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Grog had never been good at romance. He'd never been inclined towards it. He got it, sort of, he knew what it was and he understood why people liked it, but he'd never ... he'd never felt any real urges towards having it himself.
Now, don't get him wrong, he didn't mean sex in that. Grog was perfectly fine with having sex. Lots of it, nothing wrong with that. Sex was good, sex was great. Sex was like fighting, it was fun and physical and made you feel like the strongest, hardiest, most awesome bastard in the world afterwards. All the more so, all the better, when your partner was as tough or tougher than you were. That was the best. Sex and fighting, both of 'em were better when the other body was strong enough to make it real. When it came to sex, he did have a type, Grog knew that. Women, mostly women, who could stand with him toe-to-toe. He saw someone like that, his whole body stood up and paid attention. He had a type, yeah. He knew sex, he was good at sex, he'd happily have sex until the very end of his days. That wasn't the problem.
It was romance that was the problem. The extra thing, the weird thing. The bit that Grog didn't get so well. Like ... Like Scanlan. Right? Him and Scanlan, they were mates. They understood each other. They went to houses of favourable ladies together. They'd seen each other have sex, like, plenty of times, and they hadn't minded it. 'Cause it was different, right? Sex. It was just fun, it didn't mean anything. It was fine. On that level, him and Scanlan understood each other perfectly.
But then ... there was Pike. Him and Scanlan, they both loved Pike as well. And that was different. It was ... separate from the sex, yeah, both of them had it separate in their heads, but Scanlan's way of holding it separate was different from Grog's.
To Grog, Pike was family. He loved her more than he'd ever loved anything or anyone else in his life. He would die for her a thousand times. There was nobody in this world he loved more than he loved Pike. And there was no sex in that. Family and sex were miles apart in his head. But Scanlan, right, Scanlan loved her too, he loved her like family, like friends, but he loved her a different way as well. It was ... it was separate from some of the sex, it was separate from the sex he had when he went out with Grog, but it wasn't separate from all the sex. Scanlan wanted to love her that way too. Physically, like that. And Grog wasn't sure, not entirely sure, but he thought that if Scanlan could have sex with someone he loved the other way as well, if he could have sex with Pike, maybe he might not want it with anyone else afterwards. It was a big maybe, Grog wasn't sure about it at all, but he might. If Scanlan could have sex and family at the same time, romance, then that might what he really wanted.
It didn't work like that for Grog. Love for him meant family, not sex. He couldn't ... He couldn't mix 'em in his head. He'd have sex with someone if he liked them, but he didn't want to have sex if he loved them. It was that simple. For him, it was that simple.
And, yeah, he knew he wasn't getting this all the way right. He knew if he talked to somebody about it, tried to explain, that they'd think he was doing it wrong, getting all of it wrong. There was something else, he knew that. Romance and family and sex, they were all different. Romance was more than just shoving the other two together, or different from shoving the other two together, he got that. He just ...
He'd never felt it. Romance. That kind of love. It didn't work like that for him. There was sex, right, and there was family. That was it. That was all there was.
He'd had sex with ... honestly, he wasn't even sure, he wasn't the best at keeping track and it was a big number, especially since Scanlan'd come along. He'd had sex with a lot of people. He'd liked a lot of people. Lady Kima, godsdamn. There were a lot of amazing women out there, and he'd be happy to partner as many of them as might be willing, and to come back again for rematches as well if they wanted to. But that would be it. That'd be all. If they found somebody else, if they wanted just that person and nobody else, he wouldn't mind it. He'd be happy for 'em.
Love for him was when people were for keeping, and people for keeping were family. Grog didn't have as many of those as he had people he'd had sex with, but he had a lot more now than he'd had once. Pike, first of all. Pike more than anybody. And then Scanlan, yeah, and Vax, and Vox Machina, all of them, his whole family. He had so many now. So many people to love, so many people to keep safe. It was amazing. It was the best thing he'd ever had in his life. He loved them all with everything he had.
And he didn't want to have sex with any of them. Not one. Not the way Scanlan did, or Vax and Keyleth did, or the way any of 'em who sometimes looked at each other did. They were all muddled up, his family, and sometimes he thought all of them had gotten it a bit confused, mashed up family and romance in their heads and gotten muddled, but ... It was all right. It was okay. They'd figure it out. Probably. He'd offer to help, but ... well, that was the problem, wasn't it? He couldn't. Because that thing they felt, that thing they got confused with, he didn't feel it. Not for them, not for anyone else either.
He thought sometimes they felt a bit sorry for him. The ones who knew, Pike and Scanlan. He thought Pike especially felt a bit sad for him. He wanted to tell her not to be. Not just because a sad Pike was wrong anyway, but because ... because he didn't need her to be. He didn't need her to be sad, he didn't want it. There wasn't anything wrong with him. Like, he knew they'd think there was, if he tried to explain, he knew a lot of people would think it, but he didn't. He had what he needed, and he was happy with it. He knew Pike had no reason to be sad, at least not about that.
He'd never felt romance. He didn't feel it, he didn't need it. 'Cause he had family, right? He had people to love, he had people to keep. He had people who would die for him, people who would fight for him, people who would hold him and keep him safe and let him hold them and let him fight for them as well. He had people to love and people who loved him. He had family.
And he had sex. Lots of it, if he wanted it. The world was full of amazing people, strong and fierce and willing to have a fight or to have sex, whichever they both felt like at the time. There was no shortage of that. If Grog wanted something physically, he could have it. And if he wanted love, if he wanted to look at someone and know they would die for him, he could have that too. He didn't smush them together the way other people did, but he did have them. Both of them. As much as he needed and as much and more than he'd ever thought he wanted.
He wasn't missing anything. Well, okay, he was probably missing a lot, he had a tendency to do that sometimes, but it was okay. None of it mattered to him. The important things, the really important ones, he wasn't missing them. He knew exactly what they were, and where they were, and how to hold on to them. He didn't need anything aside from that. He didn't need anything else in the world.
And an odd thing, kind of a strange thing, but he thought Scanlan maybe understood that a bit more these days as well. Since he'd found his daughter, since he'd found Kaylie. Grog looked at him sometimes now, and Scanlan looked back, and he thought ... he thought his friend felt a bit less sad for him than he'd used to. 'Cause family counted for a lot, you know. Even for the kinds of people who did need and want other things as well. Scanlan wasn't like Grog, he had needs that Grog didn't, but even in spite of that there was ... a kind of certainty to be found in family. A kind of strength, a kind of love. If you had it, even if you had nothing else in the world, you were never quite as sad as the world might want you to be.
And Grog, knowing how much of it he had and knowing he needed very little else, well.
Let's just say he was very rarely sad at all.