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]

"Heh, don't worry, I left you just enough," He smiles, seeing how desperate Jake was for things to be normal. "Try not to clog up the drain like you do at home."

He walks over and sinks into one of the impossibly soft chairs. Picking up a cup of hot liquid and looking at his brothers.

"Tea sounds good, thanks guys."

[doooooog]

"Oh, uh..." Jake laughs, uneasily looking between the bathroom and Jermaine. Something about leaving Jermaine and Finn alone together made him feel a little strange, like he was shirking or something. Then again, he hadn't had any answers for a while. That or he'd made things actively worse.

Maybe removing himself from the equation for a bit really was the best thing he could do for Finn.

"I make no promises!" He jokes, voice cheerful as he stretches up out of the chair towards the bathroom. "Sorry Jermaine, ya snooze ya lose!"

Jermaine leaned over the back of his chair, sharing a brief look with Jake. His brother was hard to read sometimes, but there was a quality in his eyes now that seemed more guilty than anything else.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You smell worse than me anyway."

"Aheh..." Jake trailed off, staring at both of them for a beat longer. It seemed for a moment like he might not go at all, only to close the door at the last moment. The shower spray kicked in a few moments later, blanketing any other sounds from the bathroom in what sounded like heavy rain.

Jermaine settles back in his chair, eyes scanning Finn with mild concern.

"You're looking cozy, Finny. Feeling better?"

[heroooic]

“A lot better, yeah.”

It was mostly true…he did feel better. Clean and warm, and everything that had happened on the beach felt well far away. Finn takes a sip of the tea; it was strong and herby, different than the tea that Jake made at home but still comforting.

He looks around the room, bewildered by the richness of the decor. It was like being in someone’s house. Someone’s big, impossibly lavish house. It felt as alien as some of the stranger kingdoms they’d been to.

“Do you stay in places like this a lot?”

[doooooog]

Jermaine chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. If he'd known Bryce's choice in accommodations would earn so much speculation, he'd have told him to play it a little less opulent.

"Nah, not really... Bryce set this all up. I think he figured it was important and wanted us as comfortable as possible." Setting down his tea, Jermaine sat up a little. "I know it's a little fancy for what you're used to. Just try to think of it as a vacation, okay?"

[heroooic]

"Hey yeah, I mean it's super cool..." Finn sips his tea again, noisily. "I'm just not sure what to do with myself in a place like this. I feel like I'm gonna break a crystal...dolphin....or something."

He pulls his legs up onto the chair, holding the steaming cup close to his chest.

"I thought Bryce was your art dealer, is he like your personal assistant or something?"

[doooooog]

"Um, no." Jermaine takes a deep sip of tea, conveniently ignoring the fact that his cup was certainly empty. "Not really."

He sets the cup down with a sigh, fixing Finn with as brotherly a stare as he could muster. In some ways, he was leapfrogging out of one frying pan and into another. Still, at least the fire wasn't lapping at his own heels this time.

"Do you know why Jake asked me to set all this up, Finn?"

[heroooic]

Finn looks back at him.

“Yeah, bro…we’re closing the loop on dad stuff,” said as casually as if Jermaine had asked him the weather. He taps the cup in his hands anxiously, and it was obvious that he knew there was a little more to it than that. No small part of him was nervous about what exactly Jake had told Jermaine. How much he’d told him. He trusted Jermaine nearly as much as her trusted Jake, but so much in their life was just…hard to accurately convey to someone outside of it.

Not that Jermaine is outside of our life, Finn thinks stubbornly to himself, a visible frown forming on his face.

[doooooog]

Part of Jermaine wishes he could rip Jake out of the shower and shake him a little. He suppose he couldn't fully blame him -- even now, every word to Finn felt terribly loaded. As if one wrong phrase might send him toppling over completely.

"Well, yeah... but not just that, right?" He pauses, setting down his cup. Couldn't go around it, had to go through. "This Fern person. Jake told me he was your friend, right?"

[heroooic]

Finn’s whole body tenses, shoulder’s pulling into a stiff line.

“No, no, no,” He shakes his head, still holding tight to the small china glass with one hand and gesturing to his chest with the other. “Not my friend…me. He was like, literally me.“

[doooooog]

Jermaine looks at him for a long moment, unsure of how to proceed. What would Jake say? He'd probably change the subject, or maybe just never let this subject come up in the first place.

"... Yeah, but he also wasn't you, right? I mean, you two were a little different, weren't you?" Whether or not Finn was willing to admit that, he knew there was no way two Finns would fight each other to the death unless something was very wrong. "You didn't even go by the same name."

[heroooic]

“Yeah but that was just so it wouldn’t be confusing. We couldn’t be Finn and Finn,” he scoffs, looking away. Jermaine wasn’t wrong, but the confrontation of that fact made Finn’s chest feel tight. He felt guilty, overwhelmingly so. But he didn’t know how to put words to exactly why. He swallows, pulling his knees in closer to his chest.

“We weren’t different, we just…had different things.” Finn had their treehouse, their bed and their clothes, everything in the world. BMO and PB and all their friends, and most of all he had Jake.

Fern had…well whatever he had, he didn’t have that. Not the same way.

[doooooog]

The demeanor shift was almost immediate, a strangeness overtaking his little brother the more he poked and prodded at Fern's legacy. Is this what Jake had meant, about how stressed he was even bringing it up? Was that why he seemed to blame himself?

What did Jake call it, asking for a play by play. Cruel? Jermaine's mouth set into a firm line, thoughtful in the worst way.

"Is that why he tried to hurt you? Because you had things he didn't?"

[heroooic]

Finn’s expression twists uncomfortably.

“I don’t think he wanted to hurt me…he had this whole plan to trap me in some dungeon. He wouldn’t go out of his way to do that if he was planning on hurting me.”

There was a strange defensiveness to the explanation. Everything Fern did, Finn framed via what he would do. What he was capable of doing. Fern was a window into something Finn didn’t want to see…what he could be like if he was cornered, and hurting, and lonely.

[doooooog]

It was strange, but Jermaine was sure he could feel his heart beating in his chest. Something about picturing his kid brother navigating all this alone in a field somewhere, completely on his own, scared him as much as the sight of him pinned to that sand golem had.

Finn just still seemed so... young.

"Trap you?" Jermaine hums, discontented by the mental picture. "Why? To achieve what?"

[heroooic]

“To…be Finn, I guess!”

He looked frustrated, but it was an internally directed frustration, not focused on Jermaine, but on his own inability to explain things the way he wanted to. He huffs, standing up, sloshing some of the tea in his cup on the table where he puts it. He needed to move his body. Sitting and talking was making him feel bloated with anxious energy.

“He wanted a turn at being the main Finn. He learned how to look just like me, and I thought it was just a cool trick at first…we pranked Jake a couple times. But I think it just made him want to be Finn more.”

He was pacing now, walking back and forth near the coffee table, rubbing his side and gesturing while he talked.

[doooooog]

The energy of the room seemed to change on a dime; the formerly cozy and quiet Finn now roiling with anxiety. It was almost as if that anxiety took on a physical form, writhing just beneath his little brother's skin. Visible to the naked eye, if only he could manage to slow Finn down long enough to look at him.

"Hey, hey..." Jermaine tried for soothing, but it came out a little anxious in his own right. How did Jake do this? Watching him, it all looked so easy. Was it as simple as saying the right words in the right order, or was there some ineffable secret something that Jake had that he lacked? "Just, sit back down, Finn, you're working yourself up--"

[heroooic]

“No, no, I don’t need to sit down,” Finn snaps at him, still pacing. He was breathing hard, the details of the room meaninglessly fading away while he carved a path back and forth. “Sitting there makes me feel like I’m going crazy.”

Moving didn’t seem like it was lessening that impression. Finn’s neck felt hot and itchy and his palms were sweating. At least the one that could sweat.

“It’s so hot in here…”

[doooooog]

An anxious hum vibrated between Jermaine's grit teeth, standing as well with hands outstretched. It was a sort of stupid gesture in retrospect -- as if he was going to physically hold Finn in one piece? It seemed like something Jake might do, only Jake could probably literally do just that. Jermaine had never felt more like just a dog in his whole life, which was saying something.

"Do--do you want to keep talking?" He asks, genuinely seeming to look to his panicking brother for answers. "Or you could maybe take the pajamas off? I've changed your diaper so no judgments here, y'know?"

He was nervous, which meant talking too much. Maybe if he was more capable of paying attention, he'd notice the ambient shower noise was no longer sounding.

[heroooic]

Finn doesn’t respond, just makes a frustrated noise and keeps pacing.

He hated this room, he hated all this weird stuff and the ugly floral painting on the wall he kept looking at. He felt trapped and cornered and wanted to…to fight. Except apparently he sucked at that now.

And this was the better outcome…he was the lucky version of Finn. It made him want to cry again but he was sick of crying, and especially sick of crying in front of his brothers.

“This is stupid,” he finally shouts, although what isn’t immediately clear. “Why are we even here? I don’t want to talk about this, why would anybody want to talk about this?”

[doooooog]

Cubes of sugar, spring peas, atomic particles... Those were just a few of the things Jermaine felt smaller than in that moment. Finn looked ready to bite or bark or both, panic building up in him in a way that was both achingly familiar and frightening. He was still just a kid. How could a kid have this much pain inside him?

It didn't seem fair. None if it seemed fair.

"We just love you, Finny--"

[heroooic]

Finn turns on Jermiane, anger flashing hot.

"Don't call me "Finny", Jermaine, I'm not a dumb. Baby!"

Turning again, he bangs his knee against the coffee table, sending the tea over with a loud clatter and a startling pain. He grabs his knee, breathing in sharply, fighting back the big baby tears that were incoming.

"Son of a blee-blob-"

[doooooog]

"What the heck...?"

Jake's voice was soft, thought expressed almost subconsciously as stood in the bathroom doorway. He'd heard the raised voices, even if the words themselves were garbled through thick walls and expensive tile, but that did little to prepare him for seeing the confrontation with his own eyes. This had to mark the first time in history Jake finds himself regretting a hot shower.

"What the heck happened?" He says again, louder this time, stepping out from the bathroom threshold. Jermaine looks up at him with an expression Jake could only describe as caught; the guilty, shellshocked face of someone who had thoroughly fucked up.

"I--Finn just banged his knee--" Jermaine starts, rubbing the heel of his palm into his forehead, teeth grit so hard it looked like he might grind them down entirely. "It's my fault, Jake, I screwed up--"

Jake puts an end to that line of conversation with a hand against Jermaine's mouth, blocking his words bodily. There'd be time for that, but now wasn't it. Jermaine effectively bottled, Jake turns his full attention to Finn. The guilt that passes over his own face is brief, but palpable. Never should've left him...

"Jeez, Finn, that doesn't look great." Jake offers, studiously ignoring the fat tears starting down Finn's cheeks. Physical observations were safer than emotional ones, especially when Finn got like this. Jake kneels down in front of him, getting a better look at his knee. He lays a hand alongside it, scrutinizing the already-darkening bruise carefully. "I think you're gonna have to ice that."

[heroooic]

Maybe it was the sudden chemical jolt of pain, or maybe it was his brother's return and immediate focus on Finn's physical condition, but things felt like they almost instantly de-escalated once Jake was back in the room. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, looking at the ugly bruise.

"It doesn't really hurt."

He found himself unconsciously avoiding looking in Jermaine's direction.

[doooooog]

"Heh, okay tough guy." Jake chuckles, rolling Finn's pajama pantleg down back to his ankle. "You're still gonna need to ice it. Pretty sure I saw an ice machine in the lobby."

He pauses, strategically: "Or, it may've been on the second floor? Or the sixth? I dunno bro, you probably oughta do a few laps. This place is pretty fancy, there might be a machine somewhere that's got the real good ice."

Jermaine watches, hand still covering his mouth, baffled. If Finn was hurt why the hell was Jake making him run all over the place to find ice, which he probably didn't even need if he was well enough to do that? Finn wouldn't just listen to that, would he?

[heroooic]

He would.

Happily seizing on the opportunity to get out of the room, and for a task, regardless of how menial.

"Okay, yeah. I'll find it," he exits quickly, looking more than a little embarassed as he dodges both of their gazes.