Chapter Text
Grian was amazed that dinner revealed that no one was shot with arrows. He had been impressed until Bdubs revealed the secret of how Scar achieved it. “Mister! Mister Grian!” Bdubs almost tripped on his own feet to come to a halt in front of the pair. “Do I look stronger?” He asked all wide eyed and grins. He posed, flexing his arms and gave him a puppy dog look.
Grian wondered if Skizz and Impulse had been teaching Bdubs some more ‘martial arts’ training or maybe Gem had finally conceded to do so, after she revealed she had been taking karate lessons after school. A fact she regretted revealing after she was inundated with questions. Grian’s favourite had been Ren’s persistence requests to her to karate chop branches he found. She had denied every request but it didn’t stop the boy from running off every so often to bring her more.
Grian looked at the kid, and to be honest he saw a difference. Bdubs was standing up straight, he didn’t have stress wrinkles around his eyes… and most shockingly, at some point Grian didn’t notice but he was damn well noticing it now, Bdubs had stopped shouting. He was a little loud and excitable but he wasn’t yelling his head off about everything and Grian wondered if it came from finally being heard? Why shout if people were listening to you?
“You do look stronger?” Grian ventured and he was rewarded with Bdubs cheering and posing even more. “Of course you do!” Grian told him, deciding he had time for his new hobby. “You look so strong! Mr Muscles!” Grian clapped his hands. “Being so strong you obviously need to eat some protein to maximise your gains bro!”
“Oh yeah! Mister Scar said that I picked up the most sticks!” Bdubs told him all proud. “Imma gonna have the biggest forearms ever and be strong enough to use the bows!” He told him and Grian choked on his own spit. Of course, Scar would find some way of getting the overenergised kids to burn off their energy and clean up the wind fallen branches. “I better eat some popo-teins!”
Grian watched Bdubs run off to fill his tray full of beans and lettuce. Grian was going to make sure that the kids weren’t going to share his room tonight. Impulse was bad enough but Bdubs full of beans? No thanks. Nightmares or not. Grian sat down with his own plate of mishmash side dishes. There wasn’t a really set meal tonight, apparently it was a picky tea evening. Grian tucked into his chicken tenders and when Scar turned up, he had to give him an applause. “Honestly… I am damn impressed; how long did they believe you about it before giving up.”
Scar looked over at them. “We are doing some more stick clear up tomorrow.” He told them winking. “Well after cabin clean up and laundry.” Grian had forgotten about that. He didn’t realise that it was already Friday and they had the weekend sort of off. The kids were mostly going to entertain themselves with various projects. Grian had been scheduled to keep an eye on the arts classroom, basically hanging out there in the morning, and then the afternoon was chores. He was sorta looking forward to teaching the kids how to clean up, judging by how he found their cabins recently, they were going to get mice or ants before long.
Mumbo let out a groan at that. “I forgot about that.” He told them and looked over at Joel, who eating innocently, talking to some of the others. “Do you think he… will be a nightmare?” He asked quietly. Grian could understand Mumbo’s reluctancy, the kid they met at the start of the week was a pompous nightmare of a child, who couldn’t see the real world and the pain from his actions from being under his father’s shadow, who would kick off at the slightest perceived issues, which Grian was suspecting was mimicked behaviour from his father which was likely the only time his father approved of him.
Grian shook his head and grinned. “He doesn’t want the others to dislike him. Cleo has started a thing where if Joel begins talking about his father, everyone turns around from him. And Joel has learnt quickly that they don’t care about his father, they want to know about Joel. It seemed cruel but it only happened like twice and Joel picked up on it.”
Mumbo just sighed, moodily picking at his plate, obviously dreading it.