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

[doooooog]

"Oh yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about!" Jake cheered, stretching a hand to affectionately muss up Finn's hat. It briefly covers his eyes, allowing Jake a moment of wordless pleading in Jermaine's direction. He jerks a shoulder towards the sign, eyes purposeful.

"Finn's right Jermaine, we gotta do it official-like!" Jake's tone was needling and obnoxious, a far cry from the desperate plea he'd just worn across his face. He was good at that, Jermaine found himself musing on bitterly as he began climbing up the rusty chain link.

"Alright, I'm going..." Jermaine kept climbing, muttering to himself about the universes bias against him and his small, unstretchy body. He taps the sign, wincing at the immediate cheer from Jake. Still, despite the show of annoyance, Jermaine's tail starts to wag. Just a bit.

"Yeah, yeah, my body is a poem. Now get me down from here."

With a quick double loop of Jake's arms, he's lowered to the ground. Just before being unwrapped, Jermaine feels a soft squeeze on his shoulder -- grateful and under the radar. Jake really was worried, wasn't he?

"Next up's the race to the ocean!" Jake announces, full of competitive bombast. "You two ready?"

Squaring up for a run, Jermaine rolls his eyes. He nudges Finn, adopting a loud stage whisper: "We can't let him win or he'll be like this all day."

"Be like what? Awesome??" Jake taunts, limbering up with a few cartoonishly exaggerated stretches. "Count us off, Finny!"

Jermaine nudges Finn again, this time silently mouthing: You run, I'll grab his legs.

[heroooic]

Finn looked enthused about that, smiling excitedly at the prospect of a race with his two favorite brothers. It had been a long time since the three of them has gotten to spend this kind of time together...it really was lifting the gloomy haze off of his day. Even Jermaine was smiling.

"Alright, you guys ready...to lose?" Finn mimics Jake's stretches, readying himself, holding back a conspiratorial grin. "Three...twooooo......ooooooooone..."

He milks the long pause, crouching lower... "GO!"

The word was barely finished and he was off running, tilting into a sprint, kicking up sand and not even looking back.

[doooooog]

The brightness in Finn's voice was enough to make Jake feel like he'd already won. Still, paws curling at the sand in anticipation, he was determined to give Finn a run for his money. Or maybe... Should he let him win? Was that demeaning, even if the guy really needed one? Finn was pretty fast, maybe he shouldn't overthink it--

Jermaine collides headlong with his middle, cutting that line of inquiry in half.

"Oof--HEY!" Jake cries, stretching haphazardly between the gaps in Jermaine's tight grip, wriggling like a beached fish. The two dogs rolled head over heels, sand ground into their coats as they both howled with laughter. "Lemme go, asshole!"

Jermaine won the pin, grinding Jake's face in the sand. Jake stretched his mouth to the side of his head, sprouting two hands to cup either side of it. "Collusion! Ref!"

"Here's your yellowcard, ya crybaby." Jermaine snorted, reveling in his triumph one moment longer before looking up towards their 'finish line,' expecting to see Finn's own celebration. Instead, his blood runs cold.

Jermaine looses his grip on Jake, jumping to his feet. Confused, Jake finally lifted his face from the sand, feeling his own heart grip in a vice as it had done who knows how many times before.

The sand golem was larger than life, rising up out of the shallow surf to a height of several stories at least. Its impossibly heavy, dripping fist was raised above his head, poised to land directly where Finn stood at the water's edge.

Both older brothers shouted with one voice, a perfect blend of panic, warning, and encouragement: "Finn!"

[heroooic]

The sand golem rose up so quickly from the sand that, for a moment Finn didn’t understand what was happening. One minute there was sun, and sea, and the next, something was casting a dark shadow, blocking out both from his line of sight.

“Wha…” Finn cranes his neck, looking up as he hears his brothers shouting his name from the far end of the beach. There was no window to respond any more than that, the creature’s huge fist raised high in a shower of sand and salt water. Finn jumps back as it comes down, slamming into the sand, narrowly missing but sending him tumbling backward.

“Whoa-!”

[doooooog]

Within the space of a second, Jake was there. His body wrapped tight around the golem's fist, winding up his arm. With a clenching squeeze, Jake's torso sunk into the arm along the carve line of his torso.

"Ngh--I got him, buddy!" Despite straining from effort, there's a practiced ease to Jake's voice. "This guy's not so tough!"

Racing down the beach at a much slower (but no less dogged) pace was Jermaine, making a b-line for Finn. Halfway there and he was already cramping, subconscious screaming for him for daring to leave his easel.

"I'm--" Wheeze. "I'm here too--"

With another clench from Jake, the arm crumbles completely. Waterlogged sand plops into the sea and onto the beach with surprising heft, a particularly large piece rocketing towards the ill-fated spot Jermaine decided to catch his breath.

[heroooic]

Finn spits out a mouthful of sand, pushing himself up to his feet. It was always a relief to see that Jake was handling things, for even just a moment while he collected himself. It wasn’t even something he thought about, relying on it on a deeply unconscious level.

“Jermaine, watch out!” Scrambling across the sand in a run, Finn jumps, wrapping an arm around Jermaine and heaving him out of the path of the largest falling sand chunk. They both stumble, gracelessly falling backward, Finn still holding tightly to his brother. Smaller hunks of sand shower around them.

“You gotta be careful, bro, these sand golems aren’t messing around,” Finn’s tone was casual to a degree that he could have been talking about the weather. And it might as well be, for how often they encountered this sort of thing…even Jermaine would be aware of that, even if the realities of actually fighting those monsters in direct combat on the day to day wasn’t really his idea of a fun afternoon.

[doooooog]

Choking, first from Finn's grip and then from the sand, Jermaine can barely get his mouth around his words between coughs.

"You--" Hack. "You think I don't--" Cough cough. "--know that!?"

He ends on a frustrated shout, fueled half by his inability to speak and the unintended (but stinging) condescension. Golems were demon magic, and of particular interest to Joshua once upon a time. Jermaine could still hear his lectures -- both in person and prerecorded -- on various strategies to capture, contain, and dispatch.

"Uh, I think maybe I lied a second ago!" Jake shouts, sounding distant. "This guy might be a little touuu--blech!"

At the sound of Jake's voice, Jermaine looked up and felt that same tensing sensation from before.

Mere moments ago the shoreline was practically lapping at their feet. Now, it was yards away, water filling an unseen void centralized at the monster's feet. High above, the arm Jake destroyed was slowly reconstituting itself. The sand didn't discriminate from the open air and Jake's body, encasing him in the wet slop as he struggled to stretch his way out of the dense material.

"Little help--!" Jake gasps, barely audible above the creature's roar, before his head dipped down below the wet sand.

[heroooic]

“Hold on, Jake, I’m coming!”

Freeing Jermaine from his grip, Finn is up and pulling out the sword from where it was holstered on his backpack. An unremarkable, kind of dinged up steel sword from their collection. It wasn’t anything special (a far cry from the almost preternatural edge of the Finn Sword, for example) but it did the job. Jermaine had had a few reservations about whether they sixteen year old brother really needed to bring a sword to the beach, but their parents had raised them to never be underprepared and the matter was settled quickly.

The beach beneath the golem was becoming a swampy mess, the water-logged sand sucking at Finn’s feet as he trudged through it. He could hear Jake’s muffled shouts from above, and quickly clambering up the monster’s leg. Shifting, living sand made for difficult climbing and Finn almost fell several times before getting to the monster’s back. Holding on as well as he can, he raises the sword, hacking at the golem’s shoulder with all of his might. It took four or five swings before the still-forming arm was severed, instantly deconstituting once again.

“Jake?” His shouts of concern are mostly swallowed by the golem’s furious roar while Finn clings to it, looking around frantically for signs of his brother. “Jake, you okay!?”

[doooooog]

The instant Finn begin tearing across the beach towards the golem, Jermaine began shouting. And through it all -- the climbing, the hacking -- Jermaine never stopped shouting.

"Finn, stop! He's basically quicksand, what are you doing! You're going to get stuck!"

Jake was completely gone now. The pit of sand the golem was pulling from grew deeper, drawing the ocean back even moreso. Finn barely had to hold on anymore, heavy wet sand anchoring him to his back and making it difficult to move at all.

Jermaine balled up his fists and ran to the water's edge, dodging falling sand as he did. With the force of all his frustration and fear, he cupped his hands and let loose a voice he didn't know he had.

"Listen to me! All golems have demonic artifacts for hearts! You stab its core, it dies!" As he shouted, he began drawing out some runes with his foot. "This invocation will weaken him so your sword can reach through to his heart, you gotta stab him when I tell you!"

[heroooic]

“Oh, gross!” Jermaine could hear Finn yell, more offended than he was frightened by the sand that was pulling in his arm and both legs with a hideous squelching sound. But the words finally got through now that he was more or less pinned. He held his free arm aloft, keeping his sword clear of the sand.

His heart was racing from the exertion, looking over at Jermaine and nodding.

“Okay, okay, just tell me when! I’m ready!”

[doooooog]

The sound of acknowledgement was nice, but Jermaine felt far from relieved. His mind couldn't stop whirling, imagining all the ways this could go terribly wrong. Finn could miss the heart completely and be consumed sword first, Finn could stab through Jake in the process, all three of them could get crushed by falling sand and die or drown or--

"Epsilon, eucrates, dernesto..." He breathed, willing himself to focus as he drew out the final runes in the incantation. The moment he finished, the sand runes begin to glow with white hot light. Just as instantaneously, the golem roared in anguish. Sand sloughed off him like shed skin, splashing into the sea all around them. To Jermaine's horror, the sea reacted and pushed back towards him and his runes like an accelerated tide.

"Now, Finn!" He shouts, desperate, watching the water as it approached. They were only moments away from washing out his invocation. "The heart, stab it now!"

[heroooic]

Finn could see it. He could almost feel it. The strange, unnatural glow just below a shifting curtain of sand. The demonic artifact that was the creature’s heart, pulsating with magic, constricted and made vulnerable by whatever invocation Jermaine has scrawled in the sand.

At his shout, Finn raised the sword high above his head, gritting his teeth in determination. He just had to bring it down. Like he’d done a hundred, other times. Just, stab it in the heart. Slay it. Kill it.

Like you killed me?

Finn swallowed, body tensing. His arm was starting to ache, the hilt unsteady in his sweating hand. He didn’t have time for imagined voices, Jake needed him. He just needed to destroy this one monster, a task that was a natural as breathing.

Was that what I was to you too? A monster?

Finn could feel his grip slipping, a terrible tight feeling in his chest. He couldn’t make his arm move. He could move anything. It felt like he was…trapped in quicksand.

“No, I…”

[doooooog]

The water lapped at the runes while Jermaine shouted up at Finn, unable to parse what he was looking at at first. Had Finn not heard him?

"Now, Finn! We're running out of time!"

The shout had no effect. Finn remain still, sword arm poised to strike... then flagging. Jermaine could feel his own heart thumping in his throat, hands shaking. No, no, no...

"Finn!" He cried, less a prompt or instruction and more a wail. Something plaintive and scared. "Jake!"

What came next was an unearthly crack, echoing across the beach just as the ocean washed out Jermaine's runes. Sand exploded outwards, golem losing all organized form in the space of an instant. For that one still moment, all three brothers seemed to float in stasis. Jermaine, watching a huge wave crest high above where he stood. Finn, in mid air with sword still raised. Jake, twisted into an unrecognizable mass, holding a cracked sand pail.

Time restarts with three splashes -- Finn and Jake crashing into the sea, and the wave swell crashing onto Jermaine.

[heroooic]

The suddenness of all of it was numbing. He was stuck (inside and outside), and then he was free…no, he was falling. Crashing into the water with a shock that snapped him out of his own frozen state. He

He takes a gulp of air, half of it seawater, reaching out blindly at the wet, lumpy yellow form in front of him. Coughing and choking out, “Jake?”

[doooooog]

"I gotcha buddy," Jake gasps, voice coming from somewhere close by. Stretched yellow arms loop around Finn's middle, anchoring them together as the artificial tide took them in.

All three brothers washed up on shore together, tethered to Jake. Jermaine was face down, legs tangled with kelp. Sandpaper burns left angry red marks all over both Finn and Jake, scratching away fur and skin. Jermaine was the first to wobble up, only to immediately vomit a mix of seawater and that morning's breakfast.

[heroooic]

Finn turns onto his side, coughing up the last bit of seawater from his lungs, and taking a few deep breaths. Rolling onto his back, he lay blinking up at the clear blue sky while Jermaine retched, and Jake said something he didn’t hear. Everything felt so far away and strange. His chest ached and his mouth tasted like salt. His sword was still, miraculously, held tight in his left hand. He relaxes his grip, letting it roll to the sand silently.

Maybe nobody noticed that he’d totally choked.

[doooooog]

"--whatever you did loosened him up enough so I could stretch again, so I just, y'know. Crrk, broken bucket."

"Don't let it touch the sand, ya dingus! Just give it to me."

"This is how you talk to the guy who just totally saved the day? Your own bro-bro? I could've totally died up there."

"Like I'd be so lucky..."

The disembodied conversation happening out of Finn's eyeline goes silent for a moment.

"...That wasn't funny, I didn't mean it--"

"Don't worry, I know. I heard your big baby crying all the way from inside that monster. Jaaaaaake."

"Oh, shaddap--"

"Jaaaake, don't die, you're so much cooler than the rest of us, how're we gonna carry onnnnn!"

"I'm gonna go get a bag for this demonic item. And then maybe throw up again."

"Heehee, more like cry again."

"Whatever!" Jermaine's voice was further away now. There was still a tremor in it, same with Jake. The joking between them colored with the stress and tension of any near death experience, and then colored again with a love only brothers could share. A love only brothers could lose, too.

Finn feels a gentle fist cuff his shoulder.

"You alright, bro?"

[heroooic]

Their bickering and needling was a background sound that was as familiar and expected as the sound the waves made on the shore. It was almost comforting in its own way…they were both alive and well if they were giving each other grief. A noisy dog household had always been a good one. Better than when things were quiet.

But they almost weren’t alive, Finn thinks absently to himself. They could have died because I hesitated.

Jake’s cuff on his shoulder stops that train of thought abruptly.

“Sure, I’m okay, man,” He props himself up on his elbows. He looks in Jermaine’s direction. “Is he gonna be okay? He sounded pretty scared.”

[doooooog]

Jake looks worn out, body a little squishier to the touch than normal. Scratched patches of bald dog skin peppered his torso, stinging like nettles as he gestured.

"Him? Oh yeah, he'll be okay. We just gotta be there for him." Jake waves a hand at the ocean, indicating the remains of the fight they so narrowly won. "He's not used to the whole jaws of death sitch like you n' me."

[heroooic]

“No kidding,” he dusts some sand off his hat. Despite the cascade, he could feel there was at least three times as much inside the hat. “Guess he just needs some of that outdoor experience, like we’ve got.”

Finn smiles a little thinly. Usually a good monster fight had him laughing and grinning, the whole “jaws of death” situation was like candy to him. A different time this might have been the perfect cherry on an otherwise boring, regular trip to the beach.

But Finn didn’t seem energized. He looked scuffed up and wet, and tired. Small.

“You really saved our butts back there…”

[doooooog]

The little performance earns an audience, Jake watching Finn go through the motions expertly. He even smiles at all the right spots. It makes Jake's heart ache in a new and different way from the screams of exertion his body was punishing him for.

"Hey..." Jake catches Finn's gesturing hand by the wrist, holding it with the sort of carefree expectation that came with being family. "What's going on, what's with the everything's gravy biz?"

"What's this about gravy?" Jermaine asks, voice still undeniably rattled as he approaches them. He reads the writing on the wall quickly, sinking down on Finn's other side.

[heroooic]

Finn's mouth presses into a thin line, feeling suddenly cornered.

"What?" He glances at both of them in turn. "Everything is gravy! We beat the cheese out of that golem!"

Finn was trying very hard to put on a bravado act, but the uncertain tremor to his voice betrayed him. He could feel the tightness in his chest again, the sting behind his eyes.

[doooooog]

Ever since they were small, Jake was always the first one to sense when Finn was in trouble or needed help -- even gross help, like a diaper change or teething ring. He was even quicker than their parents, able to read the inscrutable little baby faces on the edge of tears as if they were fully formed words. There were nights when Margaret woke to check on the human babe, only to find a 5-year old Jake cradling him in her big chair and chatting him through to the other side of a nightmare.

It was remarkable, honestly. Even more remarkable was how it never went away, even as Finn grew (so, so slowly) and those needs became more and more complicated. Their father like to say that they were cut from the same cloth, their mother thought maybe they'd known each other in another life. Jermaine used to say it was just luck, even if only to himself.

The few times he tried to sneak into Finn's room and mimic those encounters universally ended in disaster -- tantrums, scolding from his parents, fat human baby tears. Whatever instincts Jake seemed to have inherently, Jermaine never got them. So while Jake stays silent and squeezes the hand he'd taken, already fully anticipating what was coming, Jermaine barrels forward blindly.

"Uh, barely!" He reminds them both, jutting a hand out towards the ocean where the golem once stood. "Please tell me that's not how close it is every time y'all fight a beastie, 'cuz I'm never gonna sleep again. Like, Finn, what happened man!? If Jake hadn't heard me through all-a that sand, both of you would've been toast!"

[heroooic]

The words hit Finn hard, making real so many of the things he'd been thinking. He shrinks into himself, looking deflated.

"I don't know what happened!" He hunches so he can hide his face, and the big, frustrated tears welling up in his eyes. He still held Jake's hand tightly, even if he wondered if that meant he was being a baby too. He loved his brothers more than anything, and Jake in particular had never made him feel bad about needing him, but...he was so aware sometimes of how much faster they had grown up. Maybe things would be different if he'd grown up faster too.

He sniffles wetly, voice muffled, "I'm sorry guys. I messed up..."

He used to be so good at saving people...but lately it felt like all he could do was hurt them.

[doooooog]

Both dogs exchanged a look at Finn's outburst, eyes meeting overtop their little brother's folded up body. An entire conversation passed wordlessly between them in the space of a moment; Jermaine's bafflement and immediate guilt at Finn's reaction, Jake's mixture of irritation and sympathy. Jermaine could never see the signs as clearly as he could, Jake didn't blame him for that. Besides, he truly believed this breakdown was coming no matter what, but also... Well, he wished Jermaine had said it differently, that's all.

"You didn't mess up, it was loud as heck and like, impossible to navigate up there." Jake rubs his back, small circles. "Coulda happened to anyone."