Grass Finn Bullshit

[doooooog]

"Finn!" Jake cupped a hand beside his mouth, the other six or seven busy putting away their haul from the Bargain Kingdom (a store, not a government, for once). A ninth hand sprouted to gently retrieve the vuvuzela from where BMO was absconding with it. "You hungry, buddy? They had a huge special on boar meat, I'm thinkin' sloppy joes!"

"THEY LEFT!" Neptr chimed in, sullenly, from his perch on the stair. "FATHER AND GRASS FATHER. NOT NEPTR."

"Oh yeah. Well, don't sweat it Neptr, that chicken coop is the kinda thing that changes a man. Better to skip it."

"NOT A CHICKEN COOP, A DUNGEON ADVENTURE."

Jake's coordinated dance of arms flagged for a moment, doubt curling in his gut. The prickle of concern was followed immediately by guilt. What the hell was he worried about? Two Finns were better than one. He could stand to cut Fern a break, even in his own thoughts.

"Welp, you can help me on a culinary adventure if you want." Jake's gaze dances from the meat to Neptr. "Whaddya think about Sloppy Joe Pies? Has a nice ring to it..."

---

The sun was slung low in the sky by the time Jake heard the familiar sound of Finn's return up the treehouse steps. Alongside the involuntary prick of his ears, the dog feels a smile start to spread. No matter how capable the kid (teenager) had become over the last decade, Jake was pretty sure he'd never lose the sense of relief that came over him when Finn came home safe.

Lately, lingering misgivings aside, those feelings were starting to blossom towards Fern as well.

"Hey boys!" Jake lets the smile grow to a grin, craning his neck over the arm of the couch. "Y'all have fun out there?"

Jake felt suddenly cold, as if some cosmic entity had reached its hand down and pinched out the contented flame and safety of home. His voice lost its usual buoyancy, standing up from the couch.

"Wait, what happened?"

Finn said nothing, standing there looking as if he'd been through a woodchipper. Blades of grass clung to his hair, his clothes, even stuck to the razor sharp line of blood at his exposed stomach.

"I know that look!" BMO chimed in, sounding pleased to be the one with the answer to Jake's question. Neither the boy or the dog seemed to hear him in that moment. "You just killed someone."

Comments

[heroooic]

“Alright, no Thursday. Throw it out, and we’ll see you on Friday, world.” Jermaine laughs, a tired, but relieved sound. He slumps a little deeper into the couch. It felt good to just laugh, and unwind, just for a moment. Even if there were bigger things bubbling up.

[doooooog]

It did feel good, and Jake was all too eager to join him. He pushes away his empty plate, devoid of even a crumb, and takes a long sip of his tea. Jake had never been much of a savorer, but he would make an exception today.

"Cool, glad that's settled."

[heroooic]

A comfortable silence falls over them for a long moment. The kind of quiet that could only come from knowing someone well enough for it to not tip into awkwardness.

Jermaine had become so aware of all the ways they didn’t know each other very well. The very separate ways in which their lives had diverged. Yet they still had shared history, years spent together in childhood, building the memories and vocabulary that only siblings could have. Maybe it wasn’t quite the same bond that Jake and Finn had…but they had something different, that maybe right now, was going to make all the difference. They were the same age.

“I think we need to talk.” Jermaine sighs, armed with the knowledge that they were going to need to meet somewhere in the middle. Act like the adults that they were and lay their cards on the table. Jermaine was ready to listen…he hoped Jake was too.

[doooooog]

It was a valiant hope to have, one that nearly sent Jake under the table. Ears back a bit, Jermaine didn't have to see Jake's tail to know it was wagging nervously.

"Aw, c'mon, man." He smiles, but it's tired. The smile of a man who knows he's caught and too exhausted to run away. "We just cancelled Thursday and everything. Now you wanna real talk?"

[heroooic]

“We gotta, man.” Jermaine sounds exasperated, but not angry. He knew that he was partly responsible for this rift between them. “I think maybe all of this might have gone different if we just, talked about some stuff, you know?”

Maybe not all of it. But maybe he would have known Jake had gone missing sooner…

[doooooog]

"Trust me dude, it wouldn't have..." For all the immediate sureness in Jake's voice, his face told a different story. He was staring at his hands mostly, picking at his nails to keep his eyes from ping ponging around the room. "This whole deal has been in the cards for me since... Birth, I guess."

Over the course of that sentence, Jake takes on a wistful tone. Keen eared listeners would pick up that the word birth seemed to be the trigger, sending Jake away from his usual jovial defenses and into something darker and more easily infiltrated.

If Jermaine was preparing to test that theory, Jake beats him to breaking the silence

"You ever think about how different we are, Jermaine?"

[heroooic]

Had he thought about how different they were? If anything it was a dark shadow that Jake cast over their relationship. Or at least, that’s what it was from Jermaine’s perspective. He had a lot of his own unpacking to do with that, and he was working on it. But the difference between them…especially the difference, not just the myriad of mundane ways in which they were nothing alike, but the big thing that was wildly, improbably, and unexplainable different about them-

“Uh, yeah, I’ve thought about it.”

[doooooog]

"'Cuz it's a lot, right?" Jake asks, more as if he was continuing his own point rather than responding to Jermaine. "I mean, since we were kids. And I'm not talking about the stretching, I mean like..."

He stops, as if reaching for something ineffable just beyond his grasp.

"Like, basic stuff. How we were with Mom and Dad, how we are with Finn, girls... I was girl crazy as a pup, you couldn't have cared less. Still couldn't!" He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck. "And like, no judgment. I've just got a lot of thoughts scrambled up in the dome piece."

[heroooic]

Jermaine watches him, all those statements felt like they could bud off into a dozen new conversations. All of them long overdue.

“Jake, what happened out there?” He cuts straight to what was, right now, in this moment the most important of all the many questions he could ask. The one he didn’t want to get buried, or dodged or forgotten. “Where were you really, and what happened to you out there?”

His tone was gentler and more concerned than it had been with Jake as of late, tinged with some characteristic Jermaine anxiety.

[doooooog]

Of all the questions Jermaine could have asked, that was probably the one Jake wanted to hear the least. Which, in some way, probably made it the one that needed to be said the most. Repression was weird like that.

With a deep breath, Jake sunk a little deeper into the booth.

"Man... it's such a crazy story." He scratches at his ear, voice taking a turn for the quiet. "I don't even know where to start."

[heroooic]

Jermaine smiles thinly.

“Now you’re gonna start worrying about crazy stories?” Jermaine shifts so he could face Jake a little better. “Okay, how about you start at the top. Where did you go? I saw that note you left Finn…wasn’t much to go off, brother.”

[doooooog]

It's a small thing, but it drags a laugh out of him. Even quiet, sort of rueful laughs counted. They had to.

"Space." He says, simply. "But you knew that. I think he called it... Nehran? Nooboo? I dunno. Whatever name he told me was definitely made up anyway, I dunno if he's even really from there or not. It was probably just some random rock."

Certain pronouns had been introduced into the fray, though Jake looks a little uneasy about defining them. Still, he can see from Jermaine's waiting expression that there was no putting this off anymore.

"I was taken there by, well, an alien. Named Warren. He's, uh...my biodad?"

Bomb dropped, Jake braces himself a little against the edge of the table. He wasn't sure what he was expecting. Nothing about today felt wholly predictable, did it.

"It wasn't like, an affair or anything." God, Jake really hoped so?? "I think he just... did something. To Dad." Eesh, that sentence wasn't much better. "And whatever he did made Dad give, uh... birth. To me."

Jake left out the head part. The head part was definitely for a different day.

[heroooic]

The words came at him fast, and Jermaine stares blankly at his brother, gaze shifting down to the worn, scratched wood of the table while he lets it all sink in. It doesn’t really sink in. The words feel like they pool, bunching up in his brain, fighting with common sense, fighting with everything he knew to be true.

He looks up again, hands balled tight on the table.

“Bro, what?” Jermaine’s incredulity bordered on concern. “Did you hit your head or something?”

[doooooog]

It's about the reaction Jake expected. He wasn't hurt by it, per se, it was not far off from his initial shock while investigating their parent's old office. But it did hurt. A sympathetic kind of hurt he wishes didn't have to be so complicated.

"Heh, I wish, bro." He scoots a little closer, making eye contact in the hopes it would help this sink in cleaner. "Mom and Dad gave birth to us at the same time, in the alley behind their office. I'm still your big brother. I just... Came outta Dad, and you came outta Mom."

Something about saying it out loud made the what the fuck alarm go off so loud and piercing in Jake's head, he could barely see straight for a few moments. He could only imagine what Jermaine was thinking.

"It's why I can stretch." He offers, as a sort of...grounding measure. It was something about him that Jermaine was so used to, something real and tangible for him. It was what made this whole thing go down easier for Jake, maybe it would do the same for his brother. "Warren could too."

[heroooic]

“Yeah, of course. That makes sense.” Jermaine laughs, an uncomfortable, nervous sound that’s not entirely without mirth. What could you do in the face of the absurdity of it all, other than laugh.

The rest of Jake’s story goes about the same, and Jermaine simply listens, save the occasional chuckle or shake of the head. He was doing his best to absorb it, wrap his head around it. It wasn’t the craziest thing in the world…although it was certainly up there. He’d grown up around stories of demons and magic and monsters. Sometimes around actual demons and magic and monsters. Their house was filled (had been filled) with scores of improbable artifacts, each with a story and history as strange as this one.

But it was different when the story brushed up against your own real life, shifting and refocusing everything you thought you knew into something stranger. Unfamiliar.

“So we’re…half brothers,” he finally says, as Jake’s whole story winds to a close. A strange thing to fixate on, especially given that it really didn’t matter. “Guess now we know why we’re so different.”

It was kind of a joke, kind of real. Either way, he wasn’t talking about the stretching…the conversation really had come full circle.

[doooooog]

The story was long and winding, full of digressions and tangents. Bringing up Warren's plan meant bringing up the museum, which meant bringing up how he'd been watched since birth, which meant bringing up what he'd seen in that alley in more detail, which meant...

It was a mess. And by the time they both got through all of it, the moon was high in the dark sky and the sound of crickets had faded into the inky stillness of the middle of the night. Jake listened to Jermaine's final note with a laugh of his own, sounding tired and wrung out.

"Aw c'mon, don't get started on that... you and me, we're brothers." Said with the sureness of someone who needed that to be true. "Brothers are different all the time. Look at Finn."