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1.
It cannot See.
That is the first thing it realises - and then that it is falling, and then that it cannot fly, or See, or reach into the fabric of the universe and pull taut a safe place to land and it is falling and it cannot See -
And then it lands, hard, and suddenly it knows pain.
It stays inhumanly still for a moment, trying desperately to scrabble at its knowledge while it is still even a fraction as infinite as it used to be, trying to pull all the crucial things into its cursedly limited memory space - its name, its purpose, but it has failed at its purpose and it cannot rely on that any more - how to care, something so foreign but so achingly important, something worth falling for - the shape of all the world and every tiny divot in its makeup, the way Saharan desert ants find their way home and the name of every mangrove tree in Ghana and the outline of a betrayal in the fabric of reality, and how do you choose what's worth keeping when you only have so much time before you lose it all -
And then there is discomfort, something pushing, and it does not know why and it cannot See itself to know what's wrong but for the spots around the edges of its disgustingly limited vision and the pushing in its tiny, frail chest and the sense that it is running out of time and breathe, it realises, sucking in air like it's jumpstarting an electric current, it needs to breathe now.
So it breathes. In, and then out, and then in again. Steady as the waves of a calm sea. Over and over again until its reflexes set in, until it becomes some facsimile of natural. (Idiotic. It is not meant to be natural. It is meant to be everything.)
And it stays like that for who knows how long, before something kicks it in the side.
"Hey," says someone light-voiced - English-speaking - human, "are you dead?"
It moves its head. Muscles contort and contract, every new tension strange and unwelcome, and the black-hot pressure of a road is against its cheek by the time it opens new eyes. The light is low - mostly from sodium-orange streetlamps, it judges, but there are stars providing something too. (And this is nothing compared to what it's supposed to be able to See, this is -)
"C'mon, man," the human speaks again, "I don't wanna have to call an ambulance. Knowing my luck it'll end up on my bill."
It runs its conscience over every vocal cord that sits inside its throat and tries to make them work. "I - am… fine."
"Oh, good!" The human crouches, and they're looking directly into its eyes before it can protest. (This is vulnerable, this is intimate, this is inappropriate -) "So what, did you get hit by a car or something? You look pretty wiped, but I don't see any glass or nothin'."
"No." It shifts its focus, then, to the muscles in its limbs, and manages to twist its arms and legs until it's pushed up onto hands and knees instead.
"Yeah, doesn't look like there was a wreck," the human says again. "So you're just… hangin' out on the floor? I can respect it."
"No."
"Then what?"
"I Fell."
The human blinks, and in that pause it's able to push off again into a more comfortable kneeling position. (This feels like prayer. That has never been its job.) "Huh," they muse. "Some fall."
"You can say that again," it murmurs.
"Well - if nothing's broken, you didn't chip any teeth or anything, then I guess it's all good, right?"
(It is not all good. It has lost everything. It has unbecome itself and now it has nothing, not even the wings on its back, not even the Sight in its core.) "Yes."
"Wonderful!" A hand outstretches, filling its vision with its promise of connection. "I'm Scar, by the way. It's nice to meet you."
"Right," it says, still a little unfocused. Do they want it to take their hand?
"And you?"
Oh. It's not… ready for this part. Humanity seemed so much easier from a firmament away. "I'm…"
It scans for something honourable, something worth its title. (It had another name, once, but it has been stripped from it - same as the Sight, same as the wings.) The light is low, but between one concrete structure or another it can catch the last of the planet's fading sunlight disappearing beyond a tarmac-flat horizon. It can't remember much, but it can call another name up for the sun.
"Grian."
"Ooh! That's a fun one," says the human. Their hand is still in its face.
Grian takes it, after another moment's silent hesitation, and is pulled abruptly to its feet.
This is how it begins - in the last of the fading sunlight, newly corporeal fingers entwined in a painfully human hand.
(Part of it is feverishly hoping this will not be how it ends as well.)
2.
Scar's apartment is tiny. They have to take the elevator up six floors to get there, and even then it's five doors down. This is a relatively large complex. Once, Grian would have been able to call up any comparison it liked - the sprawling halls of the largest hotel and the weathered-wood walls of the tiniest, most remote cabin - but now they're not images so much as they are impossibly ephemeral ideas, as fleeting in its mind's eye as the memory of its old dominion. Scar's apartment is tiny, and the lights flicker, and the kitchen is barely big enough for one, so Grian sits on the ratty red sofa while the noise of hot drinks being brewed next door floats across the living room towards it, and it thinks.
This… is not ideal.
It has no wings. (Walking is not difficult once you get the hang of it, but Grian has never found much use in trying before today.) It has no Sight, either, which is perhaps the most horrible part. (It didn't like the Watchers - didn't like their cruel tricks, their circular reasoning, their grand plan to remake this world in their image once the humans burnt it down to dust - but they were nothing if they weren't powerful.) From here it cannot See even the closest star, cannot locate the nearest deer or check in on the person who lives next door to Scar, can't even learn their name. It has no weaving power, either, which is another thing that it expected, knew was coming, but… it does sting. Grian flicks its fingers in the air and the nitrogen slides right past them.
It has no power here.
"D'you like your coffee with milk or sugar?" Scar calls. "Or both?"
It has never tasted coffee. "I don't mind."
"I'll go black," he responds cheerfully, "save me the extra supplies. You never know when you're gonna have a guest over - clearly!"
Scar laughs. Grian listens.
The mug is brought to it, steaming and discomfitingly hot under its fingers - it holds the object, studies the surface, and wonders what joy humans find in such a substance.
"Well, go on," Scar motions, "drink up, it'll cool off!"
It brings the lip of the mug up to its mouth and tips. Coffee is even worse when it's touching your skin directly, as it very rapidly discovers; its body, reflexively fighting off what it must assume is drowning, does not allow it to take in the liquid, and instead it chokes and spits and splutters until the mug clatters to the ground and splits directly down the side. A puddle of scalding coffee pools across the carpet. Scar flinches.
"Not a fan, huh?"
"It was hot," Grian replies, throat still weakened. It's not a very eloquent response, but it's all that it can bring to mind.
"It's okay." Scar sounds a lot like he's convincing himself. "It's okay, because -" and he stands up and dashes back to the kitchen, returning with a grimy-looking cloth "- because we're gonna clean this up, and we're gonna Google what you do with coffee stains, and it's gonna be fine."
Grian cannot See what you do with coffee stains. It wishes it could. "I'm sorry," it offers, not really knowing what else to say.
"It's okay," Scar repeats. "What, were you just not expecting it, or…?"
He pauses in the middle of pressing the cloth into the coffee spill and takes Grian's hand again - except, this time, it's much less firmly. There is an unmistakable gentleness to this touch, a gingerness, like he's spotted something wrong. "What is it?"
"Jesus, Grian, what'd you do to your hands?"
"What?"
"They're scalded." Grian doesn't know what that means, although it feels like it definitely should. Maybe he's referring to the redness. "Didn't you realise you were hurting? Were you out in the road that long, you're just that cold? But - but you felt alright when I -" he shakes his head "- I don't understand you."
"I'm sorry."
"No, why would you be - it's fine. You don't have anything to be sorry for. Just… tell me if you're in pain, alright?"
"Alright," Grian echoes faintly, and realises that pain must be a lot more expansive of a feeling than it thought. It had known that it would hurt, Falling to earth - but if something like coffee can cause pain too, something humans choose to take part in…
"Good." Scar grins, and finally lets go of his hand before turning back to the carpet stain. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear."
Grian runs red fingers across a raw palm and winces at the sting.
(It's new, and it's strange, and it is nothing like it has thought humanity would be - but it is almost addictive.)
3.
Humans, it seems, like to congregate in places with bright signs and harsh lights.
Target, Scar had called this place, his lips twitching at the corners as he did so. Grian stares at the bulls-eye displayed high above its head and shivers. It has no idea what Scar has brought them here for. Scar had spoken a lot of words over a second try at coffee this morning, most of which Grian had tuned out.
Underneath the bulls-eye is a building walled entirely in what must be red stucco. The red, Grian thinks absently as it approaches, still several paces behind Scar, looks like human blood.
When it asks Scar about the red place - hesitantly, and with an underlying tone of unsurety in its voice - Scar laughs one of those full-bodied laughs and says, “Groceries, duh.”
Grian does not know what that word means. After its experience with coffee, it assumes the worst. It bristles as Scar leads it forward with that same cocksure tilt to his smile, ducking through a pair of red doors and into a large open space.
(The glare of the yellow lights above them reminds Grian of the Watchers - their poking and their prodding and their clinical interest - and of the pain of Falling.
It shudders, pushing itself further into the red place; it cannot start to remember the Fall. Not here. The memory will only destroy it, and Scar expects it to behave.)
So it behaves. It ducks close to the human and lets him lead it through the spiraling walkways. If its gaze lingers on the bright items they pass, well… Scar does not notice. Grian does not know why it expected him to.
“We’ve gotta get you some new clothes,” Scar says after they’ve embroiled themselves in the maze, with his usual pointed scrutiny now directed at Grian’s garments. “That shirt’s falling to pieces.”
Grian does not look down at the shirt. It knows, even without directing its newly mortal eyes towards its chest, exactly what Scar sees: a black, shapeless thing with a ragged hem. “I like this shirt,” it says simply. It cannot lose the last thing given to it by the Watchers. It can’t.
Scar’s face twists. “No offense,” he says slowly, hands perching on his hips, “but why?”
In the face of Scar’s inquisition, Grian remains silent. It does not have an answer that will satisfy the human. It tries to ignore the way Scar stares at its face, eyes narrowing - tries to ignore the forced eye contact. Too much, too intimate, too sacred.
After a moment of tense silence, Scar drops his gaze. “Okay,” he says slowly. “A compromise. Let’s find you another shirt. You don’t have to wear it… you can keep the old one, if you’d like, though I don’t know why you would. The new one’s just - just in case.”
Grian considers the offer. It tracks the way that Scar’s eyes linger on Grian’s black shirt and then flick away again. It cannot See any longer - cannot parse the expression that flickers across Scar’s face for a split second - and frustration overwhelms it.
“Yes,” it says slowly, and the concession is almost worth it when Scar’s eyes light up. Grian is far too attached to this human already, it realizes. It does not feel emotions like humans do, but if it did, Grian thinks it would be overcome with affection.
“I’m gonna find you the best shirt,” Scar crows. He tears forwards, past shelves filled with all types of things. Grian’s curiosity piques; it stares at a colorful pile of fabric before Scar’s throat clears and it is forced to follow. “Maybe two shirts! And some pants - maybe a skirt?”
Out of everything, Grian knows what a skirt is. It does not dissuade the human from his plans, though - it follows half a step behind Scar, small and obedient and quiet. Just as it was trained to do.
“Look around,” Scar says once he stops in his tracks. Grian takes in their surroundings - they’re in the midst of racks and racks of colorful fabric. “See if you can find something. I’ll be over here.”
And then Scar is gone. Grian tries not to reel back from the human’s sudden disappearance, but its heart is pounding double time. (And isn’t that surreal? Its heart. Its heart.) It glances around, eyes flicking wildly over the clothes Scar has left it with.
It is alone. For the first time since its Fall, it is alone - and in this strange red place, too, where everything is so tall and bright and shiny. It considers curling into a ball and letting the background fade out into a blur of nothingness.
It wanders, instead - trailing a hand along soft sleeves and pressing its fingers to the hemlines. It cannot See the origin of the clothes, but it tries anyway until it is a panting mess.
The fabric turns into boxes, hard on the sides and sharp on the corners. Grian pricks itself on cardboard and whimpers, does not think about Scar, does not think about Scar -
But it does. It thinks about Scar and it aches, just a little bit inside.
“Grian,” says a familiar voice, and then Scar’s hand is wrapping around Grian’s wrist and pulling . It relaxes into the touch, more than it should, and flicks eyes up to meet Scar’s inquisitive gaze. There’s that shudder again at the wrongness of it all, but it’s muted. Faded. “Grian, I was looking for you!”
“I got lost,” Grian says. It’s not a lie, even. It can only revel in the warmth of those hands against his - the fleeting moment of human connection with this man. Is it human, now?
It cannot be human.
Scar snorts. “Figures,” he says. He draws away, still holding Grian at arms’ length. “You’re like a stray cat, y’know? Can’t keep you in one place for long.”
Grian thinks about the cats it had seen on its way to Scar’s flat, right after it had Fallen - all strays. The orange tabby, the black puffball, the grey six-toed creature. It does not do to dwell on that part of the past, but the image does bring a sudden swell of amusement to mind.
“Did you find anything?” Scar continues, brushing past Grian’s silence like it’s nothing. It shakes its head in answer. “Look,” Scar continues, holding up the two shirts in his hand with a face-splitting grin. Grian cannot read the words, but it makes out the caricature of an angel and a devil - one on each shirt. “I got us matching t-shirts!”
There is an irony to the shirt, Grian presumes, but it does not fully understand the joke. (It laughs anyway, its face twitching in unfamiliar amusement. Maybe it will get used to laughing around Scar in the next few weeks.)
4.
There was a time - before the Fall, before Grian hit the ground hard and fast and in agony, before Scar brought it back to his flat - where Grian’s fingernails were long and blackened. Claw-like, the humans would say.
(It was not called Grian, then - it used another name, something that tasted like a mouthful of Sight.)
But it does not matter - it lost those claws in the Fall. Grian is cursed with the pinkish nail beds of a human. It spends time running nail over nail, digging into the hardness there with a single-minded focus.
It does not know what its human nails are made of. It wishes, abruptly, that it could use its Sight to answer that question.
Scar notices. He notices the unimportant things, Grian has come to realize: the minute details. Even if he does not realize what Grian is - what Grian used to be - Scar sees the way that Grian feels as though it does not belong in this mortal body. A round peg in a square hole, he says, with no explanation provided, and he narrows his eyes at Grian and frowns.
It is not Sight. It could never be Sight. But it is thrilling and breathtaking and comforting, all at once, when Scar settles into the seat before Grian at breakfast one morning and asks, point-blank, “Are your nails bothering you?”
At least Scar drops the eye contact this time. “No,” Grian says, and it is a lie. It is a complete lie. Grian misses the place where wings used to sprout from its back - it misses the places where feathers plumed from its skin - it misses the long black claws that came from its fingers.
Scar’s eyes twinkle when Grian - attempting that stupid human custom of eye contact, for some odd reason - glances up to meet his gaze. “You’re scratching them like they’re bothering you,” he points out, deadpan. “Are you one of those people who bite your fingernails?”
“Yes,” Grian says, monosyllabic in lieu of anything better to say. It hopes Scar will take the hint and stop talking, stop asking questions, and will leave Grian alone to its early morning grief. But Scar does no such thing.
“Oh! D’you want me to paint them?!” he says quickly, his voice flush with excitement. When Grian’s brows furrow, he amends, “I do it all the time for Pearl. She says it's less tempting to bite her nails if they’re bright green.”
Grian does not know what - or who - Pearl is. It does not ask. “Paint them?” it repeats, molasses-slow and quiet to boot.
“Yeah!” Scar says. “I’ve got a ton of nail polish, dude - most of it’s stolen from Pearl, I think.” His gaze burns into Grian like a razor’s sharp edge. “Any color you can think of. What’s your favorite color?”
Grian hesitates. It does not have a favorite color. After a prolonged moment, it says, “Red.”
Scar smiles, and it's a sharp rattle of white teeth. “Perfect,” he says. He pushes back from the table and stands up in a fluid, graceful motion. “Let me go find it.”
Nail polish, it turns out, is a small jar of strong-smelling paint with a brush attached. Scar twists the brush too quickly between his fingertips, sending red droplets flying. When he squeaks out an apology, Grian almost smiles. Almost.
“Give me your hand,” Scar says, and he reaches for Grian’s wrist without waiting for an answer.
Grian goes willingly. It’s shaking all over - from fear, most likely, though there is adrenaline there, too. When the brush in Scar’s hand dips down to spread red paint across Grian’s fingernail, every nerve in his body kickstarts.
Watchers above, it feels like passing by a star, like brushing his fingertips against the beginning of creation - it is brilliant and it is human and it is him. It - he - gasps, snatching his fingers violently away from the touch and closing his eyes.
A moment passes in silence. Grian slowly realizes that its - that his - fingers are still wet with the strange paint. He flexes his right hand at the knuckles and marvels at the way the red polish shines on his pale skin.
His pale skin. Grian’s pale skin. This is entirely, fully, unapologetically him. His body, his hands, his fingers. All of it. And he laughs, delighted by the prospect of a strange sound that catches in his throat, thick and wonderful.
When his eyes jerk back up to the cause of this - this wondrous discovery, this realization, this new truth, Scar is staring at Grian as if he’s a scared animal. His gaze is lined with gentleness and a strange kind of softness.
(Grian thinks it might just be affection.)
“Did you, uh - ” Scar starts, and Grian thinks he’s going to make a comment about the paint smeared across his skin in twists of color, like the beauty of a sunset across a sky or a supernova from afar, but he only scratches the back of his neck and says, “Did you want me to do the other hand?”
And Grian thinks, abruptly, that he could get used to Scar’s gentle patience, the way he reaches out and takes Grian’s left hand with steady fingers. He lets the man take the brush and paint bursts of color onto Grian’s blank nails, shivering with each stroke.
He is creation. He is Scar’s creation, sacred, in a tiny flat six floors off the ground.
(He is Scar’s, Grian thinks, and the words ring truer than ever.)
5.
Tomorrow, Scar has to return to a place called work - but tonight, he tells Grian, he is restless, and so Grian is invited on a walk.
"You're not from here?" Scar asks, pulling his coat on, as Grian copies him from the other side of the room where his clothes pile is.
"No," Grian answers simply. He had never even spared a glance at this city before, even when he had the Sight to do so.
"Ah, that's a darn shame. But it's not a bad thing! It just means I'm the lucky one who gets to show you around."
"Where are we going?"
"Well, there's a couple food trucks down by the riverside, we could grab dinner if you don't feel like cooking. And then it's kind of like a picnic!"
"A picnic," he repeats.
"Sure! Please tell me you like tacos, 'cause if you drop that too I'm not payin' for another one."
"I won't drop anything this time. I promise."
"Great!" The door swings open, and Scar holds up a jangling loop of keys and chains and charms. "Let's go!"
The river is not far from here. Grian takes note as they travel downhill of his surroundings: there is the road again, the spot where he'd Fallen maybe a block or two from Scar's apartment. There are cars and houses and stains on the sidewalk; there are clouds and planes and stars in the sky, because it is late. He likes late, he thinks. It is calm. Peaceful.
"Hey," Scar grins once concrete pavement turns to dirt and grass, "it's pretty quiet out tonight, huh?"
"Yes." Nothing like it was at Target, at least.
They take it slow from here, following a path that humans seem to have worn down themselves from years of footfall on the grass (and Grian is among them now, he may have lost what made him Watcher but he has replaced it with the brilliantly human ability to make a change). Scar keeps his hand on Grian's upper arm for most of the way.
"I used to come here all the time when I was little. Never thought I'd still be stuck here now, but, y'know… Things work out. I've got my own place, at least, huh? And at least the job is clean."
"Tell me," Grian says, the words escaping in a rush that even he did not predict. "About work."
"Oh, my job? Yeah, no, you don't wanna know about my job. It's just - I sell insurance. On commission. You wanna talk about a labor shortage, you try spinnin' yarns to old people, trying to get them to buy into an overpriced package contract that'll never pay out, and you tell me people just don't wanna work!"
Grian tilts his head.
"You not into politics? That's fair - can't blame ya. And don't get me started on the healthcare!"
"Okay."
Scar smiles again. "You are a strange person, aren'tcha?"
"I suppose." But person means human, and to his credit he is very, very new to the task. "Tell me more. About - when you used to come here."
"Okay," Scar says slowly, "why do I feel like there's a catch to this?"
"I don't know. I just - I want to listen."
Something brightens in Scar's eye, and at last he obliges.
They walk down past the river for a long time, Grian still being escorted by the warmth and weight of Scar's hand on the back of his arm, Scar rambling aimlessly about the sun-bleached, happy childhood he spent growing up in this city. Memories of swings and ice cream cones and water fights are recounted, and though Grian cannot picture them, cannot See the image Scar sees, he can still feel the pleasantness projecting from the words. Scar was loved.
(Grian does not have a childhood. He just became, at the beginning of everything - and then he Saw everything - and then he came to one too many wrong conclusions, and then he Fell.)
The clouds begin to roll past the horizon and away from them, leaving nothing but a tapestry of stars. He knows that they are broiling, flaring balls of burning gas a billion miles away - but from down here they are just pinpricks in the void. Inconsequential. Indistinguishable. Small.
From up there, the humans are the small ones - but they are so much more up close. The infinite complexity of human interaction still intrigues him even now, even after this long spent amid them. Every human has so much to say.
Especially Scar, who still hasn't stopped talking.
"Oh! We - Grian, we made it!" He gives Grian's shoulder a gentle shake, and Grian looks over to see a row of dilapidated food trucks, the lights on in all but one, a tiny queue of two or three formed at each.
"This is tacos?"
"Sure, if that's how you wanna phrase it."
They get the same thing twice (upon Scar's assertion that if Grian doesn't like it again he wants to have a double portion), and they keep walking until the buzz around the food trucks is inaudible again. Scar sits in the grass, a foot or two from the riverbank. Grian imitates.
"People fish at this spot," Scar tells him. "I don't know if it's legal, but they do. Or if you'd even wanna eat the fish from this river, figuring what they dump in it all the way upstream. I guess it's just a hobby for some. But you can see the water from this angle, is the point - it's a clear shot."
Sure enough, the dirt carries unobstructed to the line of the water, and then that continues all the way to the buildings on the other bank. They're faceless concrete boxes, much like Scar's apartment complex. Part of Grian wonders if every building in this city is the same. (Except the Target.) On either side of their view there are patches of wildgrass, trees hanging over, rustling bushes that might contain any number of wild animals. And above, the void is pinpricked with the light of gas exploding from a billion miles away.
If Grian is the sun, the Watchers are the stars. They have so much power - but they're far away, here. And they can't do anything to the humans from that distance. They can only Watch.
"Stargazing?" Scar asks.
"It's nice." He feels free, this way.
"The moon is pretty tonight," and now his hand is skating down the back of Grian's arm, and picking him up by the wrist, and they are pointing to a gibbous moon together, "nearly full. Or maybe it's already been full. I don't know, I don't keep track of the moon."
"I could have told you," Grian murmurs, "not too long ago."
"You lose track?"
"I stopped being able to See that sort of thing."
Scar's fingers slide again, up his palm until they're interlacing with his own, and then their hands come arcing down into the grass together. It is cold. Scar is warm. Blood, Grian recalls, is just the body's way of paying tribute to the ocean - because these creatures left it, once, but they chose to take a token as they went. If Grian has kept anything from the thing he used to be, he thinks it's the curiosity. But this is so different from just Watching - this, being in the middle of it, being on the ground with his hand in Scar's, is so much better than observing from a firmament away.
He looks down, finally, and Scar is staring at him.
(To Watch is a one-sided activity. It is not something to reciprocate; it simply does not do to meet to gaze of someone else - especially not a human, as though you were equal things - this is breaking every rule, this is unprecedented, this is -)
And then Scar leans in, and they are kissing.
It's… nothing like he'd thought it would be. The warmth intensifies tenfold, the distance closed between their faces, Scar's nose brushing against his, and all he can really do is push back and hope that Scar can feel within the motion all the love and hope and gratitude that he can't find the words to express. It is supercharged and at the same time the softest feeling Grian has ever known, softer than Scar's other hand as it wraps around the back of his neck, coaxing him ever closer to the core of the moment, exploding like a newborn star and subtle as a shift in a quark's polarity. It is the epicentre of an earthquake and it is the eye of a storm and it is the centre of a singularity in that infinitesimal instant before the universe explodes out of it, or the black hole starts pulling everything in. This is not where humanity begins nor when it ends, but Grian has never felt smaller than he does right now, completely at Scar's mercy, captured by his hands.
He's not sure who pulls away first, but when his eyes reopen they are both breathing heavy in the moonlight.
Grian brings his hand to his mouth, electrified all over like a live wire. He could speak, but what would he say? How do you tell somebody they have made you feel both the infinite expansiveness of creation and the stretching, folded-over limits of humanity with the same impulsive choice? He wishes he could See what Scar is thinking - understand the infinite complexity of human interaction, know that what he's feeling here is right, is what Scar wants him to feel, is what Scar feels as well.
(If Watching is one-sided, then Grian has officially passed the point of no return with that kiss. It is unbearably worth it.)
But like a live wire, Scar seems to know better than to touch him a second time.
They go home.
They do not speak about it.
Grian does not sleep.
+1.
The final reckoning comes when Scar clears his throat one morning and Grian’s heart - his human heart, oh so frail and delicate - sinks inside his chest.
They have not talked about the kiss. They have not talked about the stars that stretched across the sky or the moonlight that painted their faces in a pale glow. Twice, Grian had thought Scar was about to broach the subject - his lips had twisted in thought and his mouth had opened, but he’d hesitated. And they’d gone about their day with no mention of that night.
"Oh - by the way, my landlord is not gonna be happy if he knows you're sleeping here," Scar comments now, dragging a cloth across the counter, "so if you're not planning on going home then you should probably look into finding a different place to stay."
Grian stares. He cannot tell Scar that this has become the only home he knows. “I thought -”
“Unless there’s something you want to say,” Scar says, cocksure and confident and bold. He looks as though he regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth, grimacing, but Grian is already breathing just a little bit harder. “Is there something you want to say, Grian?”
And - there it is. An opening. A chance to tell Scar, fully, what kind of creature he has brought home. What kind of creature has stolen into his affections. But Grian’s tongue goes dry in his stupidly human mouth, and all he can croak out is, “Are you kicking me out?”
Scar’s expression does something funny. Out of habit, a small part of Grian wishes he could See the intent behind it. “Not - not exactly,” he says. Vague. Grian levels him with a questioning look.
“Then what are you doing?” he asks.
Scar’s struggle is written plainly on his face. After a moment of long silence - the cloth forgotten on the counter - he leans back against the cabinets, arms crossed over his chest, and says, “Do you want a real answer to that?”
Grian goes quiet for a very long moment. He lets himself think - turning over the possibilities of why Scar might be upset with him in his mind. What has Grian done? What has he done that’s so deserving of this fate?
“You -” Scar says. He grits his teeth together, as if forcing every word to leave his lips in order. “I can’t understand you.” He cocks his head to the side, eyes lingering on Grian’s cheeks - which flush underneath the scrutiny. “You’re a mystery. You speak in riddles. I don’t…”
This time, when he cuts himself off in his tracks, Grian has a better understanding of why Scar looks so distraught. This fragile affection between them - this new tenderness, so precious they have not yet spoken of it - is an unsure thing. If Scar has ever doubted Grian in the past, then it is evident that he doubts him now.
The thought hurts, just a little bit. It squeezes in Grian’s chest until he nearly doubles over from the pain of it. But he is strong, and he does not let the pain growing in his chest distract him.
“You think that I - that I do not feel for you,” Grian says. The words are awkward, stumbling with the weight of lies between them. Scar does not blink. It’s answer enough for Grian. “You think that I am cold and unfeeling.”
“That’s not -”
“And you have convinced yourself I will never feel for you,” Grian says. He takes a step forward, then another, then a third—bold, oh so bold—until they practically share the same breath. Scar’s chest hitches at their proximity. “Through some odd tale spun with lies. Haven’t you?”
Scar’s red face and quickened breath provides enough of an answer to that question. “That’s - you’re not - I don’t -” He seems to right himself, after a moment, and says, “You’ve never shown me otherwise.”
Unspoken between them: Stay. Unspoken between them: I care about you.
And Watchers above, that hurts. Grian’s chest practically stings with the sentiment. "The Saharan desert ant," he says, instead of I'm sorry and I'm staying and I love you, "is - it travels long distances to find its food. It's walking on the sand, so it gets buffeted about in the wind a bit, and it gets lost."
Scar blinks, thrown off guard. "Okay?"
"But it knows the way home, because it can navigate by the sun. It can remember what the sky looked like at home and it can follow that path back there. And if the sun's not out, it can still find its way, because it counts its steps."
"Please tell me what this has to do with feelings."
Grian takes a deep breath. "The first time you took hold of me, I had been here for about five seconds."
"What?"
"I am…” Grian swallows thickly. “I was not human. I was a…” He attempts to speak the word Watcher, several times, but his mouth fills with static at each attempt. With a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, he adds, “When I Fell - I was cast out of the above. I lost my Sight. I was not human. And then the second time was when I spilled that coffee all over your -"
"Wait, hold on, you're what?"
“Was,” Grian corrects, still watching Scar closely. “I was a - a - Watcher .” He manages to get the word out, this time, in its ugly entirety. It hisses with a supernatural sense of loss. "But I am also like the Saharan desert ant,” he adds slowly. "In the way that ants are ants to you, you - humans - were the ants to me. But you're so much more than that. You're complicated and you're difficult and you're beautiful."
"I don't understand."
"That's what I Fell for. I wanted to be here, be with humanity - I didn't want to just watch when participating looked like so much more fun."
"You're - like - a fallen angel?"
"But it hasn't been easy," Grian continues, bolstering past the interruption, knowing that if he pauses for even a second the well of emotion, of confession might dry up. "I've felt lost. I've felt pain - I never knew what pain was like until I hit the ground, I - Scar, I've felt loneliness these past few days. I didn't know what it was like to be on my own."
"Oh."
"It's cold," he adds, helplessly.
They stand still for a moment, across from one another. The air between them should be shifting, rippling with the potential to be manipulated at its whim, but it is just still and stale and saturated with everything Grian feels - and stars above, how does he feel right now. (Stars - the Watchers don't come into this. This is between him and Scar and the stars alone.)
"I'm like the ant," Grian says again, "I'm counting my steps. I'm finding my way home."
The silence is thick, and Scar is staring at him again. Grian thinks there might be tears in his eyes.
"... Did I say something wrong?"
“No,” Scar says - a breath of air, all at once, and then Grian is reeling back as the man captures him in a tight embrace. He throws his arms around Grian and pulls him close, shuddering with an exhale of breath and tightening his fingers in Grian’s borrowed red jumper. “Oh, Grian, no. No, you didn’t.”
“You’re taking the whole, well… Fallen thing pretty well,” Grian points out. His breath curls into the space where Scar’s shoulder meets his neck - a pale expanse of unblemished skin. He imagines kissing the skin there, worshipping the skin there, making Scar curl into him and -
(Well, Grian may not have his Sight anymore, but he knows exactly how Scar would react to that.)
“You’re Grian,” Scar points out. He extricates himself from the hug with his hands on Grian’s shoulders, holding him at arms’ length to study his face. Grian flushes away from the scrutiny - and the eye contact - for all the wrong reasons. “Watcher or not, you’ll always be Grian.”
(But he was not always Grian, was he? He had another name - a different name - but that name does not matter now.
Maybe Scar is right. Maybe he has truly been Grian, all along. Maybe it only took this long for him to realize.)
“And besides,” Scar says, grinning wickedly, “do you know how much material you’ve just given me?” He tilts his head back, grins at Grian through thick eyelashes. His right hand trails from Grian’s shoulder to his forearm, slow and steady, and Grian’s breath hitches.
In a decisive movement, fluid with easy grace, he reaches out and takes Scar’s hand for the very first time. I love you, he thinks, as if the force of the thought might reach Scar. I love you I love you I love you. Maybe he’ll say it aloud - maybe he’ll bridge the gap that’s formed between them. Maybe he’ll be bold, for once.
Grian presses Scar’s hand flush to his heart and says, “Your jokes aren’t funny, Scar.”
“Are too!” Scar defends hotly with a twinkle in his eye, and Grian tries to ignore the surge of affection curling in his gut. He studies Grian for a long moment, as if he’s committing Grian’s face to memory. His eyes linger on the curve of Grian’s eyelashes, the softness at his cheeks, the line of his jawbone. (Grian does not need his Sight at all, actually, he decides - not when Scar is the only thing he has eyes for.) “Hey.”
Nerves set alight underneath the intensity of Scar’s gaze, Grian hesitates. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Did you scrape your knee when you Fell from Heaven?”
“Scar!”