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errorryx · 1 year

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grian's confession booth

read on ao3 | limited life ensemble, 3.4k words

Under the impression that Grian can't hear them, some of his fellow server members take the opportunity to spill the beans on things they probably would never have told him otherwise.

—

Joel hadn’t known what to do when Grian woke him and Jimmy early in the morning, with a look on his face that was desperately trying to be a smile. Once they were both properly awake and had stopped groaning about it, Grian had launched into an explanation that had done very little to soothe their concerns.

It’s a Watcher thing, he’d said. I’ll be back before you know it, hopefully by tomorrow. I’m sure the two of you will keep me safe while I’m gone, right?

Jimmy agreed almost immediately, and Joel a little more grudgingly, still working under the assumption that Grian was pranking them. It wasn’t until Grian climbed up on the llama, said his goodbyes, and went perfectly, horrifyingly still that Joel was even partially convinced otherwise.

He stared at Grian for a long time after, waiting for him to mess up and reveal his hand. But Grian didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. Joel made a point of watching his stomach for a while to see if it was moving, and he was pretty sure Grian wasn’t breathing either.

“D’you think his heart’s still beating?” he asked, casting a nervous glance in Jimmy’s direction.

The unreadable expression on Jimmy’s face slowly melted back into a more familiar look of contemplation, and Joel breathed a sigh of relief. “Dunno,” Jimmy said. “S’pose there’s only one way to find out.”

“Yeah,” Joel agreed. “You should check his pulse.”

“Me? It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“What? I’m not touching him! Not when he’s all—” Joel gestured. “You know.”

Jimmy crossed his arms, the first hints of a well-worn scowl starting to form on his face. “So you expect me to do it instead?”

“Well, you’re the one who knows about this stuff, not me. Whatever your deal is.”

“Whatever my deal is? What’s that supposed to mean?” Jimmy asked, immediately defensive. “You don’t see me just up and leaving my body, do you? That’s a Grian thing. I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

“Whatever,” Joel huffed. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.” He didn’t want to argue with Jimmy while Grian was gone, or he’d have nobody left.

But after a while, Jimmy left anyway, leaving Joel to watch Grian on his own. There was something about hanging out with a silent, unmoving Grian that made Joel want to talk and talk and never stop, just to fill the silence. He rambled on about his plan to build a submarine, built a tower out of carpet, and got to work flooding the mansion. Before he knew it, he was leaning on the fencepost of Grian’s enclosure, prattling on about nothing at all. Thank god no one else was there to hear him.

“Jimmy never tells me anything,” he complained. “Neither of you do. Yesterday I didn’t even know this was something you could do, and now here you are, dead to the world or whatever. It’s freaking me out. Couldn’t you at least have closed your eyes?”

Grian didn’t answer. He sat perfectly still atop his llama, his eyes fixed on a spot somewhere off in the distance. Joel followed his line of vision, but he didn’t see much of anything in that direction.

“I’m not really mad, you know,” he said. “Just—I’m worried about you, okay? I know that’s not very bad of me, but I can’t help it. I know Jimmy’s worried too, he worries about everything.”

The uncomfortable silence lingered a little too long for Joel’s taste. Finally, the llama interrupted with a loud bray right in his ear, making him jump almost a foot in the air.

“Oi! Don’t do that.” Joel glared at the llama, who stared right back at him. The stupid llama looked more alert than Grian did. “You better not tell Jimmy I’m sat over here worrying, alright, ‘cause I’m doing just fine. Having a fantastic time out here all by myself.”

If Grian was listening, Joel hoped he was convinced. That would make one of them, at least.

—

“Oh, good, there you are, Grian,” Martyn told Grian’s unmoving form. “I’m really sorry I killed you. It was self-defense, I swear. I hope this doesn’t make us enemies when you get back, but for now we just need to get you somewhere safe.”

He started digging down, taking Grian along with him. Hopefully Joel and Jimmy wouldn’t attack him again, because he really didn’t want Grian to die a third time. He hadn’t wanted him to die a second time either, but it had all happened so quickly.

“I hope you’re doing alright,” he told Grian as he dug, “whatever you’re up to. Kick some ass. Or don’t, if that’s not what you’re going for.”

It wasn’t much longer before Jimmy and Joel made it back to spawn and immediately started digging down to find Grian. None of them died this time around, and Martyn managed to convince them that he wanted to protect Grian, too—especially after that death, which he did feel rather bad about. Joel and Jimmy left, leaving Martyn alone with Grian again.

“Anyway,” he said. “Like I said. Hope you’re doing okay out there. Get home safe. Don’t destroy yourself and doom the rest of us to a life of eternal torment.” He hesitated. “The occasional torment is still okay.”

Grian didn’t answer. Martyn began digging out some more space around him, boxing him into a corner. “I’ll be here if you want to talk about it, or something,” he said, feeling a bit foolish for even speaking the words. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Grian’s eyes didn’t refocus when Martyn was blocking his line of sight. Martyn placed a torch down right beside Grian’s head, just to see if his pupils would dilate.

They didn’t.

“Huh.” He took a step back, breaking the torch. “You know, maybe it’s best if we hide you a bit.”

He filled the hole he’d dug up to the surface with water, letting it fall from the ceiling right in front of Grian. That way, it’d be easier to get in and out. He needed to invite some other people down here, or he’d start to go mad.

“Hey, Cleo!” he called, faintly hearing her voice from above. “Come down here and check this out!”

—

“Here he is!” Martyn said, making a ta-da gesture with both arms. “He looks just like a fortune teller, doesn’t he?”

He does,” Cleo agreed. “The water does him a lot of favors. Hard to tell there’s anything the matter with him.”

She peered through the water stream at Grian, who stood perfectly upright, staring right through her. The water obscured most of what was uncanny about him, but it couldn’t hide his impeccable posture. The real Grian was always hunching his shoulders, bending his knees, constantly plotting his next move, but this Grian reminded her more of a mannequin than of himself.

“What’s her fortune, Grian?” she heard Martyn ask.

Cleo laughed, idly brushing her fingers against the now-dried blood she’d smeared over her cheeks. “That I’ll die an untimely death, most likely.”

“I’d say that applies to all of us, doesn’t it?”

“Mmm.” She took her eyes off Grian for a moment to give Martyn a scrutinizing look. “You wouldn’t happen to know what he’s up to, would you?”

“Oh, I haven’t got a clue,” Martyn said. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

She took a step closer. “I do hope you’d know better than to lie to me.”

“I wouldn’t lie about this, Cleo. Grian and I, we…we don’t talk much about this kind of thing.”

Cleo believed him. When Martyn started sounding pathetic, he was usually being honest.

“What about back home?” Martyn asked. “Does he talk about this stuff on Hermitcraft?”

“Not to me,” Cleo said dismissively. “You’d have to go to Pearl about that, I expect. If anyone knows, Pearl knows.”

“Then why don’t you ask her?” Martyn suggested.

“Pearl’s not so easy to threaten,” Cleo said, allowing a small smile to creep across her face. “Besides, it’s really none of my business. He’ll be back soon enough.”

“Right, yeah. Of course.”

Cleo had no reason not to take Grian at his word—or Joel and Jimmy at theirs, since they were the ones that had passed on Grian’s message. But she couldn’t help wondering what would happen if Grian didn’t return in a timely fashion. Would they leave him here for the rest of the game, letting his clock run out naturally? Would red players flock to him, unable to resist the temptation of an easy kill?

“Let’s get some other people down here to have their fortunes read,” she said briskly. “Keep him company.” No use letting herself brood over hypotheticals.

—

“Hi, Grian!” Scar said. “I’m so sorry, but it had to happen. Thank you.”

“Scar, this isn’t a confessional,” Bdubs laughed at him. “He’s a fortune-teller.”

“Hey, it can be whatever you want it to be,” Scott said. “For Scar it’s a confessional, for the rest of us it’s fortune-tellings…”

“Thank you, Scott.” Scar hopped into the water stream, poking his head out on the other side so he could breathe. “I’m sorry I killed you, Grian, but it was part of the moment. You understand the moment, I’m sure. Things happen!”

When he opened his eyes a moment later, he realized how close he was. Grian’s eyes were hollow and unblinking, and his lips were pressed firmly together, neither smiling nor frowning. If Scar didn’t know any better, he would have thought he was looking at a statue of Grian, not his real human body.

He pulled back as quickly as he could without making it look like he was panicking, and turned his back on Grian entirely as he faced the others. “That’s a relief. He said he forgives me!”

No one seemed impressed, but Scar didn’t care. There were too many people around for him to say what was really on his mind, anyway.

—

“This is weird,” Etho said.

Until right this second, he hadn’t fully considered how weird it would be to talk to Grian one-on-one like this. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Grian in all the chaos earlier, so this was his first time taking it all in.

“Cleo said I should go talk to you,” Etho said, “and I guess she was right, because this is really putting things into perspective. Like, sure, I spent a ton of time mining today and only found two diamonds, and then I died to a creeper! But it could be lot worse. I could have died twice and found no diamonds.”

The worst thing about it was how subtle it was. Etho couldn’t put his finger on anything specifically wrong, but he could feel the tension in the air just from his proximity to Grian. Grian’s…body. His temporarily unused body.

“I’m about to turn yellow, actually,” Etho said. “Two minutes. Comin’ up pretty soon, and I think I’m gonna go kill somebody once it happens. ‘Course, you’re already yellow, so you’re safe.”

Grian didn’t answer. Etho shuffled his feet, wondering how long this conversation was supposed to go on.

“And you know what?” he said. “Bdubs said he’d ditch Scar and Cleo for me in a heartbeat. His exact words.” Grian did not seem shocked to hear it.

“I don’t really know what to do with that,” Etho admitted. “I don’t really know what to do with Bdubs in general, but you know what I mean. I swear, sometimes I think we have polar opposite brains—I don’t know how we put up with each other.

“Bdubs loves swearing his undying loyalty to people—well, mostly to me, I think. Hard to wrap my head around it sometimes, but there’s only two outcomes, y’know? Either he’s lying, which would be bad, obviously, or he means, it, which…

“Well. We’ve done this whole thing before. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I don’t know if I want to betray my whole team for him or whatever. Which is dumb, right? It’s just a silly game, I know they’ll all forgive me after it’s over, but Bdubs…we don’t have a great track record in these games, the two of us.

“I guess you’d understand that better than anyone.”

Grian didn’t answer.

“This was weird,” Etho said. “This was really weird. I’m gonna go.”

He took one last look at Grian before he returned to the surface. Grian still hadn’t moved, but then again, maybe he had. Maybe he was moving so slightly that Etho didn’t even notice. Usually Etho was a pretty perceptive guy, but he had his blind spots.

“You better not tell Bdubs,” he said, and left.

—

“Hey, Grian!” Impulse said. “Heard you had a rough time this session, huh?”

He’d already seen Grian when the boogeyman had been chosen, but Impulse was very distracted at the time. Without a bunch of people laughing and talking around him, Grian looked downright ghostly, and Impulse couldn’t say it wasn’t getting to him.

“I’m sorry you died,” he said. “I feel really bad about that, even though I didn’t have anything to do with it. Funny, right? I had something to do with someone else’s death, and I don’t feel bad about that at all. Not sure what’s up with that.”

Grian’s blank expression was a little warped through the water, and for a moment, Impulse almost thought Grian was giving him a look of exasperation. “Okay, okay,” Impulse said, “I know exactly what’s up with it. I guess I can be honest with you, since you’re kinda down for the count right now. We’re all here to let loose, right? Nothing wrong with a bit of murder between friends! It’s just a game, and Pearl and I will go back to being friends again once it’s over.”

Grian didn’t answer, but that was okay. Impulse didn’t want anyone else to hear what he was about to say. It was a good thing Martyn had set this up, because after a long day of contemplating murder, it was getting difficult for him to keep his thoughts to himself.

“I’m planning on killing Bdubs when I get to red.” He let out a long sigh of relief. “Gosh, that feels good to admit. Been keeping that one quiet for a while. I’ve always wanted to have one of those big dramatic moments like the rest of you, and I’ve never gotten the chance. It's only fair, right? Sure, winning would be nice, but all I can really think about is the moment I finally get my turn to do something people will remember.

I don’t think that’ll make a big difference to my teammates—not to Tango and Skizz, at least, they’re not the biggest fans of Bdubs right now. But I can’t help thinking if I had to choose between keeping my team safe or focusing on my plan, I’m not sure I would—”

He paused, hearing some noises from up above. “Skizz and Tango are on their way, I think—yeah, here they come.” Impulse took a step back to let Tango and Skizz out of the water. “Hey, guys!”

“Hey, Impulse!” Tango said, stepping over the cobblestone base of the water stream. “Did I hear you talking about us?”

“All good things, I’m sure,” Skizz added, jumping out behind him.

“Of course! I was just telling Grian about our beautiful new tower,” Impulse said, prompting an irritated noise from Tango. “He said all the best towers are asymmetrical nowadays.”

They seemed to believe him, thankfully. And if Grian had heard any of Impulse’s secrets, he didn’t breathe a word.

—

“Hey, Grian. Just checking to see if you were back yet before I went to sleep.”

Pearl had seen Grian like this before, here and there, but it didn’t make it any easier. Even after everything, she wasn’t immune to getting the creeps.

“A lot happened today,” she told him. “Lots of people died. Including me! Twice! I thought I had this one in the bag, you know, and now look at me, I’m yellow! Though admittedly, there’s a lot of that going around.”

Pearl was pretty comfortable talking to Grian like this. She’d tested him before, telling him all manner of secrets and bits of gossip that came to mind. She knew he wouldn’t be able to resist bringing it up afterwards, and he’d never mentioned any of it to her.

“I just can’t get into it like I did last time,” she admitted. “Playing to win seems a little pointless, doesn’t it? I already found out what happens when I win. It doesn’t fix anything. I really wish you’d warned me.

“I don’t know how you still manage it. You’ve kept trying to win all the way through every one of these games. I’m not sure I want to keep trying anymore.”

She poked him in the stomach, just for good measure. If all else failed, she’d always be able to get a reaction out of Grian that way. He didn’t move, which was proof enough for her.

“Thanks, Grian,” Pearl sighed. “Good luck out there.”

—

“Well, hey there, Grian! Thought I’d stop by one last time.”

Everyone else had gone to sleep for the night, but Scar couldn’t keep himself away. He’d waited for spawn to be deserted as long as he dared, but Grian had told everyone he’d only be gone for a day, and Scar didn’t want to miss his chance. “Can you hear anything people have been saying to you?” he asked.

Grian didn’t answer.

“I’m just going to assume you can’t, for the sake of my own well-being.” Scar checked his watch, still ticking down the time as merrily as ever. He could swear that his timer had gone a little wonky in Grian’s absence, though it was hard to tell in all the chaos. He’d killed five people today, but hadn’t gotten full credit for all of them. Hopefully Grian would set things straight when he got back.

Grian had been one of those kills, and even hours later, Scar’s head was still rushing from it. He sat back against the wall, facing the opposite direction from Grian. Scar had learned his lesson earlier about getting up close and personal with him.

“I said I was sorry, earlier,” Scar said. “I don’t know how true that is.”

He felt bad almost immediately after saying it. “I shouldn’t say that. I do feel bad, you know! I’m not like—like you, or Joel, or Bdubs, I guess. I love causing some chaos, but things settle down and I start regretting it a little. And I do regret it, but I don’t feel sorry, and I’m not sure why.

“I’m sorry for not being sorry, I guess.”

Grian didn’t answer. Usually when Grian was silent, which was really only when he was asleep, Scar could listen for his breathing. This time, he heard nothing but the trickling water between them.

Grian had always been a constant, in more ways than one. Scar could depend on him to stir things up whenever they were getting too boring. He could always count on finding Grian, if not in the center of the action, then right on the edge instead, either orchestrating the chaos or just observing it—drawn there like a magnet the way Scar was drawn to him. But the one thing Scar never thought he’d lose was the simple fact of Grian’s physical presence.

Scar had thought about killing Grian plenty of times, but the only time he’d managed to do it was when Grian wasn’t Grian at all. No death cry, no promise of vengeance. Not even a breath.

“Don’t worry,” he said, turning his head to the side to catch Grian’s silhouette in the corner of his vision, as close as he was willing to get. “I’ll make it up to you. Once you get back, I’ll work up the nerve to kill you for real. I’ll make you proud.”

Grian didn’t answer, but Scar could envision his smile. Not his feverish post-death laughter, but the softer, rarer expression of fondness he made when he thought no one was looking. Scar had caught only wisps of it in the past, but if he squinted, he could almost see it through his lashes.

He didn’t mean to fall asleep like that, leaning up against the wall of a tiny cave in the ground. But he couldn’t resist the thought of Grian waking him up the next morning, with either a friendly smile or a sword through his stomach.

“Goodnight, Grian,” he said.

Grian didn’t answer, which was just fine with Scar. It was safer that way.

—

if you read this all the way through and enjoyed, please consider reblogging!

(also, since i've been asked about previous fics, you're welcome to interpret and tag this as shipping if you like. i intentionally left it up to interpretation.)

#grian #goodtimeswithscar #smallishbeans #inthelittlewood #zombiecleo #ethoslab #impulsesv #pearlescentmoon #limited life spoilers #my stuff #my writing #lml

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