Chapter Text
Mumbo doesn’t let go of Grian for the next few hours after they reunite. Sometimes it’s a hand over his shoulder, or a hug, or the mustached man will offer his hand out hesitantly, and Grian will take it gratefully, squeezing their joint hands gently.
Occasionally, it is nothing more than their sides being pressed together, Mumbo moving his hands around as he talks.
It is - it’s a lot . The gentle reminder that he is home is like water rippling out, leaving Grian wanting to shiver more often than not. He’s too used to purposeful, deliberate and cautious touches - things that he could have stepped away from, and that would have broken away as easily as anything.
Which - it’s not to say that Mumbo isn’t letting him go. But a hand held tightly, a shoulder bumping against his own, a guiding hand in the small of his back - it’s weird and it makes the skin around the areas prickle. ( Is this normal for them, he asks himself, and the answer is a blankness that leaves his stomach dropping, a little.)
But… the contact also settles a part of Grian’s mind, and he can tell that it is what Mumbo needs as well. So, he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t ask aloud.
And his best friend pulls him along, shows him the builds Grian never got to see in his secluded stay on the server.
There is a surprising lack of Players around, and he has an inkling that there’s a coordinated effort going on to give them space. (It’s practically confirmed when, while Mumbo shows off a store filled with bizarre, tall woolen creatures - Llamas, Mumbo had called them - Grian spies Ren pushing along a creeper hybrid, a person with green skin - barring a glimmer of silver plating on one side of his face - and a labcoat that’s hanging open.
Ren looks over, and when he sees Grian standing there, his face breaks into a dopey grin and he offers him a wave with one hand - before pulling the creeper hybrid along into a shop dotted into the cave, something with colorful banners and the sound of pistons firing.
Grian snorts and turns his attention back to the tour. It’s fascinating, really, the builds that have been made in this world - it reminds him a little of what he can recall of EVO, in an aching way, but the average scale is even larger and more detailed.
The shopping area is not something scattered and self-defined, but a cave system that is lush and has a large centerpiece in the middle, reminiscent of a tree stump - though it is far larger than anything naturally grown.
“Did Scar build this?” Grian asks, as he’s brought along a pathway - and Mumbo’s step stutters for a moment, as he glances back at him.
“Part of it,” he says after a moment. “Most, really - but it’s a community project. Like,” he leans over the wooden railing, and points out a section in the cave where water falls freely. “Cub built that, if I recall, and it was mostly collaboration between the two - but most of the shops are owned by different hermits. That one-”
Grian nods as Mumbo moves along, gently pulling at his hand, and feels like he’s been thrown in the deep end of whatever this is. (He had seen how many hermits there were, earlier, but now… Now he has to conceptualize all those Players building things that are quite frankly, a bit insane. He can barely recall the builds he’s seen before, on different worlds, but - he still thinks this is frankly a lot .)
Their third hour together they finally make it out of the community center, walking through a piston door that opens up to a community portal stretching far above their heads, shining an ominous purple. It’s been designed with enough obsidian to make his head spin, nether blocks spilling out like tentacles. (And that should feel familiar, but when Grian tries to chase after the thought, it leaves his grasp.)
The sun is setting, sky turning to dusk. Mumbo pulls gently at his hand, and says, “Hey, can you stay the night?”
There’s something more to the words, something - he doesn’t know, really. Mumbo says it softly, quietly like he is afraid of Grian refusing.
However, there is no other conceivable answer than, “Yes.”
Mumbo grins and with it, Grian can see that same smile, overlapped time and time again in his brain - irritatingly, nothing that stands out, that he can pull apart, just a sense of familiarity so sickeningly sweet that it makes his lungs feel tight.
“Okay, good, good. Let’s uh -” Mumbo pauses for a moment, his expression pensive. “We should uh, probably get going?” His voice lilts up. “I don’t know if you’d rather fly, or take a boat - I - can you fly? I hope that wasn’t just terribly insensitive -”
The lift of his lips is almost instinctual. Something fond.
“I can fly, Mumbo. Er - maybe not the best at it in the overworld, mind you, I was taught to do so in the Watcher’s dimension, and the gravity is a bit different there - but I’d love to fly with you.” And that is the truth, throughout the entirety of Grian’s mind - both Watcher instincts and he, himself, singing at the mere idea. To fly with anyone sounds amazing. To fly with Mumbo?
It would be a dream.
Mumbo returns the smile, a grin that lifts his mustache and meets his eyes, and pulls his hand away from their hold, moving to dig through his inventory. “I think I have some rockets, here - aha!” He pulls out a handful of fireworks, like False had fired two months ago, and hands some of them to Grian.
He looks down at them a little daftly. “Are we having a celebration?” he asks uncertainly, and Mumbo laughs. It’s a good sound, though it would be better if he understood…
“I mean, if you'd be up for it! That might be a great way to introduce you to the others.”
A pause.
“Oh,” Mumbo says softly, and then with much more clarity, “Oh, oh! Right, I’m sorry I - how do you usually take off?”
Grian blinks, stretches his wings out at the thought. “I usually just, you know, jump and flap? Or sometimes I perch up on something and jump off there, but… that wasn't always feasible.”
Watcher towers were often made of slippery materials like glass so that everything around them could be seen at once. Their structures themselves were made of rather rich materials, made to show off opulence and power.
The glass was awful to perch on, barely a grip - and the first time they had seen him get on top of a building made of diamond and obsidian (the last time, for they See All) ended… unfavorably.
Grian never disrespected their builds after that, that much is for certain.
It takes him a moment to realize Mumbo had been talking, during that, and he tunes in, a jitter rolling down from his head to the tips of his wings.
“-So Elytra are these items that we get from the End, they were added in the -”
“One-point-nine update,” Grian finishes, and Mumbo jolts.
“Right, right!” One of his hands twists with the bottom of his red tie absently. “Sorry, did you learn about that in the, uh -”
“No,” Grian says. “Iskall uh - told me just a bit about them, when we met.”
“You know Iskall?” Mumbo asks, his eyes lighting up and a grin spreading onto his face. “Oh lovely, they’re a good friend of mine - but before I get sidetracked, rockets .” He says the word with emphasis. “They’re fireworks, without any of the fancy explosions, and more gunpowder. People with Elytra use them to gain altitude and take off, and I’m not sure if you need them? I mean, evidently not since you don't seem to know about them, but-”
“I’d love to try,” Grian placates. “But maybe not today?”
“Right! Right, of course - then uh,” Mumbo looks from his rockets, to Grian. “I’ll meet you in the skies?”
Oh, and isn't that a promise. Grian nods sharply, his wings bristling in anticipation, and watches as Mumbo jumps a bit, his elytra extended - and falls back onto flat ground as the rocket goes off too late.
“Oh, come on,” he says, and tries again - this time, the rocket fires with a vhee , and after an instant Mumbo is soaring up. His elytra are a dark purple, when they extend, something shimmering, laden with enchantments that he could identify if he just had a glimpse at the code -
Grian takes a running start, wingbeats drowning out the trail of that thought, and he leaps into the air.
Flying is good on a typical day. The stretch of muscle and sinew, stretching his wings out as far as they can go and feeling the gust of wind bluster through his wings and lungs together as one, feeling like he could take on the world as it shrinks below him.
But now, the wind brushes through his hair, whips around his ears - and when he gains altitude, there’s a vhee beside him, and when he turns, he finds Mumbo beside him, harness tight around his suit jacket and purple wings outstretched - and Grian lets out a laugh as he dives around the man, something hoarse and rusted and alive, and the man turns to him with bright eyes and an expression that seems warm and happy.
(His chest feels light, and he thinks it must be the altitude.)
“Come on!” Mumbo shouts over the wind, and Grian can barely hear him but he follows anyways, wings beating upwards as the other looses a rocket.
This time he can see it, the sparking in his hand as a minor explosion propells him forward, and it looks stupidly dangerous.
It looks like fun .
Grian chases after.
They pass over terraformed lands, pathways stretching over grassy plains like rivers, beautifully detailed things that trace along contour lines elegantly, with wooden fences dotting the pathway and rock formations that can’t be naturally occurring. There’s builds below them, houses and sculptures and buildings that Grian can’t even put a name to - but there’s one connecting feature.
They’re all impressive , which is… a shock, really, but even the things they fly over that seem wholly nonsensical are well done. (It’s not the most cohesive thing, with all the variety, but what it misses in cohesion, it gains in sheer awe factor.)
Grian follows Mumbo closely, delighting in every time their air currents cross, when he can smell the gunpowder in the air and feel the wind whipping in his face as the other man rockets upward to keep his pace. Before long, they reach the shore line, and Mumbo angles a bit to the right, over the ocean. The air is cooler here, salt tinging the breeze and humidity thick enough to make his sweater cling to his skin, slightly, as his wings beat once again.
Mumbo shouts something in the air after a few minutes, and Grian can’t hear him, but the man’s elytra angles downwards, and he is only a few moments behind him.
As they slowly descend, Grian can see it better - a thing in the ocean that really, he should have seen coming, but his eyes were focused upwards and attention elsewhere.
The base, it seems, is a symmetrical submerged thing, aqua in color and abstract in its design. It’s massive - the scale similar enough to the giant builds that Hermitcraft seems fond of, but that seems odd to him, even if Grian cannot remember how. (Not foreign to him, no, but… weird .)
When they land on the curving pathway that lines a part of the base, far under the waterline yet seemingly untouched - like it had been placed there by code, and hasn’t yet remembered that gravity is a thing- Mumbo gestures widely. “This is it,” he says, and his voice is tinged with pride. “The four squares to each side are farms - we can tour them later, if you’d like!”
Grian’s eyes widen, and he glances around. Each section does have something sticking out of it, but the walls around them are thick enough that its hard to make out what precisely lies behind them.
He’s seen records of automatic farms, in the sections of the Watcher’s archives he was allowed into ( rows A9 through C7, with further access in H89-N9 when supervised ) and he can barely recall a towering cylinder in the ocean above a white castle, something whose memory is outlined only in a dull fear, and the hint of a headache. He thinks it was a farm of some kind, though. If he had seen one other than that, it is lost to entropy - and god does he want to investigate. To learn, see what he is missing out on.
(Is that Watcher of him, to want to know more and more? Or is it Player of him, to have that curiosity?)
“What types?” he asks Mumbo instead of pondering, and his friend squints at him a little funnily, before turning so that they face the same direction.
“Let’s see- Uh, that one is a sugarcane farm, along with a mob farm in the middle,” he points to a diamond-shaped building in the distance, built upon the water. The build has no walls, all sides left to the elements except for an elegant teal frame. In the middle is a tall, dark building, suspended above — and its almost comb shaped, with little platforms for things to spawn on it.
“Fascinating,” Grian says, eyes a little wide, and Mumbo pauses again.
“I suppose it is,” Mumbo agrees, and the tone he says it in is a little odd. “Come on, let’s see the main bit, yeah?” he hops down from the path- his elytra opening a bit late, making his descent into the submerged square clumsy. Grian doesn’t fare much better, but he manages to land on his feet, at least.
The center of the geometric base is elegant, with the same blue pallet that the rest of it carries. There’s a wall in the middle, shaped like a plus sign, and it casts a light shadow on the ground.
“We can take the tour, later,” he offers, and Grian dips his head thankfully.
Mumbo leads them to one wall of the water, and his elytra spread slightly.
“So,” he says, and gestures one hand out towards the wall of water. “This is probably the closest I have to a living area?”
Grian scrutinizes the area he’s pointing to. It takes him a moment to comprehend it - a room behind the falling water, nearly camouflaged next to the steady blue of the surrounding ocean.
“We have to fly up,” Mumbo says, almost apologetically, and Grian nods - shaking out his feathers in preparation.
Mumbo rockets in first, and Grian takes a few steps backwards, before doing his best to beat his wings up into the entrance.
It’s… a little clumsy, with nothing to leap off of, and such a constricting area to try and gain altitude, but he eventually manages - crashing through the waterfall a bit inelegantly.
The water itself is thin, really, and he’s barely drenched as he crashes through the waterfall. Mumbo is there to help him up, a hand on his shoulder and another offered out - and Grian takes them easily, even as the contact leaves him feeling a little off-kilter.
“Sorry,” Mumbo is saying, and he wipes down Grian’s sleeve absently - before his movement stutters, and he takes a step back, hands coming up in front of him and his fingertips tapping together. “I’ve gotten used to having to fly through, and I didn’t really think of adding a way to, you know, switch it off.” He looks vaguely embarrassed, cheeks tinged pink.
“It’s fine,” Grian says with a half-smile, even as his wings shake behind him to dislodge any excess water.
Mumbo returns the smile, before stepping beside him and gesturing out to the room. “This is where I sleep, usually,” he says, and it’s said with a light, waiting sort of tone. Like Grian is supposed to pass judgement.
But… He’s coming up blank. It’s a better place than a tree, certainly, a room surrounded by literal walls of chests in a triangular formation, and it is backed by a glass wall that keeps the ocean out. It might be claustrophobic, almost, if it weren’t for the generous space given to the room. (It makes the bed in the middle look small.) “It looks nice,” he says, because it does - the ocean is a lovely blue, and he wonders what it looks like when the sun rises. Pretty, assumedly. As it is now, the blue room is lit only by sea lanterns, giving off a cool light.
“I - suppose it is,” and that’s said with a tone that hints he has made a misstep already, even though Grian doesn’t know the surface they’re dancing upon. “Do you want -” Mumbo cuts himself off, and it makes Grian’s stomach twist uncomfortably. “I have a spare bed, if you’d like,” is the final offer, said too-lightly, and after a moment of silence Grian nods.
“That’d be great,” he says with a smile, and Mumbo returns it - so… maybe he’s projecting onto the man.
“We’ll have a bit of a sleepover,” he says and laughs to himself, turning to dig into a chest.
It feels odd. Grian frowns at Mumbo’s back, but nothing comes to mind on what he could have done wrong - and when the man turns back, hauling a bed out of a chest, the tension seems to pass as easily as Grian moves in to help him place the unwieldy thing smoothly on the ground.
They smooth over sheets, and the bed is a good few feet away from Mumbo’s own, a bit far from the large window. “It gets a bit bright in the morning,” he offers when Grian glances at the area, so close to the wall of chests. “And well, I’m used to it, but-”
“Thank you,” Grian says warmly. (That’s very considerate of him.)
The two spend a bit longer talking. Grian asks questions about Mumbo’s base, and Mumbo answers freely - explaining the mechanics behind some things, how the farms work. They… mostly go over Grian’s head, honestly - he can put an image to the word comparator , but that’s about it.
Mumbo’s voice is nice though, a bit soothing. He talks about RS-NOR latches and how something called a Logic Gate is used, and how he uses them in his base - and.
It’s been a long day. From the tension of if he’d become a Hermit, to finding Mumbo, to walking and learning and trying his best to match Mumbo’s pace, mentally - it’s been a lot .
And his friend’s voice is so soothing, and he’s sitting up on the bed they had placed…
When his eyes dip for what he thinks might be the seventh time, half-lidded even as he clings onto his Home’s voice, Mumbo stops mid-sentence. (And Grian doesn’t know, really, what he stopped in the middle of - but he misses the sound.) Grian forces his eyes open again, only to find the mustachioed man staring at him, mustache quirked up as he smiles something soft. “Tired, mate?” he asks, and Grian frowns at him.
“You have a soothing voice,” he says defensively, “that’s squarely your fault, fella.”
The soft laugh in response is enough to fill the room, making it feel warm. “Totally,” he agrees in a tone that says he doesn’t believe it. “It is definitely my fault that you find redstone talk tiring.”
Grian works his jaw around a yawn. He feels heavy. “So glad you agree,” he says, and there’s a hum in response.
“Lay down,” Mumbo tells him, and scootches back on his own bed, kicking his legs underneath the blankets. (They forgot pajamas, Grian realizes tiredly, but he can’t muster up the energy to care terribly.) “I’ll tell you about how to extend a pulse.”
Grian makes a petulant face, something more free than usual in the dark of night, in the warmth of the air and the soothing atmosphere - but he is tired, and after a moment, he follows the command, pulling up the dark green spare blanket up over his shoulders, and lying on his side so that his wings aren’t squashed.
Mumbo, after another beat, begins to talk again. Something softer, more low, as the moon rises above the water, its image distorted. Grian closes his eyes.
The sounds of the ocean lull him to sleep, quietly bringing half-memories of a base so different, yet familiar, to his mind. One of snow and clay, of bloodshed and the ashen smell of TNT.
And, Mumbo’s voice, something steady and comfortable - well. (He feels safe.)
Grian sleeps better than he has in at least two years.