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It’s storming. Springtime, them’s the breaks— rain and rain and then more rain— the chill of winter hasn’t really worn off yet, so it’s been a cold and damp and dreary few weeks. Cub doesn’t envy the outdoor borrowers. He doesn’t ever envy them, and he especially doesn’t envy them in early spring.
There’s a leak making a damn lake out of the ground here in front of him. There’s lots of leaks, actually, all along the house’s west-facing outer wall— it’s a leak-ful place, and it wreaks havoc on the owners’ wallets, or so he’s heard them complain; all it means for Cub is a more precarious stroll. He bites the inside of his cheek and grips the rusted head of a nail for balance where it juts out from the wall, digs his other hand into the crevice between two poorly-joined boards, and carefully makes his way along the driest edge.
He’s on the hunt for pinecones today, which he can usually find plenty of up on this side of the house. It’s a tedious task ever since they got the fucking terrier; he has to take the long way around every time now, creeping through holes in walls and staying well out of sight. It’s typically a whole day’s trip out and back again, but hey, when you need pine resin, you need pine resin. And Cub—
Well, okay. In the general sense of things, yeah, he’s always in need of more pine resin. In the right-now-today sense of things, he’s not really running low on flux at all, and he doesn’t strictly need to bring home a backpack full of it. But resin collection is the reason he’s sticking with if anybody asks. If Scar asks, if the new guy asks— and, well, there’s the real reason he’s come all the way out here.
There’s a new guy.
He and Scar are in general agreement about this, have been for a couple days or so. Cub’s been suspicious a little longer than that— footprints left in flour on pantry shelves, mysterious empty mousetraps, just about every classic sign of a real brand-new amateur borrower. There’s definitely a new guy, not much other explanation for it except, like, an inexplicably sentient and secretive mouse, and that shakes out to about the same thing anyway.
He’s not even really expecting to find the guy today— he’s poked around just about every nook and cranny of the house that seems like it could house another somebody, which is surprisingly few places, when you get right down to it; between the mice and the spiders and the fucking terrier and the various threats posed by seasonal weather, a borrower’s got to be very careful picking just the right place to settle. Cub’s checked quite a few of those places and he hasn’t turned up much— no signs of the new guy settling down in any of them.
He shivers a bit, thinking longingly of the hot bath he’s going to draw when he gets back— he maneuvers around another soggy patch of ground, slips between two bricks and gets a little wetter and muddier for it. This side of the house always gets wetter when it rains, always floods faster. No borrower with any sense would be trying to set up shop down here, he’s thinking, and ironically enough, it’s about two minutes later that Cub spots him.
It’s a newcomer borrower, alright, and he’s huddled up in a nook in the bricks and boards of the very westernmost corner of the bean house, close to where a loose brick provides one of the most convenient ways in and out from under the house.
Well, Cub thinks, slowing down and moving more quietly. How about that.
He’s wearing clothes unlike any that Cub’s ever seen on another borrower— sleek and black and fitted kind of strangely, like they weren’t exactly sewn to fit him. He’s tall and he’s gangly, mostly limbs, and he doesn’t seem to be very good at moving those limbs.
He’s got a cord tied around his waist in a clumsy approximation of a belt, which contrasts really oddly with his clothes, and shoved into that belt is what looks like a sewing needle. He’s huddled in the shadow of a loose board where it’s sort of dry, hugging himself and shivering, eyes darting back and forth. He’s damp all over.
“Hey there,” says Cub, coming to a cautious stop a few feet away.
The newcomer flinches back hard, stumbling and tripping over his own two feet and slamming back against the wall so hard that Cub winces sympathetically.
“Oh,” the newcomer squeaks, fumbling for his sewing needle and holding it up like he’s going to use it as a weapon. He doesn't look like he actually knows how to do that. “Hello— er, hello. Yes. Good to— good to meet you— oh dear. Or I certainly— I certainly hope it’s good to meet you. Hello there, fellow— fellow borrower, yes. Hello.” He’s breathing hard, black eyes glittering with terror, fixated very intensely on Cub. His voice becomes still more trembly and quiet and high-pitched as he goes on, “You’re not the territorial sort, are you? Please say no.”
Cub raises his eyebrows, taking a few steps back and holding his hands up in a gesture of… friendliness? Non-threat-ness, at the least. This guy sure isn’t a threat, if his hopeless stance and his shaking hands are any indication. “Nah, not really,” he says honestly. “I’m Cub. I live here.”
The newcomer swallows. He hasn’t lowered his needle, but he is shaking a little bit less violently. “Ah,” he says. “Pleased to— to make your acquaintance. I think. I hope. My name is Mumbo K. Jumbo.”
Cub whistles. “That’s some name,” he says.
He— had admittedly planned for this to go a little bit differently, actually. A little more in the threatening and intimidation direction, dangling friendship like a carrot, sort of. A smooth transition— that’s what he’s hoping for, here. And if he needs to, Cub can make himself a problem for somebody in order to achieve that. He can make himself one hell of a problem. He and Scar have been through a lot to end up with a life this secure, with a routine this reliable, a home this safe and consistent. They’re in a groove, now, they’ve been in a groove for a good— how many years now? Five and counting? Five or six or so and counting, sure, and he’s got no interest in getting out of this groove anytime soon. A new borrower who’s too reckless or too much of, like, a fucking asshole could throw it off in a big way.
But Cub, uh— Cub doesn’t think it’s gonna take much to scare this Mumbo K. Jumbo guy into line, that’s all. He is quickly getting the impression that any attempt at intimidation would be kind of overkill.
“Came over this way to check out who might be swiping basic necessities before my partner and I can get ahold of them,” he goes on slowly. “Seems like that’s you.”
“Oh,” says Mumbo, still very squeakily. “That’s me, that is. Yep. That’s— I’m the one that’s doing that. Or— or maybe I’m not, if that’d be a reason to kill me and roast me over one of your bonfires to eat. You’re not planning to roast me and eat me, are you?”
Cub stares. “Nah,” he says after a moment. What the hell is up with this guy, he’s thinking. “We only do that to people who like magenta. Like, you know, the color? It's a really bad color. Had a friend once who loved magenta, borrower from a different house— painted a whole room of her base magenta— needless to say she didn’t last long.”
“Oh,” says Mumbo. “Of course. Right. Silly me.” Cub has the absurd thought that Mumbo has in fact just taken this seriously.
“So you’re new around here,” Cub says after a long moment, and Mumbo shudders and blinks a few times.
“Er— yes,” he says squeakily. “New around here, that’s— that’s me. I’m your new— neighbor? Are we called neighbors, if I— or maybe I should be asking if there’s room. Is there room here? To— stay? In this same house?”
“Yeah,” Cub says. “Yeah, there’s— room. Plenty of borrowing for the both of us.” He hesitates a moment. “Do you have— friends, family with you? Any other mouths you’re trying to feed?”
“Not— not really,” says Mumbo K. Jumbo, and then he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t; he just kind of stands there quietly for several more seconds.
The rain comes down harder, wind beating it against the walls.
Thunder claps outside, and Mumbo jumps violently, slamming his head back against the wall again with how hard he cringes into himself. He whimpers, reaching up to his head with one wet trembling hand, and Cub’s heart pangs a little. Sheesh. This poor fucking guy. “Look, man,” Cub finds himself saying, thinking, Alright— if Scar’s allowed to just pick up strays— “Do you have— a place to sleep tonight? Someplace, you know, warm? Moderately safe from the rats?”
“Rats?” Mumbo echoes, paling visibly. Well, okay. That answers that question.
“A home,” Cub elaborates. “Base of operations. A nest, a bed, four little walls inside the four big walls or maybe, like, a burrow, shit, I dunno. Something. Do you have someplace to— go?”
Mumbo stares at him. “Not— really,” he admits at last, weakly.
Cub nods. He has no idea why he’d have found the guy huddling like this otherwise. He thinks— feeling a little bit sick— if he goes home now and leaves him here, maybe Mumbo K. Jumbo is just going to die. Whatever it is the newcomer came from— it clearly didn’t leave him in any state to be surviving on his own.
“Okay,” says Cub. “Okay. Alright. Here's what we're gonna do, then, how about this— you come home with me. Shelter for a night— we’ve got food, too— I’ll trade you for that nifty little needle, how about it.” He thinks Scar would be flat-out disappointed in him if he didn't make some kind of trade out of it. “That sound like a deal?”
Mumbo looks down at the silver needle in his hands, startled. “Okay,” he says after a moment, and the word sounds like it’s been dragged painfully out of him.
The rain is a dull and constant drum against sturdy brick walls far away from where Scar presently finds himself. The muffled droning of the storm— and the occasional claps of thunder that accompany the downpour— only serve to make him all the more ever-so-grateful for his cozy little home under cozy little floorboards, furnished with a lifetime’s worth of cozy little things.
It’s just raining and raining and raining, this spring— can’t complain too much, though! No siree, Scar cannot complain— April showers, and all that jazz, of course, and Scar’s just sure they’re going to have a lovely late-spring-and-early-summer, just a perfectly bountiful one; he’s looking forward to it. Grian’s been all skin and bones the longer the chill of winter has dragged on, and it has dragged on. He is leaner and leaner by the month, no matter how determinedly Scar tries to fatten him up.
Scar’s nice open-concept living-and-dining-room is lit a bright, soft yellow, and it’s well insulated against the wet and cold of springy and wintry storms, but this winter has felt longer than any winter Scar has ever had the displeasure of weathering. There’s a Grian in his life, now, a little shrike borrower all alone without any shrike borrower friends to help him get through tricky winters and springs— a Grian currently perched on Scar’s nice living room couch, soaked to the bone and bedraggled. Scar had to practically drag him out of the rain and into the cozy comfort of his base, but he’s gotten very good at dragging Grians into warm and cozy living rooms.
(Grian did have shrike borrower friends, once— that much Scar’s managed to pry out of him, over their stilted early conversations and the tenderer ones that followed, between months of banter and shared adventures and the dressing of wounds and hot meals pressed into hands. Grian had friends who’d have patched him up after he got hurt, who’d have dried him off and warmed him just like this, who’d have fed him all the dead mice he could ask for when hunting-luck just wasn’t favoring him in particular that day.
Scar doesn’t know much about why Grian doesn’t have those friends anymore. If Grian’s cagey about the nice bits of his past, then he’s incredibly cagey about the not-so-nice bits, he’s a cage properly padlocked up and grown all over with thorns. Scar’s good at prying, and see, part of being good at prying is knowing when not to. He’s a diplomatic man, after all.)
“Here,” Scar says gently, and he makes his voice honey-smooth, pulling the corners of the blanket around Grian’s soaked-to-the-bone shoulders. Now Scar knows for a fact that this particular blanket is soft and fluffy and cloudlike enough to bring tears to a grown borrower’s eyes, and he’s sure he’s proven right, as Grian seizes hold of one corner and pulls it against his face, staring at Scar all the while. His eyes are very wide and very black, bright like liquid light bouncing off an inkwell. “Nice and warm and dry. What’d I tell you? Eleven out of ten— twelve out of ten, even! An extra point for my excellent bundling service, that’s gratuity— I’ll be taking down your testimonial before you skedaddle, of course, so be sure to really soak up all the fluffy softness. Commit it to memory. You can consider that your payment.”
Grian doesn’t exactly respond. He blinks a couple of times, fist tightening so much it starts to tremble where it’s seized the soft white fluffy corner of the soft white fluffy blanket. Oh, boy, don’t hurt yourself there, G, Scar almost says but doesn’t— bites back the urge to rib him, looking into those bright black eyes, hit with the gut feeling that it’d be ill-timed. And Scar makes a habit of listening to gut feelings! He’s got a real salesman’s intuition, he sure does. Good to pay attention to something like that.
Instead Scar gentles his voice still further, impossibly further, and says, “Now you just sit tight, mister. Stay right there, get all cozy, make yourself at home— I’ll be right back with that soup I was telling you about. It should be just about done.”
Grian stares a few seconds longer and then he nods, a little jerkily. Something about it almost kind of breaks Scar’s heart a little. A lot of things about Grian— do that.
He does indeed come back with a nice full pot of hot tomato and basil soup, which he is sure Cub will delight in having some of when he gets back from his resin-collecting adventures, and he starts to set the table. Grian watches with those beady black eyes, seeming to follow every one of Scar’s motions.
“So I hear there’s a new borrower around,” Scar says after a minute or so of comfortable silence, feigning casual but keeping an eye out for Grian’s response— and sure enough, Grian’s hackles just go right up, all the feathers on his neck fluffing up in trepidation. Grian’s a territorial guy. Any borrower is, has to be— outdoor borrowers, they’re lonely sorts, or so Scar has gathered from the samples available to him— Grian, though, is especially territorial. “Or that’s what Cub and I have pieced together, anyhow. Right here in our very own greater abode— he’s been nicking things before we can get to them! We’ve had to cover his tracks a few times, too, let me tell you— he is not very good at the whole borrower business.”
Grian wrinkles his nose. “Well,” he says after a moment’s scowling consideration, and his tone is hot. “That’s no good. If you need me to take care of him, I can do that. I can be very frightening, you know, I can— frighten another borrower right off.”
Scar doesn’t doubt it, actually. Grian isn’t quite— the same thing that he is. Not the same thing that Pearl is, either, or other outdoor borrowers without wings of their own. Grian has sharper teeth, and he has more of an affinity for eating dead things raw.
“Oh, gosh, no,” Scar says, shaking his head. “At least I hope not. I do appreciate the offer, but ideally we can be friends. That’s what Cub’s gone out to do, he’s gone out to try and find this fellow and start a friendship or, failing that, perhaps at least a mutually beneficial trade partnership! Well, he says he’s gone out to collect resin for his fluxa-whatsit for soldering with, but I am just about ninety-nine percent certain he’s not doing that at all.”
“Hm,” says Grian, displeased. There’s something like jealousy on his face, Scar thinks. It is inconveniently cute.
Once the table’s set, Scar procures his delightful wooden ladle (which he carved himself after years of finding himself woefully in need of a good ladle, he will proudly proclaim), and he ladles steaming hot soup into two bowls until they’re nice and full, and he reaches out to adjust the placement of one of the spoons to his satisfaction, and then he says, “There we go. Come on, come and sit at the table—”
Grian huffs. “Do I really have to—”
“Yes, you have to, every single time you have to, because I am not spending my evening trying to get tomato stains out of my upholstery!” Scar tuts and shakes his head. “Really, Grian. You have no respect for the finer things in life at all.”
Grian sticks his tongue out. Scar eyes that cute pink tongue and thinks a moment more and then adds, letting his voice drop into something a little bit sly, “Besides, I can think of a few things I would much rather spend my evening doing. And I have a feeling you’d enjoy them much more than listening to me effuse misery about tomato stains.” He gestures to the nicely-set table with a flourish and a bow, cheerfully pretending not to notice the way Grian flushes just as bright red as the vegetable in question. “ After we’ve eaten supper, of course.”
“Right,” Grian says, a little higher-pitched, and then he’s scrambling to get up from where he’s sitting, stumbling toward the table. “After we’ve eaten supper. Of course.”
He keeps the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, though. It warms Scar’s heart right up to see. Here Grian is with a wing in perfect condition, no injuries to speak of, and he’s sitting right down at Scar’s table with the softest fluffiest blanket Scar owns wrapped around his shoulders, gleefully indulging in a bowl of Scar’s (delectable and perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned) homemade tomato basil soup. (Fresh garden tomatoes and basil, that’s what goes in this soup! Scar almost dies collecting that stuff, half the time! Don’t tell Cub.) He barely bristles at all anymore when Scar tries to coax him indoors for a hot meal or a night in a warm, safe bed.
And of course Scar gets plenty out of this arrangement: he gets, uh, dead mice, although admittedly he is less strictly a fan of those than Grian is, and he gets all kinds of delightful hard-to-reach forage with which to cook up tasty new foods, and he gets the occasional one-of-a-kind shrike-wing-powered mail delivery service, which Cub has found particularly enriching and useful for correspondence between fellow circuit board aficionados. And, of course, he gets those aforementioned nights in bed, which Scar must say are just top rate, as nights in bed go. Featuring repurposed wool blankets and everything— just the absolute coziest, two borrowers are always warmer than one, that’s Scar’s opinion about it— and Grian himself as a bedmate is a marked improvement over Cub, who, as bedmates go, does not ever really do enough of either the bedding or the mating, always staying up late in that workshop of his, soldering circuit boards, and jailbreaking apples and blackberries, and all that technical nonsense— scamming human beans for all they're worth and lecturing them on Rabbit or Raddit or whatever it is he calls it. Leaving poor Scar just cold and sad and all alone in bed. Warmth— that’s what Grian provides! That’s an easy argument for Scar to make, whenever G gets tripped up about his debts and dues and beholdences.
Most importantly, though, Scar gets a delightful new friend, unfurling and un-bristling slowly, week by week— month by month. When Scar hugs Grian or nestles in close beside him, blankets wrapped around them both, Grian shudders into the touch like he is starving for it— like someone who used to have lots of it and lost so much.
Scar thinks, again, of how the other outdoor borrowers give Grian such a wide berth.
“You know, I’d been meaning to ask you about that new fellow…” Scar murmurs an hour or so later, well after supper’s finished, lazily running a hand over Grian’s shoulder and down his arm. He gets a pleasant little shiver for his trouble. Grian’s sleepy, curled on his side in bed and blinking slowly at him. “But I guess I don’t think there’s any real reason you’d know him. You— haven’t met any indoor borrowers around here that Cub and I don’t already know, have you?” (‘Around here’ is an important specification; of the few details Scar has gathered about the colony Grian grew up in, one is that they were very far from here, an unrealistically far journey except by wing.)
Grian blinks another slow, sleepy blink. He doesn’t respond for a long moment. “Not— really,” he says at last, his voice a little rough, which isn’t quite the same thing as a no, is it. He shifts and snuggles further beneath the blankets into Scar’s grip, evidently finished answering the question, and Scar obligingly pulls him in close, lips twitching up in amusement. He doesn’t pry. He’s a diplomatic man, isn’t he?
What he does do is tip Grian's chin up toward him to press a soft kiss to those cute pink lips, to cup his face in one hand and smile against him. Grian never seems to know what to do with gentleness like that, and half the time he bristles and snaps and the other half he just absolutely melts— he sputters in surprise, this time, and then a moment later he's like putty— Scar wonders, like he wonders all the time, when was the last time that someone was this gentle with Grian, cherished him this much.
Grian's a delightful guy. Scar could keep cherishing him for just about forever, he thinks.
And it’ll turn out very soon, of course, that he won’t have needed to pry. Cub’s on his very slow way back, with a very poorly-adapted traveling companion in tow, and Scar is going to find out exactly what Grian meant by ‘not really.’
You’re not very good at this, you know, says the Grian in the dream. He’s sulky. He’s been sulky for hours now, shivering in the corner of Mumbo’s— home— which really had always felt rather big and lonely for just one borrower, though Grian finds it unbearably small. Grian hissed, at first, at any attempts to get near his injured leg. It sent Mumbo’s stress levels just rocketing right up, well beyond any healthy levels, watching him bleed all alone and clutch his shin and grit his teeth— it took Mumbo a good four hours to convince him to accept any help at all.
Well, in my defense, I don’t have very much experience with first aid, Mumbo snaps in return. On account of how I’m not— not throwing myself at dangerous half-baked escape plans and causing myself unnecessary— unnecessary injuries in the first place—
No, you’re not, says Grian sourly. Because you’re just— you’re just content to stay like this all your life. In this nasty little cage. Mumbo flinches. He thinks it’s a nice enough home, is the thing. Well, I’m not. I have a life, you know, out there, I have— I have a colony. I have a family and everything, most borrowers have those, you know— and I’m sure they’re just terribly anxious about me— ow! Mumbo—
I’m sorry, Grian, I’m trying— I’m trying, says Mumbo, feeling just as frazzled as he probably sounds, and he means it. He is trying. (He doesn’t think that he has a family, he thinks absently. He certainly doesn’t remember ever having one. Maybe that's odd. He should remember, shouldn't he?)
His hands tremble, pulling the bandages tighter over the wound, trying to hold them in place and tie them off the way Grian showed him. He’s ripped up a perfectly good undershirt for this, but it’s hard to care. Mumbo has so many more things to care about now than how nice his clothes will look when he shows off for the human bean who keeps him. There’ll always be more; she’s always buying him more— there wouldn’t be another Grian, though, if he— if he died, maybe. Mumbo doesn’t know if Grian could die. Can an injury like this kill a borrower? He’s never been injured this badly himself, he doesn’t think. At least—
At least if he has, it was a long, long time ago.
You’re not going to die, are you, he blurts at last, and Grian’s head snaps up, black eyes fixing Mumbo with a stare.
No, I’m not going to die, he says, slowly, like Mumbo’s an idiot for asking. It’s just a little scratch.
That is strictly untrue.
Well, fine, it’s a big scratch, then. It’ll heal. I’m not— going to die. Grian’s voice gentles, at this repetition, more than it has gentled all day long, and Mumbo’s skin prickles with discomfort. He ties off the latest strip of undershirt-turned-bandage and then his hand is finding Grian’s, clinging to it tightly. If Grian died, Mumbo would be all alone again.
I’m alright, dude, Grian says. Really. I’ve— I’ve learned my lesson, too, about fiddling with that latch. You can bet that I’ll be a lot more careful next time.
Next time. Right. Of course there’s going to be a next time. Mumbo doesn’t let his eyes dart across the floor of the— cage, Grian calls it— to where Grian’s stolen silver sewing needle lies discarded, spattered with blood. It was a clever attempt, Mumbo thinks.
Grian’s hand is warm, in the dream. His wings are warm, too, when they wrap around Mumbo, when Mumbo’s awkwardly tucked in close to Grian’s side— it really does work better the other way around, given their difference in height and the fact that Grian sometimes just needs a good proper squish about the shoulders to stop him causing too much chaos. Well, this time it’s Grian pulling Mumbo in for a hug; they cluster close together and listen to each other breathe. Mumbo listens to Grian breathe, in the dream. He listens and listens.
Mumbo has this dream— what feels like every day, but might just work out to eighty or ninety percent of them— waking from memories of a warm hand, a warm pair of wings and the soft sound of someone else breathing and his Grian’s bright-eyed grin. Sometimes he wonders if he’ll wake up backwards one of these days, and the quiet loneliness will have been the nightmare all along. He should really know better than that by now.
He blinks back the memories, tries to bring himself to focus, staring down at the stolen sewing needle gleaming silver in his hand. Wet with rain, just like the rest of him, just like his shoes and the sodden sound they make with every step— right. He’s walking, following in the footsteps of a stranger who will hopefully turn out to be kind— Grian was kind, wasn’t he, that was a downright surprise but he was, he was kind all the way up until the very end, one hand outstretched, imploring, Mumbo, please — Mumbo dreams often about that day, too. Just at this precise moment he trips and stumbles on a bit of broken-up concrete and nearly bowls all the way over and barely catches himself and Cub turns to look back at him, giving him a concerned look. Mumbo manages an awkward laugh and a shaky thumbs-up with the hand that’s not still white-knuckling his sewing needle.
Walking. He’s walking. It’s— it’s quite simple, really. One foot in front of the other, nothing difficult about that at all.
(Mumbo’s not sure he’s ever walked as far in his entire life as he has walked in the last week.)
It’s a cold and rainy spring, that’s what this Cub fellow has said, but summer’s just around the corner, and the flowers’ll be blooming even before then, that they will. And— Grian did always say that summers were the best seasons.
“Almost there,” Cub says, and Mumbo startles. “Scar’s not expecting company, I think, so you’ll be a surprise, but hopefully not too much of one. Like I said, you’re not exactly a subtle guy, so we’ve both been kind of poking around looking for you for a couple days now.”
“Right,” says Mumbo faintly, feeling the slightest bit incredibly embarrassed. He grips his stolen silver sewing needle tighter. (Not— not his needle anymore, is it, he's gone and traded it away. When Cub asks for it, he'll have to hand it over.)
Neither he nor Cub is aware, of course, that the appearance of one Mumbo K. Jumbo is in fact about to be a very big surprise.