What’s In A Kiss?

what’s in a kiss?

Scar loses his first life to Grian with a kiss to the knuckles.

He gets played at his own game – he’d be the first to admit it. Grian asks for a life, to test out the transfer system he says, with a smile and a wrinkle of his nose and the edge of a flirt to his voice, and holds out a hand. And, well, Scar’s a showman at heart. Always has been. Always will be.

And Grian’s always been able to play him like a fiddle, when he puts the effort in.

Scar takes the proffered hand like a gentleman, bows low over it with a smirk and a bit of theatre. He kisses a life into Grian’s scarred knuckles with panache, with a flourish, like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. Like a promise.

When Grian runs off with it, laughing and teasing and gleeful with fledgeling chaos, Scar mourns half for the loss of the life and half for a kiss unreturned. He ignores the kernel of ice that sets itself to seed at the centre of his heart.

–

He gives his second to Bdubs, from half a server away – a kiss blown into the open air, imbued with a mission as it leaves his palm. He feels it, as it catches the currents of the wind and is dragged away, a homing missile with a purpose. Etho watches him, eyes narrow, and Scar smiles and promises him it’s been done.

He feels it, too, when it reaches its mark. A phantom of stubble brushes against his lips, the ghost of a warm cheek pressed to his mouth. His chest feels a little colder than it did before.

–

The third goes to Cleo, a thumb brushing her hair back from her temple, his lips touched to the papery skin there. She tenses beneath the touch, lips peeled back, teeth bared– and then shudders, relaxes, as the kiss presses a life back into her. When she blinks, her eyes open the pale yellow of buttercups and dandelions, and the lines of tension are gone from the corners of her mouth.

Her skin is cold beneath his lips as he pulls away, the transfer complete. The space between his third and fourth ribs is only a few degrees warmer.

–

Joel gets the fourth, both of Scar’s hands curled over the solidity of his shoulders and lips pressed firmly to his forehead. Scar gets a mouthful of hair, half of it hastily dyed over red with bleach and box dye. He can smell the ammonia of it, and leans back before it can make his eyes water. The warmth trickles out of him in slow degrees.

–

And then it’s Grian again.

Grian, stood in front of him with eyes like rubies, and a mouth twisted into something hard, something half-cruel. There’s a crossbow in one of his hands, a bloody-edged axe in the other. His gaze keeps sliding sideways, to that monstrosity of an obsidian cage, like he can’t quite bring himself to meet Scar’s stare.

Scar reaches out with both hands, and then hesitates. Lets one fall back to his side. He catches Grian’s chin with one knuckle, and tilts it upwards, careful, so careful. Until Grian’s eyes – tired, defiant, calculating – are forced back to his face once more.

“Last one I’ve got to give,” Scar says, with a lopsided smile, and leans in.

Grian’s lips are warm beneath his, dry and bitten-chapped, and there’s people watching, and Scar doesn’t care. The rubies turn to liquid gold between one slow flutter of lashes and the next, and red blooms across Grian’s cheeks instead. It’s chaste enough as kisses go, but Scar holds it just a second too long to play it off as a joke, and he can’t find it in his cold and aching heart to regret that.

He pulls away and Grian blinks, dazed, flushed pink beneath his freckles. “Take better care of it this time, you hear me?” murmurs Scar, into the space between them, like a secret.

Like a plea.

He doesn’t wait to see if Grian nods before he steps back, turns on his heel, and turns his back on the last life he has to spare. His ribs ache, cold metal against teeth. His heart stutters beneath the ice, as best it can.

–

The sixth life burns out of him, too hot and too fast for him to scream. When he wakes up in his own bed, he doesn’t feel cold any more.

He doesn’t feel much of anything at all.

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