Breaking the casual silence around the campfire, Scar asks, “Do you think we were ever in love?”
The question is out of nowhere, but it isn’t a surprise either. Grian thinks about it, about the lives’ worth of history between them. Of the mundane: slowly becoming friends on Hermitcraft, of the most memorable pranks they’ve gotten up to. It must be a side effect of enjoying his time on Empires that he doesn’t first think of Scar’s lips on his own, of shivering together in the desert and all of the ruin that came after. Guilt. Anger. Desperately trying to be anything other than Grian and Scar, In Love.
He says the same thing he’s said before, when Scar has asked similar questions. “It wasn’t nothing.”
Scar sighs, looking into the flames. “I know that.” He doesn’t push the issue, though. Grian isn’t going to say anything else, because that’s all he can offer.
Scar misses it, but he respects the decision. In a lot of ways, it makes sense to stay this way.
That doesn’t mean he never thinks about it.
The problem with asking Grian if he loves— or ever did love— Scar is that they both know that Grian did. And he still does, but Scar isn’t sure what kind of love it is anymore. Most of the time it just feels like friendship, but the ghost of whatever it was they used to have changes the taste of the words he says to Grian. Every single one is far sweeter than it ought to be.
It’s harder to know if they ever were in love, though.
Third Life was so— well, it was a fast few months. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t much. More importantly, it didn’t end well. Grian won, because he’s that kind of man. Selfish. Itching to cause trouble. Scar didn’t fight back, either. It left no choice. In the moment, Grian mostly felt his red heart pumping red blood through his veins, anger and despair and a need to survive mingling with the hot feeling he’d always get, being around Scar in that desert.
Before all of that, though. Was he in love with Scar? Did Scar know what he was getting himself into enough to truly be in love with Grian back?
(Of course, of course, of course. What else could it have been?)
He thinks about why Scar even asked. It’s been a while since even Double Life, which was both disastrous and miraculous. So much has happened on Hermitcraft this year alone. He figured they’d aged out of it as best they could. It doesn’t matter anymore that sometimes he still wants Scar. That’s only sometimes, anyway.
He could have moved on. Scar gave him an easy out. There’s never really an easy out of your feelings, though, is there?
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Grian says, barely a whisper.
A few feet away, cowboy hat discarded, illuminated gorgeous and orange, Scar looks back down at Grian, back from the stars he had been staring silently at. “I love secrets,” he replies, easy yet cautious, eager yet balanced precariously.
“We were definitely in love. At least for a little while.”
