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]

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."