Chapter Text
Grian wasn’t following him.
Not really.
Following implied clumsy footfalls, shadows trailing too close, some pathetic flurry of nerves. Grian was none of that. He didn’t panic. He didn’t sweat. He didn’t breathe too loud.
He watched.
He moved.
He drifted.
The same way fog wraps around street lamps. The same way wind finds the crack in a window.
From three paces behind, he knew everything he needed to know.
Mumbo walked like a man with nowhere to be. Slow. Heavy-heeled. Hands in the pockets of his coat, shoulders hunched slightly forward like he was always apologizing to the world.
Grian wanted to reach out. Not to grab. No, that would ruin it.
He wanted to trail fingers just behind Mumbo’s wrist, never touching, but letting the charge build. The almost was enough. Sometimes. For now.
He hadn’t meant to notice him.
That first time, weeks ago now, it had been a game night hosted by someone named Tango.
Grian hadn’t even planned on going that night. It was Jimmy who dragged him there, something about his friend Tango hosting, something about not staying in alone again. Grian didn’t know the host, didn’t care about the game. But he went anyway.
Small apartment, string lights overhead, everyone buzzing with cheap wine and bad snacks. Grian had been halfway into a laugh, cradling a glass of something too sweet, when he looked across the room and saw him.
Mumbo.
Sat cross-legged on the floor with a scatter of cards between his knees, sleeves pushed up and collar askew, red in the face from laughing too hard. Someone had made a joke Grian hadn’t caught, and Mumbo’s smile was wide, head tilted back, hand pressed to his chest like he was barely holding it together.
Grian stared. Just a little too long.
There it is, he had thought, unblinking.
There you are.
He hadn’t even realized he’d been searching for anything. But seeing Mumbo felt like recognition. Like hunger.
Later, they’d exchanged a few words, polite, surface-level, just the casual small talk. Grian remembered the color of his shirt, white. The warmth of his hand during a quick handshake. The way his fingers lingered just a little longer than they needed to.
Maybe it meant nothing.
Maybe it meant everything.
Grian had gone home and dreamed of nothing but the way Mumbo’s voice had curved around his name. Soft. Warm. Casual. A man who didn’t yet know he was being worshiped.
Tonight, Mumbo had taken the long way home.
From one café to the bookstore. Browsed. Bought nothing. Then wandered through the quieter streets where the lights hummed low and orange.
You want to be watched, Grian thought.
You just don’t know it yet.
He stayed across the street.
Never rushed.
He’d studied the angles, the reflections, the storefronts with mirrored glass.
In one of them, Mumbo’s reflection shimmered. Grian watched it instead of the real thing.
More sacred that way.
And when Mumbo paused to check his phone, under the amber cone of a broken streetlight, Grian stopped too. He tilted his head. Watched his thumb scroll. Saw the furrow of his brow. That little twitch in his mustache.
His heartbeat was too loud in his own ears. He tried not to smile.
Mumbo turned left at the corner. Grian followed.
This street was emptier. Closer to the residential edge of the city. Trees with bare branches clawed the sky above, and the sidewalks narrowed. Here, the sound of their steps echoed.
Grian softened his own gait. Shorter strides. A breath slower. He could do this all night.
He’s right there.
Breathing. Thinking. Existing.
He didn’t need Mumbo to speak. Didn’t want him to. Words would ruin it, collapse the weightless world between them into something real. Something small.
No. Grian liked this better.
Watching the man.
Watching the way he lived, completely unaware of how deeply loved he was.
Eventually, Mumbo reached the gates to his building, one of those older apartments with peeling paint and wide front steps, two stories, four units per floor. Mumbo lived in the far left one. Grian had confirmed it weeks ago.
He watched Mumbo disappear into the stairwell.
Then he lingered.
Head tilted back, eyes tracking the windows above until a light flicked on. There.
He is home.
The window glowed soft and golden. Curtains drawn open, carelessly. The lamp inside cast a warm halo across the far wall. He could see the edge of Mumbo’s coat, now slung over a chair.
You let me in.
You don’t even know it.
He stayed long enough to feel the static of Mumbo’s presence fade. Then turned. Walked away.
Hands in his own pockets. Heart still rattling in his chest.
He didn’t need to see more.
Not tonight.
He’d already memorized it.