Chapter Text
Pearl's POV:
Pearl is placing the last of the signs up when Grian materializes behind her with the next Build Swap victim.
Sorry.
Participant.
Next participant.
The prompts aren't even that bad this time. This one wasn't known for building. She and DomRao had gone easy on him.
Sort of.
They'd gone easier on him.
“This is Pearl, you know my sister right?” Grian says, gesturing to her.
“Umm, no. I mean, I don’t believe we’ve met. Um hello. I’m Mumbo. Jumbo. Mumbo Jumbo.”
“I know.” She chuckles. It's sweet that Mumbo Jumbo thinks she doesn’t know who he is.
"I-um-it's nice to meet you!" He stammers out, a nervous laugh bubbling up out of him.
Even after hours of watching his videos in preparation for these Build Swap rounds, he's still taller in person than she expects. He's tall enough that she doesn’t just have to tip her head up to look at him, she actually has to reach up a bit as she goes to shake his hand.
But he doesn’t quite seem to meet her eyes even when he takes her hand, which gives her a fantastic opportunity to really look at him, study him.
He's cuter in person, she decides.
Sure, the mustache is utterly ridiculous, and the suit is a bit much. I mean, god, how does he work in that? But it works in its own awkward, endearing sort of way. It's sweet. He seems sweet. And it seems very easy to get him all flustered, which could be fun if she gets bored during some of the later rounds of the game.
It's already been a very long day.
"She's one of our judges," Grian continues as she finally releases Mumbo's hand. "JtheStar was also supposed to be here, but he's sick and DomRao should be around here some-"
As if on cue, fireworks explode behind them.
“It’s fine! I'm fine! I’m good!” Dom shouts and it takes everything in Pearl not to laugh as she turns to see Dom's face covered in soot.
The long sigh Grian lets out almost breaks her all over again. “Did you just hit yourself in the face with the fireworks?”
"Uhhhhhhh…" Dom blinks, the whites of his eyes in stark contrast against the soot all over his face. He looks like a goddamn cartoon character. Being indestructible in creative worlds really brings out the idiot in all of them.
“Is that just a lever and a dispenser?" Pearl hears from behind her, turning back to see Mumbo's head cocked to the side, eyebrows raised. His nervous laughter from earlier is replaced with a sound that’s a little bit surer, a little sharper. "And you blew yourself up mate?"
Then he's striding over to crouch down and inspect Dom's lowest of low tech firework launcher.
"Okay, I mean, come on, you could have done a little bit of a better job with the redstone here guys." Mumbo turns back to them with a smile she could only describe as teasing.
Which is very interesting.
Sweet, awkward, bumbling Mumbo would have been fine all on its own. Knowing she could tease a cute guy and maybe make him a blushing, stammering mess is great. Pearl isn’t they type to turn down that ego boost.
But it looks like he's got some bite to him under all that fumbling.
"You knew that I was coming, you could have done like-" Mumbo continues, rolling his eyes at Dom.
"This is top level redstone for us!" Grian calls back, immediately taking the bait and striding over.
She catches the twitch of Mumbo's mustache as he tries to hide a smile at how defensive Grian is getting, and she realizes Mumbo knows exactly what he's doing, getting her brother all riled up.
Oh he's definitely more than meets the eye.
Pearl's afternoon just got a lot more interesting.
----------
Once Pearl and Dom get settled on the judges podium, Dom leans over to her. "I know you want to climb him like a tree, but you'll need to come up with some other reason to vote for Mumbo Jumbo each round."
Thank god he waited until Grian and Mumbo were out of earshot before dropping that comment.
"How dare you insult my honor like that! My judgment is sacred! I would never be compromised like that!" She gasps, as if she hasn't voted for and against builds for much stupider reasons than making a cute guy blush.
Though looking back at Mumbo running a hand through his hair and laughing with Grian out on the grass in front of them, climbing him like a tree isn’t a terrible analogy.
"Please. I have eyes Pearl. You look like you want to eat him alive. What do you think J? Do you think she's biased cause she's hot for redstone man?" Dom turns to the pole with J's head atop it.
"I don’t have the hots for…" Pearl realizes about halfway through her sentence that saying that what she really wants to do is put Mumbo in a jar and study him like a very interesting bug is probably not going to help her argument.
Dom patently ignores her, nodding a few times at J's head before turning back to her. "J agrees with me. You're biased."
"You two are conspiring against me."
"Someone has to keep us honest."
Before she can fire back, Grian and Mumbo are heading back towards the judges' podium, ready for the first round. Dom has enough self preservation to only waggle his eyebrows at her as Mumbo steps in front of her to open his first chest.
Which is totally a complete coincidence. Being closer to Mumbo 2 out of 3 rounds is totally not something she thought about when she sat down on Mumbo's side of the judges' podium. Not at all. Nope.
At least that is what she would say if Dom asked.
"Oh my word-I have no clue-" Mumbo's baffled expression darts from the paper, to her, and then over at Grian at least three times as he reads over the prompt. Which is totally uncalled for. They'd given people much worse prompts in the past. "What have you got?"
"I've got a goblin with 3 arms." Grian shrugs, used to their bullshit by now.
"I've got redstone man. I don't even know what the- I don’t know how on earth I'm going to build something like that." Mumbo lets out another nervous laugh, flicking Pearl another brief look before his eyes darts away again.
Realistically, Pearl knows the nervous looks are probably because this is technically a competition and she's technically judging it. But she'll be self-indulgent for a moment and say that the cute guy in front of her is nervous because he wants to impress her specifically.
"The problem I'm gonna have here," Grian says as he leads Mumbo back into the arena. "Is that DomRao is a bit of a connoisseur for goblins. So if I don't impress him he's not gonna be very happy at all."
"Is he a fan of redstone men as well, or have I got a bit of a free pass here?" She hears Mumbo joke as they walk away.
"I'm not the one who's a big fan of redstone men." Dom leans over to whisper at her.
Pearl elbows him in the ribs as she steps forward to the microphone. The nasty glare she shoots Dom over her shoulder does absolutely nothing to stop his snorting laughter.
"Ready!" She shouts into the mic, not shying away as Mumbo looks directly back at her. She sends him back her biggest smile and fuck it, she winks at him too.
She can see his blush all the way over here.
God today is going to be fun.
"Four. Three. Two. One. Go!"
----------
She votes for Grian the first round just to prove a point.
Even if Mumbo's build is very red.
And she has always liked red.
----------
Turns out Pearl can't sit still watching other people build, even when one of them does look particularly good in a suit. And even better when he takes the jacket off and rolls up his sleeves.
Maybe if it gets hot enough, he'll loosen that tie too. A red tie, for what it's worth. Building under a cloudless sky has to be pretty hot, and as the judges they could just let them keep going and then maybe…
Actually, maybe the suit is doing more harm than good to her attention span.
So before round 2 is even over, all that pent up energy is enough to drive her out of her chair and out onto the open grass to build something. Anything really. Which is how she ends up sitting atop a tower of scaffolding blocks, trying to figure out if her dragon head is the right shape. Maybe it's not a shape issue. Maybe it's a proportions issue? If she just-
Then suddenly Grian's voice is floating up from below her, and she looks down to see him and Mumbo standing in the shadow of her dragon. "My sister's been building this whole time. This is what she does, whenever she judges she's making her own thing."
Even from up here she can see that Mumbo is completely awestruck, his mouth just opening and closing as he gapes up wide-eyed at her dragon. Its wings aren’t even finished yet, and he's looking at it like it's the most impressive thing he's ever seen. Like she did actual magic right before his eyes. Like he doesn’t live on Hermitcraft with real builders who do things like this all the time for a living.
"Wow. That’s a fantas- that’s amaz- She deserves to win."
Pearl hops off the scaffolding, his nervous laughter covering the muffled sound of her landing on the grass directly beside him.
"You think? It's just something I threw together." She drops nonchalantly, hands on her hips as she looks up at the build as if to evaluate it from this angle.
"Pearl!" He practically squeaks in surprise, swiveling to look at her and nearly stumbling over in surprise when he realizes she's that close.
His blush looks even better up close. There's an absolutely delicious shade of red creeping all the way down his neck, and she is not being subtle at all about dragging her eyes down to where it slips under his collar. Which seems to only make him more flustered.
Oh, she is really enjoying messing with him. Or flirting with him.
Whatever. Same thing.
"You-you deserve to win." He stammers out, finally looking back at the dragon. "It's looking insane. Have you built that before? Has-has this been freestyled?"
"This?" she shrugs. "No. First time. Winged it."
"No way," he turns back. The flustered blush from before is no match for the genuine smile that breaks across his face along with a sudden joyous burst of laughter. "Winged it! I get it!"
There is so much genuine amusement in his reaction that Pearl can’t help but laugh too.
That’s another thing she's noticed about him as the afternoon has dragged on. There's something earnest about him that she hadn’t expected. His reactions always seem so...sincere. He seems genuinely impressed by what she's built and truly flustered by each of the build prompts they've thrown at him and, oh what does he say in his videos? Chuffed? He seems honestly chuffed at her stupid pun.
"All right judges, what do you think?" Grian calls over, yanking them back to the task at hand.
She's here to judge their builds, not listen to him compliment her own. Even if maybe she did try a little harder on this build than she normally would on something silly like this. Just in case he really was nervous to impress her with his builds, she might as well earn that reaction.
"Forget my build, I might just…take a look at this!" Mumbo calls back, waving up at the dragon.
"Gimme more compliments like that and I'll give you more time next round." She winks up at him.
"It's not hard if - I mean, I can do that - yes - yes, fantastic." The adorable blush is back on his cheeks, but he's also smiling at her in a way that’s so infectious she almost forgets she's trying to tease him.
"Hey! Don't try to sway the judges!" Grian pouts, and Pearl turns to her brother, laughing as she takes her cue to start the next round of judging.
----------
The way Mumbo pumps his fists in the air in excitement when she votes for him is totally worth overlooking the fact that the turkey he built is most definitely a chicken.
----------
"Hold on, I am still gathering blocks…Pearl, what is your favorite color?" Mumbo looks up to where she's perched on the judges podium, his hands still rifling through his inventory.
"And Dom! What's your favorite color?" Mumbo suddenly adds, clearly as an afterthought as he frantically ducks away from her gaze and looks at Dom.
The lack of subtly as Dom turns to raise an eyebrow at her is honestly hilarious.
"Orange." Dom deadpans without breaking eye contact with Pearl or so much as acknowledging Mumbo.
"Red!" She calls down, letting her eyes slide back over Mumbo before she licks her lips and adds, "Like the rest of the redstone man."
It is delightful to watch him process the possible alternative meanings and innuendos in real time. Pearl watches the twitch of his mustache, the way his eyes widen before he blinks in surprise. And of course, she watches the blush crawl back across his face. It's not even a lie that red is her favorite color, and the color of his cheeks when she teases him is slowly creeping its way up her list of favorite shades of red.
She's about to open her mouth to tease him some more and see exactly how deep she can make that flush, when Dom sighs very loudly and counts Mumbo and Grian into the final round of the game.
----------
Pearl doesn’t lay up on the flirting at all as the day drags on. Maybe if Mumbo stopped reacting each time she'd stop. Except he hasn't and cataloging his blushes and laughs is literally the only thing keeping her going through yet another long game of Build Swap.
Well, that and that Mumbo breaks out the redstone for the second game.
"The way to PearlescentMoon's heart is a redstone comparator clock, apparently. Who would have thought?" Dom rolls his eyes at her with a smirk as they walk back towards the podium for final deliberations on the second build swap of the day.
"He built a working flamethrower!" She nearly shouts, quickly looking back to see if Mumbo heard her. Thankfully, he seems well and truly engaged in teasing Grian about those horrific eyeball blocks. Which is for the best. It would be harder to keep up the cool, teasing facade for Mumbo if he knew how truly fascinated she was with all the redstone he'd done.
They told him to make a cake and he just casually started asking questions about server tick rates to build functional candles. Who does that?
Mumbo K Jumbo, apparently.
Who then also turned around and built a working flame thrower? They gave him the prompt 'while burning everything' and he just…..did it.
He blushes when she teases him and he can just come up with stuff like that out of thin air?
It's really a bummer that she has to give Mumbo back at the end of this.
He is fascinating.
"But you are still voting for Grian right? I mean, that baby tree." Dom nods back to the builds.
"Obviously. I mean look at the cheeks." Pearl isn't blind. Mumbo's flame thrower looked absolutely nothing like a flamer thrower. She couldn't possibly vote for it. But that didn’t mean she isn't impressed. Among other feelings. Pearl is a proud nerd. She'll admit that any day. And she likes nerds. So really, Dom shouldn’t be that surprised that building working redstone under time pressure might do it for her.
Because, come on. The builds from the last game are literally burning in the distance because Mumbo shot fire at them.
How can she not be impressed?
----------
"Well thank you so much for having me mate." Pearl hears Mumbo chuckle at Grian as they all wrap up filming for the day. Dom's off cutting video footage for Mumbo and Grian to take back and edit, leaving Pearl to repair the fire damage in the previous arena to make sure everything is preserved correctly for posterity.
Though she's baffled at who, besides her brother, would want a record of these monstrosities anyway.
"Sorry about this." She looks up from where she's busy trimming singed wool from his sheep to find Mumbo right behind her. To her credit, Pearl doesn’t jump. "I didn't think it would-I mean. Just sorry."
"Don't worry about it. No offense, but they aren't exactly..." she gestures at the charred sheep and off balance goblin. If Mumbo's laugh is anything to go by, they are on exactly the same page about how insane some of these design choices are.
"Yeah. These are terrible. But yours? Oh man, the stuff you made today was really good. Clearly better than what we did. You should have won. Really."
"Thanks. But it's nothing," she shrugs.
Pearl's flirting all day had been light, teasing. Not joking exactly, but not serious by any means. Just something to pass the time. But now she's the one who's flustered and can’t quite meet his eyes. There's no cameras on them, no one else to smirk at or deflect to, and he's just walked all the way over here specifically to talk to her. All his attention is so clearly focused on her, and the sincerity in his voice as he compliments her is knocking her a little off balance.
"Would-um-would you-I mean-maybe want to I don’t know-" Mumbo starts to stammer out, and it's almost reassuring to remember that she's not the only one who's flustered here.
She's about to say something when Grian's voice calls over to them. "Mumbo! Stop pestering Pearl! Pearl is he bothering you?"
"There's only one person on this server who bothers me and it's you mister!" She shouts back. "He's a menace, isn’t he?" She shrugs at Mumbo with a laugh.
Maybe there was almost something there a minute ago, something beyond the teasing and silly flirting she'd done all day. But now she's back on familiar ground with her brother shouting at them and the giant remnants of build swap towering over them. She knows how to do this.
"Totally." Mumbo says, leaning into her with a smile just a little too teasing to be completely innocent.
"Mumbo!" Grian shouts again. "What is the server info for Hermitcraft again?"
"It's in the chat from when you got me here!" Mumbo calls back, that hint of a bite back in his voice, like he can’t believe Grian couldn’t think of that.
"But I don’t want to look all the way back!" Grian shouts and it's nice to see that she's not the only one who is sometimes very done with her brother's nonsense. Pearl is confident the info would be extremely easy for Grian to find if he just looked.
"Fine!" Mumbo sighs before looking back at Pearl. "I should probably…"
"Yeah, he's not gonna stop until you-"
"Muuuuuuuuuumbooooooo," Grian all but whines, and Mumbo makes an apologetic face before Pearl waves him off with a knowing smile. When her brother decides he wants attention, it's best to give it to him.
And with that Mumbo is striding back towards Grian, shouting about servers and transports and surely plenty of other content creator logistics that she tunes out as she goes back to fixing up the burned sheep.
----------
A few minutes later, a "Goodbye Pearl!" echoes across the server, and Pearl has just enough time to wave before Mumbo disappears with the fizz of an off-server teleport.
And just like that, Mumbo Jumbo is back to his life on Hermitcraft, Grian is talking through tomorrow's filming schedule, Pearl is plotting the next set of build swap prompts with Dom, and life is going on as it always does.