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The desert is buzzing, alive with heat and the inferior mirage of sand glittering like an ocean expanse. Sun beats down onto skin, cooking off rational thought. Scar’s barely wearing clothes, just tattered shorts and a light-coloured, woven cotton coverup, wrapped and draped around his shoulders so he doesn’t expire from sun exposure.
Alone in a sea of sand, a monolith of a building rests atop a hill, cut out of sandstone. It’s packed with clays and muds inside, retaining any coolness accumulated from the relatively colder nights. There’s barely any windows, and a tall tower splits from the building’s middle. Atop the tower, at the very top, perches a blindingly red figure. Grian’s normal sweater has been swapped out for a thinner, sleeveless version, which hangs more loosely on his body. His bangs stick to his forehead, and he uses his fingers to push them back. He’s scanning the horizon for movement beyond the shifting heat, watchful. He’s holding his big wings away from his body, but they’re dropping a little in the blazing sun.
Scar sticks his head up from the entrance to the rooftop, shielding his eyes for a second.
“Grian,” He whines, dragging the n far longer than he needed to, “You’re going to die up there. It’s too hot, come inside!” He’s eyeing Grian’s wings--they aren’t normally held out that far away from his body while resting.
Grian’s mouth is open already, and he looks like he’s putting active effort into taking deeper breaths, filling his lungs entirely. He wrenches his gaze away from the pale expanse and glaces at Scar, quickly checking him over for signs of harm. He looks normal, a little sweaty, so Grian returns his attention to the horizon.
“I’m fine, Scar.” He lies.
“You aren’t! Come in, please? Pretty please with a Jellie on top?” Scar’s batting his eyelashes dramatically, pulling an exaggerated pleading face. He uses his, frankly, visibly muscled arm to wipe a bead of sweat rolling down his jaw. “Come drink some water, at least?” He says, face morphing into a slight frown.
Grian sighs, and grumbles something unintelligible underneath his breath. He rises from his crouched position and jumps down off the raised edge, looking at Scar with furrowed brows.
With a fist pump from Scar, they go inside. Grian’s glasses fog up immediately at the temperature difference, and he takes a quick second to wipe them off on his shirt. There’s grains of sand trapped between the lense and the frame, but there isn’t much he can do about that right now.
He’s still heaving air in, almost panting, by the time they reach the ground floor. Scar fills a glass of water for him, and he gulps it down as soon as it’s in his hand.
“You know, nobody’s going to attack us in the middle of the day. It’s hot here, nobody wants to be in that sun,” Scar gestures upwards, “You shouldn’t be out for that long at noon.”
Grian honestly does not feel very physically well from the sun exposure, but he frowns, stubborn. “They want you to think that, Scar.” He’s feeling slightly better from the coolness and water in his system, but he still holds his wings out.
Scar may not be the ultimate Grian expert, but something seems off with that.
“Are your wings okay?” He asks. He does not reach out for them. Grian is defensive about his wings--any indication of a touch, and he jerks away like he’s been burned. Scar respects this unspoken boundary, of course.
“They’re fine.” Grian replies curtly, lying again. His back straightens, and he does a little wing shake that makes bits of sand fall from the feathers as they fluff up. They look dull.
Scar clocks his lie, as he usually does. He’s leaning against the counter, hands gripping the edge and one leg bent to rest his foot. He clicks his tongue, “Do you need to, ah, pri-preal them?”
“Preen?” Grian offers.
“Yes! Do you need help? I can help, I’m amazin’ at…preeming.” Scar does a dramatic voice, sweeping his arm out. Grian does not think Scar has ever touched a pair of wings, let alone preened any.
“Preening.”
“Peening.” Scar nods.
Grian snorts, a giggle erupting from his throat. “Scar!” He half shouts, reaching up to shove at his shoulder. Does he do this on purpose?
“Do you?” Scar says again, quieter, a grin making his features soften. He’s staring.
Grian remembers the question, giggles dying off very quickly. He looks away. “N…no. I can do it myself. I’m holding them away from my body because it’s hot. It’s a bird thing. Birds don’t sweat, so it’s to cool them down. I sweat, but this still helps.”
“Oh! Do you need anything, then? More water?” Scar holds his hand out to take the glass back, which Grian passes to him.
“I’m alright, thank you.” This time it wasn’t a lie. He’s not panting anymore, and his body temperature has thankfully lowered a bit. He still feels a bit uncomfortable in his feathers, itchy and fidgeting.
Scar puts the glass down on the counter and watches Grian leave behind the partition around his bed in the corner. They’d put those up for privacy, and Scar is a gentleman, so he leaves the bird to it. He makes himself busy, and slides his mending supplies from a cupboard, unwrapping his coverup and searching for any worn bits. The supplies are not organized by any means, thrown into a little container and jumbled together. He fishes for a needle, stuck through a piece of scrap fabric and pointy end taped off. He sits on the ground, and begins darning a spot near the edge with the needle and light-coloured string, reinforcing the fabric by weaving his own little patch out of the embroidery thread. It’s not the most perfect mending, but it works. He’s sticking his tongue out in a face of focus when he hears a frustrated noise.
Scar looks up, hands pausing in their final touches.
“Grian?” He calls out, glancing between his work and the room divider so he can safely take the thread off the needle without sticking himself.
“Augh!” Comes the reply, then a thump and a rustle of many feathers. “Can you,” Grian starts out, then stops with a deep breath, then starts again, “Okay. Scar, can you come?”
Scar puts his mending down, and uses the counter to lift himself up with a little grunt. “What’s up?” He asks, making his way to Grian’s corner of the room. When he enters past the partition, he's met with the sight of Grian, facing the wall on his bed, cross-legged and in an awkward position, arms at weird angles. He looks like he’s trying to pull a wing over his shoulder to reach, but it’s not working.
“I can’t…reach.” Grian says, finally. He looks like a joint is about to pop out of place, so Scar is quick to cross the space in between them. He sits on the edge of the bed.
“Woah, okay! It’s okay! Here?” Scar very gently, very slowly, places his fingertips on the part of wing he thinks Grian is trying to get, near the base. Grian noticeably tenses, so he pulls his hand away. Grian was not a touchy person, other than joking swats and the bare necessary for fights.
“Yes,” The bird grits out, “Can you, ah…hm. You have to brush the dirt off, and make sure the feather’s in place. If it’s dead, pull it out. Dead ones have no blood flow, you can see it in the shaft.” Grian sounds frustrated, spitting out the words like they’ve personally offended him.
Scar’s staring at the red-yellow-blue expanse of feathers, absorbing the information. He feels the weight of the request, heavy. It hangs between them like an anvil, swinging to and fro. Grian’s tone doesn’t even phase him, used to biting words and misplaced frustration. He reaches back up to touch a feather, but the other interrupts the movement with an inhale.
“Scar? This means nothing.” Grian says, quiet.
Scar doesn’t really understand the full and entire meaning behind that statement, but it hurts a little in his chest.
“Nothing.” He breathes in reply.
He runs his fingers through the feathers, dusting sand from each one. The vanes are dusty, and he wipes them down gently. He pulls a couple small ones, and Grian barely flinches, their shafts too short to root too far into the skin. Scar uses both hands to brush through and clean, and when he reaches the actual base of the wing, Grian lurches forward, away from his hands. Scar jumps out of his focused ministrations, worry immediately painting his face.
“Sorry! Did that hurt?” He says, trying to replay his actions to see if he accidentally pulled something too hard. He was trying to be gentle! Wings are too fragile for his clumsy hands.
“No. Sorry, Scar.” Grian does not explain, straightening back up. If he had turned around, Scar would see his scrunched up face, red like a raw sunburn. He’s got a white-knuckle grip on his bedsheet, and he doesn’t even care about the sand invading his bed. After a while, you get used to it anyway.
“If you say so…” Scar hesitantly resumes his cleaning, trying to ignore the tenseness pinching Grian’s shoulders high. He shifts the back of Grian’s shirt aside so he can reach the feathers underneath, and when his fingers brush against where feather meets skin, Grian lets out a noise not unlike a squeaky-toy.
He slaps a hand to his mouth as Scar freezes. “Sorry!” He shouts, muffled.
Scar drags his widened gaze up to burn holes in the back of Grian’s head. He has never, in his entire life, heard Grian make a noise like that. It was bird-like, a trill he’d only heard real birds make. He feels like his head is going to explode, suddenly light-headed.
Grian doesn’t turn around, curling into himself. The back of his neck is red, matching everything else about him.
“I’m sorry, Scar. I didn’t mean to-”
“Don’t apologize. Another bird-y thing?” Scar says slowly, cutting him off. Truthfully, Scar thinks it was cute. He thinks it was so cute, his heart is hammering in his chest in a deafening rhythm. Scar would do anything in his power to make Grian chirp like that again, if he’d let him.
Grian releases his held exhale. “I’m s-Ugh. Yes. Preening feels…relieving. I’ve been avoiding it. I’m,” Grian pauses, unfurling himself bit by bit, “I’m comfortable.”
Scar’s heart swells at the confession. Comfortable! Grian feels comfortable around Scar. He trusts Scar, enough to offer his wings. Scar pets the feathers in front of him with his knuckles, hopefully in an encouraging way.
Grian sighs, and his shoulders drop ever so slightly.
“Pretty bird…” Scar murmurs, before he can stop himself. Mentally, he strangles the Scar in his brain that made him say that. His own boldness makes his petting stutter, and he almost pulls away, but Grian makes the tiniest chirp ever, muffled by his slumped form. His heart skips a beat. In any other circumstance, Grian probably would have yelled at him, maybe swatted his arm, if Scar were so lucky.
But Grian’s comfortable, and apparently feeling vulnerable, and Scar would shove a sword into his own gut before he would do anything to willingly stop this moment. He shifts an inch closer, and carefully, so carefully, uses both of his hands to massage the wing joint connected to Grian’s back. He briefly wonders how far down the blush on Grian’s neck goes, but mentally slaps himself hard.
Grian, on the other hand, feels hazy. His brain might have actually been cooked into a soup up on that roof, for all he knows. The hands currently working out tense muscles are rough, but not scratchy, and warm, but not hot. They’re big, too, and cover a lot of ground. Normally, he’d be stubborn. Normally, he would never let someone touch him like this, let alone call him names like that. But it’s activating something primal in his bones, and he no longer cares about what he’d normally do. He’s unsteady, feeling like he might collapse at any moment. He’s touch starved, he knows this, but knowing that doesn’t lessen the intensity of the need burning through his skin. He wants to lean back, he wants to shuffle until he’s in Scar’s lap, as close as he can get without digging a burrow underneath Scar’s ribs like an awful, needy worm. He holds himself just enough to not crawl into his best friend’s lap, though. He chirps, trills, sighing.
Grian had been silently begging Scar to reach out, touch him, for a long time. Every day, he wakes up cold, and the desert heat burns, but it doesn’t burn. It doesn’t flood his veins, it doesn’t fill up his lungs, it doesn’t feel good. He feels pathetic, craving his friend like this. Like Scar was the only thing in the world. His own brain has him feeling sick, a cavernous pit in his stomach that gets deeper and deeper by the day. He’s built up Scar’s hands so high in his mind that he flinched whenever they were near, out of pure buzzing anticipation. And…fuck. Scar respected that. He took it as rejection. He looked so sad every time it happened, too, and it made Grian nauseous. He was never once able to articulate, explain himself.
He feels the bed dip even further behind him, and he nearly falls over at the change in balance. His wings spring up to steady him, but he feels an overwhelming warmth encompass his back, sending every bodily function to a screeching halt. His brain skids out like a car sent careening over the edge of a cliff.
Scar hugs Grian from behind. His arms go underneath Grian’s and wrap around his middle, head resting on his shoulder. Grian is snapped out of his haze immediately, heart in his throat. He feels like he’s going to cough and choke and vomit it up, right there on the bed.
“Scar?” He manages, unsure what to do with his hands. He settles them on his own thighs, fingers digging into the fabric of his thin cotton pants.
Scar makes a soft shushing sound. Grian wants to bolt out of the door. Grian wants to sink into Scar’s arms. His wings flutter. They feel clean, for once. Lighter.
Grian feels the pressure of Scar pressing his lips into his shirt. He squeezes his eyes shut. He thinks, thinks, thinks. His brain is scrolling through itself into a looping mobius strip of a single subject. He wants he needs he craves he will die without. Scar, Scar, Scar, Scar.
The sun is starting to dip lower, the room a percentage darker than when they first came in. With the temperature rapidly dropping, the heat radiating off Scar doesn’t feel bad. His hands, resting on either side of Grian’s ribs, rub circles into the skin there. He feels like he’s slipping back into that haze he was just in, bird-brained and a bit dumb. He cannot physically tear his mind off Scar.
“Okay,” Grian whispers. He’s not sure what he’s saying that to. Anything. Everything. He relaxes again, letting himself sink further into Scar. His wings droop, and he moves his own hands to hang off Scar’s forearms. His face feels so red it’s almost unbearable. His head falls back so he’s looking up at the ceiling, resting on Scar’s shoulder, and he takes a big, lung-filling gulp of air before blowing it back out slowly.
He’s pulled in, impossibly closer into Scar’s lap, his legs outstretched in front of him. Scar squeezes gently, once, then loosens his grip on Grian.
“Do your wings feel better?” Scar asks genuinely, and it makes Grian huff, smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“Yes.” Grian answers, and then impossibly quieter, barely a whisper, “Thank you.” Grian almost couldn’t even hear himself say it. I love you, he thinks, because he does. He has since the beginning. Before the beginning. Always, even when he was too stupid to see it.
“If I asked, would you turn around?”
And Grian does, without thinking much of it. He gathers his wings up so they don’t hit Scar, and he shuffles around until he’s sitting on his heels in front of Scar. He cannot make eye contact, so he looks at a loose thread on Scar’s shorts. He’s positioned on his legs so he’s taller than Scar, and he can feel Scar looking up at him.
“If I asked, would you kiss me?” Grian feels reckless, bold. There’s a string tightening its hold on his heart, and it’s going to slice cleanly through any second now. He does glance up to see Scar’s reaction to his words, and he’s taken aback.
Scar looks starstruck. He looks like he’s been hit by a bus. He looks disorientated, dazed, like he’s barely holding on. His eyes are wide, his mouth is slightly open, jaw slack. Scar’s eyes are darting around Grian’s face, searching for something, any hint of malice or cruelty. As if Grian could joke about that. He finds nothing, and he nods after a couple of beats, movement jerky and quick.
Grian waits, outwardly patient. Inwardly, he’s about to have a panic attack. Scar’s hands come up and hold his jaw, thumbs on his cheeks and fingers splayed on Grian’s neck. He shivers, a trill sprouting from his mouth. And really, that’s all the encouragement Scar needs, because he pulls Grian in for the world's most gentle kiss, as if Grian were a piece of fragile glass in his hands. The pulling nearly sets Grian off balance, so he supports himself with hands on the top of Scar’s thighs. He squeezes the muscles there, secretly indulgently for himself.
It’s chaste, at first. A scared peck. Then, one of Scar’s hands snake away from his jaw, to settle into the fluffy down feathers in the middle of Grian’s upper back. This makes Grian’s mouth open, half in surprise, half to sharply inhale. He lurches forward, crashing his lips into Scar. With every open-mouthed kiss, Grian feels himself slipping more and more. He’s about to fall, but Scar keeps him upright, steady. His hands leave Scar’s thighs and come up, up, up, wrapping themselves around Scar’s neck, one burying itself into his hair. He scratches at Scar’s scalp, nips his lip with his teeth, and Scar makes some god-like, otherworldly, soft noise in the back of his throat. It strikes Grian in the chest like a fist, punching the air out of him.
Scar’s craning his head up, panting. He feels like he’s swimming through molasses, He can’t breathe. He’d willingly drown, too. Grian parts, and they both suck in air.
The sun is on the horizon now. Nobody ever came for them, in their oasis. Wind picks up outside, blowing sand around sand in swirling patterns.
Scar wants to keep kissing Grian forever. He never wants to stop. He hopes the last thing he ever sees is Grian’s face, because he doesn’t think he would survive without him.
“You’re perfect.” Scar says, unabashedly. He’s staring again, unable to rip his eyes away from Grian.
“Shut up.” Grian’s grin ruins the two words, unable to keep infatuation out of his tone. He huffs, tugging at Scar’s wavy hair. “Kiss me again,” He demands.
Scar has never acquiesced to a command faster in his entire life.