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Mumbo had his face pressed into the back of his best friend’s neck when he whimpered , but the noise was so out of left field that frankly, Mumbo didn’t react to it at once. He shifted and mumbled something even he couldn’t make out, dismissing it for hypnagogia, and then Grian whimpered again , twitching his legs and curling up into a miserable comma, his wings fluffing out like he was losing an argument.
Mumbo wriggled his arm out to frown at him. It’d been days since his last proper rest, coming off a mining bender that’d still left him poorer than Grian, and he’d been hoping he’d get to make up the deficit. So it was really rather inconsiderate of him to be a restless sleeper tonight, when he’d been the one to insist that they sleep in the same bed for the purpose of efficiency. Usually if Grian was going to be restless Mumbo liked to be warned first, so he could burrito Grian with a blanket and doze in peace.
But this wasn’t tossing and turning, was it. Grian’s face was damp with sweat. He was crying with his eyes closed, his shoulders drawn up– breathing in harsh pants, like a wounded animal’s.
The protocol for waking individuals from nightmares had never been clear to Mumbo, and now, it seemed, that lack of understanding had returned to vex him. Would it be worse to jolt Grian out of whatever was going on in his strange little head? Permanent harm seemed unlikely for a man who could repeatedly kill himself trying to break into a vault, but surely some sort of mental scarring wasn’t out of the question. Mental scarring was easy to come by.
The ancient monument’s heartbeat throbbed beneath them, vibrating up through Mumbo’s back where he’d leaned against the headboard. It was refreshingly regular: Grian had helped him feed the monument that morning, before he’d bullied Mumbo into making a bedroom, and so it was quite content to continue being a living base and not a dead one.
Grian’s quiet sobbing died off, breath slowing into even, shaky exhales. Several heartbeats pulsed by. Mumbo ventured a touch to Grian’s shoulder when he still didn’t settle, figuring he’d apologize if that somehow broke his best friend forever, and Grian–
Well, it was very quick and involved smacking Mumbo with a wing nearly the length of the mattress, so Mumbo wasn’t certain what happened, but suddenly he was on the floor, and Grian was scrambling back on the bed, pressing himself against the wall with a ragged gasp.
“ Ow , what– oh, jeez, you really are upset,” Mumbo blurted, getting his legs back under him. Grian had his wings mantled, defensive like he was guarding something embarrassing, but his expression was all wrong, flinty and hotly devastated, the look of someone who’d snapped his moorings ages back. Wild. “Was I– I wasn’t under the impression that I was squishing your wings or anything, generally I thought I’d gotten better at that, but if that’s why you’ve smacked me–”
“Where am I?” Grian interrupted him. Mumbo would have been offended, but his brain was stuck on the sleep track, insistently attempting to get back onto those rails, and the sight of Grian crying was transfixing. As a rule, Grian was not a man who cried.
“You’re in my base,” Mumbo told him blankly. “The interior decor’s rather scrambled at the moment, blame Scar for that, but we’re in my room? Here? I don’t exactly know what you want me to say, mate, you’re going to need to give me some specifics.”
Grian stared at him, shaking. The aggression he’d woken up with– or whatever had led him to kick Mumbo off the bed, which, gosh did his knee hurt where he’d landed just now, thank you for that, Grian– was sapping away, dimming like a light losing power. Mumbo stood up, making his way back to the bed, and Grian bristled up more. His hair stuck up on the side a bit where he’d had it against the pillow.
“Scar was here?” Grian repeated. The stone ceiling and the monument’s heartbeat seemed to bewitch him, especially the little reminders Mumbo had posted on the walls to remind himself to take care of the monument before it lost too many lives and bankrupted him— sometimes he regretted setting himself the challenge of keeping up with a building like a worried pet, though at least his base couldn’t attempt to follow him into the bathroom? He’d known cats to attempt that, yelling at doors and the like, and this was about the time he’d start rambling about that aloud to compare Grian to a cat and tease him but right now that didn’t seem like the best idea. Comparing Grian to a cat right now seemed like it might end in bloodshed, or at least in some amount of conflict at a bad hour of the morning. “Scar was— he didn’t mention— this isn’t our base. You’ve got a massive jungle outside!”
“Of course it’s not our base, you’ve got a mansion to be finishing,” Mumbo said, coming up closer to catch Grian's hand, and Grian flinched back, hand twitching like he was reaching for his hotbar. He flickered through a pickaxe and oak planks and landed on a golden apple, eyes widening, then vanished it and apparently landed on an empty slot. He shifted like he was getting into position to run out the door.
This was weird of him, because Mumbo never had to coax Grian into interacting. Standing visibly in one place for long enough was usually enough to lure Grian out to bother him, and forgetting to be visible and going on a multi-day mining trip was also a tried and true recipe for a Grian appearance, because Grian couldn’t go a day-night cycle without harassing Mumbo somehow. As a rule, then, it was easier to preempt the process: if Grian was bound to steal from him, Mumbo may as well treat Grian’s chests as his own; if Grian was bound to prank him, Mumbo was justified in preemptive strikes; and if Grian was bound to build his base nearby and sneak into Mumbo’s room at night to rearrange his chests, Mumbo was entirely in the right to insist that he sleep over so he wouldn’t let the cold air in.
Grian flinching away put a twist in Mumbo’s gut that he preferred not to be feeling. He stepped aside a little so there was a clear path to the door.
“It’s just me,” he said, softer. “Did you have a nightmare or something, is that what’s going on? I guess it must have been pretty bad, if you’re freaking out like this .”
“A nightmare?” Grian whispered, and twitched all over when Mumbo settled onto the end of the bed and tucked some of his ruffled feathers back into place. Grian stared at him; Mumbo budged him to the left on autopilot, tugging him so he could reach the space between his wings and rub his back, comb fingers down his coverts.
If he did this wrong, Grian would get ticklish and elbow him in the gut, but clearly Mumbo wasn’t that off his game, because all Grian did was shiver and say again, “A nightmare . But I’m— I’m dead. I killed him, I killed him and– and you have– you smell like redstone. You have a mustache.”
“I’m told those are my two defining traits, yes,” Mumbo agreed. He risked smoothing some more feathers, the bright yellow coverts; Grian’s breath hitched, concerningly close to a sob, but he leaned into it. “Well, that and the suit, and I suppose the tie as well? Though truthfully the tie is part of the suit ensemble, so it would fall under the same bullet point, wouldn’t it. Suit and tie, that’s an entire saying right there. Suit and tie, contraptions, that’s a solid half of my personality. I could file a trademark, Mumbo Jumbo, not to enter the public domain until– oh, but then I’d have to share with you, wouldn’t I, you’ve still got a whole shop essentially selling my merchandise. It might be more successful than some of mine this season. That’s discouraging.”
“Mumbo Jumbo,” Grian whispered, proving he’d listened to about half of that. He shifted, peering up at Mumbo’s face like it held the secret to the perfect slime farm, and touched Mumbo’s shoulder cautiously. He dug his thumb into the gap where Mumbo’s arm went into its socket, drawing out a wince, and stared around the room like he’d come through a portal and landed in a bastion. Torches on the stone walls, automatic sorter schematics laying out on a crafting table with coffee stains at their corners, a nametag in an item frame that Grian had put up to prove he could decorate an interior if he wanted– none of it had changed at all, as far as Mumbo knew. “Mumbo Jumbolio . You’re a Mumbo, you’re my Mumbo.”
“... Yes?”
“So we’re allies,” Grian prodded. “Right? We’re allies, you’re on my side, and– and you said Scar, when was the last time you saw him? Did he not wear a shirt, and pick flowers, and– and betray people, is it the same…?”
“I guess it would have been a few days ago, for Scar?” Mumbo ventured. Whatever this nightmare had been, it must have been a doozy. “He was mining, we didn’t talk– he was wearing a shirt, if that helps? Full armor. And I expect he would’ve gone to X’s shop for flowers, but I didn’t think his drill needs those, that’s not quite the vibe.”
Grian took his comm out, raised the tab menu and looked at it for a long moment: at the list of Hermits’ names in alphabetical order, in plain white text.
“There’s names missing. Scott, and Tim– and Jimmy, I mean, and Joel, Martyn, BigB, Skizz–”
“Oh, well, they’re not Hermits, but they’re around,” Mumbo said, bewildered. “Your friends, right, on other servers? I suppose they’d still be there now, if you want to comm them. Though, if it’s night, maybe– maybe don’t do that. Not that it would necessarily be night for them, now that I think of it–”
“No, that’s— that’s alright,” Grian blurted. “But they’re out there somewhere, right?”
“As far as I know, yeah?”
“And it was a nightmare,” Grian said, staring at his hands clutching the blanket. At his pajamas, embroidered with little parrots, and then at his wings, running a hand along his primaries. Ruffling his feathers like he was unfurling a fan to admire the pattern, dazed from it. “I haven’t killed anybody. I haven’t won anything, and we never had a monopoly, and Scar’s asleep somewhere on this server. We could go and bother him right— right now, in the middle of the night.”
Mumbo had the sense that haven’t won anything was not, in fact, referring to the mayoral race. Or any other recent games, for that matter. He was beginning to wish he’d committed to making coffee several minutes ago, so he could be awake enough for this conversation to make sense. Not that conversations with Grian always made sense, but usually the bit would have been made clear by now.
“Maybe— well, maybe not quite now—“
“And I know you,” Grian pressed, handily not answering the question of whether he was about to ambush Scar in the wee hours of the morning. “You’re my friend?”
“I think escaping you at this point would be a lost cause, so the possessive case isn’t such an exaggeration,” Mumbo told him. “And yeah, of course we’re friends. We’ve been friends forever.”
“So I dreamed it,” Grian said, more to himself than anything. Mumbo, feeling really incredibly helpless here, squeezed him a little tighter; Grian wriggled around to face him and hugged him snugly, folding his wings around him like bookends. Breathing right against his skin, and probably inhaling an unfortunate amount of the redstone dust omnipresent in the crease of Mumbo’s collar and sleeves in the process. He really did need to stop sleeping in his suit one of these days. “Oh my goodness , I— Mumbo, there was a game, and I killed Scar– I didn’t mean to the first time, I told him I’d make it up to him, it was a prank–”
“So, precisely like real life, then.”
Grian made a frustrated noise, almost a sob, and Mumbo faltered. “No– no, that’s not– everyone died. I killed him with my hands and it took too long, and– and you said he’s here, and I know you– I know you, why– why do I have a Mumbo, I don’t get this. Does this usually happen? I’ll just— players just go to bed and have weird dreams, and straight-up don’t remember anything when they wake up and it’s not morning yet? Is it supposed to come back?”
“Honestly, if you’re awake in the morning and we’re still having this problem, we can deal with it then,” Mumbo said, deciding to be decisive. That was the first test of decisiveness, then, wasn’t it, deciding that he’d make a decision about deciding— jeez, that could go on forever, stopping there– “I’ll build a lightning rod and we’ll zap your memories back into you, or we’ll talk to X if that doesn’t work.”
Grian’s mouth twitched. “So, lightning rod first, is what I’m hearing. You’re going to electrocute me about this.”
“Best to see if that does the trick, I’d say,” Mumbo said sheepishly— probably there were other, more effective machines for this that he could ask their friends about— “and if we’re loud enough about it Scar might show up to watch, so that could help?”
Another long moment passed. Grian pulled his wings closer to his back.
“You’re a very strange man,” he finally said, voice hitching just the slightest bit. “I can see why you need watching, or at least some sort of ally, you’d be lost without one, running about threatening lightning rods and machines— we’ll figure it out in the morning, then. That’s– that can work fine, you and me. I’ll remember how I got here, and you’ll stay by me in case something— something does go wrong.”
Mumbo couldn’t imagine what could go so wrong that Grian would need guarding by him, but he said, “Right, yeah, of course I will,” anyway, and that seemed to settle him. He let Mumbo inch closer to claim half the bed again, and he rested his head on Mumbo’s shoulder, and before long he was fast asleep, which was convenient because it meant Mumbo could follow his example.
As it turned out, though, he couldn’t quite manage to get to sleep himself. He sat by Grian as his chest rose and fell, his best friend curling into himself like he wanted to protect his softest parts, shuddering intermittently like he was teetering on the edge of another bizarre dream, and stayed awake until the morning.