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angeart · 4 months ago

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hhau mimic arc rambles - part IV: the inbetween (the wing spiral)

(~5,2 k words) // other parts & au masterpost here

this comes right after the hot spring bath, still the same setting. and once again this is based on our discord rp so most of it is going to be a lengthy back and forth for a scene that could be summed up much shorter <3 hopefully you’ll enjoy!

[cws self-destructive tendencies, like seriously, a LOT. this is all kind of just that. and trauma. and going nonverbal.]

~~~

It’s once Grian’s wings become properly waterlogged and start sinking him that Scar pulls Grian back to the shore and wakes him up. And he worries, for many good reasons, that the moment of peace will be gone as soon as Grian’s feathers dry up.

He doesn’t expect the end to come much sooner.

Grian’s body feels like mush after sleeping in the warm water, relaxed for the first time in forever. He feels weak, heavy. His wings are leaden. He isn’t sure he can actually walk. With trembling legs, he slumps down, instantly getting his damp skin dirty. The air brushes his damp body and sends him shivering.

Even though it’s winter, the ground outside frost-painted and frozen, the cave is somewhat warmed by the pool of hot water. It’s something, but it's still far from ideal. The walls provide them enough shielding though, and they’re relatively hidden… So Scar gingerly dares to set up a fire for the night.

Sitting down on the spread out cloak, Grian hunches up while Scar works.

Grian’s feeling Bad. Frustrated with his wings. He can’t lift them up and spread them over the fire; they’re too wet, too heavy. Everything itches So Much Worse now that the debris got dislodged from the spots he's learned to ignore. He's swarmed by an overwhelming pile of awful sensations that make him hyperaware and overstimulated in the worst ways, and he wants it to Stop.

He needs his wings dry now, or—

Or he needs them gone.

His hands hover over his feathers, expression drawn. He considers squeezing them to get the water out, but that’s only bound to damage them—and he isn’t entirely sure if he could stop himself from yanking at them right now if he so much as touches them.

Scar watches him, uneasy, trying to figure out how to help. Tentatively, he offers to help spread Grian’s wings out close to the fire. He could cover his hands with fabric! It wouldn’t even be skin-on-feather contact! And he won’t move unless Grian moves him, and and—

He’s just rambling nervously. He doesn't actually know what to do.

Grian’s a shivering mess at this point. His nerve-endings are firing and flaring up and he’s quickly growing so tense again and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

He begs Scar to help, but at the same time he doesn’t want his wings to be touched. (He can only comprehend painful touches. If Scar’d grab and pull instead of be gentle, maybe that’d be something Grian’s mind could comprehend.)

Scar tries to soothe him. “Hey, hey, we’ve got plenty of time to let them dry! It’s fine. It’s fine! I’ll help however you let me!”

But Grian’s mind is already spiralling, overtaken by the sensations that don’t let him calm down. There’s an encroaching feeling, something sharp and unpleasantly familiar. His hands curl. He whines and cries that his wings are heavy and they feel wrong.

Self destruction brushes against the nape of his neck, ghosts over his feathers. He can’t help but misguidedly crave pain against his feathers, because maybe that would feel right. Maybe that would make sense. Maybe they deserve to be punished. Maybe— Maybe they should be cut off.

Just— Please. Please make it stop feeling like this.

He needs Scar to do something, but he doesn’t know what. Can’t articulate it either to release them from this stalemate of an awful moment.

Not for the first time in this world, Scar is convinced he completely messed up for suggesting the bath at all. It was a bad idea, clearly. Why was he so eager? Why did he have to insist, even though Grian was clearly hesitant? Why did he have to go ahead and drag Grian into it, only for it all to end up like this?

He’s a bit frantic, but he’s trying to keep his suggestions level and calm. He offers Grian to lie down so he doesn’t need to keep his wings up too much in his attempts to reach the warmth of the crackling fire.

With a weak whimper, Grian curls up on the cloak. With a sharp flinch, he nudges his wing a bit too close to the fire. (He doesn’t care; he’s so upset with them. He watches blankly, sees it happen, but doesn’t move away.) (His wing is so heavy.) (What has it ever done for him—and Scar—in this world but bring suffering?) (Maybe it'd be better if it burned.) (Maybe it should.) (It deserves whatever happens to it, he thinks dazedly.)

Scar’s stunned, locked in place at the sight. What is he meant to do here?? He can’t move Grian’s wings. He— Does he move the fire? Or— Or he could scoot all of Grian, maybe. But now he’s convinced all of his ideas are garbage now. He doesn’t want to make things worse, and he’s aware that he tends to inadvertently do that far too often.

Grian’s mind continues spiralling, untethered, in free fall. He’s blankly looking at his feathers near the fire; the sparks fly nearby. The glow illuminates the damp mess of his feathers.

In the quietest voice, barely audible, he asks: “... Scar, do you want to cut them off?”

Scar’s lungs seize up. Surely he heard that wrong? “What?”

Grian purses his lips, a small frown settling between his eyebrows. He’s still staring in the direction of the feathers and the flame, not turning to look at Scar.

Something in Scar shifts then, so adamantly. Where he was trying to work with Grian’s spiralling before, now he just has outright refusal flowing through him. “Grian, no.” His voice is stern instead of that squeaky, panicked gentleness from before. “Listen to me, you are fine, we are safe, they will dry. I told you I’d watch your back, okay? I told you it was okay to relax, so let me figure this out.”

Grian doesn’t move. He stays lying quietly, not looking at Scar, fingers slightly curled but left with nothing to hold onto. Scar’s words swirl through him, but they refuse to take hold.

“Scar.” It’s quiet, so incredibly quiet. Wobbly and blank, somber and so horribly factual. “I don’t need them.”

“Yeah I don’t need my hair either but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna shave it,” Scar grumbles. His voice isn’t angry exactly, but he is not playing this game. “I can make another fire if you want. We have enough fuel, we’ll just have to gather more soon. And then we either wait or you let me help.” He’s gone full diplomatic, spending all his energy on remaining calm and certain.

Grian squeezes his eyes shut, pulling himself tighter into a ball. Scar’s voice is flatter than usual, not the coaxing gentleness he usually uses, and Grian silently blames himself for that tonal shift, further unease blooming under his skin.

His wing twitches, feathers moving just the slightest bit towards the fire. It’s not an intended motion, and with his eyes tightly closed and mind fuzzy, Grian isn’t even fully aware of it. (He wouldn’t correct it anyway.)

The wings are wet and heavy and cold, and everything in them feels dislodged and damaging, and he wants to tear at them—

He curls his fingers tighter, nails digging into his palm as a whimper breaks past his lips.

Even if Scar is upset with him. Even if Grian is feeling and saying wrong things. (Things that scare him but sink into him like daggers anyway.) Even then, he still wants Scar to help. He— He needs Scar’s help, because he isn’t sure he’s going to win this fight with himself.

Grian sniffles and looks to him, all wretched and pathetic. “Help.”

The tension tugging at Scar’s features as he racks his brain eases slightly when he meets Grian’s eyes. His expression immediately softens, utterly weak to it.

“Okay,” Scar says softly, even if he’s not sure what that promised help entails quite yet. He scoots a little closer, purposely putting his foot in between the fire and Grian’s encroaching feathers. “Another fire or do you want me to help you dry off?”

Notably, Grian’s feathers don’t shy from the barrier of Scar’s foot. They’d usually flinch back, maintaining distance, but Grian can’t muster up enough will to care right now. He’s willing to get them hurt.

The way Scar’s voice softens chips at something in Grian. Abruptly, his eyes flood with tears and his fists loosen, hands twitching up. (To cover his face or to reach for Scar, he isn’t sure.) “I just want— I just want them dry. Scar, please.”

It’s not an answer to a preferred method, but it is an answer to the scale of urgency. (And that’s not even it. Grian wants more. He wants them clean but without being bright. He wants all the things lodged in them to be pulled out without them being touched. He wants them to stop feeling so awful all the time. He wants them to stop being beacons. He wants them to stop being such an incessant burden. He wants people to stop so hungrily wanting them, as if they were an object to take. He wants to stop being afraid of the day when they will inevitably be hacked off his back while he screams and can't fight back. He wants them to feel like a part of him again instead of just something unwieldy and wounded he carries along. He wants them to stop feeling so inflamed and scratched up, so tense, so big and visible, so untouchable, like a dead space around his back that has to forever be navigated around. He wants— He wants it all to stop. He wants them gone, now, on his own terms.)

“Okay,” Scar says again. His voice is steady but his hands, notably, are not.

Aside from the fire, every suggestion he has involves touching Grian’s wings— which as far as he’s concerned, is something he is never allowed to do.

“Okay, just… let them down? Um, droop?” Scar slides his leg firmly between them and fire, though. “… And not too close to the fire.” He’s no longer beating around the bush with that. He knows what Grian is thinking about. He can sense the self destructiveness.

Grian tries to follow what Scar wants from him while wading through the endless suggestions his own mind spews at him. He shifts, a bit clumsy, and his wings sweep across the floor. They’re so heavy to move. To adjust. To redirect. It’s ungraceful, fumbly.

Despite Scar banning the proximity to the fire, the feathers lightly crash against Scar’s legs anyway, a small pressure leaving nothing but a despondent suggestion of Scar moving out of the way as Grian sobs quietly while his mind spins. (Tear rip destroy cut get rid of them get rid of them make them GONE pluck them out claw them off anything just gone gone gONE) (Make it stOP—)

While—as Scar presumes, anyway—Grian’s mind is preoccupied dealing with the task of moving his wings, Scar goes ahead and tears the other band-aid off. “…Grian, I’m— I’m going to have to touch your wings to make this work.” Again he’s fighting down his nerves, forcing his voice to remain even, but he struggles.

He hates this.

Grian blinks, not looking quite at Scar. His vision is blurry and something in his chest tingles, plunging him into uncertainty. He doesn’t know how he feels. His ears ring. “Okay…” he says, a bit too quiet, a bit too flat.

His brain fumbles through nonsensical half-sentences. He considers asking Scar to yank the feathers. He considers asking him to make it hurt? He thinks maybe he should tell him again to cut them off, get rid of the problem at the root.

What he ends up saying instead is something else entirely, and his voice is small and incredibly off while he delivers the line.

“... Do you want them?”

“... What?” Scar says again, entirely thrown off by that nonsensical question. But he quickly decides he doesn’t want Grian to explain that, actually, and keeps talking. “No, Grian, I want you. All of you. I just—“ The gravity of those statements weighs on Scar after a moment and he stutters slightly over his words, but still powers through. “I just want you to be okay. This was supposed to be relaxing.”

It takes a second for Scar to realize Grian did provide consent for the idea of his wings being touched, which is wild, and it sets off a whole bunch of other questions he doesn’t want answered flying around his brain. “So I’ll be as fast as I can, okay? And then we can enjoy some nice warm clothes and a lovely campfire.”

Grian grows both more sheepish and more numb, quieter. It feels like surrendering. To what exactly, he isn’t sure yet. He’s just done fighting. Whatever happens, happens.

His voice is tiny and hollow, but he gives Scar another nudge, another confirmation that he’s listening and Scar is allowed to carry on. “Okay.”

“… Okay,” Scar repeats, somewhat terrified. He’s never known Grian to give in so easily to anything, even when it’s good for him. “I won’t hurt you, you know that?” It’s meant to be a statement, but it comes out far too close to a question.

The words are out there and— Grian knows Scar wouldn’t hurt him, but his brain is screaming at him anyway, and he thinks he’d welcome it if Scar did something horrible to him. (He’s verging on doing it himself—) Instead of answering, he just closes his eyes.

Scar fumbles his hands about, looking for his clothes that he set out to get warm, taking his vest for starters because it’s the thickest. He wraps the fabric over and around his hand, taking this time to steel his nerves. He really shouldn’t build up to this whole thing, even if he wants to preface it with about a dozen apologies.

Grian can sense Scar getting ready. It sets his nerves alight, and he wants to retreat, back into that numbness, even as the anticipation builds up under his skin. He takes a shaky breath, brings his arms up and ducks his face in them, hiding himself.

It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay let it happen—

Scar really doesn’t want to prolong this any more than necessary, so he gets right to it, placing his wrapped-up hand on the wing closest to him and moving it in line with the feathers, trying to place as little pressure as possible for this first pass.

Grian’s wing barely twitches, startled as Scar starts touching it. Grian’s biting into his lip, trying not to tremble, trying not to— He isn’t sure what. (He wishes Scar’d pull his claws out and dug in.) (The lightness of the touch is driving him insane.)

Restless with mounting tension, Grian shifts a little, moving to curl on his other side, effectively turning his back to Scar. It seems practical: it helps the angle, gives Scar easier access to the wing. But more than that, it also means relinquishing even more control—something Grian usually never does. (The idea of someone behind his back usually spirals him into panic. He never really allows it. Not anymore.) (And yet.)

Scar’s surprised he isn’t given much resistance for doing this. He feels like he ought to be slapped, or in the very least shouted at for causing this whole mess. He’s miserable, not at all enjoying this disaster of a preening session, if you could even call it that.

Grian’s chest feels horribly constricted and his hands shake. Turned away from Scar, he presses his hand against his bare, damp chest, nails clawing at his skin, clutching at the pain he can’t quite get to.

Scar presses down a little more with each pass, letting the cloth soak up as much water as it can, and after a few successful strokes down the entire length, Scar lifts ever so slightly to let it drip off the bottom, testing if he can get away with drying there as well. He doesn’t exactly want to, but it would get this done faster if he could.

The firmer pressure on Grian’s wings, oddly enough, feels better than the light touch. Grian doesn’t want Scar to be gentle. (He doesn’t know how to make him understand that.) (He thinks maybe Scar knows and just doesn’t want to understand.) Nonsensically, he wishes it’d all be worse.

He doesn’t react to Scar manipulating his wings in any way, doesn’t twitch or flinch them away. The wing isn’t relaxed, not in the slightest, but it obliges and obeys, surrendered just like Grian. (Please please please make it hurt—)

As he works, Scar takes a breath to speak. It’s shaky, just like his hands, but he pushes past it. “I was—“ His voice catches in his throat, and he quietly curses himself for failing on his one strength here— his words. But he tries again, pushes past the wobble in his voice. “… I was gonna build a castle this season. I know I’m always on about how I hate big castle builds, but I had a block palette ready and everything.”

When Scar starts talking, voice faltering, Grian feels an abrupt rise of emotions clog his throat. It’s the first time since the start that his wing really twitches, threatening awareness on him. He fights down the uprise of panic, breathes through his mouth, a long and steady exhale.

“Wh— What palette did you— have in mind?” he manages to say in bits and pieces, voice hoarse and thick, sounding like he’s been crying. He can barely comprehend what he’s saying, half of him switched on autopilot.

Scar is so relieved to hear Grian speak, even if his voice is more pained than his own. It just feels like something more manageable than the task at hand, however, so he clings to it, continues on.

“I was gonna use blue ice for the roof. Maybe a little impractical but—“ he almost chuckles, trying to ease into the easy conversation. “I think the worst part of castles is everyone goes for the medieval look. They suck the soul right out of the build with it. There’s no magic!”

He scrubs more methodically, even offering the occasional squeeze to get the water out. He still hates it. The enthusiasm of his words rings false to his own ears. To make up for his frustration, he frees a small twig that had been driving him crazy before back in the hot spring. “I would go for a more pastel color palette— sandstone, terracotta, no deepslate allowed.”

Grian presses his forehead against the cloak that’s underneath him, just trying to hold himself together. (He still wants to grab the wing and do bad bad bad things—) (The freed twig sends a toppling sense of relief through him that he can’t quite decipher or understand.) He tries so hard to follow Scar’s words, instead of the unending scalding avalanche of things his mind keeps suggesting and burying him under.

He wants to tell Scar to rake his claws through his feathers.

He wants to tell him to just tear at the joint, right where Grian’s exposed back lies defenceless.

He wants to tell him to bite and tear and take—

He swallows thickly and says, instead: “A fairytale castle.”

“Exactly!” Scar says, the excitement partially real this time. “A proper castle isn’t just a build, it’s an experience!”

It feels like this might take an eternity, but Scar does recognize progress. He continues taking out anything he sees stuck in the wings, deciding he’s at least going to make Grian’s wings feel better if he has to do this to him.

Grian's curling up tighter, shivering despite himself, but his wing is still and willing in Scar's hands, nothing but an object to be manipulated. (To be taken.) He still wants this all to get worse. He also wants it to be over. He can't stand this in-between.

With effort, Grian drags his other wing—the one Scar isn't currently working on—across himself. He hasn't purposefully touched his wings in so long, but with a stutter of his breath and mind burning, his fingers find the feathers now.

“Careful,” Scar warns, like he’s the one that should be offering wing advice somehow. “I’m almost done with this one, I think?” He lifts his hand, seeing the vest is properly soaked already.

“Mm.” Grian doesn’t really process what Scar means by saying careful. Doesn’t catch the warning. His wing tucks around him, fingers curling into the feathers without care. He’s playing with the idea of yanking as if he was playing with fire, but somehow it seems like the option that will burn him is the safe one. The letting go. Like he should pick this destructive option instead to make it all better.

His earwings shield his face, even as all of him is turned away from Scar’s sight anyway.

They muffle the quietest, choked sob.

Grian’s fingers pull.

Just at that moment, Scar turns to grab his undershirt, figuring he may as well. The clothes’ll dry easier than the feathers, clearly.

When he looks back, he sees the slight pull Grian’s fingers make and he narrows his eyes, wanting to be wrong about what he just saw. He decides against bringing attention to it, instead grabbing Grian’s hand and unthreading his fingers altogether. “Let me,” he says, though he leaves little room for argument.

There’s no fighting back; Grian’s self destructive, but entirely given up otherwise, still surrendered to Scar fully. (His mind is a tangled mess of contradictions and warnings and pleas.) He lets Scar do what he wants, a sense of blank numbness descending back over him. (He wants to keep it. It’s easier. He wants to tuck himself in it and never emerge.)

Scar doesn’t bring up what he thinks he just saw, not now. He’s not so sure Grian is fully with it, something he’s become more familiar with than he’d like to be.

He gets to work on that wing, leaving the drier one spread out near the fire. (Though he keeps a close eye on that.) The undershirt is a tad worse at collecting water, but it’s longer and still does the job. And he wants that job done as soon as possible. “How did you ever bathe back home…” he mumbles, not expecting an answer.

Grian’s completely resigned, his wing fully in Scar’s control. He’s staring blankly ahead at the darker part of the cave, not really seeing anything. His soul feels like a warzone, littered with exploded landmines.

He isn’t sure if there’s anything left to explode. (There probably is.) (He doesn’t want to think about it.)

He hears Scar asking something, but he doesn’t quite catch and process it. The word home makes it through to his awareness though and, quietly, without a word, his eyes flood with fresh tears.

Despite not expecting an answer, it still hurts Scar not to receive one. He feels like he’s talking to the void when Grian gets like this. Like his heart is about to tip forward and fall into it.

“Is there like… a hair dryer for wings?” His attempt at a joke doesn’t make him feel any better. Again he moves the wing to work on the underside, carefully pinching when he needs to squeeze the water out.

Numbness tingles through Grian, but contradictory, the tears continue to overflow and silently drip down his face. He doesn't know what he's feeling. Is it emptiness? Is it pain? Is it fear? He thinks of the campfire and feathers. He thinks of blood and screaming, arms and blades and being pinned down. He thinks of Scar's soft voice and of his hands massaging Grian's scalp.

He can't untangle himself.

He continues staying quiet, not reacting.

“I guess you… could just use a normal hair dryer.” Scar’s heart aches. His vision is getting blurry with tears as well. He’s still doing well drying the wings, but his chest feel likes it’s splintering. With a small sniffle, he adds on, far too quiet: “Grian, I’m so sorry.”

The apology, barely audible, elicits a small twitch of Grian’s wing in Scar’s hold.

He doesn’t understand. Why is Scar sorry? Why is Scar hurting?

He can’t get through the fog that surrounds him. (He thinks it shields him; he isn’t sure he wants to venture out.) He thinks, disorientingly, of warm beds and tight cuddles.

He wants to ask if this is over yet. He wants to ask if Scar is okay. He wants to—

(He wants to discard his wings and—)

His eyes close, eyelashes wet. His hand weakly paws at the cloak that’s still underneath him, a feeble layer shielding him from the coldness of rough ground.

“Maybe not— not one of my better ideas, the whole bath thing.” Releasing his inner conflict is comforting to Scar in some way. It makes his tears feel like less of a waste. It helps him keep going somehow.

He might rush somewhat, but only because he can barely take it anymore.

Softly, he croaks out: “It was nice to hear you laugh…”

A shaky breath leaves Grian. He itches to reassure Scar. To tell him the bath was absolutely wonderful. To thank him, for letting him laugh. To press a kiss to his cheek and genuinely thank him for it, for that moment of reprieve.

But he can’t.

He can’t, not now, not now, because if he does try, everything will fall apart and the carefully held back dam of panic will break and he’d suffocate.

So he just silently waits for it to be over, even as the heartache builds and builds and builds through the numbness in his heart, a desperate aching leading straight back to Scar, yelling at Grian to fix it.

Scar continues in silence after that, words entirely failing him either way— whether he opts for sentimentality or distraction.

After a while longer, he feels like he stops making progress, like the rest will simply have to be air dried.

The wings are let go and there’s a lull, an empty moment, and Grian hazily realises he doesn’t remember most of the wing drying. Something in him skipped over it and buried it deep down, the sensation of harmless pressure over his wings lost to some void.

Scar slowly shifts to be in front of Grian as he wrings out his shirt. “Is it—“ His voice breaks painfully and he has to pause to clear his throat. “Is it okay?” He sets the shirt down near the fire and offers his empty palms, his usual placating gesture. “I could help you up?”

Grian hears Scar shift to the front of him, and it draws a small questioning sound out of him. He opens his eyes, finding Scar’s, noticing the rawness of his expression, the wetness of his eyelashes and cheeks that mirrors Grian’s own.

Scar is checking up on him, but he sounds so wounded, and it’s absolutely destroying Grian’s heart. His breath hitches, and his vision blurs anew. (Fix it fix it fix it fix it—) He still can’t quite find words. He still can’t quite find himself.

But he wants to give Scar something, and Scar didn’t take his wings, and—

Timidly, he reaches for Scar’s offered palms, but remains pressed to the ground, not attempting to get up. “Scar.” It’s hoarse and small, pleading and broken. There’s an edge of fragmentation to it, a cracked glass too sharp to not get cut on accident.

Scar’s breath hitches again at the sound of his name— god, how he loves hearing Grian say his name— and he chokes out a small sniffle, bordering on a sob. “Hi,” he says lamely, meeting Grian’s outstretched hand and taking it. His other hand immediately finds Grian’s cheek, brushing aside a few stray tears and cradling his head gently.

“Hi,” Grian echoes back so, so weakly. (He wants to give more more more more more—) His hand squeezes against Scar’s, but it’s feeble. He feels taken apart into pieces, unsure how to put himself back together.

But he looks at Scar and he thinks that Scar also needs someone to put a scrap of cloth over the wounds scattered across his heart. (They don’t have bandages. They don’t have stitches. They have hands and words, tears and prayers, and some scraps.)

So Grian does his best to pull through the thick fog, to attempt a tiny, tiniest, weakest smile. “The bath felt nice.” It’s hoarse and precarious, but it rings sincere.

Scar coughs, choking on a small bark of laughter that’s hardly even joyful. It’s still pained. But it’s something.

“I’m glad,” he replies softly, eyes flicking downward. “Your sweater should be all warm by now.”

Scar’s small laughter is more than just something. Grian holds onto it, wraps it up in his mind, protects it from the tingling fog as if it was the most precious thing.

“Mm.” His sweater might be warm, and gosh, what a tantalising though that is. But it isn’t within his reach.

Scar is.

Lightly, questioningly, he tugs at Scar’s hand. “C’mere?”

This time the laughter is a touch more sincere. Scar can’t help it. That simple word warms his heart enough to melt away a bit of the ice he was letting freeze over him.

He slides his legs down, ignoring the cold ground, and adjusts himself so he can lie down in front of Grian, leaning his head close. “I’m here.”

Without hesitation, Grian shifts towards him, yearning. There’s that string between them, a bond that tugs, dictating that there’s only one direction for Grian to go to reach safety.

His feathers are lighter. They tuck behind him loosely, still semi-sprawled, still siphoning the warmth of the fire to dry off the remaining bits. He feels a little bit silly for how violent he wanted to be with them. (He thinks he might end up wanting that again. But not now. Not now, when Scar’s lying in front of him after just laughing unsteadily, looking so vulnerable after trying his absolute best for Grian.)

“Mm.” Grian reaches out his free hand and lightly brushes over Scar’s cheek. “You are,” he confirms in a whisper, and then he sniffles. “I’m— I—” He swallows down the apology, buries it deep within his heart as he tips forward, wanting to tuck himself against Scar. “Thank you.”

The returned gesture manages to get Scar to smile, however weak it may be. He leans into the touch, needing it desperately. “Mm, I— …Yeah.” He wants to say of course like he normally would, but it doesn’t feel right. “… Is it any better?”

Grian nuzzles himself under Scar’s jaw, searching for his spot at the crook of Scar’s neck. “It’s better,” he reassures, soft and quiet and unsteadily sincere.

Even if he's still hurting. (Even if Scar is as well.)

Even if his wings still feel off and he's still scared.

Even if he still feels exhausted and numb, a little bit volatile and a whole lot fractured. With a bruised heart behind his paper-thin ribs.

Even then, this one thing is a truth he can concede.

It's better.

It's better, because Scar was here to make it so.

And Scar is still here.

Abruptly, Grian shivers, because his skin is still exposed, and so is Scar’s, and—

Maybe rashly, on impulse, he swishes his wing up, where it falters.

“Scar.” He pulls away just enough to be able to look at him. There’s an edge of fear in his wide eyes, something so desperately shackled, and an endless pool of vulnerability. “Don’t— Don’t touch them anymore, not— Just—” He starts tripping over his words. He opts to duck back into the safety of his spot and— His wing slowly, so very slowly drapes across him and Scar, like a blanket. “Just. Is this—” He wants to ask if it’s okay, but the words don’t make it past his throat.

“I won’t,” Scar confirms immediately, and he’s glad he did, because those words would have definitely been broken up and choked out if he had waited for Grian’s wings to be draped over them. “I—“ he still stammers, hopelessly endeared and emotional by the touch. “… O–okay.”

“Okay,” Grian echoes a little breathlessly, and on nothing but instinct and yearning, the wing presses against Scar’s back in a gentle tug. And his feathers still flare up, overstimulated, but it feels different now. Like this might be something he can handle.

Like maybe this could help, too.

And it's him initiating this whole touch, perfectly aware of where his wings are and what they're pressed against. He's in control here, like walking on a tightrope, begging Scar not to unexpectedly shake it underneath him.

Being cocooned in feathers feels very natural and comforting to Grian, even though it’s something he’s been denying himself for the longest time. They shield them from the cold air, trap the warmth between them, quite like a literal blanket would, even as some of the feathers are still damp. (He hopes Scar doesn’t mind.)

Maybe clothes would be warmer, but this makes Scar feel so much lighter. His heart feels like it could spring out his chest, a mixture of relief and gratefulness stirring within him. Immensely glad that the awful part is now over, quite honestly struggling to catch up to this jump in development.

But he’ll take it.

He’ll take this over Grian asking him to cut off his wings any day.

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