Doc is a very intelligent man who has never done anything wrong, ever.
Consequently, the fact that there is now a stranger in the middle of his lab, looking utterly disheveled and very confused, is absolutely not his fault. Neither is the smoking phone booth-like machine which the stranger has just stumbled out of. This is all going perfectly normal and according to plan.
(Oh, he’s screwed.)
The stranger looks… very young, for one, maybe even somewhere in their late teens, which is certainly concerning for multiple reasons (Doc was not intending on kidnapping kids, thank you very much). They – he, Doc assumes from the looks of things, he is wearing a bright green tunic criss-crossed with a couple of black belts, and a pair of soft white trousers. His hair is yellow – not blonde, actually yellow, as if he’d taken a bath in highlighter ink or something of the sort – and his eyes are a piercing, saturated blue. He’s got a hat too, same colour as the tunic, but he’s clutching it in one hand (which is probably a reasonable idea given how much the machine that brought him here must have been shaking).
He looks like a fun guy.
“What the f*ck?!”
…Okay, Doc takes that back.
“First of all, no swearing, please,” he says, cringing ever so slightly. English swear words always sound a little harsh to his ears, especially on Hermitcraft, which is PG in all but the rarest of circ*mstances. “But secondly, I am – so sorry about this. I was doing some, ah, science, and evidently it did not go as planned. Give me a few moments, and I’ll send you right back where you belong, okay?” (Forward? He isn’t sure, he’d need to check the settings.) “Sorry again.”
The stranger narrows his eyes at him. He’s, like, five foot four tops, and still has a baby face, so it should not be intimidating, least of all in the face of a seven foot tall horned creeper cyborg. Somehow though, he still manages to pull it off.
“First of all,” he says in a mocking tone, “I will swear however much I’d f*cking like.” Ah, a stubborn one, then. “And secondly, if you’re using me for some stupid-ass science of yours, you sure as Nether owe me an explanation for what is happening before you do anything else!”
Doc sighs as he makes his way to the smoking machine and peeks inside (the clock is still on the wall, though it is a little askew, and the panel is lit up in ways it is not meant to be lit up). “I owe you nothing,” he says, as calmly as he can manage (even if it isn’t quite true, he isn’t fond of the stranger’s attitude.) “But the long and short of it is that I have a somewhat malfunctioning time machine.”
Behind his back, the stranger scoffs. “Oh, like anyone’s gonna believe that bullsh*t. Why are you science people always so f*cking full of yourselves?”
Alright, that’s it. Doc turns around to glare at him (which does remarkably little to scare the guy given, again, their relative size differences and the power dynamic here), crossing his arms at his chest.
“Okay, listen here,” he says with a hiss (surely that’s bound to be at least a little frightening to anyone with self-preservation. Spoiler alert: the stranger seems to have none.) “You are here by my mistake, but you are also at my mercy. If you don’t shut up and stop antagonising me, I am fully capable of stranding you here forever. Are we understood?”
“I’d say you sound like my dad if I had one,” the kid smirks at him, crookedly – an odd thing to say to a stranger, and perhaps said precisely because of it; if you don’t have any power in a conversation, just make it uncomfortable enough for the other person to bail first. “Whatever, science man. Do your thing and get me out of here.”
That’s better. Doc huffs to himself and turns back to the time machine panel before pinching the bridge of his nose in annoyance at his own scientific curiosity, enough to overpower any frustration with the kid. “What’s your name, then? What year is it for you?”
“Oh, you’re gonna be asking questions now?” the guy scoffs, plopping himself down onto the stone-cold floor of Doc’s lab. “Yeah, I don’t think so, dude. f*ck off.”
Doc sighs. Why did he expect anything different, exactly? “Are your pronouns he/him at least? I gotta refer to you as something.”
“Don’t speak of me at all and you’ll be fine,” the stranger grumbles after a moment’s pause. “But, uh, yeah. He/him’s good.”
Great. Peachy.
For the next few minutes, as Doc tries to decode the symbols on the time machine interface, they are both silent. The only sound in the lab is the familiar humming of redstone in its walls and the quiet beep every time Doc presses a button or another, and it feels rather awkward – he’s not used to being around other people as he works, least of all strangers. But on the bright side, at least it doesn’t take him too long to figure out what knobs were turned far enough out of place to cause this whole disaster.
…On the less bright side, one of the knobs is a timer. Which Doc initially installed because he thought it would be useful to limit his forays into different times in an attempt to avoid side effects, but which, when used in this way, just means the time machine becomes unusable for a certain number of hours after its last use.
In this case, the number of hours appears to be set at twelve.
“Scheiße,” he mutters under his breath.
“Hypocrite,” the stranger chimes in in a sing-songy voice. Just Doc’s luck that he’d recognise German swear words. “What’s wrong? Broke your weird little device?”
“My weird little device is your ticket back home,” Doc reminds him, snappishly. “And it’s not broken. It’s just… temporarily unavailable for use. Which means –” (he grimaces) – “you’re stuck here for the next twelve hours.”
The stranger doesn’t look nearly as alarmed by the idea as he, in Doc’s opinion, should. He blows at the strand of neon-yellow hair which has been falling into his left eye to no avail, then puts his hat back on in a smooth motion, all the while not breaking eye contact. “I’ve been stuck in worse places for longer, I suppose,” he says with a shrug. “It better work eventually though. I have no desire to see your face for any longer than I have to.” And then, before Doc can snap at him again for being a dick: “Not… because you’re a creeper hybrid or anything, for the record. I don’t – I don’t care. You’re just an annoying bitch.”
…Huh.
The kid is getting weirder by the minute.
Doc chooses to ignore the – well, he can’t call that a compliment, it definitely was very much intended as an insult, but it was a strangely courteous insult – and instead digs his communicator out of his pocket. “The feeling is mutual,” he says instead. And then, with a sigh: “But in any case, I will have to inform the server admin of your presence here. He would not be very happy with me if he finds out on his own.”
(Not that he’ll be particularly happy either way, to be fair. Xisuma does not look lightly on intrusions, even if the intrusions come about through the Hermits’ own actions. However, Doc doesn’t want to deal with the kid all on his own for the next twelve hours either, and who better to deal with people if not the man who made it his entire job?)
He finds the chat he has with X and begins typing out a message. The kid wraps his hands around himself as he watches Doc type, but says nothing. Doc chooses to ignore that also.
***
Docm77: Xisuma I need your help and also I would appreciate it if you don’t yell at me too much
Xisuma: Great start. Always love getting messages like this first thing in the morning :)
Xisuma: What’s wrong?
Docm77: …So I was trying to mess around with time travel again.
Xisuma: Doc!
Docm77: I know I know sorry
Docm77: Anyway I uhhh maybe sort of accidentally pulled a random dude from a random time into my lab?
Docm77: And he’s like 17 so he is very rude and refuses to answer any of my questions??
Docm77: And I can’t operate the time machine again for the next 12 hours because I messed up some settings???
Docm77: help.
Xisuma: You are in SO much trouble.
Xisuma: I’m omw.
***
Xisuma arrives at his lab not fifteen minutes after, clearly having used up at least half a stack of rockets to get here from his castle in that short a time. He lands on the deepslate floor with a quiet thud, having all but jumped down the wall-mounted ladder leading to the lowest level of the Octagon where Doc had set up his equipment, and drops his elytra wings into his inventory.
Doc watches him as he looks around the lab, taking note of the still-smoking time machine and the kid on the floor, before exhaling in annoyance and marching up to Doc himself from across the room. Xisuma is also shorter than him, but he has never had any trouble being intimidating when he needs to be, so Doc instinctively backs away. (Out of the corner of his mechanical eye, he notices the kid cringe and glance down to the floor, but he doesn’t have time to access that particular reaction.)
“Doc, I hope you realise what you’ve done,” Xisuma says, voice low and serious. “First of all, you have violated the rules of the treaty of Season Six, but I will not be the one bringing that up with you.” (This, Doc assumes, means he’ll tell Grian, which… ouch. Was always a risk, but he’d rather not have it happen.) “Secondly, you have pulled a non-whitelisted stranger through all my server firewalls, which in my eyes is a more dangerous offence, because who knows the effects it’s going to have on the code. You know as well as I do how much we need those protections to be intact.”
Okay, Doc… hadn’t thought about that until now, but X has a point, and it’s a worrying one. There are people on Hermitcraft who need the defences – either to feel safe, or because they might actually be in danger otherwise – and even a slight possibility of them being out of order is concerning. Clearly, the understanding and regret reflect in his eye, because Xisuma sighs and takes a step back.
“You will help me fix anything you broke.” Fair enough. “Also, community service. At least twelve hours.” Also fair. “Includes helping Boatem fix their lag problem.” Yikes, but, sure, he’ll manage. “And obviously, you’ll send the poor kid back to whatever year you yanked him out of as soon as that is possible.”
“Well, obviously. Was planning on it anyway,” Doc grumbles, looking away. “I’m sorry, X, really. I didn’t – I didn’t plan on messing it up that bad.”
“I know you didn’t,” Xisuma says with another small sigh, shaking his head. “And it’s alright. Just – please be more responsible with these things next time, okay?”
“I will,” Doc says, lowering his head, and he means it – world-breaking may be his hobby, but he never intends to put any of his fellow Hermits in real danger with his experiments.
Xisuma claps him on the shoulder lightly before turning around on his heel, finally taking a proper look at the stranger. The kid, from what Doc can see, is looking up at him with calculating eyes, a little bewildered as he fidgets with the strap of his belt. Xisuma offers him a smile.
“Sorry about that,” he says, “but someone’s gotta keep this one in check before he does something particularly dangerous.”
“I mean, what you were saying earlier doesn’t strike me as entirely harmless either,” the kid says, carefully, as if testing it out. “I’m surprised you’re not more pissed off about it.”
“There’s no point in being angry if it’s something you can fix. Waste of energy that can be used on the fixing,” Xisuma shrugs lightly. “No point in being angry if it’s something you can’t fix either, frankly. Waste of energy that can be used on coming up with alternative solutions.”
The kid seems particularly confused by this philosophy, which, Doc figures with a snort, is just par for the course. “That sounds like hippie bullsh*t,” he announces. Xisuma raises one eyebrow at him.
“I would appreciate it if you kept swearing to a minimum on my server,” he says, politely, as he offers the kid his hand to pull him upwards. “In the meantime, however, since it seems like you’ll be spending some time with us – my name is Xisuma, and the man who dragged you over here is Doc. The circ*mstances are peculiar, but it’s nice to meet you.”
The kid eyes his hand suspiciously, then scoffs to himself and takes it, yanking himself upright. “The feeling is not mutual,” he says. And then, begrudgingly: “I’m Grian.”
Absently, Doc decides that it’s a good thing he isn’t holding anything in his hands, because he would most definitely have dropped it. Xisuma, it seems, is in much the same boat – he blinks at the kid a couple times, looking him up and down with some hesitation. Doc frantically tries to remember if Grian is a particularly common name.
“What?” the kid demands, crossing his arms on his chest. “If you think something’s wrong with my name, then say it to my face, assholes. I’m not changin’ it again.”
…Oh yeah. Grian came up with his name himself, didn’t he.
Well.
“Nothing is wrong with your name, no,” Doc says, slowly. “I mean, mine is really just a title, and Xisuma’s – you should see how it’s spelled.” He shoves his communicator in the kid’s face, watching as he squints down at it.
“Ex-eye-suma?” he reads out after a moment, snorting to himself. “Yeah, no, okay, you’re right. I revoke both of your permissions to say sh*t about my name. This pronunciation doesn’t even make sense.”
Doc and Xisuma exchange glances.
On one hand, that’s one problem down – at least Doc didn’t actually drag anyone who isn’t whitelisted onto the server. Sure, the timings are off, but for all that the code cares, it’s the same Player account, so it would not have caused any particular damage to the firewalls to bring him here. That’s a relief.
On the other hand, however–
Oh, this is going to be a long twelve hours.
***
Grian is in the middle of mining up some more cobbled deepslate for the G-Train when he gets Xisuma’s message. It’s short, sweet, and to the point – Get to Doc’s lab in Octagon ASAP (not an emergency, but important) – which is approximately the best way to pique Grian’s curiosity. Not to mention that a break would be more than welcome – he’s always looking for a way to distract himself from, ugh, mining deepslate. So he tosses the pickaxe back into his inventory, dusts off his hands, and makes his way back up the mineshaft towards the surface.
He doesn’t know what he’s expecting as he flies towards the Octagon, a steady stream of rockets propelling him forward. It could be a prank, Xisuma isn’t exactly all innocent when it comes to messing with the Hermits, and Grian wouldn’t put it beyond Doc to ask for his help – but if this were it, the message probably wouldn’t be phrased so seriously. It’s a Boy Who Cried Wolf sort of situation.
In any case, he doesn’t know what he’s expecting, so he makes his way down through the winding pathways of the Octagon and into Doc’s laboratory with some excitement bubbling in his chest. He pushes the trap door open, then slips down a wooden ladder onto the floor (oh, is Doc the person who’s been buying all of his cobbled deepslate?)
And then –
Then, he freezes.
There are so many things wrong with the scene in front of him.
For one, the machine in the corner looks suspiciously like the one he himself had built a few seasons back, and since then had vowed not to mess with. It’s got a beacon at the top and a lit up control panel inside, all proper, all in perfect operational order, precisely the way it should not be. Grian does not remember the exact terms of the agreement they’ve both signed after the Area 77 debacle, but this is definitely violating them.
And for another – a… more off-putting another, that’s for sure – there is kid sitting in the middle of the room, chatting idly with Xisuma (though both turn to look at him when he enters). The kid is sporting a horrible yellow fringe and a costume he found in a second-hand store for approximately two emeralds. His face is very familiar, in that way a face can only be familiar if you have once upon a time grown used to seeing it in the mirror.
Doc looks very guilty. Grian exhales to stop himself from storming out then and there, and instead marches up to him, jabbing his finger into the hybrid’s chest.
“Doctor Monster Seventy-Seven, you are in so, so much trouble,” he hisses.
“Trust me, Xisuma has already made that clear,” Doc sighs, though to his credit, he makes no move to step away. Grian huffs, scandalised.
“From what I remember, Xisuma is not the one whose signature is on a very important piece of paper that was written at the end of Season Six!” he exclaims. “Does Ren know what you’re messing with here? Does anyone?”
“No,” Doc sighs, casting his glance downwards. “Well, you and X do now, I suppose.”
Grian throws his hands up.
“I’ll tell him,” he threatens. “I’ll tell Impulse too, don’t you test me. And Scar, for the matter. Actually scratch that, I’m not telling Scar anything, he’ll find this hilarious.” (He is definitely telling Scar, but only after he resigns himself to the consequences. He still needs a few minutes for that.) “How does this even happen? How do you even do this?”
“Would it be better or worse if I tell you I have no clue?” Doc sighs. (Worse. So much worse.) “I didn’t… intend for this. I’m sorry.”
He does actually sound remorseful, which is a good start. Grian sighs and rubs at his cheeks tiredly before looking him in the eyes again.
“It’s… fine, I guess. I mean, I’m pissed off, and we’re going to have to talk about it after this–“ (a quick gesture at the kid behind them) – “is sorted out, but it’s fine. I just – I would have appreciated a warning.” He lets out a nearly hysterical kind of chuckle, and Doc cringes a little.
“Yeah, no, that’s – that’s fair. X and I just figured it’d be best to get you in here as soon as possible, but – yeah, sorry. Should’ve explained it some more.”
“Sorry, Grian,” Xisuma adds behind him, also sounding a little guilty. And then: “Not you, him. Oh, for heaven’s sake– We haven’t explained anything to him either if it’s any consolation.”
“It isn’t!” Grian exclaims, turning around to face the two of them, the kid on the ground now looking less bewildered and more disbelieving as the understanding of what is happening suddenly dawns on him. Oh goodness, taking into account the outfit and how young he looks, he must be about seventeen right now, which–
“What the f*ck,” the kid said emphatically.
…Yup.
Which isn’t going to bode well for Grian, clearly.
“Please don’t swear,” he says, with a sigh. “You’re not going to listen, but I am obliged to say it.”
“I’ll swear all I f*cking want!” the kid exclaims, voice high-pitched, contrarian as always. “Also, no. You three don’t get to imply whatever the Nether you seem to be implying here, because that’s bullsh*t. There’s literally no way.” He looks Grian up and down pointedly, eyes lingering on the sandy-coloured hair and the well-worn red jumper.
Grian smirks at him.
“Trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are,” he says, in a way he knows will be taken as an insult (what’s the point of coming face-to-face with your past self if not to mess with him a little, right?) “I assure you though, time machines are, unfortunately, real, and I am, unfortunately, you.” Now that’s a confusing sentence if he’s ever said one. “Ask me a question only the two of us would know an answer to or something. Gotta get the convincing part out of the way.”
The kid – Grian, Grian supposes, but he certainly isn’t going to refer to him as that in his mind, that would get far too confusing – gives him a measured gaze. “Alright,” he says, finally, voice sharp. “Who is your best friend?”
Grian blinks. Then blinks again. Decides that he should really have expected it, given the… mindset he remembers his seventeen-year-old self having. But then again, it isn’t a mindset he particularly likes to look back upon, so the question still catches him by surprise.
“You couldn’t have asked something more objective, man?” he complains nonetheless, struggling to keep his voice lighthearted. “Like our birth name or something? That’s a shorter answer, too.”
“It’s not. It has six letters,” the kid says, teeth gritted together. Grian sighs.
“And mine has ten,” he shrugs, returning his gaze just as confidently. (He’s got the number correct, right? M-U-M-B..) “You haven’t met him yet.”
The kid hisses at him, actually hisses, as heated as Grian remembers getting over this particular topic every time it had been brought up. “Well, bullsh*t, then,” he spits. “You’re not me. You’re a traitor.”
“I know what answer you expect of me,” Grian sighs. “And I will not give it, because it’s wrong. It has been wrong back then, and it would most definitely be wrong now. Truly understanding that will be a difficult process, but you’ll get there eventually, I promise. For now though, another question would really–“
“You’re so full of sh*t!” the kid screams at him, suddenly up on his feet (he’s shorter, but, unfortunately for Grian’s poor ego, not by much.) “Either you’re fooling yourself, or you know as well as I do that Sam is the only goddamn person in this whole wide world who’s ever f*cking loved us!”
“Also wrong,” Grian says, steadily. Somewhere at the back of his mind he can’t help but marvel, a little proud, at how confident he sounds; at the fact that there is no part of him that doubts the rebuttal. At how far he’d come, how much he had changed from the kid in front of him. “You have Taurtis. And I have more people than I can name in one breath. You’ll have them too, one day.” He watches the frustration, the glistening tears in the kid’s eyes for a few moments before ducking his head with an awkward laugh. “But – can we talk about literally anything else, please? Before my server-mates get either incredibly uncomfortable or incredibly concerned about my mental wellbeing?”
Behind them, Doc clears his throat. “I mean,” he says, voice a little strangled, “too late?”
“Oh, you shut up,” Grian rolls his eyes lightheartedly. “You somehow managed to not only drag my past self onto here, but drag him onto here at a particularly bad time in his life. In fact, while I don’t remember this happening, I think I can actually tell you exactly when it did, and it’s– it’s– oh, boy.”
He starts the sentence more as a joke, but as he actually says it out loud, it hits him that there’s probably more merit to his guess than he initially assumes. As he says it out loud, he remembers the night in question, remembers what came before, remembers what came after. The trip itself, not so much (probably by the merit of the universe trying to keep at least sort of in control in the face of time travel), but that’s not what matters. What matters is–
He sighs.
“Nevermind,” he mutters under his breath with a small huff. “I’m about to make them even more uncomfortable and concerned all by myself. Doc, do you have any bandages lying around?”
Doc frowns, but nods without a word, taking a few steps to a desk wedged in one of the corners of the room and getting a roll of white bandages out of its top drawer. The kid – Grian really needs to settle on calling him something more appropriate, by the way – gives him a glare.
“I know what you’re doing here,” he says, warningly, his eyes darkening a little. “Don’t.”
“That doesn’t work on me,” Grian tells him mildly, catching the roll of bandages Doc tosses to him in midair. “Thanks. We’re going to the bathroom, be right back.”
The kid – G? G could work – complains, obviously, it’s in his nature, but doesn’t struggle too much as Grian yanks him to the neighbouring bathroom practically by his scruff. It’s not a long ordeal, and they don’t speak a word throughout it, unless you count G’s muttered curses as Grian cleans up the cuts on his wrists with the bottle of peroxide he finds under the sink. Grian is intimately familiar with how first aid needs to be done for this type of wound, so it doesn’t take him longer than a couple of minutes to get it all sorted out. When he’s done, he wraps the bandages up again, all very careful, and G stares at him from under furrowed eyebrows.
“So?” he demands after a few moments. “You gonna scold me now?”
“No,” Grian shrugs, evenly. “I’m not angry at you, and it’s not going to work anyway. Never does, on me and you.” He pauses, then gives himself a small smile, tipping his head to the side. “You know what I am going to do, however? I’m going to give you a tour of the server, and I’m going introduce you to all the people who care about you more than you’d ever thought possible. People who you care about just as much in return. Does that sound good?”
The look G gives him – wide-eyed and mostly disbelieving but tinted at the edges with the brilliant shimmer of hope – is answer enough.
They make their way back to the lab room, where Xisuma and Doc are talking in hushed voices (gossiping about them behind their backs, no doubt, Grian thinks with an ironic smirk). He announces their presence by clearing his throat and tosses the roll of bandages at Doc before the creeper hybrid even gets the chance to fully turn around so it smacks him on the side of his face (as payback, naturally). Doc gives him an exaggeratedly offended look. Grian giggles.
“Now that we have that sorted out,” he says (and he doesn’t clarify what he means by that, but they’re both smart men, he’s sure they figured it out), “may I actually make proper introductions? Because I feel like there’s been a whole lot of yelling, and not a whole lot of normal conversations happening here.”
“And whose fault is that?” Doc mutters under his breath teasingly, at the same time as Xisuma says, somewhat relieved,
“Please do.”
“Thank you, X,” Grian grins, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly at Doc. “Alright, well, I suppose I need no introduction, but, uh, my name is Grian, I am currently twenty-seven years old. This over here is also Grian, and he’s currently seventeen.” G opens his mouth indignantly, and Grian claps him on the shoulder with a laugh. “Almost eighteen, sorry. How could I forget. If you want to refer to him while I am also in the room, please refer to him as G. This will make everybody’s lives easier.”
“Why do you get to keep the full name?” G grumbles.
“Because this is actually my time,” Grian parries easily. “Moving on. The man in the metal suit is Ex-eye-sooma Vee-oid – don’t let anyone tell you that’s not how you pronounce his name.” (Xisuma chuckles in exasperated fondness.) “He is the admin of this server, and has been for many years now. I can sing praises to his admin abilities for many an hour, but long story short, you’ll never meet anyone who is so on top of taking care of a server and all its inhabitants.
“Now, I know you and I don’t really have any faith in people in a position of power like this–“ (he snorts at how G looks away, clearly called out before he could chime in with the complaint himself) – “but if there is one person I could trust with it, it would be X without question. I have known him for a few years now, and he has never, ever done anything to make me doubt him.” He grins, shrugging off the serious tone. “Not to mention he’s just a good sport. Very into the idea of friendly competitions. Not very good at them, but always willing to try.”
“Hey,” Xisuma says, aiming for offended, though it sounds half-hearted at best. His voice is a little hoarse. “Listen, G – Grian, I mean, gods – warn me next time before you go on a rant about how great I am. You can’t just shower a man with compliments like that without prior notice.”
“Is it really a compliment if it’s the truth?” Grian shrugs with a quiet laugh. “Don’t worry, this will not be a common occurrence. I am just proving a point to someone here.” He gives G an ironic gaze, and chuckles as he looks away. “We’re surrounded by wonderful people, I have to acknowledge it at least once in a while.”
“Speaking of which!” he adds, shifting on his feet ever so slightly to look at Doc. Somehow, Doc still looks startled at the attention being turned to him, as if he’s missed the memo of what’s happening here. “This is Doc. I am currently a little bit pissed at him, because we have both agreed on the terms of, and signed, a very formal agreement about not messing with time travel anymore after it caused us some trouble a few years back.” He gives Doc a pointed look before smiling slightly. “But it’s okay, because we’ll work it out together. Because that’s how good partnerships are meant to work, and I like to think that that’s what we have.
“Doc is one of the most intelligent people we have ever met. He has come up with so many insanely ingenious inventions that I couldn’t list them all if I tried. He and I have had a few friendly rivalries over the years – emphasis on friendly, by the way, that’s the whole point – and he’s just about my favourite person when it comes to the fun, fast-paced stuff we need as adrenaline junkies. I’ll never get tired of his company or all the crazy ideas he comes up with. Genuinely just one of my favourite parts of the server.”
“Alright, enough,” Doc protests, his biological arm rubbing at his cheek (which does very little to hide the way it grows darker with an evident blush). “Now you’re just pandering, man.”
“Am not!” Grian argues, giggling. “I’ll let you know I mean every word I say. Don’t I compliment people enough? Why is everyone so surprised by me being nice?”
“Well, on builds, sure, but not like this,” Doc huffs. “I feel like you’re just using this as an opportunity to embarrass everyone.”
“Listen,” Grian rolls his eyes. “I don’t know if you noticed, but my seventeen-year-old self is a drama queen with a neon-yellow fringe and, just, so many issues. I’m getting embarrassed by default today. It’s only fair that I get revenge.”
“Hey!” G hisses, turning to nudge him in the ribs none too gently. “You don’t get to say sh*t about me, you condescending asshole!”
“Alright, alright,” Xisuma says, raising his arms in an attempt to placate them. “Time out. Grian, thank you for the kind words, I appreciate you too, but please don’t be mean to your younger self. He’s already having quite a day.”
“Understatement of the year, that,” G grumbles, crossing his arms again. “Is this the part where I say it’s nice to meet you? The jury’s still out on that one. Especially Doc.”
“Attaboy,” Grian laughs. He moves to ruffle his hair mindlessly before trying to remember if that was something he’d be okay with at that age and lowering his hand back down. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to win a civil war against him one day. It’ll be glorious.”
“Hold on, I thought you said they were friendly rivalries?” G sputters, disbelievingly, and–
Well, yeah, Grian reckons they’re both having quite a day, to put it mildly.
But hey. When has that ever been a bad thing in their eyes?
***
G, it turns out, is stuck in their times for the next eleven hours, which leaves Grian with even less faith in Doc’s ability to correctly operate a time machine (not that he had a lot to begin with). Still, that does mean he has enough time to give his younger self a whistle-stop tour of the Hermitcraft server, so after saying their temporary goodbyes to Doc and X (both of whom have their hands full with making sure the careless use of chronology-altering devices did not mess up any of the server’s code), they make their way out of the lab and back into the Octagon corridors. Grian’s well-aware he can’t be expecting much of G in terms of operating elytra, so they need to take the long way out. Which isn’t a problem, of course – he knows the inner layout of the Octagon well enough to not be stuck wandering its very similar corridors for too long – but does also mean, Grian realises belatedly, that they have a non-zero chance of running into the building’s other inhabitant.
“Ah,” he says with an awkward chuckle. “Hi Ren.”
“Hello, G-dude,” Rendog says, giving the two of them a confused wave. “And… uh, whoever’s with you.”
Grian sighs. Well, he did tell Doc he’d snitch on him if the opportunity arose, so he supposes it’s only fair. “Doc’s been messing with time travel again,” he deadpans. “This is me as a seventeen-year-old. Don’t ask.”
There is a pause.
“You know, you can’t just say things like that and then tell me to not ask!” Ren exclaims, then, stepping closer. “First of all, what do you mean Doc’s messing with time travel? I thought we all agreed on not doing that again!” (Grian gives him a resigned little shrug.) “Oh, I’ll be having words with that goat-man. Words, I tell you!” He shakes his head in mock outrage. “That aside though – man, G, you’ve changed over the years!”
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Grian snorts. “Still not sure why I thought that was a good idea for the hair.” (“Hey!”) “Oh, calm down, you. You’re in high school, it’s prime time for questionable hair choices. By the way, Ren, we figured we’ll call him G while he’s here – to distinguish between us, y’know. So I’m Grian for now.”
“Got it, Grian-man,” Ren grins, showing off sharpened teeth. “Well then, I best find Doc and give him a piece of my mind, yeah? Pleasure to meet ya, G!”
“One moment”, G says, idly, though he’s smirking a bit. Grian feels like he knows where this is going. “Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced yet.”
“I mean, I don’t have to do it to their faces,” Grian snickers before looking over at Ren again. “But sure, can do. Ren, I’ve been going around making him acquainted with his future friends and the like, so. Your turn.”
“Alright?” Ren blinks (though it’s hard to tell behind the darkened lenses), tipping his head to the side. “Uh, Ren-diggity-dog here, I’m–“
“This,” Grian interrupts him, gesturing grandly even as he rolls his eyes, “is Rendog. He and I have hung out together on many a miscellaneous occasion, all of which I won’t even try listing – though there was that one notable time we became hippies for a couple months to fight a military institution, and I gotta say, I still miss those days.” Come to think of it, Ren actually knows about his whole dramatic backstory thing because of the hippie days, so he probably has more… insight… into what’s going through G’s head than most Hermits.
Strangely enough, this realisation makes it easier to talk. “He’s – well, there’s many reliable people on the server, many people who will help if you ask them to. Issue is, obviously, you and I have never been particularly comfortable asking. But that’s the thing with Ren – he makes it so easy. Half the time he’s there to help before you even think to ask, and even if he’s not, it’s never – you never worry about being judged. Not with him. Don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as okay with asking for help with anyone else as I do with him.” Grian chuckles quietly. “And believe me, he knows it.”
“Don’t gotta tell me, brother,” Ren grins at him, not embarrassed in the slightest (of course he wouldn’t be; he’s not the type of guy to shy away from compliments.) “Aw, c’mere, dude.” He tugs Grian by the arm, pulling him into a hug, and Grian relaxes into the familiar grip. Truth be told, it’s been a bit since he and Ren hugged last – even if their bases aren’t too far from each other this season, they’ve both been busy technically creating rivalling shops – so he can’t help the small contented hum that escapes him.
“We need to hang out more,” he mutters into the fabric of Ren’s shirt. Ren chuckles above him, his chest rumbling with the sound.
“Anytime, man. Sort out the time travelling business and then drop me a message, yeah?”
He lets him go, and Grian wiggles himself out of his arms, offering Ren one last grin. “We’ll be off then,” he says, cheerfully, turning back to glance at G who is watching them with an unreadable look (or what would be an unreadable look if you weren’t him; as it stands, Grian can well imagine the mild discomfort he is feeling at the idea of being hugged. He wasn’t particularly touchy-feely in high school.) “See ya ‘round, Ren. Tell Doc off for me, would you?”
Ren laughs, ever chipper, offering them one final wave before making his way down the corridor in the direction they just came from. G watches him go, eyes narrowed.
“You are surrounded by strange individuals,” he says, finally, arms crossed at his chest. “And that’s coming from me.”
Grian laughs and beckons him down yet another corridor towards the exit.
If G wants strange, he knows just the place to go.
***
If you ask anyone on the Hermitcraft server, they will readily tell you that Boatem is one of the places you probably don’t want to hang out in for a long time.
There’s the lag, obviously, courtesy in part of Mumbo, in part of Impulse, in part of the world itself. On worse days, it makes walking feel like you’re moving through water; today though, it seems to be in a good enough mood to just weigh down their steps slightly. Still, if you’re visiting from elsewhere, chances are you’ll find it rather off-putting, like G seems to, frowning to himself as he moves his feet with some effort.
Grian barely notices it, truth be told. He’s not an outsider; much like the rest of Boatem, the lag knows that and curls around him like an obedient puppy, lets him pass, undeterred. He knows just the right ways to move, just the right spots to stand on. He’s not going to lie, it’s a bit of a power trip.
“How are you doing that?” G demands, struggling through his choppy motions. “This place is sh*t! Please tell me people don’t live here!”
“I live here,” Grian informs him, which gets him an irritated groan in response. “You get used to it.” He spins around a couple of times to prove his point, smooth undeterred steps over the grassy earth. “This isn’t even the best part. C’mon.”
He tugs G towards the centre of their little town, where he can already see the Boatem Pole in all of its (rather precarious) glory. Of course, where there is a Boatem Pole, there is a Boatem Hole, and so soon enough they find themselves on the edge of a crater, peering downwards toward the pitch-black void below.
“What,” G says, “with all due respect, the f*ck.”
“This is the Boatem Hole!” Grian exclaims, waving at the sign mounted to the Pole’s base. It should be self-explanatory, really. “Beautiful, isn’t it? We’re pretty sure it isn’t sentient, but I wouldn’t recommend going too far down. You aren’t used to it, it’ll drag you in.”
“Drag me in?” G repeats, staring downwards incredulously. “Into the void? And you live near this thing?!”
“Oh yeah,” Grian smirks. “Don’t tell me you don’t see the merit. No trespassers, our own personal guard void… It’s a beautiful life.” (Now, of course, the Boatem citizens fall into it far more often than anyone else on the server, but that’s beside the point. G doesn’t need to know that.) “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it. At which point you’re going to adore it, obviously.”
“Obviously,” G echoes, sarcastic as anything, throwing one last glance over the edge and shivering. “And you never feel like throwing yourself down it, then?”
…Right. The kid has issues. And the kid is him. And issues obey the transitive property, unfortunately.
“Not often,” he answers, honestly, though with a laugh that sounds awkward even to his own ears. “I think the count is at about four times this season. Considering it’s been six months, I think I’m doing better than you are on any given week.”
“…Well, that’s just rude,” G says after a moment, but he says nothing else, so Grian considers this particular battle won. He is about to get them back on track with the tour – bring up another anecdote about Boatem’s weirdness or something along those lines, heavens know there are a lot of those to go around – but he doesn’t get to. There is unmistakeable the sound of rockets going off above their heads, and then a figure lands gracefully in front of them, elytra wings folding up behind its back.
“Hey, Grian,” it says, cheerfully, inclining its head to the side, long hair curtaining its face. “And the person with Grian. Didn’t know we’re having visitors today!”
Next to him, Grian feels G go still as he evidently recognises who exactly is in front of them. She isn’t hard to recognise, truth be told, even if you hadn’t seen her in a while; the crescent moon on her face is a dead giveaway, as are the streaks of sandy-blonde in her otherwise dark hair. Now, she wasn’t going to be the first stop on the Boatem tour – Grian was going to give G at least some time to adjust to the madness going on around him, he isn’t cruel – but if that’s how the cookie crumbles, so be it. So gives her a friendly wave and beckons her closer.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t informed of this either,” he says with a laugh. “Alas, when Doc decides to mess with forbidden technologies, he doesn’t advertise it to the entire server.”
“I mean, to be fair, does he need to?” she shrugs lightheartedly. “That’s, like, his bread and butter. What was it this time?”
“A time machine,” Grian sighs in exaggerated sort of resignation. “On that note, you always did say you wanted to see what I was like in high school.“
She blinks; looks G up and down, her eyes wide and delighted as she evidently picks up on familiar features (familiar both from where she knows him now, and where she knew him before). He stares right back at her, looking much the same.
“You’re kidding,” she says, finally, at the same time as he says,
“Pearly?”
She barely lets him stumble through the word before she’s dashing forward, all but ramming her body into his as she sweeps him off his feet in a hug. Pearl’s always been strong enough to carry him – literally since the day they’ve met – and G is pretty waifish for a seventeen-year-old anyway, so she doesn’t seem to struggle even a little bit with hoisting him up into the air. Grian can see from where he’s standing a half-step back the way his younger self tenses up at the hug, but he doesn’t try pulling away. It’s only fair – Pearl is hardly a stranger.
“Oh my goodness!” she exclaims, finally, as she returns him to solid ground and looks him up and down with a barely-concealed smirk. “Aw, Griba, you were so small and cute!” She pauses; glances between them. “Not that you’ve grown much. But you’ve gotten considerably less cute.”
“Hey!” Grian and G chorus in the exact same tone of voice, which does absolutely nothing to stop Pearl’s giggling at them.
“I’m not f*cking cute,” G adds in a disgruntled voice, adjusting his hat with a tug. Pearl gasps, placing her hands at her hips.
“Language! There will be no swearing on the Hermitcraft server, it’s in the rules!” She sounds so stern that Grian himself feels scolded even if it isn’t technically directed his way. If anyone stands a chance of getting G to stop cursing, Pearl is probably the best woman for the job – she always had a way of intimidating him.
Always.
Even if, if Grian‘s counting correctly, G hasn’t seen her for about five years now.
“On that note!” he exclaims, clapping his hands together, drawing both of their eyes to him. “I trust Miss Pearlescent Moon over here needs no introduction, you remember her very well – for, well, obvious reasons, I suppose. Don’t worry, you’ll see her again very soon. We were – nineteen and a bit when Evo started, right?” (Pearl nods at him.) “Right, yeah, so, not long now. It’s a very tearful reunion, and not just because you’re mentally unstable.”
G sputters in annoyance, though the expression on his face is more akin to resignation. Smart kid – he figured out he’s still a menace when he grows up, and therefore can’t be stopped.
“Don’t be mean to him now,” Pearl says with an eye roll, because, okay, maybe he can be stopped, but only by her. “I was crying just as much. I was worried I’d never see you again, you know.”
“See, I was under that impression too until approximately two minutes ago,” G snorts, though now that they are all actually being nice to each other, Grian can hear the hidden strain in his voice as he tries to keep it steady. “I mean, you were gone, and-and I was – you know.” He waves his hand around, as if that one gesture can encompass everything he got up to between the years of twelve and nineteen. “…Do you know?”
“I know,” she confirms with a little sigh. “You tell me. Not all at once. Maybe not even everything, still. But you tell me.”
“It’s almost everything,” Grian chimes in with a shrug. “Pearl turns out to be very helpful in the Getting over an abusive ex-love interest department.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Pearl tells him, softly, as they both watch G’s face morph into a grimace, caught between anger and distress. “You know what you were like at the time. You refused to use either of the words until you were twenty-two.”
Grian sighs. “I know,” he says, glancing away briefly. “Sorry.” And then, with a forced kind of laugh: “See, that’s why we need Pearl. She actually knows how to be nice to us.”
“Debatable,” G mutters, aiming for a joke, clearly, though he’s still not quite looking either of them in the eyes. “And bullsh*t, by the way. On both fronts.“
“Yeah, yeah.” Grian pats him on the shoulder lightly in an act of not quite surrender – he’s of a different opinion, and G knows it – but of temporary ceasefire on the matter. “You keep telling yourself that, buddy.”
G knocks his hand off. Fair enough.
“Boys,” Pearl says, in disapproval. She used to say it in the same tone of voice when Grian played too rough with other kids in their childhoods, he remembers all too well. G clearly does too, because he looks sufficiently scolded. “Grian, I assume you don’t remember this visit afterwards, do you?”
“Not quite, no,” he admits. “It’s all just vague feelings.” And very real bandages on his wrists, too – he remembers waking up incredibly confused about those – but he’s not gonna mention that one. “Probably for the better. I don’t… know what I would have done if I remembered it.”
“You’re telling me,” G huffs. Grian chuckles.
“Right,” Pearl says, sternly. “So there’s no use trying to get anything concrete through his head right now, nor will it be done in a day. So you, mister–” (she jabs her finger in Grian’s chest playfully), “will play nice and not be mean to your baby self. And you,” (she turns to G), “are going to have a wonderful time getting a tour of Hermitcraft, and then you’re going to go back to where you belong, and get better. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Pearl,” they chorus once more before looking at each other, disgruntled. Some habits die hard, alright?
She laughs again. “Very good. Well, I’ll catch the two of you later, then – I actually have something to get on with, believe it or not. Detailing the base roof. If you’re gonna be giving him a tour of the bases later, please drop by – I’d love to show off!”
“Oh, you know I plan on it,” Grian grins. “Can’t not brag about how much better I got at building over the years, for one. By the way, G, I haven’t mentioned this yet, but that’s kinda the whole point of the server – we build cool stuff and get up to shenanigans.”
“The only accurate summary,” Pearl giggles as she spreads her elytra wings again and launches herself up into the sky with a couple of well-placed rockets. “See ya Grians later!”
The curiosity mixed with excitement in G’s eyes as she flies away is enough to get Grian to laugh, too.
All in all, he reckons, the tour’s going alright.
***
Impulse is doing the very reasonable thing of fixing up the redstone of his sugarcane farm which someone had broken (again) with a TNT explosion (again) when Grian comes barrelling towards him, a teenager in tow.
“Uh,” he says, very eloquently, as he looks the two of them up and down with a confused smile. “Whatever is happening here, I don’t think I’ve been informed of these new developments.”
“Oh, I’m here to inform you of them, alright,” Grian says, rolling his eyes. “Doc was messing around with time travel again. I’m this close to reforming the hippie commune, I’m telling you.”
“He did not!” Impulse gasps, mostly entertained, though slightly concerned about the respect some people on this server have for signed contracts. “Oh man, we can’t have that. Maybe we should assemble the hippie brothers again. Simpler times!”
“Simpler times,” Grian agrees with a shake of his head. “But no, yeah, that’s pretty much it. In the process of doing that, he somehow managed to drag my younger self onto the server, so I’m showing him around for a bit.”
Impulse blinks. “You know, that’s the sorta thing you start with,” he comments, looking the stranger at Grian’s side up and down. Now that he’s looking more carefully, he can see the – ah, well, it’d be wrong to call it family resemblance if it’s the same person – but he can see the shared features. The shape of the eyes, the stubbornly set jaw. “I dig the hair,” he adds, looking at baby Grian. It’s a very funky shade of yellow. Impulse approves.
“Thank you!” the kid responds, pointedly glaring at his older self. Point of contention, eh? “You’re the only damn person on this server I respect now.”
“Don’t encourage him,” normal Grian grumbles in turn. “I’ve made some choices at that age. Not all of them were good.”
On that note, Impulse thinks, a tad belatedly – depending on what the age in question is, the choices he is referring to may well not be limited to hair. They’ve spent quite a few nights over in the hippie camp a little bit too relaxed and under the influence to really keep secrets, so Impulse knows all too well about Grian’s, ahem, high school experiences, and baby Grian looks just the right age to be a high schooler…
Grian shuts him down before he can even ask.
“Yeah, no, I know what you’re thinking. Don’t go there,” he says with a quick laugh. “Pearl already told us off for getting into shouting matches.”
“Ah yes, good ol’ big sis Pearl,” Impulse chuckles. “Fair enough, man.“
“Do you just tell everyone about our traumatic backstory?” baby Grian mutters under his breath. Impulse barks out a laugh, and then immediately feels bad; at least until normal Grian dissolves into snickers too.
“Well not everyone,” he says after a moment, feigning offence. “Only the people I can trust. Speaking of which – Impulse, Impulse, I’m going around introducing people. Mind if I give a little spiel?”
“Not at all, go ahead,” Impulse chuckles, finally putting away the repeater he just realised he was clutching in his hand throughout the whole interaction. He is no stranger to Grian’s dramatics, so he knows he should either brace himself for a lot of insults, or a lot of compliments.
Turns out, today he decided to settle on the latter. Well, you won’t catch Impulse complaining.
“So, this is Impulse,” Grian says, grandly, which had better be self-evident by now with how many times he’d said his name. “The other hippie brother, if you hadn’t figured that out. Absolute genius when it comes to redstone too – I’ll take you into his farms later, they’re all these state-of-the-art industrial masterpieces.” (Might be a bit of an exaggeration as far as Impulse is concerned – he’s got a ways to go until state-of-the-art – but he’s certainly flattered Grian thinks so.)
“That’s beside the point though,” Grian continues, lightly. “The point is that he’s the most reliable person I’ve ever met. Seriously. It’s not even just that he gets things done – although he certainly does, I’ve never had to ask him twice to finish a project – it’s more of the… general aura of safety he has around him. I have never once gotten a nightmare when I slept near him. I don’t even know if he knows I get nightmares, like, pretty regularly.” (Impulse… didn’t.) “If I’m ever particularly on edge, or out of it, being in his company helps me ground myself. Ten out of ten, would recommend.”
Grian is being very… honest, here, Impulse notes, even if he is busy feeling extremely flattered. (Flattered? Happy to know he’s helping? All warm and fuzzy in his chest? Something along those lines.) Still though, it’s interesting to note how unabashed he is in front of his younger self. It’s not that he isn’t usually one for compliments, but he certainly doesn’t tend to hand them out like this – at his own expense, as it were.
Well. If he’s trying to do what Impulse thinks he’s trying to do here – send a message, offer a promise, something about hope, something about better futures – honesty is probably the best policy. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s nice to hear.
“Oh, and–“ Grian grins wider – “and he gives the best hugs. Objectively. I don’t think you can find a person who gives better hugs than Impulse.” He glances over at baby Grian, calculating. “Which, I know you have the whole no touchy thing going on with strangers, and I respect it, but – listen. If I had a chance to hug Impulse and didn’t, I would be very disappointed in myself. Don’t miss out, man.”
“I’m not sure how that would work given that I will not remember I had a chance to hug Impulse until precisely this moment in your life,” baby Grian notes, pointedly. “…But I suppose I wouldn’t want to be any more disappointed with myself than I already am.” He glances over at Impulse, uncertainty evident in his eyes. “May I?…”
“Of course,” Impulse grins at him, warmly, opening his arms. “Adult Grian may be overstating my skills a little bit–“ (“Nonsense!” Grian laughs,) – “but I am always open for hugs.”
Baby Grian takes a few careful steps towards him, stopping just short to peer at him suspiciously from beneath a curtain of neon-yellow hair. Impulse waits patiently, and soon enough the kid inches closer, slotting himself against his chest. Impulse wraps his arms around his shoulders.
Baby Grian is… small. Not short per se, but thin, sharp-boned and spindly. He tenses up for a few moments when Impulse hugs him, and then relaxes, all at once, almost melting into his grip. He’s not quite trembling, but he does feel unsteady, clutching at the fabric of his shirt at the back with near desperation. From what Impulse knows about Grian’s high school experiences, he suspects one would not be remiss to wonder when was the last time the kid had gotten a proper hug.
“I’m always right,” Grian says in a sing-songy voice to their side. Impulse makes sure to very pointedly roll his eyes at him.
“You’re a stuck-up bitch,” baby Grian murmurs, though he says it so quietly, shakily, that Impulse isn’t even sure Grian hears him (and he’s certainly not going to repeat the words.) “But I suppose I’ll give you this one.”
Impulse laughs quietly and vows to not let go until the kid backs away himself.
***
With G thoroughly hugged (and still a little bit out of it judging by the look on his face), Grian feels entirely justified in departing onto the next stop of their tour after bidding Impulse adieu. He doesn’t have a plan of action per se, but he does have a (metaphorical) list of people he wants G to meet, and one name on it is (metaphorically) circled and underlined in red. Twice. So, once they leave Impulse to his own devices of fixing a farm (which Grian definitely was not the one to break in the first place, no sir), he barely needs to think about their next destination. He can see the figure he is interested in flitting around his mountain-base in the distance, adding more colourful houses to the cliffside.
(Now, it’s not doing too well in the flitting department – Grian’s pretty sure he watches it run into various jagged rocks and half-built structures at least twice as they walk – but hey, we can’t all be pro fliers here.)
When Mumbo is busy at work, getting his attention is about as easy as creating a functioning time machine in an Alpha world version (ha, ha… ha), so one needs to resort to some chaos if one wants him to actually notice them. Grian briefly contemplates spawning another Wither, but figures that would be a little counterproductive if he’s trying to have a friendly conversation here. Bombing a build Mumbo has been putting so much effort in, even indirectly, is a sure-fire way to get the redstoner to not talk to him for the nearest day and a half.
So instead he resorts to the tried-and-tested technique of getting all up in Mumbo’s face until the man can’t help but be distracted. He leaves G to wait for him on the ground and grabs a couple rockets out of his inventory as he shrugs the elytra wings on, the straps falling perfectly into place. Back in high school he could only dream of operating an elytra, so he can’t help but show off a little bit as he propels his way upwards, pirouetting in the air a couple of times until he finally reaches the house Mumbo has been working on. He lands gracefully on the roof, watching the man shuffle around and mutter under his breath for a few moments before clapping his hands loudly to announce his presence. Mumbo startles upright, knocking his head on the overhanging canopy above the yellow porch.
“Ouch,” he says, mildly, accompanied by Grian’s laughter. “Hello there, mate. Didn’t see you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t,” Grian snorts, slipping down from the roof onto the rocky surface of the mountain. “Mr I-get-so-focused-on-my-work-the-world-could-end-and-I-wouldn’t-notice. Looks great, by the way! I love all your little houses, they’re so cohesive without being exactly the same – it’s awesome!”
“Oh, why, thank you,” Mumbo smiles. “Yeah, no, I’m honestly chuffed to bits with how some of them came out. There’s that prismarine one over there–…“ He goes to point but cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “Sorry, sorry. Before I go on rambling too much – did you need something?”
“Yes, actually. Won’t take long. Or will it? Anyway, come with me.” Grian gestures him down the mountain, his elytra wings flapping in the air as he takes off. Mumbo follows with a disbelieving laugh. It’s a short enough way down even if you glide, so they land at the base of the mountain in less than half a minute, Grian – smoothly, Mumbo – raising some some dust, of course.
“Alright, so what–“ Mumbo begins, and then doesn’t finish, because he catches G staring at him with all the suspicion in the world. He pauses for a moment, frowns; then relaxes again, pursing his lips in feigned disapproval. “…Ah, hello there, small Grian. Were you messing with time travel again?!”
Grian doubles over laughing at the nonchalance in his voice. “It was Doc!” he exclaims, scandalised at the mere accusation. “When have I ever– actually no, no, don’t answer that.“ He shakes his head with another chuckle, catching his breath. “Kudos for being the only person on the server to figure it out before I tell them though. And that includes Pearl! I’m hurt she didn’t, honestly.”
“To be fair, she wasn’t around to see the time travelling disaster the first time around, so I don’t think that would be her immediate assumption,” Mumbo deadpans. “Not to mention you’ve shown me baby pictures.”
“In a moment of weakness, I tell you,” Grian grumbles, shuddering at the thought of the photo album tucked safely away in his enderchest. “He thinks the hair is stupid too, for the record,” he adds, glancing over at G.
“The hair is not stupid,” G huffs, annoyed. “If anything is stupid around here, it’s that f*cking moustache.”
“Wha–“ Mumbo fumbles, defensively. Grian doubles over laughing once again, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Now that’s something I can get behind!” he exclaims, cackling. “I mean, you should see him without a moustache, it’s even worse. But still, you can’t let this one get too full of himself, or he’ll never shut up.”
Mumbo sighs in exaggerated defeat. “This is a nightmare,” he mutters under his breath, lightheartedly. “One Grian is a handful on a good day, I don’t know how we’re meant to deal with two.”
“Twice the Grian – twice the fun,” Grian counters, cheerfully, as G watches them in something that resembles confusion. Admittedly, that’s only fair – the way Grian interacts with Mumbo is notably different to how he interacts with just about everyone else on the server. Speaking of which… “Anyways, G! As you might have figured out by now, this fabulous and very handsome moustached man over here is Mr Mumbo Jumbo! He’s been my neighbour for all three seasons I’ve been here, and–“
“That’s ten,” G interrupts him. Grian blinks.
“Ten?”
“Letters,” he clarifies, impatiently. “Unless the spelling is f*cked up somehow, Mumbo Jumbo is ten letters.”
Ah.
“Ah,” Grian says out loud. “Astute observation, though I can’t believe you counted. Actually, I can absolutely believe you counted, I don’t know why I said that.” He laughs. “But yes, you are correct. This is Mumbo Jumbo, his name has ten letters, and he is my best friend of about six years.”
“Not… entirely sure how those two things are connected,” Mumbo chimes in, mildly confused. Grian pats him on the head condescendingly:
“Don’t question it.”
“Hm,” G says, concisely. Grian isn’t sure if that’s a noise of approval, but truth be told, he also doesn’t really care. G is not exactly in a position to judge anyone on best friend choices.
“As such, I suppose I owe him an introduction too,” he says instead, his voice full of faux reluctance. “Not that there is much to say. This is Mumbo, he is a spoon and a fool. We have set up some kind of a direct messaging system between our bases for three seasons and counting, because he can do the redstone, I can make it pretty, and neither of us can shut up. He also ate my soul a couple months ago, which is why he looks approximately human right now, but don’t be fooled, we don’t know what the Nether he is.”
“You’re going to scare small Grian, man,” Mumbo huffs, because Mumbo apparently doesn’t quite understand the way G’s brain works. “I promise the, uh, soul eating was perfectly consensual. He signed a contract and everything.”
“You tricked me into signing a contract,” Grian corrects with a smirk. “It’s fine, I got him back by blowing him up with End crystals a whole lot.”
“And making me think I was going insane,” Mumbo reminds him, pointedly. “And spawning a Wither at my front door!”
“And that,” Grian concedes. “It was funny. Which is to say, out of everyone on the server, Mumbo is the most fun to mess with. Prime pranking material. He literally never knows what’s going on around him, which means you can do whatever you want, and he’ll probably stumble right into it. It makes him a right horrible spy, but that’s okay. I’ve learned my lesson, I’m never having him on my side in a war again.”
“You say that now, and yet the next time you pick a fight with Doc, you’ll be right here coercing me into doing your crazy plans with you,” Mumbo deadpans, which is… fair, but he didn’t have to say it. “Is this all you came here to do? Entertain your younger self by making fun of my spying abilities?”
“Pretty much!” Grian confirms, cheerfully. “It’s basically what I’ve been doing with everyone else. Well, except I’ve been kinda nicer to everyone else, but that’s what you get for being my best friend. Pain and suffering.”
“Pain and suffering,” Mumbo echoes with a resigned sigh. “Welp, it was nice to meet you, Grian number two. I suppose you’ll see me again in a bit. Uh, you’re, what, in high school, so it should be about two years until we meet? Three?”
“Wait,” G blurts out, suddenly, pinning him down to the ground with a stare. “You. Older me. Go away for a moment, I want to talk to him. Alone.”
Grian blinks; tries to figure out what exactly is going through G’s head right now to request this. Maybe he wants to see what Mumbo is all about without him in the way?.. “Okay, I guess,” he shrugs lightly, throwing a questioning glance at Mumbo and receiving a nod in return. “Uh, I’ll just be – over there? By the large crack in the mountain, can’t miss it. Mumbo, point him to the Midnight Alley after you two are done here.”
“Can do!” Mumbo grins. “See you later, mate!”
Grian nods and grabs a stack of rockets into his off hand, soaring up into the clear sky. G waves him away.
***
“I am a horrible person to be best friends with.”
Mumbo blinks. That… was not what he was expecting.
They watch Grian one make his way towards the textured cliffside that makes up the entrance to his own base, landing with all the grace of a man who is known throughout the server for being very good at operating elytra, and the next thing he knows, Grian two turns on his heel to face him and blurts this out, jaw set and voice resolutely steady. Now, Mumbo isn’t sure what he was expecting, exactly, but this sure as Nether wasn’t it.
(Maybe it should have been.)
“What gives you that idea?” he asks, awkwardly, ignoring the urge to fidget under the heated gaze of cerulean eyes. Maybe that’s not quite the best way to phrase the question, because Grian two scoffs, crosses his arms at his chest in a practiced motion.
“What do you mean what gives me that idea?” he says, almost offended at the fact that he’s being questioned. “First of all, I’m me, so if anyone can make that judgement, I can.” (Arguable when you have quite so many self-esteem issues, but Mumbo resolves to hear him out in full first.) “And secondly – weren’t you listening to how he was talking about you just now? He was – we were going around, and he was introducing me to people, and he was so f*cking nice about everyone! Even the guy who got me here in the first place, Doc, they seem to have some sh*t going on between them, but even then, he was paying the guy so many compliments! And now it gets to you, his supposed best friend, and all he does is – is make fun of you!” He huffs, frustrated. “Why do you put up with that?”
Ah, Mumbo thinks. So that’s what this is about. Oh boy. He is not a speaking person, and this is… so above his pay grade.
“Well, first of all,” he says, measuredly, “don’t get me wrong, but I would not trust you to give objective judgements about your value as a person or as a friend given where you are in life right now.” Nailed it. Grian two looks sufficiently thrown off, at least. “And as for your other concerns, I promise you, I am not at all hurt by what he was saying, nor was he saying it with any intent to hurt me. In fact, I am willing to bet that as soon as you catch up with him again, he’s going to tell you far nicer things about me. That’s just how it goes with us – we joke around to each other’s faces, but we both find it amusing, I assure you.”
He pauses; tries to think of a more reassuring thing to say, and comes up kind of short. “I am a grown man,” he settles on, finally, “who is fully capable and willing to communicate it if I was offended or hurt by anything said to me. Not to mention, Grian and I have known each other for six years now, which means we are perfectly aware of each other’s boundaries in regards to this sort of thing. And besides–” (and here, he chuckles) – “don’t think for a second I haven’t heard this one already. A couple times over at that. I promise you, we’ve had more than enough chances to sit down and discuss our approaches to friendship in every small detail.” He smiles at the kid in front of him. “You put a lot of effort into being a good best friend, actually. And you do it well.”
Alright, a little too formal maybe, but it gets the point across, Mumbo thinks to himself, satisfied, as he watches Grian two grapple with his words. The boy is staring at the ground, biting down on his lip with – apparently, judging by the streak of blood on his chin – enough force to break it. Mumbo sighs and plucks a handkerchief out of the pocket of his suit.
“C’mere,” he mutters, tilting Grian’s face gently towards him with one hand and dabbing at the blood with the other. Grian doesn’t protest. “Listen – I’m probably overstepping here, given that you don’t really know me, but if I may tell you now what I tell you once again in the future – you’re nothing like Sam. And before you argue–“ (the kid opens his mouth immediately at the sound of the name, prepared, no doubt, to snap back) – “you can tell yourself all you’d like that you’re perfectly fine having a best friend like Sam, for now. That’s okay. But you would never want yourself to be a best friend like Sam to someone else. So I’m here to tell you you aren’t.”
Grian snaps his mouth shut. Mumbo finishes wiping the blood off his chin and folds the handkerchief up again.
“You’re doing fine,” he assures him with a small smile, and pretends he doesn’t notice the way the boy’s eyes shimmer with unspilled tears. “You have things to look forward to, Grian.” He lets a few seconds pass in silence, then takes a step back, throwing a glance towards the entrance of the Midnight Alley. “Now go, or your other self is going to interrogate me on what we spent so long chatting about. You can see him in the distance there, right? Won’t get lost?”
“I’m fine,” Grian chokes out, turning around swiftly on his heel and dragging his green-clad forearm across his face in a motion which is not as subtle as he probably wants it to be. “I see him. And I’ll – I’ll see you soon, yeah?”
“Soon enough,” Mumbo promises him, sufficiently loud to be heard even as the kid sets off in the given direction. “Soon enough.”
***
When Grian makes his way to the weird-ass jagged cave entrance in the wall–
Okay, stop, slow down, rewind. You didn’t think we’re talking about the grown-up Grian here, did you? Grown-up Grian would resent having his work referred to as a “weird-ass jagged cave entrance in the wall”, probably. He’s stuck-up like that. But the Grian in question is most certainly not going to refer to himself as G in his own narration – it’s his brain, come on, he at least deserves the other four letters – so here is how this will go: he’s Grian, and his grown-up version can be Gri. Yes, he can have three whole letters! Grian is generous like that!
Anyway, when Grian makes his way to the weird-ass jagged cave entrance in the wall, he finds Gri standing a couple of paces away, staring up at the mountainous terrain above it. He clears his throat obnoxiously to draw his older self’s attention, which seems to startle him out of whatever trance he stumbled into, and gives him an impatient wave.
“Ah, G,” Gri says, clapping his hands together in that way Grian hasn’t yet gotten into a habit of doing (but evidently will at some point). “Good, good. Everything okay with you and Mumbo?”
Everything is… kinda weird with him and Mumbo, as far as Grian is concerned – the man seems to be very convinced in some things Grian himself is having trouble wrapping his head around – but that is definitely more detail than he’s willing to give to his future self (condescending bastard that he is), so he settles on, “Yeah. He’s… nice.”
“He is, isn’t he?” Gri exclaims, and his eyes all but twinkle alongside the words. “Mumbo’s great. I’m so excited for you, genuinely. Becoming friends with him was so much fun. I mean, being friends with him is also so much fun – not to mention that once you’ve been friends with someone for a while, there is a certain comfort there – but my goodness, we were, like, young, and unsupervised, and slightly unhinged. We got up to so many shenanigans.” He laughs softly. “He makes you happier than you ever thought you could be. They all do, really, but Mumbo – Mumbo’s on another level. I love him so much.”
…Right. So maybe Mumbo did have some points in saying that Gri will immediately be nice about him outside of his earshot.
“And you couldn’t have said that earlier?” he grumbles, lips pursed. Gri raises his eyebrows at him, confused, but Grian isn’t about to give him the satisfaction of explaining what he’s on about, so he clears his throat and carries on. “So what’s next, then? Any other stops on this tour of yours?”
“Oh, plenty,” Gri smiles in that way he does sometimes, entirely too satisfied with himself. “And this is the first. Look up.”
Grian does. All that is above them is the mountain – a rather imposing mountain, granted, terrain generation had gone a long way in a decade, but still – so he looks back down at Gri, tipping his head to the side.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Gri hums, still smiling. “Here’s the fun part: Boatem is a plains biome.”
Grian blinks.
“…Then why the f*ck is there a mountain range smack bang in the middle?” he asks, squinting. “Is this another one of your weird glitches like the massive terrifying void hole in the ground?”
“Not this time, no,” Gri chuckles. “Nah, this one’s got a very straightforward and non-supernatural explanation. Scar built it.”
What.
First of all, Grian doesn’t know who Scar is yet – he thinks this name has come up, briefly, back in the time machine lab where he found himself first, that’s about it – but secondly, what the f*ck.
What the Nether kind of madman builds a mountain – a mountain like this, no less – by hand?!
It seems his disbelief reflects on his face, because Gri throws his back laughing, evidently satisfied with the effect this tidbit of information had caused. “Scar is a terraforming genius. He and Cub – I’ll show you Cub’s place later, he just straight up built a custom biome for himself – but Scar does these things, you look at them and it takes your breath away. The wagon over there is his too, if you’ve noticed it earlier, so his builds are just as insane, but the terrain – man, he’s a master at work.”
Grian has actually noticed the wagon earlier – the sprawling, steampunk-like procession of copper-roofed carriages, an awe-inspiring display, he won’t lie – but the mountain is somehow even more impressive. It’s the natural look of it, he thinks, the stony ridges piercing the clouds above them. If he could get up to the very top, he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t even think of jumping; he’d just feel on top of the world instead.
“So,” he asks after a few moments, as he takes the information in, “do I get to meet this mountain builder extraordinaire then?”
Gri smirks.
“Oh, well, I’m glad you asked, because I shot him a message while you and Mumbo Jumbolio were chatting over there,” he announces, cheerfully. “So he should be here any minute now. Well, unless he runs into a wall. Or a tree. Or the ground. Scar has many talents, but getting around safely isn’t one of them.”
Grian bites back a laugh. Another weird character to add to the roster of his future friends, then. He’s cautiously excited for this one.
Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately, he isn’t sure), they don’t have to wait long. It only takes another few minutes for a figure to appear in the sky above them, elytra wings carefully spread as it glides (slightly less gracefully than Grian’s older counterpart) down to the ground. Gri spots it first, waves excited upwards, and then all but bounces up towards the man whose feet have just touched the ground.
“Hi Scar!” he greets, grabbing him by the arm. The man gives him a sharp-toothed, slightly crooked grin in return.
And, well – it’s that – and the look in his eyes – combined with the fact that he’s wearing a fitted waistcoat and an actual honest-to-heavens top hat – and maybe the mountains – not the point – point is, can you blame Grian that his first impression of the man is, Oh sh*t, he’s hot?
“Hello, G!” the man says, joyfully, giving Gri a friendly pat on the shoulder (and oh, he’s got this voice too, smooth as butter, this really isn’t fair). “What can Good Times With Scar do for ya this fine day?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” Gri drawls, and he’s all but metaphorically twirling his hair (okay, at least Grian’s taste in men hasn’t changed over the past decade). “Just wanted to introduce you to someone. Long story short, your fellow Area Seventy-Seven official single-handedly decided the statute of limitation on our contract has ran out sometime over the past few years, and so it’s fair game to mess with time travel again. Tell him off for me, would you?”
“Oh, of course!” Scar exclaims, and it’s clear that he’s acting in the way he makes his voice sound scandalised. “He went back to doing crazy science things and didn’t even invite his partner in crime to join him? For shame!”
“Scar!” Gri exclaims, punching him in the shoulder, though he’s laughing. “That’s not why I’m telling you! Please don’t encourage him!” He shakes his head, all very dramatic. “My point is that he dragged my high school self onto Hermitcraft, and therefore I am making it everybody’s problem!”
For the first time since he landed, Scar’s eyes snap to Grian, and he suddenly feels pinned down to the ground by the intensity of the gaze searching him. Scar extracts his arm away from Gri, carefully, and approaches him in measured strides, looking him up and down. Grian decides here and now that if he makes a single comment about the hair, he’s chopping the goddamn fringe off the moment he gets back home, whether he remembers this or not.
“Huh,” Scar says, voice unreadable. And then there’s that smirk blooming on his face again, one corner of his lips quirked slightly higher up than the other. “Well, what a pleasure! I always wondered what the pesky bird over there was like as a kid, but Pearl and Mumbo are the only ones who saw the baby photos, and they keep their secrets!”
Pesky bird? What’s up with that?
“With good reason, mind you,” Gri grumbles, because he’s a bastard. “I mean, come on.”
“Oh, you’re so mean to yourself, G,” Scar says, his voice smooth and sing-songy, every word said in a different pitch, and yet all of them blending so neatly together in a sentence. He glances back at Grian and catches his hand with one of his own, bringing it up to his lips to press a small kiss to his skin in a move which, just, utterly short circuits Grian’s whole brain. “Personally, I think you’re charming.”
His face must reflect how flustered he feels, because behind them, Gri huffs in annoyance at how obvious he’s being, and yanks Scar back by the scruff of his waistcoat. “Alright, that’s enough of that out of you,” he announces, framed by Scar’s teasing laughter. “I did not invite you here to be like that. It was just meant to be for introductions!”
“Ah, but I am always like that,” Scar counters, which is a fair rebuttal if Grian has ever heard one. “Surely that’s as good an introduction as any!”
“I support him,” Grian chimes in after he gets his face under control.
Gri looks at him, unimpressed. “Of course you do,” he says, in a tone of voice that sends Grian into a giggling fit. “I want not a sound out of you for the nearest five minutes.”
“Well, we all want some things we can’t have,” Grian shrugs, wisely. It gets Scar to cackle, so he considers the battle won, even if Gri does still look mildly unimpressed. “Speaking of wanting things – does Scar not get a fancy introduction, then? You’ve given one to everyone else.
“Ooh, you’re giving out fancy introductions?” Scar grins, turning to face Gri, excitement written all over his face, even while the man in question rolls his eyes at the both of them. “Please, I’m all ears. I can even stage-whisper you the things to say. This is Scar, he’s the best and most handsome salesman on the server–…”
“This is Scar,” Gri interrupts him, voice full of the fond sort of exasperation Grian isn’t sure he’s quite capable of yet. “He is really good at selling you things you need, and better at selling you things you don’t. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but then again, I can throw people pretty far, so it’s gotta count for something.” He pauses for a moment; laughs, a little sheepishly. “No, yeah, that’s it. Not much to say on that one.”
Not much his ass, Grian thinks, unimpressed, but doesn’t say out loud because he’s gracious like that. It’s clear to anyone with eyes that Gri is head over heels for the man, which Grian frankly can’t blame him for, but given their track record with romance he can’t help but feel a little bad for his future self. It sucks, being that close to someone you want and not being able to have them. Grian would know.
“I’ll take that!” Scar announces, cheerfully, oblivious to both of their inner turmoils. “Though, please don’t throw me, G. Every time you throw me, I inevitably end up in the Boatem Hole, and I really don’t fancy losing my stuff the fifth time over.”
“I mean,” Gri drawls, squinting teasingly at him, “I’m not saying I’m going to do that to you, but if you ever accidentally find yourself out of stuff, you can always just swing by my base and purchase another Perhaps You Perish Parcel. I’ll even give you a friendly discount! How does seventy diamonds sound?”
“…How about we leave the sales pitches to me?” Scar says after a few moments, and Grian can’t help but laugh at the feigned offence flashing on his counterpart’s face at the deadpan tone of his voice. They’re so friendly, so comfortable in each other’s presence, joking back and forth without worrying that the next thing they’ll say is going to offend, to cause an argument that inevitably ends in bloodshed.
Sure, Grian thinks as he watches Scar poke Gri on the side of his face in an attempt to get him to take back a teasing insult or another, maybe they never will have a great track record with romance. And maybe it will hurt, as much as it always does, as much as it hurts Grian now, back in his his own time, back in his own home.
But at least they’ll have a better track record with friendship. And that much will have to be good enough.
***
Grian’s communicator pings about half an hour into their impromptu gathering at the foot of the Boatem Gigabase Mountain (they still need to give it a better name), and he pulls it out of his pocket, squinting at the dim screen in the light of the mid-morning sun. Scar peeks over his shoulder curiously to find him having pulled up his private chat with Doc, tapping away at the keyboard.
“They need me back in Doc’s lab,” he announces after a few moments, having sent forth his response. “Something about how I am the resident time travel authority, and Doc was messing with stuff he doesn’t fully understand.” He tries his best to sound annoyed, but it doesn’t hide the edge of satisfaction lacing his voice at having his skills be acknowledged. That’s Grian for you, full of contradictions. He messes up every redstone circuit he comes into contact with unless presented with detailed step-by-step instructions, and yet is fully capable of building a functioning time machine given enough of an incentive. As his neighbour of now two seasons and counting, it keeps Scar on his toes alright. “G, you coming with?”
“Do I have a choice?” small Grian – G, that’s what they’re calling him for the time being to avoid causing any more confusion – asks, voice tinted with sarcasm. (His voice is always tinted with sarcasm, Scar had come to realise. Not that Grian’s doesn’t do that from time to time too, but Scar had never heard Grian sound quite so… bitter.) “I’m following you around like a lost puppy here, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Well, you don’t have to,” Grian shrugs. “Go wander the Midnight Alley or something. Dissociate for an hour. You’re good at that.”
“Now, that’s no way to treat a guest, Grian!” Scar chimes in with a quiet chuckle before G can (rightfully, perhaps) complain about the suggestion. “How about this – you go ahead and talk all the science you need, and I’ll keep G company in the meantime. There’s a lot to show around these parts, and I can be an excellent tour guide if I say so myself!”
Grian looks conflicted for a moment, exchanging a quick gaze with his younger self before shrugging in agreement. “Works for me. As long as someone–“ a pointed look towards G – “behaves.”
“Would you in my shoes?” G grins, and Scar gets the feeling they know something he doesn’t here (though then again, they are literally the same person, so fair enough). Grian narrows his eyes at him, unimpressed. “Fine, fine. I’ll not say anything too bad, I promise.”
“Somehow, I find that doubtful,” Grian mutters, blandly. “It’s okay. Scar knows our tragic backstory too, so you can’t weird him out too much, I hope.”
Ah yes, Grian and his tendency to turn the horrible things that happened to him in the past into jokes. Scar wouldn’t call it a “tragic backstory” per se – it’s the kind of turn of phrase that trivialises it, makes it seem like you’re talking about a character in a book rather than a real person – but Grian is correct in saying that he knows full well what the other builder had gone through before they met. Before Grian was here, on Hermitcraft, before he was free and safe and happy. They’ve talked about it before (early Season Seven, high with the delight brought on by exploration, with having just changed servers), and Grian told him… things.
(Scar told Grian things too. Newton’s Third Law applies to heartfelt conversations.)
Point is, Scar knows, and G is in high school; he can put two and two together. Can tell that the sarcastic bitterness in his voice is not just for show.
“I promise to be calm and collected no matter what he chooses to tell me,” Scar jokes. Grian smacks him lightly in response to the teasing, but it’s fair enough.
They watch Grian leave; watch him fish the rockets out of his inventory and spread the elytra wings open with all the mastery of a man who is known for being really, really good at flying. Once he’s out of the earshot, G turns to look at him, gaze cautious and calculating in a way Grian’s never is (which, well, fair enough; see above), and tips his head to the side.
“So you’re his friend, then,” he says, sharply. Scar tries not to look away (both because G’s gaze is very pointed, and because the idea of being Grian’s friend, as lovely as it is, can get unbearable). “Well, you’re fine, I guess. Show me around.”
His voice is… demanding, but Scar can appreciate the distraction.
He does his best tour guide impression as he leads G down the cobbled floor of the Midnight Alley, pointing out the buildings at either side of them and reminiscing about the stories associated with them (that’s the Magical Menagerie, Grian and I got blown up at least twice while getting Boo; and that interior was made by Bdubs, Grian won a favour from him in a Leaf Spleef tournament; and that’s the prank shop, oh, Grian is so good at pranks; and…). They almost get all the way to the Griangotts bank, Scar chuckling at the stories and the memories, G staring intently as he listens; but before Scar can point out the marble columns and call attention to how beautiful they look (Grian is an expert at building grand facades), he’s interrupted.
“It’s no wonder,” G says, quiet but audible enough still, “he’s so in love with you.”
Scar freezes halfway through a step. It’s actually a little embarrassing – he straight up stumbles when he puts his foot down – but he can’t bring himself to care as he spins around on his heel to stare the kid in the eyes.
“What,” he says, blandly. G blinks.
“My older self,” he clarifies, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s no wonder he’s in love with you. I mean, you’re our type and all – physically – but you’re also so… nice. I can’t blame him.”
Scar doesn’t sag against the wall of the nearest building because he’s a reasonable man who is in control of his movements. He does feel like he might pass out though; that much, he can’t really stop.
“You’re just saying things now,” he accuses, softly.
G scoffs. “Am I?” he says, voice ever rigid. “You must be blind if you can’t see it. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that he’s in love with you, like, a pathetic amount.”
The inside of Scar’s mouth is dry. He isn’t sure G – Grian, he’ll call him Grian, there’s no point in differentiating now – knows what the hell he’s talking about.
“I’m not sure you know what you’re talking about,” he says, out loud. Grian snorts. “He’s not– You’re not– He doesn’t–“
“Oh, but he does,” Grian shrugs, lightly. “I’m sorry if you didn’t know; I thought it’s obvious enough that I can bring it up and you wouldn’t be all confused. I thought you’re just sparing him the embarrassment of mentioning it, frankly.”
Well, now Scar is really lost.
“The embarrassment?” he echoes, blankly. “Why would it be embarrassing?”
Grian gives him a look. “Because he’s in love with you,” he says, like he isn’t just repeating himself, like it’s obvious. “Because you don’t love him back.”
And now that’s–
Huh.
“You seem awfully sure of that,” Scar says, slowly. “That I don’t love him back.”
“Well, you don’t,” Grian spits, fists clenched in a way that must be at least a little uncomfortable, unevenly-bitten nails digging into the soft skin of his palms. “Why would you? When you’re so out of our league? When you’re clearly so much more than we’ll ever be? Of course I’m awfully f*cking sure of that.” He shakes his head, glancing away in frustration. “…Ah, sh*t. I totally messed up the behaving part, didn’t I? Don’t tell him I told you, or self-loathing is gonna take on a whole new meaning.”
Scar lets out an involuntary scoff at the – joke? Can anything be called a joke when said that bitterly? – before shaking his head to get himself back on track.
“Listen,” he says, and then grimaces because of how unsure, how shaky his voice sounds. “Listen,” he repeats, firmer. If he can’t talk his way through this one, then what good has his silver tongue ever done to anyone? “I don’t think you, as you are right now, will believe me if I start waxing poetics about how good of a person you are. About how many good – truly good – things you have done in all my years of knowing you. About how your unwavering conviction that you aren’t worth much is completely and utterly unfounded, and about how you’ll come to realise, one day, that it is wrong. I don’t think you’ll believe me.” He lets out a shaky breath. “But in objective terms, there are, as of right now, three people on this server who can tell you that I’ve been hopelessly in love with Grian for the past two years, and that I can’t shut up about it.” He scoffs again, giving the kid a quick, brittle grin. “Awfully sure my ass.”
Grian doesn’t move. He says nothing for a long time, but he doesn’t look away, his gaze burrowing, it seems, right into the depths of Scar’s soul. His eyes are bluer than his older counterpart’s – bluer than any eyes Scar had seen before, honestly, a cerulean sky on a summer’s day – but when he looks at you like that, you still feel like you’re burning.
“I don’t believe you,” he says, finally, and his voice is firm. Scar almost speaks up again – he’s half-tempted to call up Cub here and now, he has proof, don’t you test him – but Grian steps forward, forward again, only a few inches left between them. When he speaks, his breath is warm against Scar’s skin. “And here’s the thing – my older self can pretend all he wants that he’s better adjusted than me – happier than me – more willing to accept the fact that people care for him than me. I’ll give him all of those, even. But it doesn’t matter. When it comes to this, he won’t believe you either.”
And Scar wants to argue – wants to say that G can’t know, despite being the same person he can’t know what he’s like in a decade’s time, can’t make bold assertions like that on the basis of his own penchant for self-deprecation – but he can’t quite make himself speak the words. Because G can’t know, that much is true. But he can be right. And if Scar knows anything of Grian – if he had learned anything through the nights of whispered confessions, through the sorrow in his friend’s voice as he speaks of years past and years lost, through fighting and winning and losing by each other’s side – it’s that G is right. Grian won’t believe it.
He looks away first.
G grabs him by the collar of his shirt, pulling them closer, until they’re practically nose to nose, until Scar has no choice but to look him in the eyes again.
“Convince him,” he says.
His voice rings of steel, and Scar’s breath catches in his throat. He takes a step back; gently unclasps Grian’s fingers from where they’re gripping at the black fabric of his bow, strong enough for his knuckles to go white. His skin is soft and fair, ever so slightly freckled, not yet covered in barely healed-over blisters from months of non-stop building and tearing down and building again. Scar presses his lips to it. This time, it’s nothing short of a promise; nothing short of a declaration of future love.
“There is nothing,” he whispers, and he means it, and he hopes to heavens Grian knows he means it, “I would love more.”
Ans when Grian looks at him this time, he smiles.
***
He takes the long route back to the Octagon, this time. He has the elytra in his inventory still, but frankly speaking, he welcomes the chance to clear his head for at least a little while before jumping back into the thick of things. It’s not that he’s particularly upset, or overwhelmed, or anything of the sort – it’s just… kind of been a weird morning, is all. It’s nice to have a chance to think it all over.
He considers calling Mumbo to keep him company as he walks – and to inquire what his younger self was so adamant about asking, yes, but you can’t blame him for being curious! – but ultimately decides against it. There’s a certain charm in the silence that settles around him as he walks, nothing but the world wrapping itself around his shoulders and whispering in his ears. He needs to take more long walks, he thinks. Might do good things to his rocket expenses, too.
Still, for all that it is a nice break from… everything, he can’t avoid his destination forever, and so soon enough he finds himself at the foot of the Octagon. There is a bubble elevator expertly installed by Ren in every one of its eight feet, and Grian lets himself be whisked upwards. For all that Doc’s lab is located at the building’s lowest functioning level, it is still a good hundred blocks up in the air.
As he finally steps inside of it, marvelling not for the first nor the last time at the imposing grandness of the room and the various complex-looking machines lining its walls, he is greeted with the sight of Xisuma and Doc bent over a holographic screen of the former’s making, bickering lightheartedly over something or other. He watches them for a few moments with a fond smile on his face (nothing like telling your younger self about how much you value people in your life to be reminded to truly appreciate them, he supposes) before clearing his throat.
They spring upright.
“Grian!” Xisuma grins behind his visor, a little apologetically, beckoning him forward. “Hi. Sorry to distract you from the tour, but I’d rather get all of this sorted out as soon as possible.”
“Oh, totally understandable, don’t worry about it,” Grian smiles back, skipping up to the holographic screen and peeking at it over Doc’s shoulder. “I left G with Scar. I trust them both to be at least a little reasonable, so I am at your disposal for as long as you need.”
“Knowing both of you, I fear your trust may be misplaced,” Doc jokes. Grian smacks him on the shoulder with a laugh. “But, ah, yes, we just wanted to ask for your expertise…”
Talking science with Doc and X is easy, at least. It’s familiar territory, the three of them having met up to discuss particular intricacies of the code before (Grian having experience as an admin and all). Now, time machines are a bit of an unprecedented territory – sure, Grian’s built one before, but it’s not like he and Doc were on the same side of that particular debacle, and X had stayed out of the shenanigans completely – but they manage well enough. Grian’s got a solid idea of what went wrong with Doc’s design, and X checks all the relevant bits of code to make sure the damage did not extend further than it oughta. They work great as a trio.
Maybe one of these days, he thinks with a small smirk, the three of them will put their heads together and make something particularly unhinged. Next season goals?
For now though, they go through the code, ironing out small inconsistencies (only some of which were caused by negligent time travel – there’s a plethora of redundancies and small bugs here and there, glitchy drop rates, a few infinite loops – but then, Xisuma can be forgiven. Grian admined a server half the size of Hermitcraft once upon a time, and X’s code runs better that Evo’s ever did.) It takes them about an hour and a half to comb through the particularly thorny parts of it, all in all – going over everything would probably take at least three days, and none of them are prepared for that kind of time commitment – but they leave the code in a better state than they found it, Grian likes to think, which is good enough for him.
They take a few seconds to breathe once they’re done (believe it or not, wrangling bugs takes a lot out of a man). Then, Doc folds up the time machine blueprints.
“You know, I think I am legally obliged to burn those,” Grian comments, poking the blue paper. The creeper hybrid gasps in barely exaggerated horror and all but leaps out of his way, clutching it protectively to his chest.
“It’s science, man!” he exclaims, accusingly. “You can’t destroy historical records, that’s blasphemy!”
“See, it’s only historical records until you actually build the thing,” Xisuma comments, blandly (though judging by the grin on his face he is obviously amused). “And then it constitutes breach of contract and danger to society.”
“You’re a danger to society,” Doc grumbles, in what is a very mature comeback befitting of such an accomplished scientist. Grian snorts and claps him on the shoulder.
They take a few minutes to clean up. Grian doesn’t burn the blueprints (for all his dramatics, he agrees with the importance of records as much as the next person, and besides, he’d be lying if he said Doc messing with forbidden technologies isn’t entertaining once you get over the shock factor of it all). Xisuma folds up the floating half-transparent screens around them. Suddenly, once all the programming talk dies down, the lab grows eerily silent.
And now here’s the thing – Grian doesn’t mind the silence, usually, but he can feel their eyes at the back of his head as he walks, somewhat pointlessly, from one corner of the room to the other. Doc’s as allergic to feelings as he is, that much he knows, though that doesn’t stop him from staring, but Xisuma–
“…Grian?”
–well, Xisuma’s never exactly been a stranger to yanking Grian head-first into uncomfortable conversations.
He sighs and turns around.
“Yes, X?” he says, in a voice which he hopes conveys exactly how little he wants to be talking about this. (It does, he’s pretty sure, but Xisuma is also remarkably bull-headed.) “I hope you know I’m going to make you ask a question before I give any answers.”
“That is fair,” Xisuma says, inclining his head to the side slightly. He hooks his fingers under the rim of his helmet and takes it off in a practiced motion, which does nothing to reassure Grian on the levels of seriousness in the conversation that’s about to follow. And then: “As I’m sure you’re aware, Hermitcraft is a private whitelist server, but I am capable of blocking Players for an additional layer of protection. Is there a name you would like me to to add to the blocklist?”
And… ah, f*ck.
Frick. He means frick. His younger self is rubbing off on him.
“And then you have the gall to act all shy when I compliment you, Xisuma Void,” Grian grumbles, though he’s pretty sure he fools no one with the way his hand flinches upwards, traitorously, to rub at his eyes. “But, uh, yeah. Yeah. It’s–“ (he takes a shuddering breath) – “It’s Samgladiator. All one word, no spaces, spelled exactly how you’d expect.” He pauses; grimaces. “f*ckin’ asshole.”
…Definitely rubbing off on him.
Fortunately, Xisuma is polite enough to not call him out on his swearing this time. Unfortunately, the other person in the room is a curious, curious man, and not only when it comes to science.
“Can I ask,” Doc says, in a voice which is only slightly hoarser than usual, “what he did?”
And most unfortunately of all, of course, Grian is way too prone to oversharing.
“Can I ask if you want to know all of it?” he hums, because he’s at least reasonable – he’s at least not going to dump this onto them without some consent, even if they don’t know quite what they’re getting into.
“If you want to tell, then yes,” Xisuma says, steadily. Doc nods in agreement, and he looks even more curious, if a little apprehensive.
Grian, frankly speaking, is a bit past the point of caring about if he wants to tell.
“Let’s see,” he drawls, leaning against the desk, and he feels loose-tongued with all the science and all the weirdness of the morning’s affairs. “Tell me if you want me to shut up, because things get a little intense towards the end, and I can’t blame you if you don’t want to listen.” He waits for them both to nod at this one too before continuing. “Great, thanks. So, it all starts – we met when I was maybe six? My parents basically threw me out of the house to sort out their own relationship issues. Haven’t seen them since, but that’s not the point. Got shipped off to an orphanage in a different country, that was fun. Met Pearl there, actually, but we got separated around middle school, so she plays a smaller part in this particular story. Now Sam, he’s the important one. Thrifty kid, few years older, knew the ins and outs. Took a liking to me at the time, I think. Was nice enough. Met Taurtis there too, but didn’t think much of him at the time, honestly. He was always just… there. Sam’s best friend.”
He shivers – not because saying the phrase hurts per se, but because of how much he remembers it hurting. Because he knows that if he utters these words in front of G, that shouting match will end in tears.
“And then high school happened, and – I don’t know. Something snapped, I guess. I mean, our teacher tried to hang us, and then hanged himself and haunted us, so the atmosphere wasn’t exactly conducive to anyone’s mental health–“ (“What?!”) – “Yeah, don’t question it. State-funded school, nobody gave a shi– crap about what we got up to.” Listen, it’s not his fault memories of high school make him want to swear, alright? “Anyway, not the point. Point is – well, the order of events is all murky here, but at some point Sam started doing sh*t to me and Taurtis. Taurtis sort of got off easy at first – best friend privileges, I used to think – but I got the whole shebang. Slapping me, encouraging self-harm, cigarettes against skin. Knives, later, when he was just getting a taste for blood.“
He rattles it all out with a cold sort of detachment, like a laundry list, and wonders if it’s better this way. Wonders if it’s better to do it like this, to stay level-headed instead of choking on your own sobs (like he’d done with Pearl, and with Mumbo, and with Scar. Ren and Impulse got a rendition somewhat similar to this, but he doesn’t remember going quite so in-depth.)
Better or not, Xisuma and Doc both look either vaguely unsettled or utterly horrified, depending on how much you’re willing to admit to yourself. Grian gives them a crooked smirk.
“Let it be known that Taurtis is the only reason I didn’t throw myself off a building in a one-life world,” he adds, because he doesn’t want to paint an unfair picture here. “He’s – I never really got the chance to let him know, because Evo happened, and there was the whole – not the point – we got separated, point is, and I never got to let him know how much he helped, back then. I hated him at the time, of course, hated anyone who told me that what Sam was doing to me was wrong – I worshipped the ground he walked on, come hell or high water – but it was… Taurtis kept me sane, even while he had himself to worry about. He talked me off the ledge more often that I’d like to admit, and he made me smile, sometimes. He’s done more for me that I could ever hope to repay, and I never even got to thank him.”
Xisuma and Doc exchange a look. He pays it no mind, because he’s spinning his story for shock value here.
“Anyway, Sam stabbed him,” he says, casually, and feels a strange sort of delight at the way both of their eyes widen. “During a Halloween party. I didn’t realise it wasn’t fake blood at first, he was dressed as a vampire, it only made sense – and then he kissed me, and all I could taste was metal.” He scrapes his tongue against his teeth, because even thinking about it brings back the sickening taste. “I thought it was hot, back then. Not my finest moment.” Well, he’d think anything was hot at the time if Sam was involved, but that’s besides the point.
“Anyway, it took – someone called an ambulance, thank gods, and it took them a week to be able to confidently tell us he’d live, and that – things got so much worse over those few days.” He scrunches his eyes up, because he doesn’t want to see their expressions when he says the next part. “Sam would feed me plastic, and I’d f*cking eat it. He’d force me to dress up as him – as Taurtis – and hold me at knifepoint until I promised that I was him. Until I believed that I was nothing if I wasn’t.”
He’s long past that point in his life, of course, he’s worked through it, made himself figure it out, but damn if the memory doesn’t still make his eyes sting. Damn if he doesn’t still feel his lips tremble as the familiar hopelessness rears its ugly head somewhere deep inside his chest.
When he opens his eyes, Xisuma looks on the verge of tears, too. Doc just looks like he want to kill a man, which is fascinating, because you’d think Grian would know by now what Doc looks like when he wants to kill a man given all the wars they’ve gotten into, and yet this is somehow totally new. Doc is a scary man when he’s irked, he builds lag machines that can crash a server and nuclear weapons that can wipe an entire country from the maps, but he’s terrifying when he’s angry.
But here’s the fun part: for all that he is terrifying, Grian isn’t terrified. Because he knows – and he believes, crucially, for once, he believes that the anger is not directed at him. That the anger is on his behalf.
And maybe he’s still a little screwed up in the head, because out of everything, this is what makes him feel safe.
He smirks. “Taurtis got out of the hospital eventually, of course,” he continues, voice lighthearted. “I had just turned eighteen at the time, and he’s a few months older, so the moment he figured out what was going on, he whisked me the hell outta there. Or, well, pulled me away kicking and screaming, more accurately, because I was still all up in arms about how I deserved nothing better than Sam. A little ridiculous, looking back on it, but hey. Worked out in the end. I started this little server called Evo, both of you know about that. Met back up with Pearl, met Mumbo.” He can’t help but smile at that one. Good times. “Haven’t seen Sam since. Don’t really want to, as you might imagine.“
“Really,” Doc chokes out. He’s gunning for sarcastic, probably, but it’s kind of hard to tell with the sharp hiss of gunpowder that becomes more apparent when he opens his mouth.
“Please don’t blow up your lab,” Grian adds in mild alarm. “I don’t know what the appropriate response to all of this is, but it’s not that.”
Xisuma takes in a shaky breath.
“I don’t think,” he says, “there is any appropriate response here.”
“I think the appropriate response is murder,” Doc points out, and it’s sort of funny how hissy his words come out, resssponsssse.
“Well, yes,” Xisuma says, matter-of-factly, and hold on now, Grian did not know he can be talked into committing murder that easily – “but not right now. That requires meticulous planning. Which I will help with, don’t get me wrong, but I’d argue we need a clearer head.”
“Please don’t murder anyone?” Grian says, meekly, but he doesn’t sound particularly convincing even to his own ears. “It’s fine! I’m fine!” The sceptical looks they give him are something to behold. He huffs, mildly offended. “No, no, I’m not actually – I’m not, like, lying about that one. Maybe I’m not fully alright, I don’t know if that’s really possible at this point, but I am fine. Better than fine, even. I mean it when I say my stay on Hermitcraft is the happiest I’ve ever been. It’s like – every now and then I look back at the previous month, and I’m like, well, that was the best month of my life!, and then the next one rolls around, and it’s better!”
He shakes his head with a small laugh, then sobers up a bit. “I am sorry for dumping all this on you both, by the way, but you did ask,” he says, lightly. They both look like they’re ready to reassure him that it’s okay, they don’t mind, so he rolls his eyes at them very pointedly. “Don’t even try to pretend this was remotely acceptable in any social context. I know you’re not mad–” (at me, he doesn’t add, but implies) – “but I fully embrace the fact that it was weird as Nether to do. You can say that out loud. I won’t be offended.”
There is a pause. Then, Doc exhales, the familiar hissing sound fading somewhat as he does. “It was a little weird,” he says, cautiously, and Grian barks a laugh. “I’m – I assume you’re not going to want pity?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Grian scoffs. “I realise it’s a bit of a tall ask, but I’d at least appreciate it if you tried not treating me any differently. And–“ he laughs again here, because it is sort of funny, in that nonsensical sort of way, because he says it half as a joke but he knows they’ll take it seriously and he likes that – “can I get back to you on the murder thing, please? I’m not – I think I need a couple days to think it over.”
“That is fair,” Doc says, and he’s grinning darkly, a dangerous glint in his eyes in that way that serves only – ridiculously, perhaps – to make Grian smile wider. “Just say the word though.”
Xisuma smacks him on the shoulder, but it’s clearly more of an instinctual thing, what with the way his gaze is also calculatingly sharp. Still, it softens when Grian catches it, and maybe it should sting, but instead of feeling like pity, it feels like love.
“Can we at least hug you?” X inquires, politely. Doc perks up at the idea too, the dangerous facade falling apart in favour of a mildly hopefully expression, and Grian –
Well, Grian feels like love, too. So who is he to resist?
***
Gri is out of breath when he lands next to them, his elytra wings a little crooked on his shoulders. Not that Grian is very familiar with the way one is meant to wear elytra wings, of course – he’s only really laid eyes on a pair once before today – but maybe the fact that even he can tell that something is wrong with how they’re positioned is a testament to the fact that Gri needs to get his sh*t together.
“You need to get your sh*t together,” Grian says, just to prove a point. His older self sputters.
“I have – I’ve literally only just got here,” he says, his voice caught somewhere between amused and offended. “Everything is perfectly fine. Scar, tell him everything is perfectly fine.”
Scar, who has up until this point been busy giving Grian a tour of the more delicate details of his mountain range, looks him up and down doubtfully. “I dunno, man,” he drawls, and he’s grinning too, a glint of slightly sharpened teeth. “G’s right, you look pretty messed up to me. Science trio session got particularly heated?”
“Oh, the science was fine,” Gri mutters, doing his best to look dejected (which doesn’t work particularly well, but Grian can’t exactly blame him. He spent his last two or so hours in a rather strange state of nervous elation and is beginning to think that might just be the Scar Effect.) “Now the aftermath – well. Let’s just say Doc is a curious man, and I need only to be promoted once to say way too much.”
“Oh, come on,” Grian scoffs, wrapping his arms around himself in a nigh automatic motion. “Don’t tell me you told the irresponsible science man who is also your rival about your trauma. I’m no expert, but that feels like a mistake.”
“Well, I also told Xisuma,” Gri shrugs, and Grian tries and fails to suppress his shiver at how lighthearted he sounds; how easily, it seems, opening up comes to him (at least in some regards. Grian is still baffled Scar couldn’t tell how in love his older self was with the man, but at least he’s not surprised Gri hasn’t told him. Grian is also baffled for a multitude of other related reasons, but he elects sternly not to think about them, because he’s only taken one psychology course, and doesn’t quite know how to talk himself out of cognitive dissonance.) “Although I do want to make it clear that Doc and I are, first and foremost, friends. All our rivalries are in good nature, and he’ll never actually use anything I say against me like that.”
…And of course the f*cker can tell exactly what makes Grian uneasy about the whole thing. What did he even expect.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, glancing down at the uneven ground beneath their feet. “You and your friends.”
“Nothing wrong with having friends,” Gri grins, in that way he does when he’s trying to make a dig at him (asshole). “Well, let me amend that – depends on the friend, but…”
“Alright, alright,” Scar interrupts, taking a few steps towards him and smacking him lightly on the shoulder. Grian can appreciate that – he was not exactly looking forward to another confrontation over his choice of companionship. Still, for all that the action is casual, he can see the undercurrent of tension in the man’s morions – probably in response to… whatever Grian has told him earlier, listen, he doesn’t like thinking about his dramatics – so he has to hide a cringe and hope to heavens his older self won’t notice (unlikely) or question (more realistic). “Personally, I’m starving, and I can’t imagine either of you is faring any better. So – lunch? And then you can introduce him to the rest of the server.”
Well, Grian thinks to himself even as they both nod enthusiastically, that is as good a distraction as any.
***
Grian’s far too exhausted from all the twists and turns and science to actually make any food – if it were up to him, they’d just snack on golden carrots before moving onto the next stop of the tour – so Scar’s willingness to provide them with lunch is certainly a blessing. He does make rabbit stew, which is a little funny (it’s not intentional, Grian is pretty sure, but that doesn’t stop him from dissolving into giggles, and G – from staring at him with a mildly unimpressed expression on his face), but it’s good stew, so neither of them complain beyond that. Scar doesn’t cook very often – usually he’s either too busy building or too tired from the day’s work – but when he does, it’s always a good day.
They eat, then sit around the table chatting for a while – Scar goes on about his ideas for expanding the Swaggon, and Grian tries to imagine what it’s going to look like when he’s done with all of his grand plans. G just sort of listens, head tipped to the side and an outright dreamy smile on his face, leaving Grian to hope he’s not being too obvious. Scar is an oblivious man, fortunately, but there has to be a limit, and Grian would rather that limit not be crossed. It would just make Boatem meetings unbearably awkward.
(He only kicks G under the table twice throughout lunch, by the way. He would like it to be noted as a noteworthy example of restraint.)
After lunch is done, they make their way out of Boatem (to G’s evident relief – although he’s gotten some handle on the lag, he’s still not quite used to spending long periods of time in such environments) and towards Cub’s custom biome. Scar tags along for a bit, but stays behind after they run into Cub and get past all the introductions, citing having something to discuss with the man. Grian figures that’s fair. Scar and Cub always have something or other to discuss, after all.
(G looks at him for at least five seconds longer than necessary when he voices this thought, chewing at his lips. Then he crossed his arms on his chests and says, “You do realise you sound exactly like I do when I complain about Taurtis spending too much time with Sam, right?”
Grian isn’t sure if he should be proud of him for being self-aware, or just, like, incredibly offended.)
They move onto the Big-Eye District, where G reasonably inquires why exactly is it called the Big-Eye District if only two out of three residents have big eyes, and Tango proceeds to act horribly insulted until Grian gives him an extra-nice introduction (which, to be fair, is not particularly hard, given that there’s a lot of good things to say about Tango.) Bdubs and Keralis are baffling creatures at the best of times, of course, so they do nothing to make G any less confused about the server he finds himself in – not to mention, introducing him to Fifi can’t have helped their case – but at least it’s funny.
Grian decides he should visit the Big Eyes more. Their company is a delight.
When they run into Etho, he immediately recruits G into the No Wings Club, and then tries to make the argument that this technically means Grian needs to give up his wings too. Grian decides this is appalling and horrifying, and therefore immediately sets out to teach G the basics of operating elytra. Despite all odds, that works surprisingly well – it takes no longer than two hours for him to find himself approximately steady in the skies, and way less than that to get the taste for dive-bombing in a way that Grian would appreciate far more if they knew what a respawn would do to him. He takes to flying like – well, like a bird – and Grian wonders, briefly, if maybe a strange sort of muscle memory had played a part in how easily elytra came to him at the start of Season Six.
After she gets some explanations, Stress, who not so much stumbles into them as G stumbles into her in a botched attempt at a landing, offers to make them some tea, which they gladly take her up on (it’s basically five o’clock). Gem drops by while they’re drinking and proceeds to gush, to Grian’s understandable, he’d like to think, displeasure, about how much she likes G’s style. By dinner they make it all the way to Iskall’s, and Grian takes it as an opportunity to annoy him into making meatballs and reminisce about the Architechs (oh, there’s so much to say about Sahara, so much to say about the nights spent building and working and laughing). It’s been a right while since Grian scouted the server so thoroughly, truth be told, so by the time darkness settles over the lands around them he’s utterly impressed by all the builds that have sprung up escaping his notice, and just as utterly exhausted.
G doesn’t seem to be faring much better. He’s yawning every other word, and Grian knows full well he isn’t used to the amount of walking they’ve done today, so he’s kind of dragging his feet. Still, he’s not complaining – not as much as Grian would expect him to, at the very least. He huffs quietly when they set our back towards the Octagon from where they were sitting very comfortably on a wrought iron bench outside Cleo’s castle, but that’s about it.
“If it helps, the way back won’t be as long,” Grian comments. They took the more winding way the first time around, what with going through Boatem and all. “Or we could fly, technically. I’ve got spare elytra in my enderchest and rockets galore.”
“No, no,” G shakes his head, almost too hasty. “It’s okay. We can walk.”
Grian hums. Maybe there’s more to it than just being tired, he thinks, though he isn’t quite sure how to put it into words. The uncertainty must reflect on his face, because G sighs beside him and shoved his hands into the pockets of his bright green tunic.
“It’s stupid,” he says. “What I’m thinking about. It’s stupid.”
“That obvious I’m wondering?” Grian chuckles, kicking a small rock off the path into the grassy fields around them. “Nah, it’s – I mean, you’ve had a really long day. You’re entitled to thinking whatever you’d like without it being called stupid.”
G hums. He’s watching the dirt beneath his feet as they walk, step in step, and for a few moments he allows the silence to linger. Then:
“I’m jealous, I guess,” he shrugs, and he sounds almost bitter, and, yeah, Grian supposed he should have figured that much. “Which, I mean, it is dumb, you can’t deny that. I’ll be… well, you one day. I’ll be in your shoes, showing my younger self around a server I love so much, introducing him to the people I love. So much. Like, I’ll get there, it’s basically an inevitability, it’s nothing I should even be worried about. But I’m not there yet.” He swallows dryly. “I’m not there yet.”
Grian nods. He understands, he thinks. It’s been a while since he was in G’s current mindset, of course, but he can still remember it all too vividly if he tries.
He doesn’t try, usually. But it could matter now.
“I don’t think it’s dumb,” he says, quietly. “I know – I remember what I was like, at your age. You’re – it’s December, right? Early December?” (G nods, looking away.) “Yeah. It’s early December, and everything is so messed up, and you can’t remember the last time you didn’t cry yourself to sleep. You don’t know if Taurtis will be okay yet – he will, by the way, I promise–“ (for now, he doesn’t add) – “and you don’t know if Sam will be okay.“ He looks down, smiling bitterly to himself. “You wish so badly for Sam to be okay. For everything to just go back to normal, how it used to be.”
G squeezes his eyes shut for a few moments, keeping his breathing level.
“But it won’t,” he says. “Will it.”
“It can’t,” Grian shrugs, softly. “Deep down, you know full well it can’t, after all of it. Deep down, you know Taurtis will want to leave as soon as he can stand again, and you don’t blame him.”
“He didn’t deserve it!” G exclaims, eyebrows furrowed, the loudness of his voice harsh in both of their ears. “Of course I wouldn’t blame him!”
Grian lets the corner of his mouth quirk up ever so slightly. “You think he didn’t deserve it. He thinks he deserved every moment.” G looks affronted, scandalised by the idea, but it’s true – Grian call recall all too well the nights he and Taurtis spent in each other’s arms, trading self-deprecating remarks, going head to head in the ever-futile competition of who screwed up worse. “You think you deserved every moment. He thinks no the f*ck you did not.“
The swear word draws a sharp laugh out of G, his eyes fixated pointedly on the road ahead, on the eerily lit octagonal spider-structure that is just coming to view in the distance. “Stalemate?” he asks, voice hoarse.
“Would be,” Grian shrugs. “But he’s just that little bit more desperate.”
“It’s not like we can just run from Sam,” G notes, his jaw tense. “Been there, done that, didn’t work.”
“Not to a different country, maybe,” Grian shrugs. “But off-server? You can run off-server.” That gives him pause, and Grian knows exactly what he’s thinking – something along the lines of That’s insane, along the lines of We have nowhere to go, of It’s not like there’s a lot of servers who will welcome a pair of orphans with nothing to their name with open arms. He knows, because these are exactly the arguments he made to Taurtis’s face, teary-eyed, all those years back. But he also remembers very well the response he got, and so he doesn’t let G voice the thoughts swirling in his head. “You,” he says instead, in the same tone of voice that Taurtis had said We, “can make your own.”
G pauses mid-step.
“No the f*ck we can’t?” he says, voice high-pitched and incredulous, and Grian has to bite back a snort because – yeah, that’s what he said too, word for word, down to the intonation. “That’s – admin training, do you know how much admin training costs?!”
“Yes, actually,” Grian grins. “Coincidentally, it costs two diamond blocks less than Taurtis has in his enderchest at the time of asking. And they provide free accommodation if you bug them enough.”
Unsurprisingly, G looks gobsmacked. For approximately three-and-a-half seconds, that is.
Then: “Oh that sly bastard,” he spits, and his voice sounds equal measures resentful and impressed as he digs his heels into the ground beneath them. “He just – has those?! That’s like– It would be– Where the f*ck would he even get that amount? We’re literally in high school, and he’s been… y’know! It’s not like you can earn diamonds from a hospital bed!”
“Taurtis has always been the more self-aware one out of the two of us,” Grian shrugs. He places his hand on G’s shoulder lightly, feels the tension in his muscles. “He’s been preparing for this for – a while. Planning to run. With you.”
“Or without me?” G adds, voice still bitter. Grian smiles, pulling the hand away, and he knows G isn’t going to believe his next words because he hadn’t believed them in G’s shoes; but he believes them now, and maybe that’s all that ever mattered.
“No,” he says, steady as ever. “Just with you.”
And maybe it’s something about the day, something about being tired, or something about demonstrable love; but G’s eyes glimmer with tears, and he doesn’t argue, this time. And maybe that matters too.
***
Freeze-frame, rewind.
Okay, bad wording; horrible wording, even, given that the time machine is still looming ominously in the corner of Doc’s lab, not actively smoking, but still smelling vaguely of molten plastic. There will be no rewinding happening in the nearest couple months at least if Doc wants to keep any kind of creative agency over his future science projects (and he does, thank you very much.) Xisuma certainly already looks disappointed enough in his endeavours, and that’s not even mentioning whatever Grian has going on.
Which is… a lot, by the way. Grian has a lot going on.
And it’s not like Doc hadn’t figured by now that Grian has a lot going on – he and Grian have gotten up to some things no mentally well person would ever choose to get up to of their own accord – but… heilige Scheiße, basically. Doc didn’t think it was like that.
“I didn’t think it was like that,” he says, weakly, a few minutes after the trap door slams closed behind Grian that afternoon. Xisuma gives a joyless laugh.
“Yeah,” he agrees on an exhale. “I mean, I heard about Evo – and that’s bad enough – but, heavens.” The way he emphasises it, heavens, it’s like he wants to say something a little weightier. Doc can’t honestly blame him.
They stand in silence for a bit. The science part of their afternoon is done, and Grian’s helped clean up up the working surfaces, so there isn’t really anything left to do, but… well. Xisuma doesn’t turn to leave, and Doc doesn’t shoo him out. It’s an unspoken sort of agreement, that both of them need five.
Doc thinks. His thoughts are disorganised, which is far from unusual, flitting back and forth in his half-mechanised brain. It takes a particularly strong affinity for disorganisation to overcome any technology’s inherent tendency to compartmentalise everything into tiny boxes and keep it there, but Doc fits the bill and then some. It’s the only reason he’s managed to not drive himself (too) crazy over the years.
Still, it does mean that it’s easy for him to get stuck on one particular idea, an infinite, self-perpetuating loop of a thought, reinforced both by the tech deciding to keep it on the forefront of his mind and his own stubbornness. A complete lack of goal disengagement, a trained professional might say, along with a great deal of other things a trained professional might have to say to him. A great thing, usually, as far as Doc is concerned, even if it does sometimes result in him losing days or even weeks to nigh-impossible tasks. It’s the reason why he gets so much stuff done.
However, when he’s been ever so politely ask to not proceed with his main goal right now, it becomes just a little bit frustrating.
Really, all he wants to do is permakill a guy, is that too much to ask?!
…Okay, so maybe Grian has a little bit more of a say in whether or not Sam gets permakilled. That’s fair. Doc will allow that. He will even do his very best to be patient – in this case and no other, ever. This does not mean he will cease planning out the most painful ways to murder somebody in his mind, of course, but that’s the price you gotta pay for getting him to not do something. Deal with it.
Alternatively, however…
Well, he’d need Xisuma’s help for that, but Xisuma has already expressed an impressive lack of reluctance with respect to the murder plan, so surely he wouldn’t be that hard to convince to break a few other universal rules. To open a few backdoors in the code here and there, send a few search algorithms whirring through it, stuff like that. Surely.
“Do you want–“ he begins.
“Yes,” Xisuma interrupts, evenly. He’s leaning back against the work desk, staring intensely at the deepslate wall opposite them. Doc blinks.
“Do you even know what I was going to say?” he sputters, turning to face him. Xisuma turns too, giving him an unimpressed look.
“How long have we been friends for?” he asks, rhetorically. “Of course I know what you were going to say. Grian asked us to hold off on killing Sam, so you moved onto the next best thing, and were about to ask me to hack into the universe code to see if we can locate Taurtis. To which I say, yes, sure, but not right now. Are you free tomorrow afternoon?”
Doc laughs on an exhale, shaking his head incredulously at the conviction in Xisuma’s voice. “You’re right, of course,” he says, “but I resent it. And yes, I’m free.”
Xisuma gives him a satisfied smile and claps him on the shoulder.
He leaves not long after, and Doc is left to do precious little as he waits for Grian and his younger counterpart to come back to his lab. The clock on the wall of the time machine ticks away, monotonously, towards the inevitable twelve hour mark, so he watches it as he tinkers with some silly little device on his workbench (it’s supposed to be an upgrade to one of Ren’s prosthetics, but not in this state it isn’t.) Still, he gets so invested in his work that he barely notices the sound of a trap door slamming open.
“And back we go,” Grian’s voice announces, cheerfully, and then there is a thud of somebody landing in the stone floor (followed by another, slightly lighter somebody.) “Oh, Doc, you’re still here, great. Did you leave the lab today at all? Got any sun?”
Doc looks away from him guiltily even as he turns around to face them, and Grian lets out a sharp laugh. “Listen,” he says, “I have no right to judge you, but judge you I will. Take your chlorophyll supplements and go outside tomorrow or I swear to heavens I will drag you out of here by the scruff of your lab coat.
“Yes, mum,” Doc says with as much sarcasm as he can muster, rolling his eyes. He appreciates the undercurrent of care amidst the sharpness of Grian’s voice, but Grian doesn’t need to know that. “Now get your butts over here, the time machine should be set up all proper.”
They do, accompanied by G’s fascinated and not-quite-as-quiet-as-he-thinks whispers of “He photosynthesises?!”. The process is a little slow – G obviously stalls, and Grian obviously lets him – but Doc pretends not to notice. He’s all for the kid staying for as long as he can – if they had a stronger handle on the side effects of time travel, he’d argue for keeping him around longer, frankly. It’s not like he has much to go back to.
(But, a voice says in his head, tugs his lips into a smile as he looks once again at Grian, bright, lovely, happy Grian. But he has so much to look forward to. So maybe it’s not all bad.)
Still, they get everything in working order soon enough, even if Grian does insist on double- and triple-checking the knobs on the time machine interface (“Oh ye of little faith,” Doc murmurs, delighting in the little laugh it gets him). G fiddles with the clock on the wall idly, though the sharp curiosity in his eyes is obvious (there’s the kid who’s going to grow up having unexpected flashes of technological genius.) The display lights up in front of them with cheery blues.
“Alright,” Grian announces with a small hum, letting his fingers ripple across its surface. “Guess that’s it.”
“Guess that’s it,” G echoes, voice a little hollow, stepping closer. Doc is standing in front of them both, and the kid gives him a long look. “It’s been… interesting?”
“Enlightening,” Doc suggests.
G nods solemnly. “Enlightening,” he agrees.
Next to them, Grian snorts.
“Alright now, quit exchanging pleasantries, you two. Doc’s great, we think Doc’s great, that’s common knowledge. G, you ready to go?”
“Would you be?” G shrugs, ironically. Grian sighs.
“It’s okay,” he says, quieter this time, placing his hand on his younger self’s shoulder, light as a feather. “You’ll be okay.”
Doc looks away. It’s a private moment.
Grian is a hugging type of person, but G is not yet, so most they do is exchange an awkward pat on the shoulder before Doc and Grian step out of the time machine confines, closing the door behind them with a quiet screech of metal. Operating it is give or take a matter of pressing two buttons, so Doc waits for Grian to give him a terse nod before taking a short breath and pressing them in rapid succession, one-two, a near practiced rhythm. It’s all very anticlimactic – a flash of white and then silence, nothing, a husk of an empty time machine in the corner of his lab. For a while, they let it sit. Then:
“Well, this was a day and a half!” Grian announces, with a laugh that isn’t forced for an audience so much as it is forced for himself. “I’d apologise for the trouble, but really, you’re the one who caused it!”
“I’m sorry,” Doc sighs, half-earnestly. Grian laughs again.
“Nah, it’s – I’m joking, mostly. It’s okay.” He plays with the puffy sleeve of his sweater, eyes focused on the chunkily knit threads. “I did mean it when I said I remember the day it happens. Not any of this–“ he gestures around them, a wide sweep of an arm – “but just… the feeling. It’s like I woke up, and suddenly knew there was more to this world than I’ve let myself hope for. Like I had reasons to keep my head up for a bit longer. It was… I’m gonna give you crap for the unsanctioned time machine usage, but I think it saved my life.”
“With the bandages, I could’ve figured,” Doc says, because he’s incapable of holding a serious conversation for longer than a few minutes. Grian chuckles.
“I mean, that too. Maybe not life per say, but certainly saved me the trouble of getting an infection again,” he admits. Doc exhales quietly, closing his eyes.
“Do I want to ask you if you – still – do that?” he forces out, despite his throat closing up around the words. Grian sighs too.
“Probably not, no,” he admits. “Though – if it… helps, I think? If it helps, nowadays, half the time I think of doing… that, I show up on your doorstep instead. You make it better.”
Selfishly, it does help. Doc hums.
“Make it seventy-five percent, and then we’re talking,” he suggests with a quiet snort. And no matter whether it works or not as far as suggestions go, Grian lets out a laugh, startled and delightful, beautiful enough to make them both smile –
and that, Doc thinks to himself, fondly, that is really all that matters.
***
Doc offers him a drink at the tail-end of the evening, but Grian declines, even if he is a little tempted. If he starts drinking tonight, he’ll have a horrific hangover tomorrow morning – it’s that kind of day – and he’s sure it wouldn’t do him any favours when people come knocking on his door asking what the absolute Nether was going on yesterday. He’s tried to keep everyone they ran into at least a little updated, but he doubts they asked every question they had in front of G, and it doesn’t really count as talking behind someone’s back if you bug their grown-up self about them.
So he doesn’t drink, though he thanks Doc for the invitation and assures him he’ll swing by on the weekend unless something else goes horribly horribly wrong. Instead, he takes the easy way out (up the wooden ladder and a few corridors down is a window, which as far as he is concerned is all it takes to get out of the Octagon’s most ominous branch), allowing himself a few deep breath on the way back to Boatem. The nighttime mid-October air is… cold, but strangely freeing. Strangely kind to any old fool who stumbles within its grasp.
Grian glides, and lands, and takes another breath.
“Hello there!” a voice calls out, next to him. He startles.
“Oh, Scar–“ he stutters out, stumbling closer to the figure veiled in darkness of the world around him. “You scared me! I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Scar giggles. “Couldn’t help myself. Had a nice flight back?”
“Far too short,” Grian laments, taking his elytra off his shoulders and folding it up into his inventory (it’s not a long walk from here). “Thanks for keeping an eye on G earlier, by the way. I’m sure he wouldn’t be particularly happy stuck in a lab with us.”
“You know, I think you underestimate him,” Scar laughs easily, falling into step beside him. “…Underestimate yourself? I’m not sure about the correct turn of phrase here. Anyhow though, the kid’s got some smarts on him.”
“Oh, I’m not saying he doesn’t,” Grian shrugs. He’s looking straight ahead of him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m just saying he’s not really someone I want around a relatively uneventful workspace for longer than an hour or so. Not while he’s unmedicated, anyway.”
Scar squints at him (or at least it looks like he squints at him; it’s kind of hard to tell in the darkness.) “Are you?” he asks, more lighthearted than most people when it comes to this sort of thing (though coming from Scar, it’s not particularly surprising). “I’m learning a lot about you today, man.”
“Oh yeah?” Grian chuckles. “And yes, of course. Last time I forgot to take my meds in the morning, I started the mycelium resistance. Mumbo has kept me on a tight leash since then.”
Scar laughs at that, openly, as he always does when they reminisce about Season Seven shenanigans. “I can’t say those weren’t entertaining times, even if I was stressed to Nether and back,” he notes in a thoughtful voice. “But, going back to the previous point – yes, I am, actually. Learning a lot about you, that is.”
Grian almost falters mid-step, frowning slightly at the sudden softness of the conversation. “Oh no,” he deadpans, trying to keep his voice steady. “What did he tell you about us? Please tell me it was nothing particularly embarrassing.”
“Oh, never,” Scar says, quietly, and then pauses for a moment – a hesitation, a half-breath of uncertainty so unusual for a salesman of his skill, which does nothing to calm Grian’s suddenly-hammering heart. “He told me you’re in love with me, is all.”
Grian does falter. He feels his breath catch in his throat; feels that stinging in his eyes that will be undeniable even in the darkness around them. He tries, desperately, to come up with a joke or a retort or anything, anything that’ll work to stave off the piercing look in Scar’s eyes, but even as rummages through his scattered thoughts for excuses, he knows deep inside of him that it’s pointless. That he blew this, totally and entirely, and maybe forever, and it wasn’t even his fault – or maybe it was, if you want to count it as his fault, but his younger self is a bastard, point is, and it’s not – he’s not – he is, but he didn’t–
“Grian?” Scar asks, in mild alarm, his hands suddenly on Grian’s shoulders. Grian stumbles back, violently, his hands flying up to wrap around himself (heavens, this is so stupid, it’s been so long since he did this–) “Grian, G, hey, dude – breathe. Please. Okay? Oh, void, this is not how I pictured this going.”
Grian feels the bitter retort at the very edge of his tongue, and he bites it back just in time to ensure his words don’t spill out tainted with the poison that fills his lungs. “Well, how did you picture this going?” he says, and because he is so good at controlling his voice, it comes out as just slightly too even rather than pathetically trembling. “I left him alone with you on one condition – one, Scar, I just asked him to behave! – and what does he do? Just go ahead and spill all my stupid secrets?!”
“Well, first of all, I think you would have done the same thing,” Scar says diplomatically (and he’s right, Grian hates that he’s right). “And second of all, please… stop freaking out? I’m in love with you too, so it can’t be that bad?”
Grian feels himself freeze.
It’s actually a little ridiculous, the way his breath catches in his throat at Scar’s words, the way he can’t quite bring himself to respond. The violent onslaught of his thoughts. The picture-perfect image of a desert that pops into his head, entirely unrelated. All of this is ridiculous.
“No,” he manages, voice strangled, “you’re not.”
“Yes,” Scar responds, ever calmly, “I am. Have been, in fact, since – oh – early-ish Season Seven? It’s difficult to pinpoint, really, because I was definitely infatuated around the days of Area Seventy-Seven, but we barely knew each other then, right? And then the jungle happened, and we actually hung out for prolonged periods for the first time, and I – yeah.” He lets out a small chuckle, seemingly shy, but doesn’t look away as he’s talking, not once, and Grian finds himself transfixed by his gaze. “Bdubs can tell you all about it – I used to talk his ear off about you when I was mayor. And don’t get me started on how many times Cub had to remind me he does not in fact have any advice for my romantic troubles.”
Grian opens his mouth to say something – to interrupt, or laugh, play it off as a joke or tell Scar good night and flee unceremoniously into the darkness of the Midnight Alley. Scar doesn’t let him.
“I am in love with you,” he repeats, and he sounds so sure of his own words that for a moment Grian forgets how to breathe. “It doesn’t mean we have to do anything. It doesn’t mean anything has to change. If you’d rather I never bring it up again, I won’t. But I need you to know–“ (he steps closer, here, but stops at an arm’s length) – “Grian, I need you to know that you’re loved. And I’m happy to repeat it as many times as you’ll listen.”
Grian swallows. He can taste the dryness of his tongue; can see the way Scar’s chest rises and falls, the way his gaze never wavers. “You’d never stop,” he whispers.
“I love you,” Scar replies, near reverently. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
The words worm their way into Grian’s lungs and settle next to his stuttering heart. He wants to keep them there forever. Wants them etched into his bones. Wants them burned on his skin.
He wants a lot of things.
Except – that’s not Scar’s way of doing things, is it? Blood and bones and hurt. No. Scar’s way is a gentle voice, a soothing look in his eyes, an air of patience about him Grian doesn’t deserve and yet gets anyway. Scar’s way is sunshine-soaked and echoing of laughter on warm afternoons; echoing of kindness that fills you from within and makes you feel like you’re walking on clouds.
Grian thinks he could get used to it.
Grian thinks he wants to get used to it.
Grian even thinks that one day, he might believe it.
But most of all, Grian thinks –
“I think I want to kiss you,” he breathes out, and he doesn’t try to stop the corners of his lips from quirking, traitorously, upwards.
The smile Scar gives him in return is the most brilliant thing he’s ever seen.
***
(“You,” Pearl tells him, a few nights later, when he finally breaks and relays the events of that evening to her, “have screwed up so many bets.”
There is a twinkle in her eyes as she says it, despite the feigned accusatory tone. Grian can’t help but blink.
“…Bets?” he clarifies, cautiously. He knows exactly what she must be implying, of course – knows the Hermits’ fondness for gambling on every which thing – but this? Really? “Pearl, please don’t tell me.”
“I mean, I don’t have to tell you if you don’t wanna hear it,” she shrugs with a giggle. “But – well. In a theoretical scenario where there is a theoretical betting pool on how and when you and Scar would get together–“
“Pearl…”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t you pout, you’d do the same exact thing in our situation.” It’s true – in fact, he has done the same exact thing with Etho and Bdubs back in Season Seven, and he won a hefty number of diamonds for it too – but he resents it. “Anyways, in this theoretical betting pool, because we like to keep things clean, there are only three options – either you get your crap together and confess first, Scar gets his crap together and confesses first, or someone else has to intervene and get you idiots to quit staring at each other like lovesick puppies.” She sighs. “And now tell me, Griba, how the Nether are we meant to interpret this?!”
Grian considers this for a moment. Snorts. Depending on the approach you want to take here, either of the three works just as well.
“…Scar and I can take the diamonds,” he offers, innocently. Pearl smacks him lightly in the shoulder, because she is rude and mean and wants him to suffer. He grins and rests his chin on top of her head.
Life is good.)
