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Scar stares for a minute, eyes going glassy. They are green— a nice, human color— and Grian imagines, for a moment, that they are back on Hermitcraft, and Scar’s eyes are gleaming bright blue with mischief, magic, a little bloodlust and the capacity to act on it. He imagines that he is years younger, that they both are, that Cub is here and coming around the corner of the ConCorp building any second now with his own bright blue magic dancing off of his eyes and his shoulders, and Grian is standing up and bouncing on his heels and giggling as he tells Scar about something else that Mumbo’s done, how silly Mumbo sounds pacing back and forth muttering himself as he tries to get the redstone working for Sahara— Grian misses Mumbo so much —
“Another take,” Scar echoes, sounding hollow. “Oh.” His throat bobs up and down, and after a moment he says in a very small voice, “Okay.” His gaze flicks down to where Grian lies, flat on his back and trying to breathe shallowly, shivering with leftover pain. “Okay. Okay— I can— please just don’t—”
He flinches into himself again, violently cutting off, shuddering at something that must be only in his head. A Watcher’s voice, maybe, One’s voice or Two’s, or a hand on his body that Grian and the cameras can’t see, glamoured over and hidden, tracing delicate patterns over all of his exposed skin, enjoying it. Appreciating it.
There’s plenty exposed to appreciate, and Grian’s not sure if that was Scar’s choice— it probably wasn’t, but he’s seen how they talk to him, how they touch him, how they— indulge him. How he indulges them back, plays into things— he’s clever like that. Grian sees Scar play tricks that he knows the Watchers don’t catch onto. Beloved victor, smiling salesman, he’s been practically pampered, since the fifth game ended.
Grian’s been indulged like that before. He wasn’t— exactly this smart about it.
He remembers the desert and everything that came in its wake, because of course he remembers the desert, because no one’s ever going to let the desert go, his handlers won’t, the network certainly won’t—
Grian blinks and Two is snapping his fingers in front of his face, catching his attention, and there is One’s voice somewhere behind him, soft and melodic, going on about viewers and ratings and what the executives are asking for, what a star he’s going to be, what a star he already is— it is a very long time ago—
Your handlers, Pearl is saying, a longer time ago than that, before any of them really knows what this is going to mean for them— when they are just fourteen players huddled together in a little bedrock cell—
Our handlers, Grian corrects her quietly, staring at his hands. I’ve deliberately avoided learning their names, as you’ll find that they’re terrible people and really not worth trying to befriend. One of them is One and the other is Two.
How d’you keep track? Pearl asks, tilting her head, a grin on her face that’s not exactly as light as the Pearl-grins he’s used to seeing, and not exactly as unsteady as the Pearl-grins he’ll learn to expect.
Well, the one I’ve called Two is called Two because it irritates him that I’ve not called him One, Grian says, and that should tell you most of what you need to know about his personality.
Grian blinks again and the sun is bearing down, lower in the sky than it was, and the wind smells like sunflowers, and there is no one in the world but the two of them, a set that seems to stretch as far as the eye can see. It’s a cut-and-dry seven hundred by seven hundred, it’s a world trimmed down like a little decorative tree, to keep its players in one easily observable place— to keep its player in one place; it’s only had the one, since that one player won the game— but it’s the image of infinity, the skybox, blue and endless. The cameras are rolling behind it.
“I can do another take,” Scar whispers finally.
Grian shuts his eyes, tries to breathe through the cold dread that has washed over him. Another take. Scar sounds like he is about to cry, which is fair, all things considered, and Grian wonders if they’ll break another rib if he says what he wants to say to Scar right now. He reasons that it’s more than likely, so he steels himself and takes another very careful breath. He can feel Scar shifting position, leaning forward so he’s fully overtop of Grian again.
He can hear the tremble in Scar’s breath, this close. Sweat makes their skin cling together in places, and Grian’s stomach turns at the feeling of Scar’s come leaking out of him. What’s on his thighs has dried cool and sticky by this point. Scar’s hand is moving there now, ghosting over Grian’s chest and down his stomach, slipping between his legs.
His fingers are trembling, too.
The words stick in Grian’s throat when he tries to force them out. Nauseating pain radiates through his chest already, and it seems to throb harder at just— at just the idea of—
Scar ghosts over Grian’s clit and then his entrance, hesitates there, one finger pressed against it (wet and fucked-open already, sore and aching and dripping with Scar’s come and on display, he’s on display, there’s the ghost of a hand that isn’t Scar’s at all on each of his knees, nudging them further open) and— the look in his eyes — Scar looks like he wants to die. Desperation surges up violently in Grian’s chest alongside the pain, overwhelming his fear.
“It’s okay, Scar,” he blurts, even as his throat tries to close up around the words in terror. He has to say it. “It’s okay— whatever you have to— I swear, it’s okay, and I’ll be fine —”
A bolt of white lightning lances across his chest, and a vicious crack accompanies it, and Grian is screaming raggedly again, choking off his own words. For a moment he is not laid down on a blanket in a sunflower field, and Scar is not overtop of him and there are no ghostly hands trailing over his body and nudging it into more attractive shapes— the pain is all there is — the pain and the magic that’s caused it, what binds his body to the Watchers, wrapped like a vice around the rib that it’s just snapped in half.
He chokes and sobs a dry sob and the agony makes him want to heave but he tries desperately to get a grip on his breathing instead, to make it slow and shallow— it shivers in and out of him, his whole body shivers, runs hot and then cold and then numb, tingling, nerves overloaded with pain. Every movement exacerbates it, so he’s been doing his best not to move too much. Slow and shallow, breathe slowly and shallowly, that’s—
Four. Four ribs broken, he thinks, unless he’s forgotten one, and Grian can admit to himself that he’s done his best to black out for the vast majority of this— show — but he does think he’s counting that right.
(Dazed, delirious, he remembers Scar whispering after the first— round— devastated, he’d sounded devastated, and Grian wondered abruptly if this was something Scar would ever come back from — if Cub would ever forgive him for this, if anyone would, because it’s Grian’s fault and he knows it and everyone knows it, all the way down it’s his own mistakes on mistakes on mistakes, it’s him who’s done this to Scar— Scar who pulled away from Grian’s body, shattered apart and whispering dully, defeatedly, Is— is it done? Is that— am I done now?
A bolt of white lightning and an accompanying crack; that was the third one. No, Scar had screamed, voice cracking, no— please— please, I was only— I can keep, I can keep going, please—
The first two were broken before the cameras were even rolling, because Scar— refused, at first. Then he stopped refusing very quickly.)
Tiny whimpers slip out between his breaths that Grian can’t get control of anymore, no matter how hard he tries, and he’s flooded, again, with humiliation, pooling hot and liquid in his stomach. Scar’s going to fuck him again, and it’s going to hurt again and he’s going to be very well behaved and cry just as pitifully as he’s expected to and that’s going to be a good show, for— for— whoever’s paying for it— exclusive content for only the very highest bidders, an apparently highly requested take on what Scar’s victory lap might look like—
Oh, that’s just very in-character, isn’t it, that’s exactly like something Scar would do— I’m sure your beloved audience will just adore that, you absolute idiots, Grian had snarled, vicious in the wake of the terror that set in, and Two made him pay for that the way Two likes to make him pay for just about everything.
Scar’s eyes are wide and shining with unshed tears. He blinks them back furiously, and he doesn’t respond to any of Grian’s desperate reassurances. For a long moment he says nothing at all, only blinks and schools his expression. The tears don’t fall.
When he does speak, he isn’t meeting Grian’s eyes. The finger at Grian’s entrance has begun to draw light circles around it, dipping just barely inside its heat, and Scar’s other hand grips his hip tightly enough to press little fingerprint bruises there.
“Well,” he says, and Grian knows that tone of voice. He knows, already, the line that Scar is gearing up to deliver, and he thinks— as he watches the shift in Scar’s body language, the subtle adjustments, aimed to please— that he even remembers its specific place in the scene they’re filming. He can’t bite back the frightened whimper it draws out of him, and he shouldn’t be trying to, either— he has a part to play, too, if this is ever going to end.
Another take. Just— this last shot, one more time.
Scar slides one finger in. “I can hardly say that I’m finished. After only one round? Can’t waste the opportunity, can I, now that I have you like this, and I have to say, Grian, though you make a terrible ally— I learned that lesson, didn’t I?— your body makes an absolutely wonderful prize.”
“Please,” Grian whimpers, humiliation cloying in his stomach, that hot liquid pool of it thickening and coating all of his insides. There are cameras he can’t see, and there are ghostly hands on his body again, a spectral production staff nudging his shoulders back, pulling his arms up and out of the way so that his chest and stomach are on display, tipping his head back so that the bruises bitten and sucked into his neck are more visible. His lips are still swollen, kiss-bruised, and he remembers One’s voice in the green room as she murmured close to his face, brushing her thumb over his bottom lip— There we are. Soft and supple, those lips are so pink, and you are absolutely glowing— the very picture of sex. A gift just waiting to be unwrapped. Isn’t he a picture?
He’d better be, Two had said, irritated, dismissive. He’s the reason our ratings have been in the gutter—
That’s not true, Grian had hissed, face hot with shame, trying to twist away because One was still touching him and she wouldn’t stop and he was about to be fucked in front of a live studio audience and Scar was going to have to be the one to do it — You know that’s not true, he’d hissed, this is— I’ve seen the ratings, this is the most popular we’ve been since season one—
And who’s responsible for that? One had murmured. Not you, little bird. You’re hardly the fan favorite anymore.
The current fan favorite is fingering Grian open, adding a second one and smiling a vicious and villainous smile, beloved victor enjoying his prize. That’s the story. That’s— the game, play along, good little Watcher— maybe they’ll take him back, something is saying to him, that’s One’s voice in his head again, isn’t it— maybe he won’t be consigned to this anymore, if he just pleases their audience enough, if he plays the role well enough, makes up all the missing money on his contract and more—
Her hands are on his knees, pulling them further apart so that Grian’s sex is only more visible— Scar is shifting, too, pulling his fingers out and lining himself up.
“All mine,” Scar murmurs.
He slides in, and Grian whimpers at the slight stretch, but his body acquiesces quickly this time, already wet and open— already fucked enough times in the last hour that he can take Scar’s length in one thrust, fully seated, hips flush. It still knocks a whimper out of him. He is— so exhausted. He is so exhausted.
“That’s right,” Scar murmurs, every inch the villain he’s been written to be. “You take me so well.”
Scar starts to fuck him again, and he doesn’t take his time, he doesn’t go slowly— there is a murmur in both of their ears about a script — he thrusts into Grian roughly, mercilessly, bending to bite at Grian’s shoulder and Grian bites his own lip until it bleeds, spasming with pain and trying to stifle the agonized punched-out screams that Scar fucks out of him, trying to swallow back the sobs that are building in his chest like a wave.
The sun is hot and bright overhead and there’s a warm wind that smells like sunflowers and the sky is blue and Grian is so exposed. Naked, on display— every thrust is agony and everyone is watching him, everyone can hear the sounds he makes, and his handlers are in his head in turns, directing his responses, and One makes a comment that they’ll have to film another one of these, she can tell it’s going to be a hit and—
Scar is coming inside of Grian again, groaning, slamming his hips hard against Grian’s and half-collapsing over him. Grian blinks, breath hitching, tries not to sob— he realizes dimly that Scar’s braced his arms around Grian very carefully, and that despite all appearances to the contrary Scar’s not putting any weight at all on his pulverized ribs, and he wants to cry for a different reason entirely.
“Good,” Scar says, panting, “good — so well-behaved for me, aren’t you, Grian, you make— such a good fucktoy, I’m going to have to—” He shifts, and his cock slides out of Grian. He’s still not meeting his eyes, but quickly, carefully— deniably— he squeezes his hand. “Keep you here, just like this.”
It’s done. It’s done. Grian doesn’t sob, doesn’t heave even though his body desperately wants to, just dissolves into pathetic whimpering cries and turns his face away into the blanket, away from Scar and the sky full of invisible spectators and cameras and more spectators behind those cameras and he drifts. He goes— away. Anywhere but here.
Let’s give our audience a better look at that, One is saying— softly, delightedly— her hands are on his knees again, spreading them further apart again, and Grian just doesn’t think about it, doesn’t feel it at all, he is—
In a desert, drifting through it. The sun is low and red in the sky, dipping over the horizon.
He is sitting at the edge of a pair of beds pushed together, shifting to lean his head on a sturdy shoulder, or he is trudging through sand dunes in iron boots with a llama on a leash behind him— the Scar in the desert’s got red eyes, and he’s saying something and Grian is giggling and giggling, and he’s thinking I could kiss you right now and then thinking he’s an idiot for thinking that, but maybe Scar’s thinking the same thing, behind those red eyes— this is all there is. Just him and Scar in the desert. (The audience liked that, they liked that so much — it was the highest their ratings have ever been, coming up on the finale of season one. Glory days. Grian had no fucking idea how bad it was going to get. It was— supposed to be over, after that. They weren’t supposed to be counting up seasons at all. )
He drifts. Scar hasn’t moved away from him yet. Scar is talking, now— Scar is saying— what is Scar saying—
Grian can barely concentrate through the cottony haze that his brain’s become, but he tries to. He catches the tail end:
“It’s a pleasure doing business with you. Just an hour or two, and— of course, of course! Anything our perfect little Watchernet subscribers desire, top-tier, premium content on offer for the premium price. An hour for an hour, or better yet, two hours for two — you know how I love a good bargain.” Grian tries to make this make sense, and before he can succeed, something abruptly vanishes. It is— hard to identify, but it sets him wildly off-kilter; it is a sixth sense, an awareness so constant he only notices it now that it is absent— it is the awareness of being observed, the little magical tickle of his contract with the Watchers, ever latched to the back of his brain. He chokes on a startled gasp, then shudders at the wave of agony that the gasp sends rippling through his chest.
“Grian,” Scar is saying, carefully gentle. So carefully gentle. His voice is still trembling and he’s still trying to hide it and he does it so well that if Grian were anyone else, he knows he wouldn’t be able to tell. “Grian, buddy, hey, I need you— I need you with me, I’m sorry, I need you to answer me— are they gone?”
“They’re— they’re gone,” Grian manages, still blinking back tears. How did— how did—
A glass shattering sound, and then a light musical hiss, and something cool and sweet and soothing washes over Grian’s body, and now he does sob because it’s a healing potion and it is curling itself around his insides, mending broken ribs and taking the pain with it when it subsides. He sobs and he shudders and curls into himself, and then Scar is dragging him into a hug, holding him tight and whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Grian, I’m sorry— I’m so sorry—”
Grian is too stunned for a moment to consciously react, but his arms move automatically, hugging Scar back. Hugging Scar back tightly, once his brain finishes processing the fact that it doesn’t cause excruciating pain. Their skin is clinging together, sweat and slick and come on both their bodies.
“Scar,” he manages, and he doesn’t manage anything else, and Scar holds him. There is no one watching. Just an hour or two, Scar said, and Grian already knows it’s not going to be enough. He just hugs Scar back, burying his face into his shoulder, and Scar sways into the embrace, cupping the back of Grian’s head. “Scar.”
“I’m sorry,” Scar whispers, and he sounds shattered. “I’ve got you, I’m right here— we have— an hour or two, maybe, maybe two— I’m so sorry. Grian. I’m— I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Grian says, still dizzy with the absence of pain. “It’s— I’m okay. I’m okay.” He swallows past the thickness in his throat. “Scar.”
“I’m here,” Scar whispers. “I’m right here, G—” He seems to flinch, for some reason, from using the nickname, and then he says— for some inscrutable reason, he shudders and loosens his grip, starts to pull away and says: “Or, you know, if you’d rather I didn’t touch you at all, I can do that, that is— absolutely fine, the finest and most doable thing—”
“Scar, don’t— don’t be ridiculous,” Grian says, choked. “Come— come back here. Let me hug you. We have— one hour, or maybe two, and I intend to make full and complete use of it and if you don’t, that’s— well, that’s just bad business strategy on your part. I’d be very— very disappointed in you.”
“Okay,” says Scar, sounding a little bewildered and a little like he’s about to start crying again.
Grian hugs him and Scar kind of collapses into it, and— it’s just the two of them, right now, no one watching at all. Grian’s still not wearing any clothes but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. Not as long as Scar’s the only one seeing him.