Chapter Text
Breaking news! Overzealous skeleton with the temperament of a child found to be sitting outside the door of a perfectly average Joe and his pet flower who also happens to be sentient! |
Frisk stares at the blinking cursor, white against black for the sake of his eyes, and sighs, putting his phone down and burying himself deeper into his blanket. It’s three in the fucking morning, and Papyrus is still outside their fucking door.
Back when he and Flowey had stood near the door for about half an hour (before realizing that the skeleton probably wouldn’t be able to hear them if they were quiet enough in moving to the bedroom), Papyrus had revealed that he’d already gotten kicked out once for being a general nuisance (“-FOR WAITING FOR MY GOOD FRIEND-“) so he was being quieter. Frisk sees no difference from when they’d last spoken but who knows, maybe it was just that he was getting old.
Anyway, Flowey hadn’t been able to find sleep either, so he had been doing the to-and-fro thing, reporting his findings every half hour or so. The last time he’d shown up was a little under an hour ago so Frisk assumes the little guy finally passed out. Good for him or whatever.
There is still work today. There is work to leave for in exactly five hours from now.
Somehow, this doesn’t make sleep come any faster. He still feels like he’s a sad little puppet on strings, being maneuvered around despite the fact that someone forgot to repair the stitching on his neck again.
Instead, he’s thinking of the Underground again, that jolly place, and is suddenly glad that the curtains are drawn shut. If they were willing to use Papyrus…
Frisk shudders. It’s not even ironic.
He is no stranger to the occasional loopy-ass dream, but the ones featuring that fucking short-ass skeleton turn out to be arthouse psychological films that are about as tangible in his mind as memories from a night of heavy drinking and crying on Flowey. Except these have the additional perks of cold sweats, shaking uncontrollably, panic attacks, the whole works. He’s not even entirely certain of why, because while Sans had been someone whose true nature had shocked him to his core, he’d never actually been… violent.
Yeah, fine, okay. Maybe his eye-lights went dark and he threatened him with death over what was supposed to be a dinner between friends, something that wasn’t even true because Sans had made a promise to the goat, and oh my god. It always goes back to her, doesn’t it? She’d love that.
Maybe there’s time when his eternally smiling expression exuded an odd cruelty, something dark lurking just beneath the surface. It was much more noticeable after Frisk hit reset for the first time, after the aforementioned bombshell. It was enough to make him angry and depressed, just a tad. Annoyed, some days. Apathetic for the rest, since trying so hard, getting so far, and finding out that Linkin Park only ever had the bitter truth to offer does that to a person.
Don’t pretend to be my friend. Don’t give me hope if you’re going to take it away.
Anyway, that can of worms was long sealed and dealt with. It’s just that he has flashes of beige, golden and brown, and blood, not all of it his own, and Sans at the helm of it all, like his psyche had decided that Sans was the literal gold standard for a sleep paralysis demon, because that dude managed to hit Frisk with 90 mental damage all while being the laziest fuck alive.
Maybe that’s why it was successful? Sans went the extra mile (sigh) for him, or seemed to be doing that, so it was easier to get pulled into a false sense of security, like things ever went well for Frisk.
Point of this whole tangent is, Sans could teleport. The limitations were never clear, because this was Sans, come on, but Frisk thinks it has a lot to do with if Sans has seen the place prior. Hence, the curtains were permanently drawn shut for the foreseeable future. Flowey grumbled about sunlight, as he grumbled about alcohol and any monster-related news they came across, but that fucker lived in a hole underground so Frisk doesn’t believe that at all.
He turns over, and prays to any deity that is listening for a moment of reprieve. Please.
(He ended up having a lucid dream about a basketball flying at his head. How quaint.)
Frisk seems to have blinked away the night, because there had been a beam of moonlight where yellow sun filtered into the room between the slight movements of the curtains, revealing all the dust that was flying through the air. It takes a while for him to get changed, all in a rush, but by the time he tip-toe-runs to the living room, Flowey is glaring at the television screen with something close to a soul-crushing longing.
Valid. Frisk hurts for him.
Flowey blinks at his arrival, and points at the door. They hadn’t pushed down the peephole’s slider, so Frisk’s easily able to toe his way to the door and look through.
There’s no one there.
He almost breathes a sigh of relief, just as a skull pops up from underneath his field of vision, probably in front of the door, grin as wide as a bridge threatening to be built, and Frisk falls back with a barely suppressed yell.
“HUMAN! HUMAN FRISK! GOOD MORNING! I HOPE YOU ARE AWAKE NOW! IT IS A LOVELY DAY TODAY, YOU KNOW? A LOVELY DAY TO MEET FRIENDS!”
Fuck. This.
Flowey seems to have made a long-suffering expression his permanent mode of existence, so he doesn’t even look surprised when Frisk asks him, low, whether he could be taken to work through the window. But one thing was abundantly clear.
Coming back to the house was the biggest mistake they could’ve made.
“So, we should’ve seriously just never come back,” he finishes, sighing. “I don’t have any other ideas, and-“
“I think I liked it better when you couldn’t speak,” Flowey says, snippy, as Frisk lets him curl onto his shoulder after he gets them to the street his store is at, away from the apartments. Frisk has been brainstorming ways to fuck off without being noticed, and this is what he gets. Go figure.
“Oh, shut your hole too. You did such a great job at it back home.”
“I will actually kill you in your sleep.”
“If I can get any, that would be great. I’d take death too.”
Flowey blinks, suddenly concerned in his own way. “How much did you get last night?”
“Like… three? Two? I don’t know.”
“Hm.” Then. “Don’t you humans have medicines or something for that?”
“Hehe. Medicine? All we get is drugs!”
“…”
“All medicine is just drugs in sheep costumes with specified dosages. Just so you know,” Frisk says. “And look, I used to take melatonin, but I’ve built up a tolerance and now the dosage I need to take causes my dreams to be way too… vivid. I get the sleep, but I feel just as shit afterwards with mental scarring to boot. Not worth it.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, anyway, so let me speak.”
“Okay.”
“…the fuck. You’re never nice.”
“I’m not. This is so that you won’t ask me to carry you to work after you get tired or whatever. Keep talking.”
Frisk grins.
They keep doing this for a few days. Papyrus leaves, but never for long, and he always comes back. He keeps talking about his latest recipes and experiences like as if Frisk spends his time sitting by the door and listening, like a prison inmate with precious call time who doesn’t want to interrupt.
It’s cute, he would’ve said a few years ago. Now, he’s tired.
It’s work, and then lingering in silence while he and Flowey attempt communication via every other method that doesn’t involve opening mouths. They even watched Evil Dead 2 on Frisk’s phone. What has the world come to. And then, it’s straight to bed, where he’s plagued by memories and nightmares and non-memories and everything else under the moon and sun, and then it’s back to work, because the weekend couldn’t come any sooner.
And when it’s here, he wakes up with a crick in his neck and no desire to live, because he and Flowey couldn’t do what they usually did on the weekends, which was watch something shitty while drunk and holler about it as such.
That’s probably the last straw. Who knows. There have been several last straws thus far.
So, he calls Flowey into his bedroom while Papyrus talks about mushroom risotto and how it smells charred when it’s cooked perfectly, and buries his head in his hands.
“We need to end this.”
“What?”
“We can’t live like this. This is hell. This is how he’s behaving without knowing we are home. Imagine what he’d do if he knew.”
“…it is hell,” Flowey agrees, frowning. “But then, what do we even do? He and the rest of them won’t leave you alone.”
“…”
“Doesn’t this count as workplace harassment? You could report them.”
“This isn’t my workplace, so it’s not precisely that. But I get what you’re saying and… no. They deserve to… exist. I wish they didn’t make it my problem. But I can’t complain because if I do, they won’t be accepted anywhere anymore. It’ll hurt them.”
“Fuck them,” Flowey hisses. “Look at you, Frisk. You can’t even sleep. You haven’t eaten anything in the last thirty-six hours. And you leave for work through a window.”
“Point taken. You don’t look well either.”
And Flowey looks kind of… sunken. His petals look more ochre than yellow. He shakes his head, and one comes flying off. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” And saying that sort of makes something in Frisk curl uncomfortably tight, and then solidy into something steely. Steely resolve. Look, he’s still got it.
“What do we do?”
Frisk thinks. For a blissful moment, he can.
And then promptly groans when something Papyrus is saying echoes more than the rest of the sentence he’d been yelling through. “Oh my god. There’s literally no other way. I’m opening the door.”
“What?!” Flowey almost yells, and Frisk shushes him. “What the fuck kind of decision is that? Can you use your brain?”
“Look, I’m not going another damn day without watching The Room with you while we throw plastic spoons at our TV. We’ve planned that for ages.”
“You open that door,” Flowey says, rough, “and only the stars can tell if we’d ever be able to do that.”
“What do you want to do then? Live like this? I don’t have enough money to rent another place, much less to move everything there. We are stuck here. Forever. And he’s not going away. They want something from me, and they’ve never stopped when it comes to getting that sort of thing.”
Flowey is quiet. And Frisk looks up to see his face, because he’s been silent for a bit too long, and-
“Oh my god, are you crying?!”
Flowey is… dribbling water, and that’s the only way to put it. His eyes are shiny and his leaves tremble. He looks…
“Fuck off. I h-hate you.”
Scared.
Oh.
“Flowey, buddy. Oh my god,” Frisk feel his own eyes burn, and he laughs. “You’re going to make me cry now. Flowey, I’m not leaving you. You’re coming with me, okay?”
“S-Stop that. Stop.”
“I’m not lying. No matter what they do, no matter what happens, I’ll be with you, and you’ll be with me. This doesn’t change anything.”
Flowey shakes a bit. He’s a silent crier, Frisk notices, something that causes his chest to hurt. He’s shaking his head, trying to push Frisk’s hands away as he shakes harder and harder.
“Hey. Who’s going to take me to work if you don’t, huh?”
“That fuck- that fucking skeleton could just t-teleport you there.”
Oh. Oh.
Frisk’s expression drops. “Why would I let him do that?”
“I don’t fucking know.” A hiccup.
“I don’t think I lived in a house with him.”
“…”
“Did he perhaps… hold my hair back while I threw up over myself?”
“…”
“Oh, yeah. He was definitely the one who I watched the entire Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy with, yeah?”
“…shut up.”
“Oh no. He was the one who berated and trashed my taste in partners so much that I was set straight. He even made me food, yelled at me to take care of myself, and listened to me cry everyday. Such a sweetheart. How shall I ever thank him? I’ll need to find him a gift basket or something. Luckily, I have all these pots around my house that could work. They’re full of soil though…”
Flowey looks up, shaky, but there is no more liquid leaking from his eyes. He laughs, an uncertain, shocked thing, and Frisk grins.
“You’re so stupid for someone who calls me stupid, you stupid flower.”
“You are v-very stupid.”
“Okay.”
They sit in silence for a bit, until Flowey composes himself enough, wiping tears away and clearing his throat. “So.”
Frisk leans forward. “Yeah, so.”
“The door.”
“It’s the only way,” Frisk sighs. “We’ll just give them what they want. It can’t be too hard, can it?”
Flowey stares. Then he sighs. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay. Let me on your shoulder.”
They march to the door, hearts in throats and quivering nerves and all that. Frisk has changed into something more befitting a fight, jacket slung over a shoulder while Flowey hovers on the other. They decide against the kitchen knife, because Frisk pales at the sight of it and Flowey is insanely perceptive, but he still has his flashlight and stock of gummy bears in the pocket of that jacket. His phone, his wallet, his keys. He thinks he’s got everything.
Papyrus is still talking, going on, and on, and on.
Flowey and Frisk make eye contact, before Frisk sighs. He takes a deep breath.
Then he unlocks the door.