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It’s after about the third time Grian interrupts Mumbo in the middle of base-building to do something silly, like throw him golden carrots, that Mumbo begins to think that perhaps, maybe, possibly, something is a bit wrong?
It’s not that he minds the golden carrots, or the free deepslate to make up for “accidentally creepering your base and not putting it together correctly” (which, really, he doesn’t need deepslate, but Grian had flown off before Mumbo could mention that), or the quiet terraforming help that Grian had fled from the moment Mumbo pointed it out.
It’s just… well it’s a bit odd, isn’t it? Grian isn’t normally helpful! Wait, no, that sounds terrible. Grian can be helpful plenty! It’s just that Grian is also, you know, Grian. He’s loud, and he causes problems as a form of affection, and he doesn’t fly away whenever Mumbo looks him in the eyes for too long.
…that kind of hurts, actually, now that he thinks about it. If Mumbo didn’t know Grian was a master of avoiding problems - but that suggests that Mumbo is one of Grian’s problems! And, you know, why?
He. He did have one of Grian’s beacons. But that didn’t explain the gifts.
Maybe it’s some strange new bird instinct? Despite the years of knowing each other, new things crop up all the time. And Mumbo has a ceiling to work on (after Grian went and did the night sky that Mumbo had been originally planning to do, too). So maybe whatever’s wrong will… go away on it’s own? It is Grian. He’s really proactive, typically. Far more proactive than Mumbo. It’s probably fine, he thinks, and.
Two days more of being followed from a distance by his best friend and Mumbo is pretty sure this isn’t going away. Grian keeps on killing mobs for him, which is great, because despite his proficiency end crystals are expensive and lava buckets are unwieldy, but it feels rather like Grian is trying to do… something. Which would be great, but. Grian’s also throwing golden carrots at him all the time. And bottles of enchanting. And.
And it’s confusing. And he won’t talk to Mumbo. And Mumbo doesn’t know what exactly is happening, but it’s starting to get annoying. Grian’s not even working on his own base properly! He keeps on stalking Mumbo! And Mumbo’s been friends with Grian for long enough to put up with a lot but it’s making Mumbo twitchy! So, okay, maybe when Grian has just. Shoved several redstone blocks at Mumbo, Mumbo finally snaps a little bit.
“Can you stop following me around and -”
“Oh, right, of course. You wouldn’t want me here. My bad, I’ll just go… work on the back of the base,” Grian says, before Mumbo can finish, and then he’s gone.
Mumbo stares at where he was.
…well now he knows he’s lying. Work on the back of the base? Since when would Grian do that? No, there’s… there’s something wrong, Mumbo finally decides, and he sighs and shoves the redstone blocks in the same chest he’s been putting all of Grian’s random gifts in and goes to find him.
It takes a few tries. Grian, when he doesn’t want to be found, is surprisingly good at it, especially considering that Grian normally wants everyone to find him all the time. He’s hiding in one of his alley’s builds, detailing an interior that really doesn’t need to be done. (And oh, Mumbo knew he was upset before, but Grian willingly doing interiors that no one would look at? He’s trying to distract himself.) Mumbo watches for a bit. Gosh, but Grian knows how to build an interior. Grian knows so many things Mumbo doesn’t, actually, and sometimes it’s a little intimidating, and Mumbo hopes he didn’t read Grian’s kind of upset wrong, and Grian’s not mad at him. He doesn’t think he is, though. He thinks…
“Mumbo? When did you get there?” asks Grian.
“I followed you.” Mumbo looks at Grian, he thinks about the gifts, and he looks at the way Grian keeps on looking at the window. Grian’s wings pull tighter against his sides, which is basically the same thing as him emoting with them when he’s outside, in Mumbo’s experience.
“I’m sorry,” Grian says.
“What for?” Mumbo asks. (He’s being really quite patient, actually.)
“You - you know exactly what for! For killing you! For good!”
Mumbo blinks. “…you know that was just a game, right? I mean, I was a bit upset and all, but -”
Grian’s expression is. Oh. Oh. Mumbo’s figured out what this is about.
“You know I won’t stop being friends with you, right? That would just be silly. You don’t need to keep apologizing to me. If that were enough to make us stop being friends, why, I think we would have by now, don’t you think?”
Grian stares at Mumbo for a moment like he’s running around in his underwear or something equally silly and Mumbo, for a moment, considers checking. He’s not doing anything all that shocking, right? Grian was acting strange, so Mumbo came to see why Grian was acting strange, and pointed out that it was strange. That’s something Mumbo does all the time, really.
“So we can still be friends?” Grian says, seriously, and Mumbo laughs.
“Well, now, when you put it that way I’m worried. You don’t have something planned, do you?” he says, thinking of Grian knocking cobblestone out from under him. (But Grian’s friendship has always been like that. He pokes, and pokes, and then at some point he gets satisfied with knowing he knows your limits, and then he pokes again. It’s quite a lot to put up with, but when Grian smiles like that…)
“…I mean,” Grian says, shakily, “you never know with me, now do you? I could be pranking you right now.”
Mumbo magnanimously doesn’t point out that, from the way Grian is trembling and the streaks on his cheeks, he rather doubts Grian’s been in a state lately to plan anything. It hits Mumbo all at once that Grian is rather upset about this whole thing, regardless of how much fun (or how somewhat frightening) it had been at the time, and, hm.
…Mumbo had never thought of his friend as fragile before, but there’s something in Grian’s expression that is.
“I’ll just have to watch out,” Mumbo says instead of that. “I never know when your dastardly schemes may strike.”
Grian laughs. “My first scheme is getting those beacon blocks back.”
“Absolutely not.”
Okay, Mumbo thinks. They’re okay. They’re okay. They’re okay. He doesn’t have to worry about why Grian might be stalking or avoiding him anymore, they’re okay. That’s what this means. They’re gonna be okay. (That night, Mumbo sorts through the chest of junk Grian had gifted him and plans to find the most annoying way he can think of to gift it back, though. Grian does deserve it a little.)