Requested? ✅️

NSFW? 🔀

Requested by: ✒️🤖

Art by: Kitsuneisi

A/N: Still alive unfortunately. We'll get motivation one day when we aren't in and out of appointments to see if we have cancer.

UHh RedScape/Scar intended user but doesn't have to be.

Mumbo slouched in the breakroom like gravity had finally decided to make an example of him. His chair sagged beneath his weight, metal legs squealing faintly against the linoleum whenever he shifted, which was often. Restless, uncomfortable movements from a body that had been awake far longer than it should have been.

The table in front of him was a battlefield of caffeine: disposable paper cups collapsed in on themselves, ceramic mugs ringed with dark stains, one battered travel tumbler tipped on its side like it had given up hours ago. The air reeked of burnt coffee and bitterness, the smell clinging to his clothes and crawling up the back of his throat.

Stacks of exam papers sprawled across the table, some neatly piled, others skewed and half-slid into one another where his attention had fractured. He stared down at them, red pen clenched between his fingers, eyes squinting hard as if sheer force of will might make the equations behave. Numbers swam. Symbols blurred. His head throbbed in a dull, rhythmic pulse that synced unpleasantly with the fluorescent lights humming overhead.

He groaned, low and rough, the sound dragged out of a chest hollowed by exhaustion. One hand came up to rake through his hair, fingers catching on tangles and tugging slightly at his scalp. He barely noticed. The skin beneath his eyes felt tight and overheated, like it might split if he blinked too hard. He was jittery; caffeine-deep, nerves buzzing under his skin, but at the same time crushingly slow, thoughts moving through syrup.

The red pen scratched sharply across a page. Wrong. He circled an answer too hard, the paper puckering under the pressure. The sound made him wince, jaw tightening as irritation flared hot and brief. He leaned back with a huff, chair protesting loudly, spine popping as he stretched and immediately regretted it.

He grabbed the nearest mug and drank without looking. Cold. Acrid. It tasted like regret and burnt plastic. He swallowed anyway.

Footsteps approached, muted by the constant background noise of the building; distant conversations, doors slamming, vents sighing like tired lungs. At first, he barely registered it, attention slipping in and out like a failing connection. Then the breakroom door opened.

He looked up, blinking slowly, eyes glassy and unfocused.

“Hey,” he said, or tried to. The word came out slurred at the edges, consonants colliding into something barely recognizable as English. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Morning. Or... whatever time this counts as.”

We're so drained at this point.