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thetomorrowshow · 3 months ago

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love is such a drag - ch. 6

in which Grian gets doused with water twice (but there's a worm the second time)

welp it's april fool's day so I thought it would be a fun time to update my silly scarian drag au :)

“What do I do?”

Mumbo twirls the metal puzzle between his fingers. “Dude, I still can’t believe the man is Scar.”

Grian throws his balled-up sock at him. “You’re here to give advice, not criticize,” he says imperiously. “Pearl didn’t criticize.”

“Not for lack of wanting to,” Pearl says under her breath. Grian throws his other sock at her.

“Really, though? Scar?” Mumbo says. “He’s . . . well, he’s Scar.”

“And you’re Mumbo,” Grian retorts. “I’m Grian. She’s Pearl. What else is new?”

“Yeah, but . . . it’s Scar,” Mumbo says lamely. When he fails to come up with any qualifiers to his statement, Grian turns back to Pearl.

“So?”

“So . . . what?”

“What do I do?”

Pearl sighs. Mumbo makes a sound that might be a choked laugh, but when Grian rounds on him, he’s just coughing into his shoulder.

This isn’t helpful. Neither of them are helpful. He should take his problems to someone who would actually listen to him and want to help.

Unfortunately, the only person like that he can think of is Scar.

Grian groans, flopping his face down into Mumbo’s stomach, who lets out a surprised oof. “This sucks,” he says, muffled by Mumbo’s shirt. “This sucks so much.”

“You could just ghost him,” suggests Mumbo.

“I don’t want to,” Grian whines. “I want to date him. Ugh. Forget I said that.”

“Right, but if you ghost him as Ariana, then you can seduce him as Grian! All’s well that ends well, and all that.”

“I think he’s straight, though. He’s never even looked at a guy while we’re out.”

“Has he ever looked at a girl?” Pearl says thoughtfully.

Which—he hasn’t done that, either, but that’s because he’s infatuated with Ariana. Grian doesn’t think he’d even notice another girl with her around.

“I’m actually not sure that Scar has any sort of concept of sexuality, like, in general,” Mumbo comments. “I wouldn’t even bet anything on him knowing what gay is.”

“He’s not dumb,” Grian says. “He knows, like, everything there is to know about Disney and Star Wars.”

“That doesn’t mean smart, bud.”

Grian maneuvers himself to be lying on his back on Mumbo’s lap, glaring up at him. “You just don’t know him like I do.”

Mumbo shudders. “Goodness me, I sure hope not.”

“You guys are making this worse.”

It’s a lie. Grian feels a bit better than he did earlier—at least, he no longer feels like he might burst into tears at any moment. Even now, as Pearl and Mumbo chuckle, he can’t help but smile. It’s not quite the end of the world, as long as he’s got them on his side.

“I don’t want to ghost him right before Valentine’s Day,” he says. “Maybe—maybe I can go to the dance with him, and like—like, friendzone him and set him up with me? Real me?”

“If he doesn’t even know what gay is, he might not go for it,” says Pearl. “You should try to work out his sexuality first.”

Grian looks over to her, one eyebrow raised. “How would I go about doing that?”

Grian shows up to the next study group meeting early, a rainbow pin affixed to his jacket and a love is love t-shirt on. The plan is simple: once Scar gets here, Mumbo will compliment Grian’s shirt. Scar, kind man that he is, will probably look over at it to comment on it as well. It’s a foolproof plan to see if he knows what it means and if he’s okay with it.

“What if I went home instead?” Grian says, glancing at the open door again. Mumbo shushes him.

“We’re being subtle, stop talking.”

Grian sticks his tongue out at him.

“Hey, Impulse!” Mumbo greets cheerily, as a heavyset man pokes his head in the room. Impulse waves.

“Hey, Mumbo! How’s it going?”

“Totally fine and normal,” Mumbo says. Grian restrains a facepalm. Why is this the plan they decided to go with? Sure, it’ll probably work, but Mumbo could blow the whole operation at any moment. He’s literally sweating right now, a conspicuous drop rolling down his temple, as his mustache quivers. Could he be any more obvious?

“That’s not a suspicious response at all,” Impulse says genially. “Is this Grian?”

“Hi,” Grian says quickly, cutting off whatever excuses Mumbo was about to make. “Yep, that’s me! Impulse, you said?”

Impulse steps into the room, leaning over to shake Grian’s hand. “Nice to meet you, dude. Mumbo and Pearl talk about you all the time.”

Grian laughs. “All good things, I hope?”

“I dunno,” Impulse chuckles. “I’ve heard a bit about your high school adventures.”

“Not from me!” Mumbo interjects. “All Pearl. I would never betray your trust like that, G.”

Grian, unfortunately, knows better than that. Mumbo has betrayed his trust plenty of times—like when he was having his Scar-related breakdown and the first thing Mumbo did was laugh until he couldn’t breathe. Like, choking and crying on the floor laughing. Like, his face actually started turning blue and Pearl threatened to call an ambulance unless he stopped.

He’s a terrible best friend like that.

Grian hasn’t actually heard a lot about Impulse, despite him being one of his sister’s closest friends. He looks like he does in the photo on Pearl’s wall—big and maybe a little imposing, his hair cut short and beard scruffy. He’s wearing cargo shorts (just like Scar was last time, curse him for reminding Grian of Scar) and a black t-shirt with an ‘i’ on it that might be a reference to the Incredibles. Grian hasn’t seen that movie in years. Seems like an odd thing to wear.

But then again, Mumbo wears a button-up almost every day, and Grian himself almost never takes off his red sweater (which he isn’t wearing today to show off his pride shirt and he feels more than a little naked without it), so he really hasn’t got any room to judge.

“I’ve got the other room set up, but only two or three people said they plan on showing, so it might be better to combine today,” Impulse says to Mumbo, eyeing the seats in the room. “What were you planning on going over?”

“Just some stats stuff. Reading tables, p values, all that.”

Impulse nods. “Yeah, we can probably combine. I’ve mostly been running homework help for trig, but if Scar doesn’t show the others would be fine with a recap.”

Grian chokes.

He tries to cover it up as a cough, ducking his face into his elbow, but he knows that his face is redder than it’s ever been. He hacks out another cough past his choking, his ears burning as he feels Impulse’s eyes on him.

“Is—is Scar not coming?” he hears Mumbo ask.

“I haven’t seen him all day, so . . . and he didn’t respond when I texted him.”

“That’s. That’s . . . odd. That’s odd, for Scar, right?”

“I dunno. I mean, sometimes he has to—Grian, do you want some water, dude?”

“I’m fine,” Grian gasps through more and more severe coughing, a tear squeezing out of his eye as he tries desperately to get air in past his twisted up throat tubes. “Just—choked on my spit—”

“Yeah, okay. I’m gonna go get some water.”

Grian hears footsteps leave the room, then Mumbo sighs. “Dude, what do we do if he isn’t here?”

Grian can’t respond, his vision getting a little bit hazy. He’s going to throw up if this gets any worse—his stomach is already cramping from how hard he’s coughing, trying to stop choking.

“Wait, are you actually—do you need—?”

“Got water!”

“Here, let me—”

Grian reels back as what feels like a whole bucket of ice water is thrown in his face, instantly soaking his shirt and hair. Unfortunately, he reels back a bit too far, and falls out of his chair, landing in a wet heap on the hard floor.

And he’s still choking.

“You’re supposed to let him drink it, not throw it at him!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—I’ve never seen someone actually choking before!”

His body wracked with coughs, his arms almost too weak to hold him up, Grian crawls over to his backpack, still sitting by his overturned chair. His water bottle—it’s in the side water bottle holding pocket, he pulls it out but he can’t get it open with how badly his fingers are spasming.

Thankfully, someone takes mercy on him and twists the lid off, holding it up to his lips. Grian drinks gratefully until he can take the bottle back into his own hands, which he holds away from himself as he coughs a few more times, ugly, hoarse sounds to clear out his throat.

“Sorry,” he rasps. He can’t stop shivering, now, goosebumps rising all over his skin from the soaking wet clothes clinging to him.

“Dude, no worries,” Impulse tells him incredulously. Grian tries to stand and ends up collapsing into a chair, his vision a bit fuzzy. “Are you okay?”

Grian waves a hand. “Eh.”

Great. Now he needs to go change, unless he wants to sit here in a freezing puddle of water for the next hour. He turns a weak glare on Mumbo, who has the decency to look a little ashamed, an empty hydroflask still in his hands.

“Sorry?” he apologizes. Grian rolls his eyes.

“I might . . . go home,” he says, pulling himself up onto trembling legs like a newborn baby giraffe. “Thanks . . . thanks, Impulse.”

“You sure? You’re not looking too hot.”

“I live just across the street, I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll—I’ll catch up with you later,” Mumbo says. He twists his mouth strangely, jerking his head toward Impulse. He looks kind of like he’s tasting something sour. Maybe he ate a lemon or something. Anything could have happened while he was dying a second ago.

“See you,” Grian nods to Mumbo.

Then he slings his backpack over his shoulder and wobbles away toward the nearest vending machine to acquire some sort of elixir to restore his health.

Grian has class on Mondays during the study group (last week his class had been canceled, the only reason he’d been there to see Scar in the first place), but it isn’t a very important class. It’s just his civic engagement class. There are more important things than his major at stake right now.

“Looking cute,” Scott calls out from down the hall as Grian hurries toward the study room where Mumbo’s study group meets.

And Scar isn’t there.

Again.

Is he doing something wrong? Scar hasn’t been coming to the study group, Impulse and Mumbo haven’t seen him, and he hasn’t messaged a single thing since he asked Ariana to the Valentine’s Day dance—almost a week ago, now.

Grian leaves early again, though this time he doesn’t nearly choke to death. He makes up some excuse about needing to organize his sock drawer (Mumbo gives him a look of consternation, stumbling over his explanation of the standard normal distribution) and practically flees the room, hurrying back to his apartment without even thinking about his last class of the day, set to start later that afternoon.

Pearl isn’t home, thankfully. It gives Grian plenty of space to change into his parrot onesie and carry all his fish plushies to the couch, which he dumps in a heap on the sofa and collapses on top of them.

Actually, he kind of wishes Pearl was home. Then he could bother her relentlessly until she made him hot chocolate.

Scar got him hot chocolate on their most recent date.

Grian shoves his face into a cod, muffling his wail of despair. He can’t stop thinking about him, and he’s losing his mind! Is there some way to get a restraining order against your own thoughts? Because he desperately needs one.

Everything reminds him of Scar. Every stupid thing, from the Valentine’s bouquets of flowers at the grocery store to some kid playing Tetris in front of him in class to Mumbo tripping over his own feet. It’s awful and depressing and always leaves him feeling down. Not to mention, he spends way too much time imagining a life together while lying in bed, trying to sleep. Too much. Restraining order, now, please.

If he moved to Iceland, he definitely wouldn’t have to deal with this. In fact, Iceland also offers free college, so if he wanted to continue his education in a distant land with no connection to his life here, it would be a pretty good option. He’s sure he can also get a fisherman apprenticeship, though at this point, the whole ‘laying low’ thing isn’t as necessary as it was before. Given that Scar seems to be ghosting him just as much in return.

He supposes it would be kind of funny if Scar had also run away to Iceland. He can picture it—he’s been living in Iceland as a fisherman for several years now, a bushy mustache successfully hiding his identity. One day he’s out fishing in a storm, only kept safe by the guiding lighthouse as he gets dangerously close to shipwrecking on the rocks. He manages to stumble inside the lighthouse, soaked through and shivering, only to stop with awe at the beautiful murals that spiral around the inside of the building.

He stands there in the center of it, slowly spinning in place to take it all in, then hears an oddly familiar click-thump of a cane. . . .

And Scar comes striding down the spiral stairs, his own face covered with a similarly bushy mustache and a long beard.

“Well, hello there!” he says, leaning against the stair rail. “It’s quite the storm out there, isn’t it? Come on up, I’ve got hot chocolate on the stove!”

Shocked and completely disarmed, Grian follows, shucking off his heavy coat and clutching his arms around his waterlogged red sweater. Scar leads him into a cozy kitchen, a vine trailing from an overgrown flower pot set on the windowsill, a tiny table set with two chairs in the corner. He pours them both mugs of hot chocolate and sits, pushing Grian’s toward him.

Grian drinks gratefully, sitting with him, still dripping water all over. The hot chocolate warms him through, and Grian sighs in relief as his thumb brushes over a small chip in the handle of the off-white mug.

Then he looks up at Scar, and Scar is looking at him, that soft smile that he always gives Ariana gracing his face.

“You must be freezing,” he’ll say, and Grian will nod, taking another sip. “Not to worry! Plenty of blankets in this here lighthouse, and body heat is the best source of warmth, so we should probably cuddle on the couch.”

Grian nods again. “That—that sounds good,” he says, trying to cover his blush with his mug.

Soon enough, Grian will find himself in a spare pair of trousers and an oversized shirt, both of which smell so much like Scar his head is dizzy with it. He joins Scar on the couch, where the man holds him tenderly to his chest, the two of them wrapped in a blanket while the fireplace crackles cozily nearby.

Scar combs his fingers through Grian’s stringy, salty hair, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he murmurs. Grian hums contentedly, one finger idly curled around the end of Scar’s beard.

“But so have the worms,” Scar says, voice quickly turning ominous.

Grian blinks.

“What?” he says, looking up at him. Scar’s face is lined with concern, concern that only grows when he glances out the window at the thundering night.

“They’re worse during the rain,” he says. “And with this storm? I wouldn’t be surprised if they uprooted my entire home.”

Grian’s eyes follow Scar’s to the window—and, as he watches, something blocks the lower half of the glass, lightning reflecting off a slimy, segmented, fleshy tube.

It’s massive—thicker around than Grian himself is, and it slides across the window slowly, seemingly never-ending.

“I’ll protect you,” Scar breathes. “But our best bet is to stay quiet and hope they don’t sense us.”

“They can smell us, though,” Grian whispers. “We have to try to run.”

“There’s too many of them. They’re slow, but . . . so am I.”

Scar’s right. They may be slow, but with Scar’s cane, he’ll never outrun the beasts.

“Then we stay,” Grian decides, pulling the blanket closer around them. Scar shakes his head.

“No, you can go! You have to get to the combination Subway-Chili’s, it’s the only safe place close by!”

“I won’t leave you,” promises Grian.

Scar gives him a look, one overflowing with affection and grief and so much hope. “Grian.”

The window rattles under the weight of the worm’s heavy body. Grian ignores it. “Kiss me?” he asks softly, eyes flicking toward Scar’s lips.

“Grian, don’t you have a class?”

Kind of a weird thing for Scar to say right now. Grian frowns—

“Grian, mate, wake up.”

A pillow hits him in the head and Grian opens his eyes.

He pushes himself up onto his arms, knocking a salmon off the soda and onto the carpet floor. He blinks at it, then looks up, squinting at Mumbo’s mustached face.

He glances out the window, finds it cloudy, but not too dark, another apartment complex visible. No storms and giant, flesh-eating worms.

“I think I just had the weirdest dream,” he mumbles, smacking his lips. Yeah, his mouth tastes like afternoon nap. Not his favorite. “There were, like, worms.”

“Dude, isn’t your class starting soon?”

Grian fumbles around the sofa until he finds his phone on the floor, next to the salmon. One look at it tells him two things—the time, and that he hasn’t received a single message from Scar.

“It already started,” he says, flopping onto his back on the sofa.

“How many times can you miss it?”

“No attendance policy. It’s a seminar.”

Mumbo sighs. “Sure, but what about the other class that you skipped? To come to the study group?”

“Maybe he hates me.”

“Your professor?”

Grian just groans as Mumbo carefully moves his legs aside so that he can sit down too. He doesn’t even protest when Grian puts them right back, now on top of Mumbo’s lap.

“He’s basically constantly texting me,” says Grian, picking at the stitches of a cod plushie. “But he hasn’t said anything since last Monday, Mumbo, he hasn’t texted me in a week and he wasn’t at the study group twice and I don’t know what to do!”

“Oh, Scar,” Mumbo says. He’s clearly not paying a huge amount of attention, his eyes fixed on his phone. “Dude, it’s probably fine.”

“What if he hates me?” Grian bemoans, flailing his arms dramatically. “I kind of ghosted him, so what if he hates me?”

He didn’t mean to ghost him all week. Every day, he’d told himself that he would say something if Scar didn’t text first. But then he put off figuring out what to say, because he didn’t know how to respond without accepting the invite to the date, and now it’s been a week and he’s definitely made a mistake.

“Isn’t that good, though?” Mumbo says thoughtfully. “If he hates girl-you, maybe he’ll like you-you.”

Grian’s still not quite awake, so it takes him a moment to parse that sentence.

He doesn’t want Scar to hate any version of him, though. He wants Scar to love all of him, instead of just one small part.

He should really text him back.

“Would it hurt that much if I just went to the dance with him?” he reasons out loud. “Probably nothing will happen.”

“I’m pretty sure you said that there was the possibility of him asking you to be his girlfriend.”

“That probably won’t happen.”

Mumbo looks up from his phone, giving Grian a Look not dissimilar to the one he gave him at the study group today. Annoyance and exasperation and anxiety, all mixed into one facial expression. “Dude. It’ll be Valentine’s Day.”

“Yeah, so, basically fine,” Grian waves off, already opening his text thread with Scar. “And if he does ask, I can just say I’m not ready for that kind of commitment or something. I’ll be fine.”

“If Pearl were here, she’d stop you.”

“Pearl’s not here, so there.”

He honestly just really, really wants to hear from Scar again.

Besides, the dance will be fun. It’ll be really fun. He’ll have a great time.

Ariana: sry for the late response, life lol

Ariana: sure :) meet you there?

The next day comes and Grian still hasn’t gotten a text back.

That’s actually really scary. Really, really, scary, because Mumbo tells him that Scar didn’t come to the study group that afternoon, either, which means he’s basically a missing person.

Grian doesn’t want to talk about the steps that bring him to the door of Scar’s apartment, knocking before he can have second thoughts.

It definitely didn’t involve Mumbo, an admin computer, and an absurd heist-situation that involved lowering Mumbo in through the ceiling, hanging from some gear that he borrowed from his rock climbing class.

It also definitely didn’t involve Grian accidentally dropping Mumbo on his face.

Nor did it involve the administrator coming in halfway through and Mumbo hiding behind a lamp.

But they managed to get Scar’s address from an undisclosed location by undisclosed means, and Mumbo swore he would never get involved in Grian’s antics ever again and Grian knew that was a promise he wasn’t going to be able to keep.

But, hey—the Valentine’s Day dance is mere days away, and he needs to know if Scar’s okay before he actually collapses into a breakdown! Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

When the door opens, though, Grian’s surprised to see someone who definitely isn’t Scar.

The man who answers the door has glasses and black hair that sticks up wildly, an irritated expression on his face. He’s larger than Grian, large enough to block most of the doorway, so Grian can’t look past to see if Scar’s even here.

“What do you want?” the man asks, one hand still on the doorknob, as if he’s ready to close it in Grian’s face.

“Erm, hi!” Grian says, frantically searching for his pre-decided lines. “My name’s Grian, I—well, er, I’m in a study group with S—with someone named Scar, and—well, I thought he lived here—”

“He does.”

“Oh! Cool! Well, we haven’t seen him around in a while, and he wasn’t responding to any messages—” Grian panics briefly, because as far as he knows only Ariana has sent Scar anything, but he assumes that Impulse has said something so he forges on— “so we just wanted to make sure he was okay.”

The man glances over his shoulder, back into the apartment. Grian stands on his tippy-toes to try and see as well, but drops down to flat feet when the man turns back around.

“He’s good,” the man says.

Oh.

So Scar has been ghosting him.

That really, really hurts. Way more than he thought it would—his heart actually feels like it sinks in his chest, all the way down to swim around in his stomach acid.

The man must notice the way he deflates, because he sighs. “Look, he didn’t want me to tell anyone,” he says, lowering his voice. “But Scar got a bit of a nasty concussion last week. No screens for a week, is what the doctor said. He’ll be back in a day or two. What did you say your name was, again?”

Oh.

Okay, forget about his heart sinking. It rises so quickly that he can almost taste the burn of stomach acid in the back of his throat, which may just be vomit induced by such rapidly vacillating emotions.

Scar hasn’t been purposefully avoiding him, he’s just concussed! He’s still head over heels for Ariana!

“Grian,” he says, before smiling—and he can’t stop the grin from spreading so large that his cheeks hurt. “Thanks. Thanks!”

“Okay,” the man says with a frown. Grian doesn’t say anything else, though, just skips away down the stairs and out of the apartment building, absolutely giddy with the endorphins rushing through him.

He might still throw up.

But that doesn’t matter! Tonight will be an ice cream celebration, and Grian’s stomach had better just deal with it! That night, it’s right after he eats an entire bowl of caramel-drizzled ice cream, of course, that his phone buzzes. Neither Mumbo nor Pearl notice, scraping the last bits of ice cream out of their bowls, but Grian’s stomach starts doing somersaults when he sees who he received a message from.

Grian actually throws up, then, barely making it to the kitchen sink in time.

Amidst Mumbo’s panicking and Pearl’s concern, Grian looks at his phone again, wiping off his mouth with a handful of water.

Scar: Sounds goodd! I;ll meet yuo at 7?

“Well, fellas,” he says, holding up his phone. “Looks like I have a date.”

This all would have been far easier if he’d just fled to Iceland.

#scarian #ariana griande #grian #goodtimeswithscar #gtws #hermitcraft smp #hermitcraft #hermitcraft fanfic #love is such a drag #lisad #mas writes #i'm feeling quite sane about this chapter #by which i mean. we once again experience a world where everything that happens is the first thing that popped into my head #enjoy the choking and worms #enjoy grian's seemingly absurd thought process #honestly this entire fic is very absurd #next chapter will be a bit more serious but still very absurd #lmk what you think #love you guys

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