#seriously auughh thank you so much im so glad you enjoy them

[tunastime]

I’m always a little nervous sending a scarian request but I just love the way you write them<3 so can I get scarian 10 pls 🤲

10. transparent / tangled (x) (839 words)

Grian is trying to make a sweater better. No. He’s trying to fix the holes in his sweater with thread and needles from a compass. The thread is tangled in his hands. It’s dark red, like his sweater. His sweater is draped over his knee, and the patches sit in his lap. Grian threads the needle.

He’s in an undershirt far too thin for the rapidly cooling autumn weather. Scar’s cloak is draped over his shoulders. Scar is sitting by the fireplace, his back to the flame. He’s reading the book off Grian’s bookshelf, tracing the words under his fingertips. Grian feels goosebumps on his skin.

“Why do we keep playing that game even when it breaks us?"

Scar looks up toward him. Grian looks up from his hands holding the needle and thread, still trying to spool it around it's bobbin. His eyebrows knit together.

"What d'you mean?"

"The death game," Scar says slowly. "Why do we keep playing it? Why do you keep setting it up? When you know it's horrible?"

"Was never supposed to be horrible..." Grian settles, twisting his hands. He starts to sew again. He pulls the thread through a part of his sweater. He’s sewing in a patch of blue on the elbow. He’ll be sewing patches into the shoulders too, just for the sake of it. It’s threadbare, but he can’t replace it until he’s knit a new one. And he'll have to ask Gem for the spinning wheel to do that. He has too many sweaters in too many colors and not much else. "It was supposed to be fun."

"It is, most of the time,” Scar lays back. Grian watches him pull a pillow from the chair beside him, propping it behind his head. He stretches out, crossing his ankles. It can’t be good for his back, but Grian doesn’t stop him. “But then you kill your friends, and you betray them, and you hurt them."

Scar doesn’t sound upset when he says this. He states it as if it’s fact. Part of it is; it’s a token of the games. You're tangled in the awfulness of it all. You’re always expecting someone to do something. But it was never the original intention. The first one was a game, something to keep him occupied. Something to keep other people satiated, maybe. (Though he may not ever say that. Whether or not someone heard it and whether or not that was true was for only him to know.)

"Suppose you do," Grian trails. He drops his hands in his lap. "It's...I get bored here. I know you do too, not quite mortal." He gestures to Scar with his needle before he punches it back through the fabric. Scar snorts.

"It's kind of a sick sort of fun,” he finishes. “Knowing you'll die eventually.”

"I guess so...” Scar hums. “I guess life always goes back to normal."

Normal. What did that word even mean anymore? Was there a sense of normalcy anymore? How far did they push the envelope? How much irreparable damage did they do?

Scar was still lying there, and Grian was still sitting on the floor in his house and was still sleeping next to him if he wasn’t studying in the ground below them. He was still talking and laughing and enjoying the company of a man he spent time betraying. He was still cooking for them and carving out time to do nothing at all except sit and bask and. Oh. 

"Guess doesn't make it hurt any less, though, I suppose," he says, mostly as an afterthought. They’re still a game. A game can hurt the same. Scar sighs, folding his hands over his sternum.

"Never does."

Grian turns back to his sewing project. Punches the needle through. Back in. Back out.

"Death games do bring people closer, though,” he says, smiling. “Just so you know."

Scar scoffs. 

"You're twisted."

Grian shrugs.

"You've never turned it down,” he says. Scar hums.

"No,” he says, and sounds almost surprised. “I suppose not."

Part Grian wonders why that might be. He wonders if Scar has any say at all.

“Do you think there will ever be a next time?” Scar asks him. He turns his head to him, just to look him in the eyes. Grian snorts, setting down his needle.

“You want to go through that again? Every other second you were giving me a panic attack.”

Scar shrugs.

“Dunno. You said it yourself. It’s a twisted sort of fun.”

“I guess we’re all a little twisted to keep joining in on it. What’s death when there’s no consequence, hm?”

Scar smiles, and Grian smiles back at him. Something about that smile raises the hair on the back of his neck—something tells him Scar might be scheming for the next time. He’ll want to be on his good side then. They share an unspoken moment like this before Scar turns back to stare at the ceiling and Grian finally finishes his elbow patch.

A death without consequence. What was it, indeed.