doooooog | Grass Finn Bullshit

Grass Finn Bullshit

"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."

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Jermaine blinks, craning his neck back to where they were just sitting.

"So you mean, like...?"

“Like we were doing, I guess…” Finn sits back down, trying to replicate their previous success. “Real talk. It likes that.”

Jermaine stares at Finn, ever the task-minded kid, seem to literally try to replicate how he'd been sitting moments prior. It felt... strange. Artificial, somehow.

"... I dunno, man. Doesn't this seem a little weird?" He glances over at the door. "Like, is it listening to us?" Is it gonna tell Jake?

“Dude, it’s reading our minds and building rooms out of our mind gunk ups,” he points to his head while he says it. “Of course it’s listening.”

This all felt obvious to Finn, and there’s a little annoyance in his tone about Jermaine dragging his feet on the matter.

"... Okay, yeah, good point."

Convinced, Jermaine sinks back down on the stones, only sparing a few more passing glances back towards the door. He takes a centering breath, before remembering what exactly Finn had been asking about before the door saved him from an unpleasant conversation. Great.

"I, uh... I guess, what do you wanna know?"

Finn casts him a furtive sidelong glance, a thoughtful look on his face. Truthfully it did feel a skosh manipulative to put Jermaine on the spot with personal questions that he pretty much HAD to answer.

On the other hand, as far as Finn knew, he was about to answer it before they’d been interrupted by the discovery. They were just picking up where they left off.

“I just wanted to know what you and Jake’s big fight was about.” It was cool, Jermaine could ask him a question next and they would be even.

Yep. That's about what I expected.

Jermaine sighs, rubbing his eyes as he works through the involuntary cringe. It's not Finn's fault, Jermaine couldn't really even blame him for taking a little advantage. He knew first hand how much of a pain it could be getting a straight answer out of Jake, and he was kinda no better. Chalk it up to how they were raised.

"A lot of things, Finn." He glances at the door, crestfallen at its soundless, glowless appearance. Guess that would be too easy. "Mostly just... well, y'know, it had been kind of a crazy day. And we had different ideas on how to deal with it." Another look. Nothing. Guess the door wanted specifics. "It being... all the stuff you were going through."

“Oh.” Finn had kind of known - or at least suspected - that possibility. He looks at the door when Jermaine does. Was that a faint glow? Or just his imagination…

“Geez, I didn’t mean to worry you guys…” he scratches his head, looking apologetic. “I know stuff got kinda crazy for awhile but, it’s pretty good now, actually.”

Funny, how it only took that one statement for Jermaine to forget about the door entirely.

"What do you mean, it's all good now?"

“I mean, it’s all good,” Finn shrugs, pointing to his head again. “All that weird guilt mixup in my melon that made it so I couldn’t slay monsters? Taken care of. I figured out how to make it work for me.”

There was a hint of self pride in the statement.

“Also…Fern’s not dead anymore, so. Nothing to feel bad about.” There was less pride in that statement, and more of a flatness. He just thought it would be good for Jermaine to know.

Jermaine stares at him for a long moment. Breathing in, then out.

"The doors not glowing, Finn."

Finn looks at the door, expression falling a little, avoiding Jermaine’s gaze.

Jermaine's face falls too, though it didn't have very far to go.

"Sorry, I'm... not trying to give you a hard time, Finn." He shifts a little, moving to sit next to him. "I'm glad you're feeling better about all that stuff. I guess I'm just..."

He takes a breath.

"Do you wanna know what, exactly, me and Jake were uh... talking about?" He assumes the answer is yes -- at least a door-mandated yes -- and continues without pause. "I was scared you were growing up to be a little... too much like Dad. And I guess I'm still scared of that."

Part of him braces for a Jake-esque outburst, but the rest of him feels strangely at peace. It actually felt good to say. Since he and Jake's fight, Jermaine barely felt right discussing it with Bryce. His boyfriend was a little too eager to start dumping on his family if he gave him an inch.

No outburst comes, just a long, uneasy silence while Finn absorbs what he was saying.

“Too much like Dad?” Finn looks perplexed, an uneasy feeling in his chest, like he was treading into waters a little deeper than he knew how to handle. “We love Dad, why would that be a bad thing? Why would you guys fight about that…”

"We do love Dad!" Jermaine was quick to agree, holding up his hands. Crap. This was heading quickly into dangerous territory. He finds himself hoping Jake will be so grateful to be rescued, he overlooks all the ways in which he's fucking up with their baby brother. "But he was... a really hard guy, that's all. He didn't let anybody in. I just didn't want you to feel like you had to be... okay, all the time."

He tentatively stretches a hand out to clasp Finn's shoulder, "I mean... tricking yourself into being able to fight the way you used to is pretty cool, but. I guess I can't help feeling like it also sort of sucks. Does that make any sense?"

Finn was staring at him like he’d sprouted another head. Or maybe some weirder thing that their brother couldn’t do. He steps back, brushing Jermaine’s hand off his shoulder.

“I…no that doesn’t make sense!” Finn didn’t like this conversation, he didn’t like how it made him feel. The door was starting to glow behind him, but that only made it feel worse. It meant there was truth to what Jermaine was saying. “It doesn’t suck, it…”

He flounders, grasping for the right words and failing to find them. Settling for a bludgeon when he needed a needle.

“You don’t even know what it was like, or what I was going through, how can you say it sucks?”

Jermaine froze, watching the door start to glow with a stark intensity. It silhouetted Finn, wreathing him in a strange golden light that caught him at the edges. It was kinda beautiful, in the way that only an artist might notice. One way to distance himself from the emotional weight of Finn's expression and words.

The thrum of the door's singing grew louder, underscored by Finn's voice raising right alongside it.

Quietly, once Finn finished and the two of them shared a few moments of tense silence: "... The door's open."

Finn’s anger slips, and he turns to look at the door. It was open. His shoulders slump a little. The door was opened, but it didn’t feel very good how’d they’d done it.

“Jermaine, I…” Finn’s mouth presses into a line, looking down. He makes a frustrated sound.

"It's okay," Jermaine starts to put a hand up on his arm, but hesitates. He ghosts it there, a few inches away, not eager to pull it away either. "You feeling better doesn't suck, alright? I'm the one who sucks, for making you feel like it does."

Jermaine wasn't lying, but he was also a little worried about getting through the door before he got too deep into this apology.

"Let's go, okay? Jake needs us." When in Rome, why not do as Romans do. Jermaine thought back to running around dungeons with Jake and his father. "This is just... a dumb mind maze, getting in our heads. We're too smart for that, right?"

“You don’t suck…I guess it’s just. Maybe a little bit of a sensitive subject? For me.” Finn says glumly, in the understatement of the century. He looks up at the opened door once more, smiling a little at Jermaine’s transparent attempt at motivation. Transparent, but effective. “Yeah, we’re too smart for it. Gotta keep our eyes on the prize.”

The prize being Jake. He grabs Jermaine’s hand and pulls him along through the door.

Edited 2022-12-02 07:24 (UTC)

Content to be pulled along (and away from the vibes of the last room), Jermaine was briefly unburdened by fear of what was to come. It couldn't possibly be worse than the Awkward Family Conversations door.

Smooth stone pavers gave way slowly to the familiar wooden floor of--

"Oh no." Jermaine whispers, looking around. They were home. Home-home. It looked the way it did when their parents were alive; which also happened to look an awful lot like when Jermaine kept it. Just, warmer, somehow. Full of the earmarks of a family that lived there, instead of one lonely dog with one lonely chair.

Then again, their parents never had bars on the windows, did they?

"Great. What's this gonna be?" He asks, looking around anxiously. "Are we gonna have to fight our parents as zombies or something?"

Finn was, however, already rooted to the spot, silent.

On the far side of the room, bathed in the warm soft light of the room, their Mom. She looked as real as anything else in this dungeon, and exactly as he remembered her the last time he ever saw her. She was wearing one of her wide brimmed adventuring hats, and carefully packing a number of vials of clear liquid in her well worn bag. She’s taken that bag on countless adventures and explorations, Finn remembered it well.

“Finny, why don’t you hand mommy her neckerchief, sweetie?”

Hearing her voice, even in some fantastical magic-induced illusion made Finn’s heart race, excitement and joy and aching nostalgia flooding in all at once. He might have even responded to that request, if not for the quick thumping of feet from behind him as someone runs past. Him. Only…maybe five years old. How old had he been on this day? He was pretty sure five. Just a puppy.

“Mommy, here!” Baby Finn was holding up for her a crumpled silk neckerchief. Real Finn takes a step back, toward Jermaine. This was too much, he couldn’t do it. Whatever it was, it was too much.

Jermaine's own mind was racing, processing through what he was looking at in fits and starts. Unlike Finn, the scene appeared less like a warm, safe dream made terrible by the knowledge it was about to painfully end. For Jermaine, it appeared spliced with his nightmares.

Dark omens peppered it like grim warnings; bars on the window, an ugly scar Finn had now carved down his baby brother's back in the past. Finn never loved wearing clothes back then, going around shirtless whenever the weather broke 70. Only Jermaine could swear it had to be 90, at least. Had to be. The air felt stifling.

He gropes around for Finn's hand, closing around his robot one accidentally. Jermaine has a flash of random realization when he does -- he really... Never liked touching this hand, did he?

In front of them, the scene plays out.

"There! Now, how does Mommy look?" Margaret finished tying her scarf in expert fashion, setting the knotted end coquettishly off center. "Pretty smart, hm?"

For all her demeanor seems so normal, her usual bright and cheerful self, there was a worry there that seemed all the starker with hindsight. Their father had been missing for weeks. It wasn't unusual for him to be gone long stretches, but he always found a way to get in touch with Mom somehow. Always.

Edited 2022-12-02 12:36 (UTC)

Finn was transfixed, unable to look away from the exchange, gripping tightly to Jermaine’s hand. Listening to his younger self chatter to their mom about how pretty she looked and could he go with her?

He looks around the room, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do. It couldn’t just be stand around and watch…there must be something. A door or a piece of a puzzle to solve.

“Now, now, Mommy’s got to do this one on her own,” he heard her say sweetly. Picking him up and giving him a kiss on the nose. “There will be plenty of adventures for young pups when I come back.”

Now, from his older perspective, blessed with the knowledge of what was to come, Finn could hear the strain in her voice. The worry that she was fostering. He hadn’t seen that at all, back then. It had felt like any other time to him, his parents going off on just another expedition.

His baby self was starting to tearfully protest when he notices the clock. Its face so familiar it almost didn’t strike him as out of place…except he’d never seen that clock here, in their parents’ house. He and Jake had decorated that clock when he was young, quite awhile after their parents deaths. He’d probably been eight or nine (time was so hard to pin down when you were young) and on day two of a miserably persistent rain storm that trapped them inside, that had been driving Finn (and Jake, through him) stir crazy. Jake had suggested a project, said it would help pass the time.

So it shouldn’t be here. He nudges his brother with his elbow, pointing in its direction.

“Jermaine…look. That clock’s from our treehouse. It doesn’t belong here.”

Edited 2022-12-02 19:34 (UTC)

"Now, now, sweetheart." Margaret poked him on the nose, shouldering her crossbow as naturally as she might a handbag. "You be good for your brother."

Jermaine knew which brother was home, just a surely as he could anticipate Finn's response.

"Jakey?"

"Not Jakey, dewdrop, Jermaine is just in his room there. Go ask him to play with you if you get bored, alright? And if you get hungry, be sure to let him know."

Then the protests started, the renewed requests to go with her, the generalized whining that used to drive him up a wall when they all shared a house. Jermaine loved Finn -- he was their little brother, he wasn't legally allowed not to -- but he hadn't always been the most... patient with him, growing up.

Jake was the shining star back then, to just about everyone but especially Finn. Nevermind that he was running with a bunch of delinquents and getting into trouble constantly, even if everyone but Jermaine loved pretending they didn't know about that.

Yeesh, the longer he was here the more his late teens seemed to be creeping up on him. Blech. Not a time he'd ever willingly relive, even if this mind dungeon wasn't giving them a choice.

Wait, had Finn said something?

"Huh?" His reply came out soft and sort of numb, following his finger to the clock. "Oh. Weird. What do we do with it?"

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