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angeart · 2 months

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Ari AU - Part Five

Part five of the Popstar Grian AU (ari au <3) that I am indulging in with @xoxo-ren-xoxo. This time written by yours truly :3c Expect turbulence spread out across 3,2k words.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four

CONTENT WARNINGS for this part: suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, mental health crisis, despair and desperation, seizures, medical crisis, a sprinkle of angst (a whole lakeful)

The New Normal

And yet, life goes on. They settle back into routine, trying to find some footing in this new normal. Scar is trying so hard, taking everything as it comes, needing to be ready for anything, doing his best to spin things into the positive. He needs to be the strong one here. He needs to be attentive and watchful, patient and loving.

It’s not a wretched work, if it’s for Grian. He’d do anything for her.

(Sometimes, he dreams of waking up to the bathroom light being on, and Grian lying limp and unmoving in his arms.) (Sometimes, that dream feels so real—it’s happened again, he didn’t wake up this time, it’s too late—he wakes up in panic and cries, a mix of grieving and relief as Grian confusedly stirrs in his arms, the bathroom light off.) (The pills are hidden, in Scar’s charge, but if Scar can get to them, so can Grian. Right?) (He’s terrified.)

He desperately wants Grian to stay alive, but he wants more than that. He wants Grian to laugh. (He fell in love with the sound of that laughter, eyes squinted in the sparkly, wild, life-filled reflection of it. The unabashed happiness pooled there. Oh how it hurts his heart to think that he might never have that again— how it hurts his heart to think that Grian might never have that again—)

He wants his words to be able to soothe and heal. He wants to kiss it better. He wants his hugs to do something. He feels so helpless. Like nothing he does makes a big enough difference.

But maybe the small things matter, too. Maybe they count. Maybe they add up.

He isn’t going to give up. Not on this. Not on Grian. He’s going to be there, stay, and do his best.

Despite everything, they manage to carve out some good things for themselves. Scar is creative, and kind, and funny. He bakes for Grian, gives her all the cookies she could ever want (which really isn’t many, because she’ll get sick if she eats too much). They spend hours just talking, laughing, cuddling. Grian even sets up a few pranks for Scar, on the best days.

But things aren’t really good. Most days, Grian can’t bring herself to get out of bed, and Scar has to fight hard to make sure she takes her medication and drinks some water, if nothing else. He hugs her through rough nights a lot, heart splintering as he listens to Grian’s choked, unending cries.

Sometimes, Grian goes through the apartment looking for things to hurt himself with. Scar tells her to come to him when it feels like that, but most often than not, Grian’s mind is her worst enemy. It isolates him. It drives him to make bad choices, in silence.

Which is how Scar finds him once at three AM sobbing underneath the kitchen table, all the drawers open and emptied.

He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He knows better. Instead, he just crouches down and gathers Grian in his arms. He rocks them both gently, pressing a kiss to Grian’s hair. Hoping to offer some comfort. To be a lighthouse when the waves and cliffs are too deadly around them.

Grian leans on him easily, burrowing into offered arms, crying.

She asks, hoarsely, wretchedly, Where are all the knives?

Scar shushes her and rubs her back and softly murmurs that’s not something she needs.

Grian claws at Scar's chest and says he needs it, actually. Desperate and hurting. (There’s an agony howling behind his ribcage and he can’t find a way to silence it. It hurts. It hurts, why doesn’t Scar understand?)

Scar just hugs tighter. No.

And on it goes. Scar keeps all sharp and dangerous objects locked away. Grian cries when she searches desperately and can’t find anything. The house is too secure. It’s too guarded. There’s nothing dangerous enough in their home.

But that just means that Grian has to look elsewhere.

In the middle of the night, wrangling his fear of being seen, of reporters, of getting a seizure from a camera flash. All those fears are overpowered by a much darker, urgent need.

It doesn’t matter if she’s seen if she’s going to be gone soon, right…?

Which is why, one night, Scar wakes to the sound of the front door shutting.

Attempt Three - The Lake

The apartment door has an alarm installed that beeps when it’s turned off. It’s this sound that wakes Scar up, a quiet beep beep that makes him deliriously think of the heart monitor at the hospital. He’s disoriented for a minute, processing that sound plunging into silence, and he has a horrible thought that it was all a dream and Grian actually never made it out of the hospital.

But then he blinks and his brain catches up. Grian made it home. He was home, but he’s not in bed. And that sound? That was their front door.

Shit.

Shit shit shit.

He blindly grabs at his phone and runs downstairs. He yells for Grian in case he’s wrong and Grian is still at home. He calls him. It rings in their bedroom.

The pit in his stomach deepens and he quickly puts on his shoes and rushes outside, eyes wide and heartbeat panicky-fast as he looks around. The street is quiet, dark, deserted. Devoid of even the seemingly ever-present reporters. (A fact that strikes him as eerie and worrisome, where otherwise it’d call for relief.)

With shaky hands, he manages to dial a number. He calls the crew. Breathless and lightheaded, he says—not very coherently—that Grian is gone.

“What do you mean, gone???”

Scar’s legs are about ready to buckle under him. He starts walking in one direction, then spins in the other. He’s shaking horribly. He can’t think. He’s babbling into the phone, ignoring Impulse entirely as he tells him to slow down and take a breath. That feels trivial. He doesn’t have time for slowing down. He needs to find Grian, now.

His head is spinning, running into dead ends. He needs help, so he asks the crew, desperately, if they have any idea where Grian would have gone. (“Listen, if you were gonna off yourself, where would you go?”)

They don’t know the neighbourhood too well, since they don’t live there, but with mounting unease, they try to suggest general enough places, seeing if one will stick. (Hoping that none of the easy options are actually within walkable distance.) Is there any tall broadcast tower or something? Is there a highway near your guys? Any bridges? Train tracks? Uh, a lake?

Scar almost trips. A lake.

His phone almost falls out of his grasp as he breaks into a sprint.

Thankfully, unlike him, Grian wasn’t sprinting like a madman. And yet it still feels like Scar is almost too late, when he arrives within sight of the lake only to see Grian waist-deep in. His brain short-circuits, relieved to have found her, relieved that Grian is still okay (for now, for now) (for how long?), while still running on absolute mayhem of a thought-robbing panic.

Scar rushes in, of course. Yelling Grian’s name for anyone to hear. There’s a big splash as he runs into the water, followed by his absolutely desperate begging.

Stop. Please stop. Don’t. Please, Grian, no.

But as he approaches, Grian takes a fearful step back. Deeper in. Further out of Scar’s reach.

Scar startles and stops. They’re both in the cold water now. Grian’s staring at him with wide eyes, both their breathing erratic.

She didn’t expect Scar to go after her. Didn’t think Scar’d wake up. (A mistake. She should know better.) Honestly, Grian isn’t really thinking straight at all. Something in him is splintering as he stares at Scar, who looks so heartbroken and terrified.

Scar continues pleading. He isn't even sure what exactly he's saying; he just has to keep going until something sticks. His voice trembles. He talks softly, even though his words come out in jumbled heaps. He begs. He bargains.

He takes a tiny step forward.

Grian takes a wide, alarmed step back. Flails. Stumbles. Barely keeps himself upright.

He’s so close, so close to what he intended to do. The water is right here, beckoning Grian to go under. To let the surface close over her and take everything away.

But he doesn’t want Scar to dive after him. He’s irrationally terrified of Scar stopping him now.

She asks Scar to go home.

Scar looks at him as if he was insane. No way he’s doing that.

And then his phone rings, the crew checking in. Grian startles, flinching, everything about her threatening to take several more steps back in an instant. Scar frowns and swipes at his phone to silence it before holding his hands out placatingly.

He says it’s okay. It’s just the two of them. It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

(Nothing is okay.)

Despairingly, Scar tries to dredge up a memory. Something nice. He closes his eyes for a second, swaying from dizziness. He thinks of dim lights. Of a melody. Of better times, back when Grian laughed like she meant it.

Gingerly, he reaches a trembling hand out to Grian. His eyes are teary when he opens them again, his voice shaking as he asks for a dance.

Grian’s heart hurts. A dance?

Scar nods. Mhm! He gives a smile, as best as he can. He says it’s a nice night for a dance.

And Grian finds that he— He wants to. He wants to give in. He wants—

He wants to live.

He wants to be spontaneous and he wants Scar’s arms around him and he wants—

She doesn’t know. It still feels like she should take a step back and let the lake take him.

The spontaneity has been so thoroughly stifled in Grian’s life, by the media and the constant pressure for perfection. She doesn’t remember how it felt, without these shackles and restraints. Without all this suffocating weight on top of her.

But as she looks up from Scar’s hand, he sees that here are tears in Scar’s eyes, and he’s smiling so softly, and his hand is reaching out, and— Grian used to love dancing with him. They used to be silly. They laughed a lot. It always felt nice, Scar’s arms securely around her.

She can feel her heart breaking in her chest.

She wants to have that again.

Quietly, Grian makes a tentative step towards Scar.

Instantly, all of Scar flares up with the instinct to go forwards, to meet her halfway, but Grian still looks so wound-up, like he’d run off. So Scar stays still. Lets Grian come to him. He’s trying to soften it, desperately attempting to make it easier, more enticing than whatever else that’s got Grian in its grasp—he says gentle things and hums melodies, splashes a bit of water around, laughing under his breath (a bit unsteadily) about how he’s never danced in a lake, doesn’t it sound like fun?

And Grian smiles a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it does sound fun. (Even though her concept of fun is crumbling, understanding of it slinking out of reach, despite all of Scar’s efforts to paint the whole picture. Grian feels like he’s wearing a blindfold.) It— It sounds ridiculous, actually. But in a good way. In a Scar-way. (Grian loves the Scar brand of ridiculous.)

Grian gets to Scar, and Scar tries to grab him without being too desperate about it. Gentle. Fond. A dance hold. He presses a kiss to Grian’s hair, murmurs a quiet “Shall we?” and leads them in soft sways, right there, waist-deep in the water. [ART]

And maybe he starts singing something stupid.

And maybe Grian’s caught off guard enough to actually laugh. (The sound still carries tears and hoarseness in it, but it is a laugh.)

All Fragile Things Come To Ruins

And yet they can’t keep this moment for themselves. Just like anything else, Grian isn’t destined to be allowed to keep things. To be allowed to to crumble and be put back together in any semblance of privacy. Even when she’s made of cracked glass, ready to shatter, he’ll never stop being hounded. Every moment of weakness or vulnerable tenderness exploited and taken away.

There’s a flash, from a different part of the shore. Followed by another one.

They could’ve just ignored it, for the moment, if it wasn’t for Grian’s condition. A flash of light in the dark is suddenly much more dangerous than it ought to be. It’s a physical weapon, carving at Grian, instead of just tearing away at his mental state.

Scar feels Grian freeze up in his arms. He hears in his breathing that something’s wrong. She’s seizing and Scar has to act fast.

He tries to remember the things written in the booklet he read. Grian is twitching against him. The water splashes at their sides.

Okay. Okay, stay calm, Scar.

One. Loosen any clothes around the neck. Great, Grian’s wearing a button-up pyjama top, so that’s easy. Or, should be. Scar still fumbles a little with shaky hands, trying to keep hold on Grian—who’s putting his whole weight on Scar—and fighting with the buttons. But he manages to get it done, relatively quickly. There. No constricted breathing.

Two. Record when the seizure starts and stops.

This is when Scar’s mind starts properly spiralling. What is he meant to do if his phone is wet? He doesn’t wear a watch, and— Wait, are they meant to get out of the water? Is it considered dangerous?

Scar’s vision blurs, but he does his best to take a breath. He needs to get them through this. Hold grian steady. Above water. It’s okay. It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

Another flash.

Scar buries Grian in his arms, trying to shield her from the light without moving him too much. He wants to yell at whoever is doing it—but knows it would achieve nothing. He wants to fight them. He’s scared and angry and Grian’s life is in his hands, in a wholly different way than just minutes ago, but no less terrifying.

Three. After he’s stopped spasming, move him into a recovery position. That means getting to solid ground and getting safely on the floor. Gently. That’s a whole other issue.

Grian’s only held up by Scar right now, literally the only thing keeping him afloat. It’s okay. It’ll be okay, Scar says, as much to Grian as to himself. He does his best to keep his voice steady, because he knows you’re meant to speak calmly. He only needs to call an ambulance if this goes on for more than 5 minutes.

Scar has no idea how much time has passed.

Once Grian stops convulsing, Scar basically carries him out of the water. He’s really not meant to move her so much, but there’s no other way to get Grian into a recovery position. He improvises, heart terrified, hoping what he’s doing is right.

He carefully—so very carefully—puts Grian on the ground, on his side, as much in a recovery position as Scar can remember.

And then he waits.

And waits.

Time passes, and Scar has no idea if it’s been five minutes yet. Anxiously, he tries to breathe steadily and count seconds, even though it no longer matters without any starting point.

When it’s been more than one minute since he started—just when he’s contemplating calling an ambulance—Grian gasps loudly. His breathing is laborious and heavy, panting, but he’s back. He’s awake. It’s gonna be okay.

Scar doesn’t touch him straight away, just in case, but he uses his body as a shield to block any more potential camera flashes. He speaks calmly to her—or as calm as he can manage—and asks if she’s okay.

Grian nods, a little out of it still. He’s shaking like a leaf. That was scary. Scarier than the first time, when he passed out. Or maybe this was just worse because he remembers it. Or maybe because it happened in a lake. There wasn’t any ground to hit, any breath to take, if things went wrong. She was completely reliant on Scar.

And Scar didn’t let her down. He kept him safe.

That doesn’t make it not frightening. But Scar is still here. Still protective. Still determined. Still unwilling to give up or let go.

Through the fuzz, Grian deliriously thinks that the moment before it all went down was actually good. It— It was nice.

Of course it would be ruined by a camera.

Of course it would be.

Grian isn’t allowed to have anything of his own anymore. Not his breakdowns, not his romantic moments, not joy, not tears, not medical emergencies.

Nothing is his.

He curls up on the ground, presses his forehead into the grass and sobs.

He wants that moment again.

He wants it back. He wants it not to be stolen. He wants it to be his—

He wants to be allowed to keep something.

He can’t. He can’t.

The lake is right there, taunting him.

Scar’s fingers are so gentle when they brush her hair, his voice filled with affection and concerns as he checks up on her.

It all feels like emerging from water to take gulps of air (they burn in her chest, but they feel so good), only to be yanked back down below, sharply and without warning, lungs flooding with saltwater—

He’s drowning again and he’s tired of drowning.

He sobs, pleading for it all to just stop. To have an out. An exit. To be allowed to end it.

Scar shushes him softly, kissing his hair. Voice reassuring, if raw.

It’s this moment that really convinces Scar that he has to say something, publicly, even if it might not make a difference. Because this is destroying Grian—it has destroyed Grian—and Scar can’t just watch it happen. He thinks about this while comforting Grian, fully aware that Grian won’t want him to say anything. But it’s going to happen. It has to happen.

But they still need to get through this moment first. They need to get back home, together, both of them, safe and alive.

They’re both cold. Wet and shivering.

Scar waits a while longer, not rushing anything, but then he suggests they should go home when Grian feels alright to stand.

Grian doesn’t know if she’ll ever feel alright to do anything.

She feels devoid of energy. Sad and hollow and. Isn't it all pointless? She can stay here curled up and shivering. It doesn't matter.

Scar just really, really wants Grian to go home with him.

Grian’s heart is too hurt and tired to refuse. He gives in easily to Scar’s guidance (having someone safe make the decisions for her), surrenders to his arms (is it trust, or is it just a hollow lack of caring of what happens next?).

With so much care, Scar lifts Grian up.

He carries him home. Leaving behind wet footsteps. Murmuring comforting nonsense the whole way, despite his own sky-high anxiety. (There are more flashes.) (Grian’s face is pressed into Scar’s chest. She’s shivering in his arms.) Scar’s hold on Grian is gentle yet tight, a firm grasp; something in him is scared that if he lets go even a little bit, Grian will slip from his reach.

But Grian doesn’t want to go anywhere. He doesn’t want to go away. He wants to stay right here, curled in Scar’s hold. Cherished. Protected. Loved.

Cold, worn, devastated, and scared, but still so very much in love, they go home.

#ange writes #ange rambles #ari au #PART FIVE!!!#this time by meeeeee #my favourite scene #the lake scene #it's so heartache filled #so desperate and dark and almost mournful #but amidst it all #there's this softness #and dancing #and clinging to hope and life despite it all?#sobs #anyway come yell at us about this <3 #cws just to be safe:#mental health struggles #suicidal ideation

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