle letting out that familiar whistle - he keeps a tight lid on it, trying not to think about the consequences of letting the pressure build up inside of him.
Metaphors only take you so far. Grian isn't hollow, made to serve and willingly lie into the flames - the kettle can scream, but he isn't filled with steam, nor is he full of nauseous anxiety. Not at all.
Finally, the door to Scar's office slams open in a concerto of screeching hinges bellowing their pain for the world to hear. When they run out of metallic breath the door hangs pitifully off its frame like a lame dog begging for scraps. Out of it step two hunters in a frenzied run, alert and sharp, hunting animals getting the first scent of blood in the air.
Grian, trying to affect a plausible amount of surprise, takes a step back - the soles of his shoes tickle the fibers of the soft grey carpet that will need a thorough cleaning if it wants to survive the night.
The dice are thrown from his clammy cheating hands, and now all that's left is to see whether the House is big enough to win - and to see if Grian's costume hadn't sunk into his epidermal layer with meandering threads sewing the gasping chasm in his chest closed.
He's making his way out of the danger zone when he falls headfirst into the mistake of meeting Scar's eyes, doused in unsurprised realisation. The few seconds it takes for the hunters to reach him are grains of sand, coarse and dry inside Grian's throat, seeing disappointment chase the last drops of enjoyment off the other's face.
There's nothing to give him but a tight smile and a shrug. Try to kill a guy 35 times, and he's still acting shocked when you try again. Honestly.
A point has to be made for Scar's case though, because it is the first time Grian has taken himself out of the equation, cutting his presence away like a surgical incision salvaging a long string of bad decisions.
Regret starts to playfully nip at his skin - the first lick of heat coming to burn the witch's feet. But it's too late now, the fire has been lit, and Grian tied to the pole of denial solidified against his back.
Grian will watch, drenched in icy waters dripping off the frozen block of dread somewhere in his chest, and know deep in his bones there'll be no good way for this fight to end.
Trying to kill Scar is like picking at a scab, making it bleed anew - his brain had twisted itself around the objective with a fierce full-teethed bite, so much that he doesn't even know what he'll do with himself if Scar does lose to the duo of hunters.
They're supposed to be the best, young and spry, rusted vampire blood taking the shine out of them, but Grian had first-hand experience about how much it meant nothing when facing Scar.
A breath, and the fight begins.
The girl makes the first mistake, going too fast, throwing herself at him with all her weight, barely dodging Scar's first swipe, leaving one of her sides wide open while doing so, a misplaced trust in her partner that is still lagging a few steps behind.
After six months of working for him, Grian knows Scar - giving away small unneeded pieces of himself in tentative reciprocity, hoarding all these little details for the mission, and only the mission.
(Scar's favorite color is orange. One of his dreams is to have a cat, and to be able to burrow his fingers into its fur, on long winter nights. It doesn't mean anything.)
All this carefully acquired understanding means he knows that Scar isn't one to use the blunt-edged tool of violence, but it doesn't mean he won't dance to the melody of crushed bones and torn sinew when the performance requires him to.
This time is no exception, and Scar strikes her throat so fast his arm almost leaves an afterimage hanging in the air. She goes down with a sickening gurgle, cartilaginous larynx collapsing on itself, her eyes still fixed on the space where Scar's hand would have been, had he round flat teeth instead of fangs.
Her companion yells, something inhuman and rough, anguish turning his face whiter than snow. Grief must be pushing in now, getting stuffed in all sorts of places without time to process, and it at least makes him a little more intelligent in his approach to Scar, circling him like one does a beast that had red spilling from its maws.
Grian turns away. An impulsive train of actions leads him to crouch next to the girl, sprawled on the floor, with a perturbed equilibrium: the sound of struggle and breaking glass claw its way back into his brain, tugging him into two directions at once.
She's dying, that much is obvious. Already, her eyes seem far away, taking on the milky sheen that speaks of an adieu. Her chest shakes, lungs trying to draw in oxygen when her airways are nothing but ruins, and Grian lays his hand flat on the fragile space under the hollow dent in between her clavicles. "Rest." He tells her, watching her eyelids fall like an axe. He can at least give her that last second of respect.
He could have been her, if Scar hadn't decided he was to keep.
He should feel guilty. It should crawl around his cells like a second membrane, should leave a bad aftertaste on his tongue when he thinks of her life cut short because Grian had implicated her in this.
And he does to some extent feel the raw corners of something uneasily rolling in his stomach but it's diluted, sloshing around with frustration and annoyance. (Relief, too, peeks its sun-kissed little head in the middle of the mess, but that, Grian will never admit.)
She played their game and lost, collateral damages, queen of hearts that no longer beat.
He tunes back in the situation to see Scar pinned to the ground, doing his best to keep a silver glinting blade far from his heart.
What is he doing?
Now that he has Grian's attention Scar grins, letting the knife slip a little closer to his skin. "A little help?" He asks, almost paying no attention to the imminent threat to his life.
He's playing it up, preening under his disbelieving stare: maintaining the status quo to let Grian rule over his fate with a gladiatorial decision, to live or to die.
The intoxicating feeling of power doesn't last long, and Grian scoffs, short and cold. "You're getting what you deserve." His trained tongue smoothes over any trembles in his voice, tone professional and to the point, like it hadn't meant anything, conversations empty, vulnerability left behind in small clumps of hair from a bad cut.
His head dips a little lower, allowing shadows to run over his eyes in a hazy mask. Scar is a fool if he thinks Grian won't take the opportunity to eliminate one more vampire from this earth.
He wants, greedily, to see the light escape Scar's eyes. Wants to catch it in his own two hands like you would a firefly on a hot summer night. Grian wants, so hard that his legs shuffle on their own to step closer.
The hunter pays him no mind, lost to the all-encompassing fury of revenge, tense muscles shaking as he tries to drive the knife deeper and deeper into vampire's flesh. Into Scar.
It's fascinating how Grian is a welcome presence to both sides. Tightrope dancer above the hungry mouth of the abyss, he dips and twists, steals a little touch of Scar for himself when he laughs, and says: See? Am I not your friend?
It had been him, feeding information to the hunters every week. Him caving in and suggesting he needed reinforcements, leaving the back door open in the rosy-cheeked morning.
Him, standing next to Scar as the firelight flickered over their face in a heat-warped prism, chuckling nervously as Scar whispered to him, words warm and soft, rising above the heat. "I dreamed we danced."
(Him blushing all the way to the roots of his hair, hiding behind the cover of the dark, haunted by Scar's following question: "Would you want to?")
Every step of the way Grian had turned and turned - Janus, the two-faced god, a labyrinth of torturous choices leaving him to this, toes curled around the edge of the precipice.
This close to the fight, he can see the moment Scar gives up, resigned and quiet: his arms give one last push in tentative denial of what's to come, but they fall limp in the same slow breath. Green eyes search for him one last time as the knife cuts through the first layer of his clothes with a sickening ease.
Grian tries to think of a world without Scar. Going back to his skeletal flat, starved of warm lights and noise, a negative space about 6 feet tall to his left.
It feels cold.
Scar is a fool, triple time idiot, but Grian is the king dancing to his tunes, and in one fast strike, the steel of his own blade sinks deep into the meat of the hunter's shoulder - it stays there, opening the way to long rivulets of blood leaving the wound in a steady rhythm.
Not wasting a moment, Scar uses the distraction to push the other off, retrieving the weapon Grian had so kindly provided him with in the same movement.
On the floor, the man rolls in erratic fits of pain, trying to hold on to his bleeding shoulder. Scar's confidence strengthens, his knee digging itself a space underneath the man's sternum as he rises, triumphant and wild.
Despite the vampire's looming presence above his ribcage, the hunter doesn't let a single blink escape him as his gaze locks into Grian's eyes with a mean hook.
"Traitor." He spits, his pupils a needle's width - it's said with so much hatred Grian flinches, rattled.
These are the hunter's last words. A curse, thrown at him with the weight of a soul.
Lightheaded, Grian falls against the desk, the consequences of his actions painting his thoughts sharp and fractured neatly in the middle, like an egg that cracks open, a headache so strong it splits your head in two.
Dark polished wood stays solid under his hands, sturdy enough to stabilize his spinning mind, and Grian states, voice strangled. "You were letting him get the advantage."
He had just helped kill a man for Scar.
Pouting, voluntarily failing to read the mood, Scar sighs, something disappointed. "I would have rathered it to be you, straddling me." One smile shy of flirtatious: "You're losing your touch."
Grian levels him with a glare, still shaking off the last dregs of shock. "You're the one that almost got killed."
"I'm touched, very touched by your worry." Scar is getting back to his feet now, sarcasm dragging its nails along the natural honey of his words - turning it black, curdled, and bitter, if it weren't for half-lidded eyes betraying his affection. "You didn't even participate in this attempt."
Wordless witness, the room swells with a great burst of stifling air thrown on his shoulders, caving under the weight. Scar, relentless, continues. "It was like you were a stranger, and I would have died a nameless death."
Silence sways his tongue - dragging it down inescapable depths with only a slight tug on his heart.
He's still cataloging all the ways in which their destinies tangle in a hangman's knot when Scar startles him, his touch sending splinters of surprise where it meets his skin. The knife, still wet, is gently nudged back into his palm. "If I have to die, I'd rather it be by your blade."
The admission hurts somewhere low in his belly, where heat stirs his guts in equal part with hate, taking so much space his lungs heave with pained shallow breaths.
Grian would love to comply, only he's not so sure he's able to. "Next try." He selfishly answers, wishing he could keep Scar's expression under his nails like black dirt staining your fingers after crawling out your own grave.
He wonders, not for the first time, what had led him to this. Butterfly wings fluttering near his face, in his open mouth, crawling down his esophagus to settle in his stomach, wings beating, always.
It had been a simple decision in the beginning. Scar had a high-level clearance, was charming, easy to get along with. Not much escaped his watchful eyes, horizon point of the city assigned to him - Scar knew everything going on in its belly and then some. It was strategic, applying to work for him.
It had started to be less simple when Grian had handed in his resignation letter the morning after Scar had discovered him towering over a vampire's corpse, guts out and knife in.
Scar had only laughed in big, full-bodied breaths petering off into small restrained giggles as he tore the letter in two. And Grian's foolish feet still dragged him to Scar's room every day, just to feel that electric tingle on his skin whenever the great, titanic wave of Scar's joy drowned him in salt and foam.
And now, Grian had helped kill a man for him.
Scar clicks his tongue. "None of that."
There are a multitude of reasons for the weakness in his knees: Scar bypasses the problem entirely by lifting him up in the air with ease until he's sat on top of the desk, ruffling the very documents he'd pestered Scar into signing just a few hours ago.
It puts him eyes to eyes with Scar's smiling face, soft mellow lines that burn to look at, like the sun. "I was in danger, and you reacted. You can't be blamed for that." But Scar blames him all the same, only in the opposite direction, elevating him for an instinctual response Grian is still picking at his brain for.
"You weren't in danger." He feels the need to point out, prickly and pissed; planting his nails so deep inside the arm still holding him they take roots that in turn blossom into red crescents, tattooed on the other's skin.
Scar bats his eyelashes, smile still contaminating his face. "But look at those knives! If they had their way, I'd have been a little porcupine by now."
Rolling his eyes, Grian reaches out to Scar's chest, knocking his fist on the suspiciously firm fabric of his clothes, confirming his doubts. "You're wearing a reinforced vest."
"Alright," Scar steps back a little, raising his hands in the air as if it made him look better, more innocent: it really didn’t. "I knew. That doesn't mean I couldn't have been killed there."
"You've certainly made it more difficult than usual." The back and forth eases him down into a calmer mood, as long as he doesn't look past Scar's dramatic pout and right into the bodies lying crumpled on the floor. "How did you know?"
A finger hooks his chin up. "You always get this look on your face when you're planning to kill me." Scar gently taps his forehead, dead center of his brain. "See that wrinkle when you frown? It's all mine apparently."
"That's not true." He frowns, unconsciously rubbing a palm against his skin like Scar's very touch has left an irreparable stain. "I want to kill you all the time." It sounds fake. It sounds real. It sounds like Grian himself has no idea what to do with this particular bunch of words.
Scar hums. "Sure you do buddy." Before Grian can snarl at him, the vampire's eyes zero in on his cheek.
Faster than he can react, Scar is cupping the left side of his face, swiping his thumb across the line of his cheekbone. It comes away red.
"You had a little something" He justifies, and Grian can feel the moment Scar decides to lick the blood off his fingers, already wrinkling his nose with a disgusted remark ready in his lungs.
It gets lost on the way out of his mouth when Scar's tongue peeks outside his lips to run along his fingertip. It definitely dies when he watches Scar swallows, the corner of his mouth wet.
Grian quietly clears his throat, finding it to have the dry and cracked consistency of a failed pottery. None of this desperate ritual escapes Scar, and the other rests a hand on his thigh, leaning closer - the warm ghost of his breath haunting Grian's cheeks. "Do you want me to bite you?"
It shouldn't surprise him. Every time the topic of feeding had come up, Scar's eyes were magnetized, snapping back to Grian's neck, pale and bare because he refused to be cowed into wearing a scarf.
Even now, the other's pupils swell, painfully obvious with him this close. Now that the idea has got its foot in the door, Grian shivers against his will, thoughts pressing down his spine like hot incandescent embers.
It shouldn't surprise him but it does, a little bit, the sight of Scar's sharp teeth near his neck making his hair stand.
When he tries to douse the flames kissing up his cheeks, all that comes to his mind is the thought of those people, queuing up on the streets in unsteady lines at the nearest blood bank, chasing that sweet release of endorphins. They're here, frail arms and bruise-littered necks. Swaying.
"I won't make it hurt." Scar croons, like it's not what Grian's afraid of, that soft place his mind can't reach on its own. Still, he cannot stop looking at those bone-white teeth, reflecting off the light.
He's seen Scar feed before, the flinches and the pain washed away by exquisite bliss dripping down their bloodstreams as Scar dug inside their flesh, drinking and drinking from this willing feast.
With great effort, he wrenches his eyes away from the mesmerizing canines - focusing back on Scar's heady gaze as he shakes his head, face tight. "No." His body unwinds all of a sudden, as if his muscles couldn't bear being tense for so long.
It doesn't make Scar back off, that's the thing. They stay here, eyes to eyes, nose to nose, and- "I hate you." Grian says, three shades off loathing.
"Are you gonna do something about it?" Breathless, fingers curling around his shoulders like claws, Scar looks excited, lips falling open in a too-familiar grin with a hint of desire thrown into the mix.
Like Grian could drive a knife into his chest and he'd thank him for it. Like Scar would return him the favour just as fast.
"I hate you." He repeats, gripping the back of Scar's neck hard enough to make him wince.
Scar takes it for the invitation that it is, barreling past Grian's lips right into his furious mouth. A small, instinctual part of him shivers in disgust at doing something so unnatural - the rest of him burns.
Scar's hands sting everywhere they touch him, roaming all over his body, which means that all he knows is fire lighting up his skin. Gracefully, Scar twists them until Grian's back is to the corpses like it will make it any less terrible.
A searing tongue licks at his teeth, greedily using the distraction of devilish fingers touching under the thick fabric of his jumper, and Grian gasps into it, electrified by the heat and the live wire that is Scar's mouth.
Catching his breath in the corner of Scar's lips, Grian thinks about snakes, and dry bites occurring half the time. Flipping a coin. When they kiss again, Scar's teeth catch on his lips, just like Grian knew they would, and it deliriously hurts.
It might be a worse addiction than the venom.
-
His thirty-seventh attempt will go like this: first, he will get the vampire's heart, warm and still beating, slippery red in his fingers.
He will get the vampire's heart and kiss him under the moonlight, dancing with a long-necked glass in his hand, head a little dizzy from the wine and the feeling of sharp teeth set once again on his lips.
He will kiss him like his life depends on it, shedding clothes like a tree discards its golden leaves in the wake of winter, tumbling into bed with an urgency that's impossible to fake and then. Then-