Chapter Text
Scar sucked in a sharp breath of harsh, musky smoke, and let the air flood his lungs, coating them in tar that he had been told from childhood to avoid like the devil- he didn't want to wind up like his father, did he? That no good, rotten, dead-beat bastard he had the misfortune to call a 'father'.
Was it any surprise that after years of hand me down smoke that he would want a taste for himself?
Unlike his father, however at least Scar could turn up the oxygen, sending the excess up his pipe once he was done. Surely Cub would understand that 'boredom' qualified as an emergency!
Calling them 'father' or anything of that sort would be laughable at best, and at worst, it'd be generous. The title already felt far too aggrandizing for the silver fox, and he could already see his mother- his poor, long suffering mother- tutting at the notion that even in thought, they were referred to as 'father'. Their hatred for their now ex significant other was palpable, even from across the room, let alone across the world. They smoked too, a pack of day just to keep the light dancing in their stormy gray eyes, of which neither he nor his brother inherited.
They'd gotten their mother's eyes of green, which Scar had always loved.
Looking like the person who raised you always brought you closer, at least that's how he saw it. Even as a child, he was always told by aunts, uncles, cousins, friends of family and strangers alike how he looked so much like his mother. Granted, he didn't have their voluminous curls, or their strong and stocky build, but his eyes- oh looking into his eyes transported you back to the 80's, when his mother seemed to rule through the beige brick of a landline that stayed in their office, even to this day. Now that he was older and no longer had to beg them to let him play with their workstation- working from home before it was cool- Scar had a phone of his own just like it, except his was blue.
And since they were the only two with landlines out of all of their extended family, that meant whenever his phone rang, he knew exactly who was on the other end.
Without his mother, London had truly been a lonely city.
And Cumbria was even worse.
Forgive him for his complaints, but compared to both his childhood home in Sicily, and his penthouse apartments in Seattle, Seoul, and most recently, London, Scar just didn't see the appeal of the countryside- at least not the way his brother did. Yeah, it was pretty, but it was also a million miles away from the closest coffee shop or veterinarian if god forbid one of his cats had an emergency, or he just wanted to feel normal for once and pop in for a macchiato. He loved Mumbo to death, but sometimes he wanted to be the one to order his food, was that too much to ask? The peaks and valleys of snowcapped mountain tops, and the crystalline lakes were fine for photos but…
Complaining about thirty acres of land to his name made him sound like a whiny, spoiled child. He was far too aware of this, as Grian often liked to point it out, while laughing in his face. Oh, look at the mama's boy, pouting about owning enough land to house a college populace, oh the poor thing. Did he want a bottle too while he was at it? A silver spoon to shove into his mouth so no more words spill out like a leaky faucet? And while Grian's cheek was part of the package that Scar had paid for, that doesn't mean it was as appreciated as he thought. Grian didn't tend to think much at all, but he hoped that his companion had enough sense to think that his words, as playful as they may be, had a time and a place.
Perhaps he was just being sensitive as of late.
The move had been stressful on everyone from himself to his staff, and so the fact he was higher strung than usual, even going so far as to smoke, could be forgiven with that in mind. Especially since the move wasn't his idea to begin with! He'd never wanted any of this stress, did it look like he wanted wrinkles? He'd found a gray hair the other day! That wasn't supposed to happen for years! Oh, poor Mumbo had to put up with hours of his tears at the prospect of the inevitability that was losing his hair, how the cruel the passage of time was! How unfair his life was! How-
You get the point.
Scar just couldn't keep a one-track mind today, could he?
It would have been one thing if he had been as charmed by the quaint port town less than a half hour's drive away and decided he must snatch up the earliest available property as soon as it was made available. It would be one thing if he had chosen to leave London of his own free will, deciding to swap his claw foot bathtub, his personal parking garage, and every single wheelchair friendly door. If it had been his choice, it would have been different.
Because if it was his choice than he never would have left at all.
No, all of this was arranged by the aforementioned dear old dad. The person whom-
No!
No, Scar didn't even want to think of them.
Etho Slab had taken up far too much space in his brain for his liking, starting all the way back to the day he was born.
To give them anymore occupancy in what little room he had left in his head for anything that wasn't about Star Wars, Disney, or his real family would be a disservice to their mother, and he'd never want to do them a disservice, now would he? He wouldn't dare dream of it, not after everything they had sacrificed to get him where he was today. No, he'd leave Etho as they were outside the realm of his mind and instead whine about the property itself- not the person whose pennies were pinched to purchase it in the first place.
To start off with, and it was the complaint that garnered him the most sympathy, was that the stoops, stairs, and doors were not made with a high-quality wheelchair in mind- any wheelchair for that matter. The spiral staircases were so plentiful that he could only assume the previous owner had a fetish for the things, and though they were pretty to look at, more often than not he was cut off from entire sections of his own property. Doors would swing shut without something heavy enough to keep them pinned down, resulting in a jostled chair, two popped wheels, and a dark bruise on his elbow where it had met aged mahogany. He couldn't even access the gardens without assistance, needing to be lifted from his chair so it could be transported down safely, and only after it was on the flat surface could he be set down. Except, wait, no he couldn't! Because the gardens were rocky as rocky could be, so what should be a peaceful stroll to admire rosebushes covered in snow like the sugar on top of a powdered donut, he was instead left feeling like he were an extra in Top Gun- constantly bouncing around, his teeth clattering inside of his jaw and his bones rattling inside of his skin.
That seemed to be where the sympathies ended.
At least Cub understood what he meant when he said the beds were too high, and that the mattress was so soft that it made it hard for him to sit up without assistance. If there was one person who would understand why Scar looked out so longingly at the window, his eyes trained on the outstretched horizon, the view only obfuscated by the old wooden bars, it would be his long time friend. As much as Mumbo listened and offered every possibly solution short of using the nearly one hundred year old bed frames for kindling, he didn't truly understand. He saw, but seeing was as different from understanding as Cumbria was different to London.
If even Mumbo couldn't understand, then Scar might as well keep the rest of his complaints to himself, lest more rumors found themselves in the mill keep running by his staff. Nothing against them, of course, he didn't mind that he was the subject of their idle prattle between tasks. He'd even gotten used to it.
Being used to it didn't stop him from wishing that there was someone else that heard what he meant, not what he said.
What use was a horse-track when he didn't even race?
What use was a garden in the middle of the frigid cold January?
What use was a all this land when Scar was always stuck in the confines of the manor, rain, shine, or otherwise?
Cub was good for those sorts of questions.
Though he wasn't always around now that the two were older, he never strayed too far for too long, meaning that whenever Scar needed a taste of comradery, he was only a phone call away. Currently, he was actually back in Sicily! Scar had him personally flown out to check on his mother and let them know he was okay after such a strenuous move- he knew full well how in a tizzy they got when himself and his brother had to switch locations. They'd called him every hour on the hour for the first month that he lived in Seattle, when Scar was in Seoul for surgery, they were on the first flight there the same day it was announced. This time, he would make sure they were alright, not the other way around.
Afterwards Cub would take a quick trip to Newfoundland to say hello his aunt and his brother, and after a month or so, would return back to Scar's doorstep with as much eagerness as a parcel arriving on Christmas Day. He'd bring back sweets from home a novelty snow globe from Canada, knowing how much Scar just adored his tchotchkes, and the two would sit down for a cup of coffee together, just like old times.
He wished he could have gone with him. More than anything, actually. He knows that he's only just got here, but he was itching for any reason to leave, and visiting his childhood home seemed to be as good of a reason as any!
Without Cub to shoot the shit with, the corridors felt terribly lonely, bare of any of his old art, only adorned with portraits of people he had never seen, nor ever will, being long dead and all. Men with mustaches that curled into cartoonish shapes, women in enough layers of fabric to suffocate a small child, ghostly children dressed in identical lace and bonnets- he swore that the woman in the massive landscape across from his bedroom door was staring at him, following him with her beady, faded blue eyes. Scar was contemplating painting them over with brown just for a moment of rest. Oh, and don't even get him started on the painting hanging in Grian's bedroom that he refused to take down for any reason, despite how hard it was for Scar to concentrate on the task at hand without her boring holes in the back of his neck.
"Grian-" He remembered begging, with sweat beading down his forehead his trembling arms keeping him propped upright on the mattress. Not the ideal time to ask, but at least there was no oatmeal that could be flung at his face like at breakfast. "Can you please let me take that thing down?"
"That 'thing' has a name, you know." Grian grinned from beneath him like the cat that caught the cream. "I call her Leia."
"Oh no, mister! You are NOT using Star Wars against me!" Scar had given Grian his best pout- the kind that ensured he was given helpings of dessert as a child, and that any breaking of vases was pinned on BDubs.
He was only given a smirk in return.
"Come on, G!" He whined. "She's creeping me out! I can't focus like this!"
"Hmm. That sounds like a you problem."
"This a you problem too! It's you I can't focus on!"
"Have you tried getting good?"
Scar had just hung his head with a heavy groan, accepting that the creepy old Victorian- Edwardian? Renaissance-ian? Regency? - woman would be watching him and Grian partake in their weekly activities under her watchful eye.
His London penthouse suite didn't have anything even remotely close to the myriad of dusty artwork, everything from busts to the intricately carved balusters covered in a fluffle of dust bunnies large enough to cause his asthma to start acting up again. It was another reason that he longed for the open concept estate that he had grown up in, the seaside of Sicily a far cry from the port of Cumbria. Heck, his last apartment in London was just as missed, and it was less than an hour away by car.
He'd only been living there for a handful of months, but he'd gotten used to his little routine.
Wake up. Shower. Get dressed. Feed Jellie. Have breakfast. Load his wheelchair into the limo. Pull up to the office building. Make small talk to the receptionist who always had strawberry candies in her little dish and pretend he worked at a regular office job. Take the elevator. Get whatever assignments were given to him. Get a coffee, tuna sandwich, and cinnamon roll from the cafe down the block. Fill the rest of his day with old movies from the 80's and video essays on YouTube about Disney until he was needed. Remember he wouldn't be needed for another week. Feed Jellie. Lift weights. Box with Mumbo or Cub. Take another shower. Eat dinner. Call his mother to let them know he was still alive. Possibly go out to a gay bar and pretended that it was the booze making him blush, not the men in leather pants. Go home, or continue to be home if he opted to stay inside. Have a late-night snack. Feed Jellie. Go to bed. Rinse and repeat until-
It was supposed to be until next year when he could go back to Seattle. With his surgeries healed up and his assignments as low effort as they were for someone so high up in the Orologio family food chain, it was only a matter of time before he could pick out where he wanted to be stationed for himself, not the heads of their split family- the matriarch staying in Sicily and the patriarch settled in Seoul.
Too bad that now he was supposed to be 'laying low'.
'When has laying low ever actually worked?' Scar remembered pondering to himself as his father talked over him, just as they had been doing for his entire life.
It was nothing new. They'd always done this. Scar's voice always being the quietest in the room, even when it was his own life being discussed. His actions spoken in a perfect play by play like a storyboard would have made him sink in his chair if he weren't strapped to it, wanting nothing more than to groan like a petulant teenager, the kind that frowned in every family photograph and wore headphones at the dinner table. And just like a teenager, he found himself perfectly justified in his actions!
Yes, he knows, what happened in Budapest was his fault, and he did get carried away. How was he supposed to know there would be so many cameras? No one had told him about the cameras! If he'd actually known that then-
Any argument he may have been able to concoct died he was the only one to protest sending him away. 'Relocating' was the word that had been tossed around the most, and yet as the meeting dragged on, it began to feel to Scar as if this weren't a matter of safety, but of mutual convenience- gag.
The only two in the room that were completely against the sudden change of pace were Cub- because of course his long time friend, practically his brother, would have his back- and his aunt Gem. Though he didn't see her often, it was nice to know that she saw that he'd only made a simple mistake, and that anyone else, even men with far more experience being out in the field than Scar, could have made. She had officially shot up to favorite aunt status, and he would have to plan his Christmas presents accordingly.
Scar found himself letting out another languished sigh.
It was no wonder that he kept little touches of home scattered throughout his office, which he had been told many times before looked like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or something that Walt Disney would come up with. He couldn't be back home, no matter how much he might want to, so he brought home to him! It was such an easy idea, and yet, he didn't start attempting to emulate what was so clear in his memories until he'd moved to London first. Despite being closer to Italy, London was where he had felt the most homesick, most in need of a pick me up, and where was better to put said pick me up than in his office, where he spent the majority of his day?
One of his favorite things to do when he had guests over was to have them guess what knickknack was from where, especially the far more ornate ones that he kept on the higher shelves for safe keeping. You'd think that some of the people that shuffled into his estate thinking they could ask for any old thing would know what a Faberge egg was without it needing to be explained to them like a toddler! Or that they'd never even seen Star Wars before! They acted as if they were watching a child show off his favorite toys whenever Scar would show off his collectables- first edition this, limited edition that, autographed here, from the set there, no number of zeroes would deter him from the movies that kept his spirits bright for so long.
And damn it, if they wanted money from it, the least they could do was pretend to be interested.
Even Grian pretended, with what Scar was paying him! He'd never seen a single Star Wars anything before, but now, he'd seen the whole franchise! Just the movies, of course. If he were going to sit down and watch an entire mediocre TV series with far too much CGI- his words, not Scar's- then with all due respect Scar would have to pay him more. Which was fair! And he was working on it! Cub was usually here to help him with the budget, so it'd have to wait.
The walls were painted an improper emerald green that had made him giddy as a child when he first picked out his swatch, and realized that the color matched perfectly with the dark wooden floorboards that were cleaned to a shine every morning before he rolled his way in. The red velvet sofa was for guests, as was the copper tea set that sat on the glass coffee table, as Scar wasn't a tea drinker. He was in England though, so he might as well appease the locals when they came for a boon. They'd come for his help, but surely they'd stay for the tea!
Mumbo kept telling him he should workshop that joke.
Joke's on him, Skizz got a giggle out of it every time.
Scar turned away from the curtains he had pulled back. He shoved the barely smoked cigar harshly into the ashtray that rested on his knee and set it back down on the windowsill.
The room now reeked of smoke, but unlike Mumbo, he didn't wrinkle his nose or start fiddling with what little facial hair he had, the same way Mumbo would twirl his mustache when he was becoming cross. His shoulders instead relaxed, as the smell of home settled inside his nose, a wave of nostalgia making him take a moment to lean back and sigh.
Only a moment though.
Anymore, and he might start having thoughts! And he'd been so good about those lately!
Sans today, of course, but today had been off since he'd rolled out of bed and found that Jellie was no longer sleeping curled up beside his head and instead chose to peruse her new hunting grounds for herself. Which he had found out by the dead rat on the pillow only inches away from his face.
Poor Mumbo. The poor man had run in with a pistol in one hand and a fireplace stoker in the other, face as ghostly white as the portrait that Scar had been trying so hard to avoid, and now Mumbo of all people wore the same shade. Really, that had scared him more than the rat.
He rolled towards his desk, the rain that pitter pattered against his window having not been worth the effort of leaving it just to smoke. He'd hadn't even opened it before deciding it wasn't worth his time. Not when he had pens more entertaining than the gray sky without a single bird in it- not even one lousy bird. He knew it was winter and all, but God couldn't spare one bird to sing outside his office? Really? He found that hard to believe considering the pesky bird he'd been letting flit in and out of this very office for years now, but sure, he'll draw the line at a finch or a pigeon.
Putting on a record felt like far too much effort for his weary bones, as they had struggled to keep him upright just this morning. The idea of having to thumb through his extensive vinyl collection just felt like far too much a hassle. What if the record skipped? What if he changed his mind while back at his desk? What if he suddenly found himself missing the silence? He'd rather just skip all the 'what ifs' and return to the sanctity and sameness of his mahogany desk covered in cat scratches, knife marks, and old ink spills that never got scrubbed away.
He pulled himself in, and took a deep, steady breath. He set his elbows down on the chill wood, a shiver being sent down his spine.
"Oh!" He said to himself, his voice echoing back to him. "I'll tell you what- who needs a coffee when it's so gosh darn cold in here? Woke me right up, right G-"
He turned to his side, and his smile fell at once.
Oh.
Right.
Grian was away.
He was alone for the weekend.
That was fine! He was nothing if not adaptable!
And besides, Mumbo would be here any minute with the breakfast trolley, ready to deliver him his morning scones alongside his morning news. He could wait. The minutes would surely go by in a snap!
If there's one thing he's learned from the movies, it's that no time that made it onto the screen was done so with the intention to waste it.
A picture of him, his mother, and his younger brother of only two years framed in gold felt perfectly at home on his desk among the dried out ink vials, his favorite old lamp with a pull chain that kept him entertained for hours, and a puzzle cube that he swore he was close to solving, despite only two of its six faces being done.
Where was he?
Oh, right.
His mother.
His mother's words echoed in his head, and as he tended to do when they were of no use to him, he completely ignored them, leaving them to spin down the drain where all of his other thoughts went, discarding them like junk mail without bothering to dig any deeper. A bad habit, and he knew as much.
His mother's advice did him good some days. When the answers to his problems were neither in the ash of a cigar, nor the bottom of a bottle, nor in the arms of another man. Their ruby red lips always found a way to part in order to tell exactly what he needed to hear. But on days like today, where the clouds covered the sky like a thick woolen blanket, and not a single shred of sunshine was able to make its way through the window and into his office, their words hardly did anything at all.
The father in question was hardly without a cigarette in hand every time he was pictured in Scar's mind. Tall, imposing, with slicked back hair and a cigarette. That was all Scar had known them to be.
But he- Scar- was different. He was a different man.
He found his vice in the far classier cigar, than at the bottom of a pack of Marlboro Reds.
That alone made all the difference in the world.