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It just wasn’t right.
None of it was right, the palettes were off, the gradient was terrible, the weight of the build was unsteady, too heavy on the left side, and Grian didn’t even like the way the buildings scaled down the mountain. It was awful, all of it, and the more he looked at it, the more he hated it.
Grian was no stranger to burnout. He’d been haunted by it on and off for years, spurts of inspiration coming fewer and farther between these days. Season nine was probably his worst near the end, but season ten wasn’t going much better, and it was all Grian could do some days to get himself out of bed to stare at the things he’d created.
There was the pier, he liked that. Some of the cliff side houses were alright, in color at least. He loved the animated waterfall he’d made. He wasn’t sure if he liked the wheat fields because of how they looked, or because of how mindless it was to make them.
It was easier to like what he’d built when he didn’t have to work on it anymore. But that was the problem. It never ended. There was always more work to do.
When he laid in bed, he felt worthless. When he got up, looking at the little he’d managed to do in all this time, he felt worse.
(By any standard, his base was not little. It was just that in comparison to the rest of the server..)
Grian looked up at his cliffside homes, the project he’d started and promptly avoided for months, and felt his stomach roil. The sun was shining, a steady breeze making for a beautiful day, but he couldn’t enjoy it, not with needles under his skin, static in the space between his skull and his brain, he didn’t want this, he wasn’t cut out to be here, he just wanted to go home—
He woke up in bed.
When the shock wore off, anguish took its place as crashing waves in his gut, torrents knocking everything else around and letting bile rise in his throat. Dead. He’d died. It hadn’t been hOtgUy either, Grian would have heard Scar yell.
He knew. And still he looked outside.
It had his body halfway down its throat already, neck bulging like a heron trying to swallow a fish the size of its body. But where the heron might have given up or at the very least choked, its body distended to accommodate the size of its quarry, chest and stomach pulsing like how a snake forces its meal through its body.
Grian was not so sure it had any human organs. He did not see how there would be space.
He managed not to puke on his bed. He prayed to any high power that might listen that Mumbo would not notice.
…
The train was long and narrow, cluttered enough to slow Mumbo down, but not enough to make much difference. The player ducked and weaved through the cars, slamming doors and yanking carts into the path, but the act hindered it more than it helped, the player staggering even as Mumbo tripped.
The water was even worse for the player, the path too linear for it to lose him, and while Mumbo’s body could actively adapt to swimming, the players’ did not, its lab coat creating even more drag.
Mumbo nipped at its heels, tasting adrenaline. He could drown it here, it would be easy, something new, but whether or not it would be distressing, Mumbo couldn’t be sure. Most players resigned themselves to death. Drowning was not uncommon. Mumbo would run the course in its entirety before deciding what was best.
It whipped through tiny holes that Mumbo slammed into face first, belatedly dislocating his shoulders to fit through, hips groaning as the bone cracked, then returned to shape.
His form stretched as he dredged himself from the water, the resistance physically extending him. The player darted around the corner, and Mumbo was there. It was not necessary to hurt it; the pressure of the race, of losing time, was enough.
And then they turned a corner, the hallway long and filled with slimes, and where the player had to slow to dodge them, Mumbo’s knees inverted, the quadrupedal form more suited for clearing the whole room in a few bounds. The player did not slow when Mumbo turned around from the hall’s end, still focused, still confident, and while Mumbo was wondering just what the player was planning on doing about this, he didn’t have to wait long before the player barreled into his legs, trying to slide through.
Mumbo stopped it with one clawed hand. His spindly fingers dwarfed the player’s chest, who looked up at him innocently.
“I really thought that would work. Oh hey, is your hand webbed? That’s cool, that makes sense. Do you have gills, too? That’s probably convenient. I think next time I’m going to need a bigger head start.”
Hm. Well it certainly wasn’t afraid anymore. Maybe Mumbo should have let it slide through his legs, but come on, it was a little insulting it even thought it could get away with that. No use killing it now, though. Irked, Mumbo grabbed the player by the hair and tossed it into the next section. It somersaulted forward before landing flat on its face, popping back up incredulously.
“Are you seriously mad? It’s not my fault you’re sucking.”
Mumbo started toward it in a brisk trot, and the player got the message, scrambling to its feet.
“You know, it’s freaky when your knees bend back and forth when you walk like that. Will you just pick one way and stick to it?”
Mumbo was seconds from giving it a concussion to
remember before getting nailed with a sudden burst of wind, stumbling back through the archway of the room. When he looked up, he only saw a flash of white coat as the player rounded the corner. Well fine, a little reset might kick this back into gear.
The soul sand was sluggish and slow, but Mumbo was having trouble adjusting while being peppered with wind charges, the force pushing and pulling him in all the wrong directions as he tried to change. He was just too— too big.
Brute forcing this problem did not make it go away, the concentrated gusts knocking the wind from his lungs when he charged through them, a second and third impact easily resetting his progress. What had first been annoying was quickly becoming rage inducing, Mumbo’s anger scoring claw marks in the sand and walls and any dispensers he could get his claws on. His attack did nothing to ease the assault, getting battered from what felt like all angles, wall to wall.
Anger turned to desperation when he couldn’t progress, forward was where the player had gone, Mumbo needed to catch it, but the bombardment never stopped. It wasn’t long before he’d forgotten the player altogether, his distress entirely rooted in his own inability to escape. All that was left to do was press himself flat against the sand.
The wind charges whizzed above his head, mussing his short hair in what felt like a threat. He tried to dig, but the sand layer was thin, his claws scraping uselessly against the rock below.
“Hey man, you get stuck?” The player laughed, like it knew exactly what had been happening for the past twenty minutes. “I’m a big fan of flat Mumbo, actually. I like it, I like it. Impulse is turning the game off, you’ll be fine.”
As if on cue, the whirring of mechanisms in the walls slowed to a stop. Gingerly, Mumbo lifted his head, but his distrust remained, choosing to scuttle close to the ground rather than walk, which the player must have found amusing, hiding its laugh with a hand. At the back of his mind, Mumbo couldn’t help but enjoy its little smile.
He proceeded to smash the player against the cement a few dozen times until it was soft enough to eat efficiently, then moseyed through the rest of the course. It seemed so easy, then. It was even easier to blame the monster’s one track mind when Mumbo returned to normal.
“You’re not going to get stuck again, are you?” Cub said, stretching out enough to take up Scar’s whole bed. Mumbo, still wondering why he was also in Scar’s bed, smacked Cub’s arm away.
“I just got too big, I won’t next time. I’m not very good at problem solving, alright? If Get Long isn’t a viable solution, I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Get Small?”
“I tried, I think. Then the wind charges made me long again. They hit you hard, don’t they.”
Cub shrugged. “You got flat. Could you not have gotten flat and then small and moved on?”
“You’re asking me to think way more steps ahead than I’m qualified for in that state.”
Cub continued stretching and Mumbo continued smacking his arm away, wondering what his problem was until Cub’s arm not-so-subtly fell across Mumbo’s shoulders. Mumbo accepted his fate.
“I still think this will work,” Cub went on as if they hadn’t been distracted at all, “Like, you just gotta run it a couple times. Maybe going in blind wasn’t the best idea. This was never going to be perfect the first time. Etho won’t know what hit him when I— When he’s in the dust. Coughing and stuff. ‘Cause I got him.”
“Did Impulse even okay this? Technically you’re not running solo if I’m chasing you.”
“I asked.”
“..and?”
“And when he responded I said lalala until he stopped talking. Easy. Etho doesn’t care, he doesn’t think this will work. It will.”
It did not work.
It turns out that Mumbo remained severely untalented whether he was in a human form or otherwise, the wind charges being his biggest obstacle, but more than once he’d been exploded into a hundred pieces in the TNT room, and anywhere there was ice he just kept slipping, like he was discovering the path for the first time every new run. There was just so much to look at, so much to process, the changes to his body couldn’t just be unconscious, he had to plan, react to new obstacles, and it seemed the monster was not used to focusing on anything but its quarry.
Six or seven gapingly unsatisfying meals later, Mumbo mood was really starting to sour. He didn’t want to say anything, he hated that, especially the way it felt like asking for more.
Cub would offer himself freely, and Mumbo had long since stopped feeling guilty for accepting, but Cub was just— so unbothered. Better than a hog, but hardly ever substantial enough to put Mumbo to sleep unless he really pushed him to his limit, which.. Mumbo didn’t like to do that. He had gotten too used to taking distress he did not need to cause, frustration from the other hermits, anger that burned hot and fast, harvested at its peak.
Asking this of anyone else.. it just didn’t feel right. Mumbo could be assured on repeat until the end of the universe that if an offer was extended, it was because the hermit did not mind, but it just felt bad, even with Scar, who was just as out of his mind as Cub. God, the last thing Mumbo wanted right now was for Scar or Cub to know he wasn’t well; they’d probably yank him off his feet, force their help upon him, and hell, Mumbo would probably feel a lot better, it just..
He didn’t want to hear it right now. That he was okay. That he had no reason to feel this.. What was it, even? Guilt? Numb sorrow? Soul sucking sadness?
Mumbo did not miss the way things were before. He did not miss starving. He just. Missed his life before everything changed. Before the dynamic shifted. The hermits were not a purist people, far from it, but they.. it wasn’t the same. When they looked at him, it was not bad, it was not resentful, it just wasn’t the same. When Grian looked at him, it wasn’t the same.
Maybe that’s why he called Grian. He wanted to feel worse.
Grian picked up before the end of the first ring. “Yellow. Whatcha up to?”
“Have you done any Metro Mayhem?”
It was nice, to be disasters together. Climbing through the train cars, getting stuck in cobwebs and killed by slimes. Despite taking his normal human form, Mumbo was still afraid to enter the hallway of wind charges, and this fear seemed to be well founded, because he appeared to be a magnet for all things unfortunate.
Grian’s screeching cackle echoed off the walls from the other end of the hall as Mumbo was blasted squarely off his feet for what must have been the sixth time, though he was vindicated when Grian scampered over to help, and was immediately punished for his kindness with a wind charge to the back.
“Dude, this room sucks!” Grian snorted into the soul sand, and Mumbo huffed his staunch agreement.
“I don’t know how Cub does it. You should see him moving through here, it’s like he never gets hit!”
“Ah, was it Cub then? Who pulled you into this?” Grian rolled to his knees, staying low as he helped Mumbo to his feet, though Mumbo didn’t get the chance to steady himself before taking a face full of gaseous despair. He fell on his back, tasting blood.
“And what makes you think I’m not here by my own volition?” Mumbo snorted a short breath while Grian snrked.
“Well I didn’t think he blackmailed you, but now I’m not so sure.”
“He asked very nicely. He doesn’t really take a non-committal answer as a no, though, he just files it into his mental schedule and drags you out the next day.”
“Maybe I should learn from the expert, huh? It only took months to get you to play Hungry Hermits with me. And you were the one asking in the first place!!”
“I would love to play, I just happen to be very busy that day.”
Grian huffed, throwing up his arms, “And the worst part is, you would like to play. You’d love to! You have fun! You just have an aversion to— I don’t even know what your problem is.”
“I have a few.”
“I’d say so!”
It was almost the same. Near indistinguishable, almost the same, it was so close, and then Grian would look away, avoid his eye, cringe at Cub’s name, the confidence evaporating from his voice for less than a moment. Hyper-aware of it all since the moment Mumbo stepped foot on this server, he always noticed.
They got past the wind charges eventually.
A little slipping and sliding, burning, and admiring the scenery later, they were through.
“Gosh, I’m already sweating.” Mumbo slowed to a walk, avoiding glancing at the chest containing his score.
“Is that not the point?” Grian teased, and Mumbo shrugged.
“I suppose it is. Not the best feeling though when we’ve got quite a few more runs ahead of us. I’d like to be at least comparable in skill to Cub, I hope. I mean, at least enough to get through the course without dying.”
“Surely Cub doesn’t get through those long halls without getting hit by a wind charge at least once.”
“He does! I’ve watched it happen every time!”
Grian faltered, so slightly, just barely enough to notice. “Needed someone more on your level to practice with then?” He was joking. Trying to. Mumbo could taste the hurt at the roof of his mouth, and maybe Grian too realized that he could not hide the feeling from someone who sustained himself on all things terrible. The pursing of lips, the glance away. Neither of them said a word.
“Shall we go again?”
…
Cub was running out of ideas. Nothing he came up with was good enough anymore, and he was running out of ideas.
Mumbo was starving, always starving, and Cub was not good enough. He didn’t hate it enough, pain did not faze him, did not distress him, he loved Mumbo too much to fear him.
He loved Mumbo so much. What a strange thing that was.
He loved all Hermitcraft members, romantically involved or otherwise. That’s why he sought Mumbo out in the first place. That’s why he tried so hard to make this work. But he really— What he had with Scar, that was love, a bond deeper than anything he’d ever share with anyone else, but Mumbo was different, he and Mumbo shared something strange and intense that hardly anyone else on the server had any involvement in. It was just the two of them so often, and Cub wasn’t sure if he’d ever been so primarily invested in another person before. If anyone else was involved, Cub was organizing. Cub was there. Cub was always there, always coming up with new ways to make this work, but they weren’t working anymore, Mumbo wasn’t getting enough, and all of it rested on Cub’s shoulders.
The weight of this pressure felt good when things were going well. It was intoxicating, wonderful, sugar and spice and everything nice. It felt impossible when Cub was shut away in woodland mansions, reading books in languages he didn’t speak, trying to find anything on Mumbo’s origins, anything to break his curse. Anything to keep him from perpetually starving.
Cub had promised. He’d promise to try. In the beginning, it hadn’t felt like such a pressing issue, but now it was all Cub thought about.
He knew Mumbo’s body well enough to tell he was thinning. Little differences, never missed under Cub’s dutiful hands. Little reminders that he wasn’t enough.
The pressure was building, but even that wasn’t enough for a good meal. Cub was so thoroughly useless, and so damn alone.
Sometimes he blamed them. The rest of the hermits. The rest of them who didn’t have to worry about Mumbo, who never thought about his health, who didn’t take this too seriously. They didn’t have to. Cub had it handled, didn’t he?
And that wasn’t all fair. Plenty of hermits helped, stepping in every once and a while, but it wasn’t—
It was just hard. It was just hard.
Cub spent many nights wishing he could take on a fraction of Mumbo’s pain, lessen his hunger, make it better, because Mumbo was the kind of person you wanted good things for. The kind of person you fought for. Died for.
But dying wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Cub had run out of himself to give, and there were few things in life more unbearable than doing your damn best and still falling short.
…
I love you. I love you in all your forms, I have always loved you, but now it’s wrong. Now you’re All of you, and we are not so intrinsically us, and maybe if I can’t be yours the way I was before, you understand that I did not love you as much as I previously thought.
Grian had thought he did. He really. He really thought he did.
It was no wonder he’d been replaced.
Replaced. Maybe that was dramatic. But it was true, wasn’t it, that Cub loved all of Mumbo, all of him, Cub loved all of Mumbo when they were hardly more than strangers, and damn it if he didn’t do a better job of it than Grian.
Cub was right. Grian had been so angry at Cub, and Scar by extension for allowing this to happen, for pushing Mumbo to places he didn’t want to be, but Mumbo was sick, and it was so much easier to pretend it wasn’t happening than to find a cure. Not that Cub found a cure. Just. A solution.
And it wasn’t— Grian wasn’t trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. That nothing was wrong. He knew, just like he knew in season nine, he knew it was getting worse, but how in the hell was Grian supposed to fix it besides reaching out, being there, doing all the things he knew Mumbo loved to do. Grian knew how to be Mumbo’s best friend, just as Cub did for Scar. Cub couldn’t cure Scar’s illness, just as Grian couldn’t cure Mumbo’s, but Mumbo wasn’t just Sick, was he. No.
Grian knew. And Cub did something about it. Cub was still doing it, caring for Mumbo, making certain his needs were met, and Grian was doing nothing, so of course he’d be replaced, why not?
Grian didn’t. He knew what happened in Cub’s labyrinth. He didn’t want it to happen to him. He didn’t want to be one of Mumbo’s meals.
“I don’t think Mumbo would want you to be either,” Gem shrugged, an edge to her tone that wasn’t unfriendly, “I mean, that’s his whole deal, isn’t it? Not wanting to do any of this? The only reason Cub and Scar and Bdubs and anyone else has gone in the ring is because they’re certifiably insane. And Pearl thought she could beat the labyrinth before Mumbo caught her. It’s hard to be the best at everything for her, Grian, she has to find other ways to be competitive.”
“But I— I’m missing out on something important, aren’t I? It is important. It’s important to him, not just emotionally either, it’s a matter of not perpetually starving. And I just— I can’t deal.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and?’ Is it not excruciatingly clear?”
Gem sighed, plopping back in the grass. They’d been walking the path between their bases before the topic came up, and apparently even the mention of Mumbo’s name was enough for Gem to force them both to stop. Something this heavy was not a ‘walking’ conversation, in her words.
“Maybe I just don’t understand. I feel like you don’t have to be involved in every facet of Mumbo’s life. You guys can still be just as close without entirely interlocking worlds. There are other people in Mumbo’s life who will fill the gaps you don’t want to fill. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But I hate that.”
“Cope.”
Grian could not sit down, pacing in small circles, wings ruffled. “I don’t think you’re right about Mumbo. Not wanting me to be part of this, I mean. I think he does. I really think he does.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“I just feel like—“
“Ope—!” Gem cut him off, “Have you talked to him? Asked him? Said any words to him about this at all?”
“Not—“
“I don’t want to hear it then. Talk to him.”
Grian grit his teeth, frustration broiling in his throat, “It’s not exactly easy to breach the subject! It’s a sensitive topic for both of us! I don’t want to hurt his feelings, and honestly, I’m a little scared of what he’ll ask of me! I’m not built to be farmed for my distress, Gem!”
“Grian, has anyone ever told you you’re a whiny pussy baby? Because you are a whiny pussy baby.”
“And I’m jealous of Cub. I’m mad at him like all the time.”
“Yeah, buddy, I know.”
…
“Grian is making me nervous.”
Scar lifted his head, eyes a little wide like he hadn’t heard Cub’s approach. Typical, if he was in the zone on his base; it was cruel of Cub to interrupt him while he was landscaping, because now Scar’s procrastination brain would never get back to where it was before. Oh well!
“Is he now?” Scar cocked his head, not unkindly. Interest sparked in his eyes, and Cub tried to physically expel it with a wave of his hand.
“He’s Looking at me.”
“Classic Grian.”
“No. He’s Looking. With those eyes. Or lack-there-of.”
“People with eyes and/or eye-shaped-holes in their face tend to do that.”
“Theres Intention. I need to kill him.” Cub clasped his hands together, magic sparking from either side. He relaxed, contented. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Am I invited?”
“Sure, I’m just gonna plant a bunch of trees in his wheat fields and put TNT minecarts in them.”
…
Grian blew up
Grian blew up
Grian: WHO PUT ALL THESE BOMBS IN MY BASE????
Grian blew up
Grian was shot by GoodTimeWithScar using [hOtguY]
…
“And when you blew up the first time, you thought it was a good idea to chop the next tree down the exact same way?” Mumbo did not try to hide his amusement, Grian puffing up in turn.
“I just— The first few trees didn’t have bombs in them, I didn’t think two would blow up in a row!”
“You didn’t check..?”
“I did after the second incident!” Grian cleared his throat, sheepish, “They aren’t always the easiest things to disarm. You have no room to judge, for the record.”
“Oh, I’m not judging! Just laughing at you.”
“GRAH!” Grian threw up his hands, “And the worst, I still don’t know who even did it! Or why!”
“It was Cub.”
“I KNEW IT WAS CUB!”
Mumbo snorted, “I don’t know if you did, mate.”
“Well he was at the top of my list, I’ll tell you that much. And Scar was being weird which narrows it down. I just don’t know why. Does he do this stuff to you? There’s holes all over my base now, it’s just frustrating!” Maybe Grian let a little too much out, Mumbo cringing in response.
“He probably didn’t mean anything by it.. he and Scar are just like that sometimes.” Mumbo shrugged meekly, and Grian hated the way he looked at him. Like it just wasn’t a big deal. And it wasn’t a big deal, but Grian wasn’t making it a big deal, he was just expressing a reasonable complaint!
Grian felt weak, all of a sudden. “It’s fine.”
“I could talk to Cub, ask him to clean up the craters. Did more than three minecarts blow up?”
“No, no, don’t say anything. Please don’t.”
Mumbo paused, wide, dark eyes boring holes through Grian’s chest. Grian had to stop himself from pulling his wings into himself to hide.
“Are you okay?” Soft. Meek.
“I dunno,” Grian mumbled, “Things haven’t been so good lately.”
“Oh,” Mumbo said stupidly, as if he hadn’t already known. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe to him, Grian was just a meal. No, no, that wasn’t.. no. Grian still felt sick to his stomach. “You want to talk about it? Do something fun, maybe? We could play a little Metro Mayhem?”
The absolute last thing Grian wanted to do right now was play Metro Mayhem.
“Yeah, that sounds good. We can do that.”
…
“He’s sad,” Mumbo whispered, his own heartache choking out the substance to his voice. He laid under the covers, knees up, Cub beside him playing with glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs.
“I thought you already knew that,” Cub mumbled, absent, but not intentional, his focus simply elsewhere. It still stung. Cub looked up in the silence, the soft glow of the dinosaurs reflecting off his glasses. “Sorry, that came out bad.”
Mumbo didn’t move. “It’s just. More than I thought. I don’t know. I feel out of touch with my friends as people. I don’t like the distance. It makes me feel like a monster.”
Cub was quiet for a moment, likely thinking very carefully about what to say next. Eggshells like Mumbo were ripe for the cracking, and Cub did not know how to step lightly. But he was trying. He’d gotten so much better over the past months, he really was trying. It would have made Mumbo feel warm if he wasn’t frozen numb with dread.
“How so?”
That was a simple question. Practical. It made sense. Mumbo thought about it.
“I’m always thinking about what I’m going to eat. Always.” Mumbo cringed; Cub knew that already, and Mumbo hated feeling like he was talking in circles, but Cub was still quiet, listening. “And now that I’m eating whenever I get the opportunity, it feels like.. I don’t know. It feels like I’m looking for opportunities more than I’m thinking about why I have these opportunities in the first place. A lot of it’s harmless stuff, minor frustrations or the like, but it’s the.. the deeper feelings. The part of my brain that wants to help is overwritten but the part that’s been told it can eat whenever it wants. I don’t like that. I don’t like internally weighing the pros and cons of comforting a friend. Trying to make things better. I already know I’m a manifestation of something bad, I just don’t want that part of me to win.”
“I don’t think you were made bad.”
“That’s just— That’s not true!” Mumbo shifted suddenly, accidentally knocking a few of the dinosaurs. Cub flinched, and Mumbo stopped, helping Cub set them back upright. He continued on, quieter, “I don’t think that’s true. Good things don’t sustain themselves on other peoples’ suffering.”
“That’s fine. I’m just telling you what I think.” Cub paused, then continued, gentler, “You don’t have to bite my head off over it, you know.”
“I’m sorry. It just.. it’s really hard being in my head. Everything is.. it’s not worse than it was before, god no, it’s just weirder. I’m a breathing contradiction of myself. I feel like I’m letting people down.”
“Who are you—“
“Grian.”
“Ah.”
The two of them were quiet for a long moment, but Mumbo’s throat burned, and Cub was the first to speak.
“Grian wants you to be happy, Mumbo. He’s in a bad place, it sucks, but your preservational instincts aren’t stopping you from being there for him. Aren’t you guys still hanging out all the time? That’s helping. You being there when he’s down, that’s helping. Me putting craters in his base? That was not helping, that was not good at all. I had to do it, but it was not a good decision.”
“What do you mean you had to do it?”
“You gotta do whatcha gotta do, Mumbo. You, me, Grian. We’re all doing our best out here. You’re a good guy, Mumbo. Good people don’t worry as much as you do about being secretly evil. Grian understands that. He understands the situation, the whole server does. If eating his depression keeps you at your peak health, he would want you to keep doing it. There’s that balance, right? You’re his best friend, he’d do anything for you.”
Was that true? Mumbo frowned, his intestines tying themselves in knots. Maybe before, that was true. Before things had changed, gotten weirder, gotten worse. It had been easy to read Grian before, but now his mind felt stony, and Mumbo struggled to discern the truth from his own violent self deprecation. If he let his mind go, he could easily convince himself in a night that Grian wanted nothing to do with him anymore.
But Mumbo was often wrong. He’d come to accept he was often wrong, especially about the server’s perception of him. They cared for him all the same, some were even more interested in him than they were before, and Grian never seemed thrilled about what was happening with Mumbo behind the scenes, but Grian had also never denied him, simply asking not to be involved in the labyrinth business. That was more than fair! It didn’t have to mean anything deeper.
If Mumbo could not trust his own judgement, maybe, just for tonight, it would be okay to trust Cub’s.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, closing his eyes. “I know these kinds of conversations aren’t really your cup of tea.”
“I don’t mind,” Cub said, his attention returning near completely to his dinosaurs, “I just want you to feel good about yourself, someday. It makes me sad to see you so down about the parts of you that I really love.”
“You’re crazy for that.”
Cub shrugged. “We’re all a little crazy.”
…
It was a bad day.
A bad day after a string of bad days made it difficult to tell if this day was particularly bad or just bad normal style, but Grian had done so little in the past week that the guilt was now eating him alive.
He wanted company. He didn’t want to talk to anyone at all.
Scar could be nice for these kinds of days, but sometimes his tics caused spurts of irrational and unpredictable rage, and Grian was too sensitive to risk calling him. He didn’t want to lash out.
Gem would be sympathetic, but sometimes she fixated too hard on solving his problems rather than just listening, and Grian understood the impulse, but that wasn’t what he needed right now, and the risk of being forced to engage in that kind of conversation sounded too exhausting to consider.
Impulse might be good company, but he was busy, wasn’t he..? Really busy, Grian didn’t want to bother him..
Skizz was too loud. Same problem as Gem but multiplied by a thousand with constant interjected personal anecdotes that bordered on unrelated.
Mumbo was the worst person he could see today. With how insecure Grian was feeling today, that was a dumpster fire waiting to happen.
Maybe he shouldn’t go outside today.
No. If he was too much of a worthless sack of shit that he couldn’t touch a little grass and breathe some fresh air, he didn’t deserve to be on this server at all. He was a grown ass adult, productive, adults went outside and worked on their bases and said hi to people without tearing up. He could go outside for ten minutes, do a little fishing maybe, then take a fucking shower, god he should shower before anyone stumbled upon him, but if he lost himself to the shower in this state he was never going outside in the first place.
Okay.
Get up.
Get up.
Get up.
Grian laid in bed unblinking for thirty more minutes before rolling himself out of bed, laying face down on the floor for another ten.
He heaved himself to his feet. Dragged himself out into crisp, fresh air. He did not feel better, but he might have felt a little less gross.
He didn’t get the chance to have the thought before he woke up back in bed.
Grian breathed. He breathed quite a lot in too little time. He was out the door in record time.
“What, were you just waiting? Waiting for me to step out the fucking door?”
Mumbo looked like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide, body physically puffing up. He had Grian’s body by the head, neck hanging at a broken angle.
Grian heard himself scream, the sound echoing through his own pounding head. “Drop it! Fucking drop it!”
Mumbo moved, and Grian didn’t get the chance to react before he was dead. Grian stormed outside to see Mumbo staring at the new body, the old despawning in the wake of the new death. He almost looked normal, and Grian hated him for it.
“I— I’m sorry,” Mumbo stammered, body fidgeting to life like Grian’s presence was sending electric pulses through his muscles, “You scared me, I just reacted—“
“Are you seriously apologizing for killing me the second time? Like that’s the problem? Do you think the second time was the fucking problem, Mumbo!? You were waiting for me! You were waiting for me to leave my fucking house so you could jump me! What do I even mean to you anymore!?”
Mumbo blanched. “Waiting for you—? Grian, no, I was just flying and I—“
“Is my misery an invitation to you!? Am I just a fucking opportunity now!? How can I even say we were ever friends when you don’t even do me the decency of taking my corpse somewhere I can’t see you devour it, it’s fucking gross, Mumbo, you make me sick to my fucking stomach. I hate it!! I hate— I hate everything about this!!”
Grian had only seen Mumbo look this sick before his extended break in season nine. For a moment, just one moment, it vindicated him. And then Mumbo started to cry.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll— I’ll go. I’ll go, and you won’t— you won’t have to see me again. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—“ Mumbo choked on the next words. They never left his lips. There was a rocket in his hand, and in the next moment he was gone.
Grian sat. Laid in the grass. Closed his eyes.
…
“You’re okay, Mumbo, listen to me Mumbo, you’re okay.”
Scar held him, held him close and felt Mumbo sink into him, physically pushing so hard to be closer that that every part of his body squeezed into the gaps of Scar’s own, and all Scar could do was hold him, whispering soft comforts over Mumbo’s hysterical, hyperventilating breaths.
Scar did not know what was wrong. Mumbo could not tell him. He was not sure he’d ever seen one of his friends in a state of this much disrepair, not like this, coming on so suddenly.
Had it been sudden? Had Scar not been paying enough attention? He’d been known to miss things, but a panic attack of this magnitude didn’t— it didn’t make any sense.
Scar did not have the time or the space to think about it. If he had, he might have been able to figure it out before Mumbo calmed down enough to speak.
…
Cub did not take it well. Obviously. He was never going to take this well, but Scar hoped his priorities were in order enough to keep his head on his shoulders. For the time being, at least.
…
God fucking damn it.
…
“Is your spawn set somewhere nearby?”
Grian heard the placement of a block, no, a bed. He was faraway, gone, he did not know how much time had passed or why Cub was here and asking such strange questions. Grian had slept quite a lot recently, he was not in danger of being attacked by phantoms.
“Just inside,” Grian mumbled. His eyes shot open at the piercing sting of claws in his shoulders. Grian kicked out with sharp talons, but for every blow he tore through Cub’s stomach, Cub had landed threefold through his chest, the two of them wrestling in a brief, bloody spasm.
Grian woke up, and almost immediately met Cub’s eye through the narrow blinds of his window. The glass shattered under the force that Cub threw himself through it, but Grian was able to use Cub’s momentum to send him flying further, hitting the other wall with a sharp crack. Cub buckled, leaving behind a smear of blood against the wall as he slid to the floor, but his eyes never closed, never broke contact with Grian’s, radiating malice.
“Wh— What’s your fucking problem?”
Cub did not get to answer before he died, but Grian did not get the sense he was going to regardless.
He was halfway out the door before Cub leapt on him, snarling. They traded deaths, nearly equally, though Cub was so grimly motivated to hurt that he often did not stop swinging until he was dead, getting a few more over on Grian, not that he had the mental room to keep score. It was frightening, but more than that it was deeply annoying, and suddenly the deep seeded rage that haunted Grian in his worst moments had an outlet, a safe place to hurt, and he only tried to run away once or twice before giving up on the notion entirely.
This was Cub’s fault, actually.
Cub, who let this happen. Cub, who took Mumbo away, turned him into someone else. Cub, who replaced Grian. Cub, who was better for Mumbo in every way, because Cub loved the things that made Grian squirm. Mumbo deserved someone who loved him wholly. Who treated him kindly. Who didn’t scream at him on bad days. It was Cub’s fault for being That. For being there when Grian wouldn’t. For filling the holes left by Grian’s neglect.
Cub was right to flay him, rip his skin from the muscle, crush his bones under his teeth, claw and tear and kill until there was nothing left, until Grian stopped coming back.
Grian did not deserve to be here. Cub was right.
People were yelling, screaming, other hermits, but Grian did not hear the words, and all hands were claws in his skin, teeth on his neck. Grian lashed out blindly at the hands on his shoulders, a yelp that wasn’t Cub’s stoic grunting snapping him out of his stupor.
“Let me go! You don’t understand. He’s a fucking monster!”
Hearing Cub yell had an oddly sedative effect on Grian, more than calm, sinking so far into his bed that he might have fallen through it. His eyes felt heavy, lidded.
“Shit..” Pearl mumbled, though Grian didn’t think those words were meant for him. “Stay.”
Pearl left his side, and Grian closed his eyes, enveloping himself in Cub’s distress. If he was Cub, he would not have to think about his own worthlessness. He would not have to think about what he’d done to Mumbo. He hardly even remembered what he’d said, and that was a beautiful world to live in. Maybe it had all been a dream.
…
Their chairs were sat across from each other, gray particles flickering up from their backs from the slowness that has been splashed between them. Their mouths were firmly shut. Glaring.
Gem sighed, harsh as she slumped over Grian’s head, arms nestling in his greasy hair. “I would quite like it if somebody would say what started this. That was not friendly murder. Correct? Pearl, back me up.”
“That was not friendly murder.”
Cub leaned back in his chair, eternally unamused. “Let’s hear it then. I’d like to know exactly what you said to him.” Cub’s lip twitched, curling in a raw anger Grian didn’t know was possible for him to feel. “Do you even know how deep Mumbo’s self-loathing runs? Do you know? I thought you might, but with how easily you’ve gone and shattered months of improvement, I’m not so sure you care at all. He’s never going to eat again, and it’s your fucking fault!” Cub stood up, and Grian was petrified to think Cub might cry, but gently, Pearl eased him back down. The weight of slowness gave him little choice.
Gem did not seem to grasp the severity, perhaps caught up in her own mental ‘I told you so!’ as she threw her head back in an exaggerated groan, “UGH! Grian, what did you say!”
“Gem—“ Pearl tried, but from her place behind Cub, she could not see the white and reddish pink that rippled across Cub’s skin.
“Is this a joke to you!?” Cub’s voice broke in the distinct kind of way that made you wonder if he was ever really angry at all. The transformation made his cracked voice echo in on itself. “This isn’t just— a game. He starts every day wishing he didn’t have to exist because existing means Hurting, and he can’t find a shred of value in himself beyond that, he can’t get past it. He’s miserable, he’s just waiting to snap and chase everyone away, he’s convinced he’s living on borrowed time, and how am I supposed to change that— the way he feels, and the extremely real threat of what he fears—“ Cub snapped on Grian “—when FUCKS like you are actively working to regress him back to the edge!”
Pearl obviously didn’t know what to do, Gem even more lost and guilted into a stunned silence, so she stood idly in the middle while Pearl attempted to soothe Cub down from the vex state. Not a particularly successful effort, but at least with their bodies blocking direct eye contact between him and Grian, the red lines started to die.
Grian had a defense, but he didn’t like it, didn’t even want to protect himself. It was less of an excuse, and more of a hopeless sentiment, a fractal of the hot agony he’d felt when he woke back up in bed, and knew.
“He was waiting.” It might not have been true. It probably wasn’t. Grian knew it probably wasn’t true, but it felt so hard to know Mumbo lately, and in bed, stunned and hurt, he just..
He wanted to go outside. Take a shower. Why was that so wrong? Why did he keep getting punished?
“I felt. So bad. I can’t get out of bed. But I did. I made it outside. He was waiting. Just. Killed me.” It sounded so stupid out loud. Pathetic. Mean.
“Oh, Grian.. Shit.” Gem turned to face him; it was much easier to face Grian than Cub. “Are you..? I mean I.. How bad has this gotten? You said you’d been feeling better..”
“WHO CARES!” Cub thrashed in his chair, and while both Gem and Pearl looked ready to restrain him from another murder attempt, his slow-motion tantrum stayed contained to his own bubble.
“Cub.” Gem said firmly, more in her lane, “Come on.”
“Who cares! Who cares! If you’d just let him eat he’d be sleeping right now! I thought you cared— I can’t— I can’t even believe you wouldn’t take any solace in being able to do this for him! I can’t— I can’t do that! It doesn’t matter how hard I try to engineer situations where he can harvest anything half-decent from me, it’s not the same. You’re naturally miserable, that’s a void-given gift considering the company you keep! How do you not understand that!?”
“Cub— Dear god, Cub.” Gem let her face fall into her hands. “Okay, I need to make it known that I am understanding Grian said something probably really bad here—“
“It was really bad,” Grian supplemented numbly. Gem pursed her lips.
“Grian is an asshole, he did an asshole, but Cub, everything that is coming out of your mouth right now sounds deranged. Please stop talking.”
“You would think that,” Cub huffed, eyes dark. “It’s ’cause no one wants to talk about it. No one else cares, no one else cares to try and understand or do something about it, it’s just me!”
“That’s not true.” Pearl interrupted, firm in her judgement, and Cub looked away.
“..and Scar.”
“You look me in the eyes and tell me we are living in the same world where only you and Scar have volunteered not only to be eaten, but to play your game in the labyrinth. Come on. Do everyone a favor and hop off your soapbox.”
Cub softened, cringing in on himself. It was a little difficult to watch, the way he just fell apart, anger melting to guilt and shame. “It’s just.. so much. I try so hard. I’m not enough. I can’t help him. He wants me to help him, and I just can’t do it. I’m already exhausted, and now because of— this— we’ll have to start all over! I can’t— I can’t do that. I can’t stomach all of him, the self hate, the hunger, I want to do it for him and I just can’t. What do I tell him when he worries that the rest of the server secretly hates what he needs to do to live? He won’t believe me. Not after it’s come from his best friend. He won’t trust anyone. He’ll starve, because I’m not enough and Scar isn’t enough and the supplemental other hermits in the maze aren’t enough, and he’s going to starve and snap and drive all of us away because I failed. People just don’t— get that! We have everything to lose.” Cub whirled on Grian, anger reignited, “So why can’t you just suck it up and take one for the team!”
Gem opened her mouth to admonish him, but Grian spoke first. “I want to. I want to do everything for him that you do. I want to feel loved like he loves you. But I might be— squeamish, maybe. I want to look out for him. I just hate watching it happen. I hate it. And it wasn’t okay. He just caught me on a.. a really horrible day.”
“You’re.. squeamish.” Cub couldn’t have sounded more baffled if he tried, like the thought would never in a thousand years have crossed his mind, which, fair, but just about now Grian was coming to a belated realization of his own.
“You— Where is he? Mumbo? You didn’t leave him alone, did you?”
“He’s with Scar.”
“He’s with— Scar..” Grian relaxed in time with his processing, closing his eyes. Then he opened them. “And you just. Left? To beat the shit out of me? Seriously!? What’s your fucking problem!?”
Cub bowed his head, “I didn’t know what to do.”
“I fucking got that! Where is he—?” Grian got up, and Gem moved as if to stop him, but decided otherwise. The slowness had worn off by now.
“Scar’s train. The balloon car. Wait, you’re not going, are you? What are you—“ Cub was up as well, but Grian was already in the sky.
…
Gem watched, blinking in mild bafflement as the two guys flew off, clumsy in the air. Pearl sidled up beside her, wearing a similar frown.
After a while, the silence was unbearable. Gem sighed harshly. “Do your friends ever do something so outrageous it makes you wonder how you ever came to associate with them in the first place?”
“No.” Pearl said simply, a hint of teasing. “Seems they got it out of their system though. I guess we’ll see if we keep an eye on the chat logs.”
…
It was a warm, tired, and quiet kind of afternoon, dry eyes, heavy limbs, collapsed against the only person willing to stay.
Mumbo felt thin. Gaunt and sharp. His skin felt tight.
There was a presence close by, getting closer, a tangle of Feeling, too explosive to be Cub. Scar must have felt him tense.
“Something wrong?”
“Someone is coming.”
Scar frowned. “I’ll go check.”
Mumbo thought he would miss Scar’s touch immediately as it left him, but the only thing that screamed was the monster that’d had a decadent meal stolen, now drooling over Scar-shaped scraps. Mumbo didn’t know if he was relieved or forlorn to have the temptation removed.
He’d never stopped before. Not with a feast, already dead. He felt evil for the simmering regret at letting it go, for listening when Grian told him to leave it. He should have finished, then taken more. He could have killed Grian ten times, and slept for days, untainted by the ache of chronic hunger.
There was only one person it could have been, outside. But how was Mumbo supposed to reconcile that.
Grian was shadowed in the entrance of the train car.
Mumbo felt his body try to react. Change. Tighten. He did not move. It begged him to. Since when had this gotten so hard? Staying still. Resisting. Maybe it had something to do with the denied meal. Or maybe Mumbo had gotten too comfortable, he’d made a mistake letting go, and the next time someone asked him to stop, he’d never be able to again.
“Mumbo?” Grian’s voice hitched, sounded physically pained— Had the soft noise he’d heard at his periphery been Grian, had Mumbo been salivating too hard to acknowledge it? “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I want to stay, talk about it, but I understand if you.. if you don’t want me here. I think we should talk. Still. I want to.”
“Okay.” Mumbo wasn’t sure if he’d even spoken. His mind growled.
“I haven’t been happy, lately. You know that.”
Mumbo nodded, cautiously. “I know.”
“It’s deeper than unhappiness.” Grian looked away, almost shyly. “Heavier. I think.. you probably also know that.”
“I know.”
“I’ve been feeling.. I don’t know. Hollow. When I talk to anyone, it’s hollow. When I’m hanging out with friends, hollow. I could be included in every event, and I’d still feel alone. I’ve been combating this all for.. a while. It’s been a really long time.” Grian paused for so long that Mumbo thought he wanted his input.
“I know.”
Grian nodded, slowly. “I don’t want you to starve. I’m glad for you, that things have been getting better. Or that things at the very least are less bad. I think I’m just in this space where change is really.. I don’t know, it really started fucking me up. Not you being you, but the dynamic just kinda.. shifted. The social dynamic. You and Cub were suddenly close, and I like Cub, I don’t dislike Cub, but he wasn’t here before, and suddenly everything was different and you’d found this other person that made you happy and I just realized you’d managed to find someone.. better. Someone you loved you enough to help you.”
“Grian, you didn’t do anything wrong by— by—“
“Ignoring it?” Grian cocked his head, almost sad. “I don’t know about that. I don’t know. But it happened, and immediately I felt sorta competitive, jealous, like oh, Cub’s here now? He thinks he’s doing all this stuff for Mumbo, yeah? Well I can do that too! And I kinda sat on that and realized exactly what that meant. What I would have to do. Endure. And I just— and mean it feels crazy to say that I don’t want to be tortured to death surrounded by people who are okay with being tortured to death. I don’t like to be in pain for extended periods. I don’t want to be afraid of you.”
“I don’t want any of that for you. I really don’t.” Mumbo did. He wanted it now even more after being denied, but he would never speak it.
“You don’t have to say that,” Grian mumbled, and Mumbo flinched as if struck. Grian looked up at him, and was quiet for a long time. Mumbo wanted to die.
“Seeing myself. My friends. Being eaten. It makes me feel very ill, very squeamish, and it always has, and I should have told you sooner, but I didn’t, because I was scared that if I told you, you’d know that I didn’t want to be part of this bit of your life, that I didn’t love you as much as I should, and I was just. Scared. Of giving that up. But I just. I was so. I was having such a horrible day, morning, afternoon, I kept trying to get up and get outside and I just couldn’t move, my body wouldn’t move, and I wanted to be alone and outside so I could say that I’d done it, and hide back away, but I just. Died. And it felt like that monumental thing I’d done, making it outside, was just. For nothing. I knew what I’d see when I looked outside. And I was so upset that I snapped and I said so much I can’t take back, and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for being selfish. For not helping you when you were starving, not offering my support when things were better, and for making you feel all the awful things you’re feeling. I’m sorry you don’t feel like you can talk to me about this stuff. Cub says you talk to him a lot.”
“You don’t have to be sorry, Grian.” Hollow was a good word. A very apt description, Grian had used. “I know what it means, to support me. I don’t want anyone to sacrifice themselves in my name. I’d leave, if I could. But I won’t. I’m too weak.”
Grian looked stricken, like he might shatter into a thousand pieces. “I want to—!”
“I won’t let you.”
“No, I want to— I don’t want to be cut off, Mumbo, please, I just want to do things differently. I just— I just don’t want to see it, alright? That sounds terrible, god—“
“That’s okay, Grian.”
“You can eat me! You can eat me, it’s fine, I just need you to ask first, and I don’t want to see it happening, that’s really the only part I can’t stomach. And I— I want to be involved. I know this is hard for you, and I know I’m not always emotionally available, but I want you to talk to me about it. Tell me when you’re not feeling so good and I.. I’ll do the same, yeah? I think it will be a little uncomfortable at first, maybe for both of us, but I want to get used to it. I want to be in your life. All of it. Or I guess like— 95% of it.”
Mumbo wanted to deny him. The anguish that exploded inside him from the need to fight to deny him, fight the urge to leap across the room and rip him to pieces right then— Mumbo was so tired, so drained, eyes too dry to cry.
“I want to sleep. I just want to go to sleep for a while.”
Did Grian understand? Mumbo strained to read him as he cocked his head ever so slightly.
Grian would be able to. Put him to sleep. The Feeling was less than earlier in the day, much less, but the sharp longing for specifically him after being denied— Mumbo didn’t think it would matter if Grian was jumping for joy. His ongoing starvation was not a physical battle. His cravings were consistent, but not firmly static.
Grian yawned. “I’m a bit tired myself.. Might have to take a long nap after this one. If I sleep for sixteen hours, that’s sixteen more hours I have until Gem grills me on my ever-chronic mental health problems.” Grian turned around, almost ambling, slow and deliberate. “If only I knew a good shortcut straight to my bed.”
Less than a moment later, Grian was dead.
He wasn’t coming back, obviously, but Mumbo still scuttled away with the corpse, craving the privacy of a dark, empty corner.
…
“That wasn’t fair, Cub.”
Scar had met him in the sky, then eased him to the ground despite Cub’s protests of how Grian was here, Grian was going to make things worse. He believed it, wrought with panic, but Scar would not let him go. Now they were sitting in the entrance of a train car, legs hanging just above the tracks. Cub’s stomach churned.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Sometimes Cub wished Scar expected less of him. Lowered the standard. It was too hard to be like Scar all the time, smart, resilient.
“You could start with an apology.”
“I’m sorry, then.”
“Come on, Cub.” Scar turned on him, hurt, and Cub knew he was hurt and didn’t want things to be that way, but he was so drained, he had no energy to think this through, to make it better. When Cub said nothing, Scar went on. “I just. I can’t believe you just left. He kept asking for you, he wanted you to be there, and you were gone. For what? To yell at Grian? Did that make you feel better?” Scar was not accusatory, but desperate, searching for an answer Cub didn’t know how to give him. Anything out of his mouth would just make it sound more awful.
“It didn’t make me feel worse.”
“That so.” Disappointment. It shouldn’t have stung as bad as it did.
“I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t help. I left. It’s not as easy for me as it is for you. It hurts.”
“It’s not easy for me either.”
“You know it’s worse.”
“I know,” Scar mumbled, hands knit. “I just hate it when you run.”
Cub was certain if he had to take any more of this right now, he was going to spontaneously combust. “I’m scared. I know it’s bad, I know you’re mad, I know it’s wrong, but I’m scared and I didn’t know what to do and I’ve been so useless lately that I just know me being here and upset wasn’t going to help anyone. I can’t just— I can’t deal with it like you can. My emotions don’t just Regulate. I’m quiet until it explodes out of me, and I was exploding, and I ran away and it was wrong and I’m sorry. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t mean to leave you alone.”
“You didn’t just leave me.”
“I know!” Cub’s hands flew to his hair, ripping at the scalp, “Can we just— talk about this another time. Tomorrow. Please. I’ll go see him now, I just can’t do any more of this right now. I can’t do it.”
“Alright.” Scar’s voice softened into sadness, quiet. He didn’t like to be angry. He didn’t like to do this, to fight with Cub, but he wouldn’t just let it go either, he couldn’t, likely for the betterment of both of them. If Cub had to go off and lay into Grian, then he deserved to be laid into in turn. That was the price. “Go see him.”
Cub went.
It was nerve wracking that he hadn’t seen or heard Grian leave, but it was pretty clear what had happened when Cub landed at the entrance and Mumbo was asleep on Scar’s couch. Ah.. Probably.. that was probably for the best.
He scooped a blanket off the arm, a soft, heavy one, and settled into the crook of Mumbo’s body, pulling the blanket over the both of them.
“I am sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry I.. I wish I could be everything you needed. Sometimes it scares me when I.. feel like I have to be. When Grian.. I just need more help. You need more, and I wasn’t prepared for someone to just..” Cub closed his eyes, exhaling softly. “I’ll wait until you’re awake. I hope you get to be Not That for a while. I’ll be here.”
…
For Cub, sleeping face down had never really been an issue before, however, when he woke up and couldn’t move, having your face firmly buried in a pillow was a bit of an alarming place to be. Cub tried to roll, but with Mumbo beside him, there wasn’t enough room on the couch, and when he elbowed the space behind himself, his arm only met empty air.
Hm.
Well it wasn’t Scar. Scar would be heavier. And cuddlier. And also under the blanket and Cub would probably end up on the floor in the battle of three people trying to sleep side by side on a couch. He was pretty sure whatever was on top of him was alive. Too big to be Jellie.. too small to be Scar..
Cub was stumped. Guess this was his life now.
Time was a little ambiguous when you were face down into a pillow, but Cub was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen back asleep before the Weight on top of him shifted.
“Ey,” he tried, muffled by pillow.
The weight paused its movement. “Hello..” Grian said, with utmost caution.
“Why’re you on my back.” Another lengthy pause. Cub didn’t particularly mind the wait, he had all the time in the world.
“I got jealous.”
“Oh. Okay.” Weird, but fine. “Can you get off now.”
The hesitation from Grian’s end indicated he didn’t want to do much moving at all, but he did decide in the end that compliance was the better option, his talons digging into Cub’s back as he scrambled up the back of the couch. Cub rolled over, but very quickly realized he didn’t like looking up at a silent, mildly unnerving Grian staring down at him, so instead he shifted to rest his head in the crook of Mumbo’s neck. Mumbo.. still asleep. Good. Very good.
Cub didn’t love that Grian wasn’t leaving. Maybe he should have guessed that’d be the case. “You don’t have to be jealous,” he tried, shrugging. “Mumbo likes you plenty. Probably. I’m guessing you made up.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“It’s true. You guys are cool. He talks about you all the time.”
“He does? What does he say?” Grian leaned so far over the edge of his seat that one stray breath from behind would have knocked him clean over, and Cub was quickly regretting bringing this up at all as he wracked his brain for anything recent that was positive.
“He’s.. a lot lately he’s been worried. I guess things have been pretty shit for you recently.” All Grian’s energy died, and Cub had feverishly comb his brain for something to fix it. “Metro Mayhem has been good fun, though. He really likes playing with you. No one else he’d rather do anything with than you.”
Grian snorted, “You don’t have to say that for my sake.”
“It’s true.” Cub meant it, and was a little taken aback that Grian did not believe him.
“I think he’s found a new favorite.”
“Who?”
“Ha!” Grian laughed until he realized Cub was not joking, Cub in turn understanding.
“Oh, you’re wrong. Really, you are wrong. If Mumbo had a favorite that is not you, it certainly isn’t me. I guess it would be Scar. His favorite might be Scar. But it’s not me over you.”
“As if.” Grian snorted, “You guys do everything together, you practically saved his life on Hermitcraft, and he certainly likes you enough to date you! I’m not interested in Mumbo like that, but I have eyes.”
“Do you have eyes?”
Grian squawked, then crossed his arms. “That’s for me to know and you to speculate on forever.” When Cub reached out towards Grian’s face, he was swatted away. Slowly, Cub’s mind refocused. He frowned.
“I don’t know. Most everything we do is stuff he hates himself for. It’s not fun. I mean. I guess it used to be fun.” Cub sighed hard through his nose. “It’s not not fun. Some days are worse than others. I just.. somehow I found myself in this place where everything Mumbo and I do surrounds the parts of himself that he can’t stand. We aren’t hanging out, we’re conducting business, and if I’m not good enough, he starves, and all of it is for nothing. When all this started, I loved the challenge, the uniqueness of the situation, and I had this ambition that if I loved him enough, he would come around too. We could work on it together. He wouldn’t have to live in constant discomfort.”
Cub buried his face in Mumbo’s chest. “But the honeymoon period’s over. And instead of him accepting the more monstrous parts of himself, I’m starting to resent them. It just.. it feels stupid to say I thought it would be easy, because I knew it would take a lot of work, but I did the work, I’ve done everything I could think to do, and not only does Mumbo still hate himself, but he’s still starving. It was okay for a while, when I wasn’t so desensitized, but now it’s.. I can’t feed him anymore. I can’t even put him to sleep. It’s just. Horrible. I’ve never felt so helpless in my entire life. I’ve never encountered a problem I can’t just work on until it’s fixed. I can’t look at Mumbo without knowing I failed. I can’t stop wishing we had something more normal. Like, what the hell? I hate normal. I just wasn’t expecting crazy to be this hard.”
“Oh.” Grian sounded kind of stupid, and Cub was willing to bet he looked kind of stupid too, but Cub couldn’t bring himself to detach from Mumbo. “When you say he’s starving, do you mean it’s getting worse? Like, he’s getting sick?”
“Not sick, yet,” Cub mumbled. “Just losing weight. Not a lot. Not fast. But it’s steady. I’m out of ideas, and so burnt out that it hurts to try. I just. I don’t know how to be the only one anymore. The primary— organizer. And I can’t say anything, or I’ll ruin him. I mean— he’s not a child, he can handle it, but what happens when he stops telling me everything? When he starts asking for less? How can I break the trust we’ve built when I know it will be to his severe detriment. I’m just. Stuck.”
“Take a break, then.”
Cub could have smacked him, but before he could go off on all the obvious reasons why he could not just take a break, Grian continued.
“My depression has been going strong for a long while, and my valleys can last months. Hell, I knew I had to be around when he woke up, and it still took me ages to get out of bed. Let him sustain himself on me. In the meantime, go on a date or something. Be normal with him. See how you like it. If it wasn’t what you imagined, break up. You don’t have to hold onto this if what brought you together in the first place has soured. No one will hold that against you.”
Cub bit his lip. Break up? In truth, it wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it, a blasphemous kind of thought, selfish, one he’d always dismissed in an instant. Something he couldn’t consider because then Mumbo would know, know how tired he was, that Cub was shallow, leaping into this at the first sign of Monsters! and dipping right out as soon as he got bored. Abandoning him to deal with this on his own. To starve, because without Cub, he would never advocate for what he needed.
Maybe that was unfair. Cub shouldn’t think so little of him, not when he’d come so far.
Mumbo wasn’t helpless. He knew himself well enough to know if he was in trouble. He would ask for help if he needed it, even if he might wait longer than was good for him. Cub didn’t have to hold his hand. Maybe.. maybe it would be good for both of them if Cub loosened his grip.
“You’d.. do that? Feed him?” Cub’s voice felt weak, and he had to focus to keep it from shaking. A break. God, a break. What an idea. Even now, the world felt a little less suffocating.
“I would do anything for him.” Grian spoke with such conviction, Cub almost forgot about the day before. “And— Yeah, I know that rings hollow right now, but I.. I would. I’d just prefer to have some agency in the decision. It’s hard for me when I can’t.. control it. Mumbo and I will talk. We’ll work out some sort of schedule. And if he needs more, I’d even— Well I’d probably make Scar run the labyrinth before I’d go in there, but if even Scar wasn’t enough, I’d do it too. I would. In the meantime, you can build another country club or take a sculk bath or whatever it is that you do. Get away from it for a while.”
“Ooh, sculk hot tub would be awesome.”
“Yeah. That. Do that.”
“I might,” Cub mumbled. Like magic the world felt lighter, even Mumbo himself felt softer, easier to hold. “Yeah man.. Thank you.”
…
It was a little funny and a little exciting being this nervous for a date— not anxious, just that antsy jumping up and down feeling, butterflies. They’d be meeting soon, at the minigame distinct.
Mumbo spent a lot of time asleep lately, which, honestly, indicated some pretty concerning things about Grian’s mental health— he really hadn’t been exaggerating, huh. Cub was happy for Mumbo, truly, glad he’d agreed to this arrangement and even more thrilled it was working out so well, but Mumbo’s sudden absence had also left a vacuum in Cub’s routine. He wasn’t a super social guy, but he liked being around people, with Scar, with bigger groups hanging around the server, and of course, with Mumbo, but now that Mumbo wasn’t reliably around..
Well. He bothered Grian.
Part of it was a desire to make sure Grian was doing alright, and he usually wasn’t, but the last thing either of them wanted to do was talk about it, so generally their brief hangouts were ideal for both of them. Worst case scenario was that Gem was already at the dock, not letting Cub leave once she’d caught his scent and forcing all three of them to have a supremely awkward hangout.
It was a little strange for Cub, realizing how little he and Grian interacted— of course, when they were part of server-wide stories like the Permit Office, they talked quite often, but Grian was a very business oriented kind of person, it wasn’t very easy to get past his walls into more personable conversation, at least not for Cub. He couldn’t say he’d ever tried too hard, but that wasn’t on purpose, Cub was just drawn to more outgoing people, the kind of hermits that would do the hard parts for him.
Cub was growing to find that he liked Grian. Not exactly a surprise, he had already liked Grian before all this, but getting to know the actual Grian, Cub liked him more than he thought he would, especially after The Incident. Which. Cub did apologize for how he reacted in the aftermath. He’d apologized to Mumbo immediately, but for Grian, it had just.. taken him a little longer.
Grian had just shrugged him off. “Honestly, if our roles were reversed, it would have been me ripping off your face. I get it. I mean, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I forgive you. Never held it against you.” He paused for a moment, then laughed, “You know, it feels kinda crazy to say this, but it actually felt kind of good. I get so.. pent up. Angry. And I don’t really have an outlet for that, since murdering your friends is generally considered bad practice. But just then, I got to be the animal that lives in the back of my head. And that was good.”
Cub had pursed and unpursed his lips so many times that Grian called him out on it, and he was forced to speak his mind. “I have a suggestion. Don’t get mad.”
“I make no such promises.”
“You and Mumbo could try to kill each other. Eventually. If you wanted to. Torture isn’t all we do in the labyrinth, even if that’s the nickname it’s gained.. It’s really difficult to bring him down, but very gratifying, I’ve only been able to do it without dying myself once. Though.. I mean, I have a lot more tools at my disposal, the vex and such.. I don’t know if that would be in the cards for you.”
At that, Grian had looked like his head might explode right off his shoulders, and Cub braced for impact. “You don’t think I could kill Mumbo? Really?? I can’t believe this! Of course I could kill Mumbo! Whether I want to or not is another question but I absolutely could. Come on. Let’s talk at a later date.”
Cub had actually let loose a huge sigh of relief, which Grian had teased him about, cawing, “Hey, you aren’t supposed to think about this kind of stuff right now! You’re on break!”
“It wasn’t for Mumbo,” Cub had said, suddenly, honestly, “It was for you.”
All this to say, Mumbo was not awake very much and when he was, he was usually busy with his cliffside town and factory, so scheduling anything with him was a nightmare. Their first detox date had been delayed by two weeks due to unpredictable naps and bursts of inspiration, which— honestly, Cub was most happy that Mumbo felt well enough to do this much work on his base, but could he please stop being an exemplary hermit and go on a proper date with him??
Truly, Cub was not very fussed, he was flexible, but in the most loving way possible, not having a dependable date and time was driving him up a fucking wall. He filled the empty days by digging sculk, diamonds, or making Scar go on faux-dates with him instead.
But no more of that! Because today was the day.
“I just want to look nice. I think it would be cute, if we matched. Well, not exactly matched, but you understand. Same vibe. The look on his face, it will be worth every second in the worst clothes I can think to wear for an event like this.”
“Hey! This suit of mine is plenty comfortable!” Scar squawked, drawing the hanger closer to his chest as if to protect it from a man who wouldn’t appreciate it. “And Mumbo is all sorts of athletic in that suit of his every day, you will be fine for an afternoon.”
“Mumbo’s suit doesn’t count because for all intents and purposes, that is his skin.”
“Forgot about that.”
“I can not forget. His strip teases are the worst I’ve ever seen. As a shapeshifter, I feel like there are a thousand different ways you could make that shit hot as hell, but Mumbo is supremely talented at sucking.”
“Some might say that’s a good thing!”
Cub blinked, then snickered. “Yeah, good one.”
In the lobby of Hungry Hermits, Cub and Mumbo spent a good amount of time staring rather than saying hello, Cub in his (Scar’s) suit while Mumbo was wearing jeans and a loose yellow sweater, casual, and if Cub was being honest, disgustingly adorable.
“Whose suit is that?” Mumbo asked, to which Cub crossed his arms at the hint of a tease.
“It could be mine.”
“It’s not your size, but still flattering. How many undershirts you wearing under there; looking a bit puffy you are.”
“And whose clothes are you wearing,” Cub retorted, the act falling apart in a small chuckle he couldn’t keep down, “If those even are real clothes.”
“They are!” Mumbo brightened, twirling around so Cub could see the whole of him. “Grian’s sweater, and Pearl’s jeans. Did you know Grian has sweaters that aren’t red? I didn’t! He never wears them! But he’s got a blue one and a green one and orange too, I just couldn’t believe it! My mind was blown! You know, I wanted to wear real clothes because I thought it’d be more natural, but actually I kind of hate it. I don’t know how you guys can stand to feel this stuff against your skin, I’d much rather pretend and call it a day.”
“Oh, I’ve never been so relieved to be on the same page,” Cub threw his head back in a hearty sigh, promptly yanking his blazer off his shoulders.
“A!! I wasn’t suggesting we strip!!” Mumbo bounced on his toes, flustered in his surprise like a cartoon, but Cub was too focused on removing all discomfort from his life to care. When his lab coat flew free from his dress shirt and pants, he finally knew peace.
“God, that was terrible. Much better now!”
“Terrible!?” Mumbo squeaked, the perfect little horrified sound that never failed to make Cub smile. “No wonder you were uncomfortable! What was the point of wearing your normal outfit under all those clothes!?”
“Hungry Hermits is an intense game, Mumbo, I was worried the suit would be too stifling.” Cub swooned, then promptly stood straight again, hopping off to deposit his things in the locker. “Had to have a backup.”
“You couldn’t.. just change?”
“I just did.”
Mumbo considered him with some thought, glancing at the floor where Scar’s suit was left crumpled, then back up at Cub. “You’re not wrong but I don’t like it.”
“Aha, cheers.”