Archive of Our Own ^beta

The ice in Mettaton’s solvent mojito was melting. Pouting, he ran his silver claw along the salted sugar rim and tucked it between his lips. Some of the crystals were as bad as the ice, gelling together in a gross smear (tasty, though.)

“Alright, luv?” Ramb was at his usual spot behind his little union-won bar. “I can make a fresh one. Put it on your man’s tab.” He was keeping himself busy by polishing the same pint glass he had for the last two hours with a coarse cheesecloth and scrubbing with all the determined vigor of a rheumatic hound.

Mettaton heaved a sigh. “No, no. Don’t let me be wasteful.” He plucked the bendy straw poking over the rim of his flute and sipped. ‘Glum’ may have been his flavor of the day, but Ramb’s flair for mixology was strong enough to slice through it, albeit for a moment.

Cold honeydew melon chilled his tongue and he sighed again, fondly this time. “Fabulous as ever, darling.”

The green room looked like a rapture site. Tenna had declared an all-paws on deck order for his afternoon taping, one that Mettaton had tried to be oh-so-subtle about calling out of by whispering as much in his beau’s aural mesh over lunch.

He should have known better. For as great of an actor as Tenna was on the stage, he was utterly hopeless when it came to volume control. Not that he had been angry! Certainly not, especially when his sharp cry of shock had so quickly devolved into worry, worry that Mettaton was bored, that he didn’t love him anymore, that he couldn’t come to the studio anymore, and so on and so forth until his cosmic obligation dragged him to the soundstage.

Ramb slid a tiny cocktail over. “Here,” he said, “Do me a favor? Try this and tell me if it’s swill. Your man asked me to try out more ‘festive’ guff for the holidays.” His smile was rueful. “You guessing the flavor right will tip me off on if I cinched it.”

“Oh, if you insist.” Mettaton gave him a grateful smile and picked up the glass to sniff. “Notes of berry… something sweeter, too. Cake batter? You know I’m no sommelier.” He couldn’t help glancing over at the bright ON AIR sign above the doors, then at the wristwatch he kept under his cuff. Filming still had another hour to run, assuming Tenna didn’t need retakes.

The afternoon had been blocked out for a few game show tapings with Mettaton penciled in as a contestant, but his presence hadn’t been strictly mandatory. There were always ready and willing understudies to account for no-shows. Things would turn out fine, he told himself.

“Eh.” Ramb set down his glass and cheesecloth. “You’ve still got better taste than the rest of us chimney stacks.” His hollow-point eyes stared up at Mettaton, unblinking, as a sly grin curled along the ends of his lips. “Nice to have someone here who doesn’t settle for the same old usual. You Lightners always give us a good shock of spontaneity when we need it.”

“You know flattery will get you everywhere with me, darling.” Mettaton tried not to wince at how half-hearted the quip sounded. He chased the sourness with a sip of cocktail, humming as tangy acid seared his month and spread down the tubing of his throat. “Hm…”

Ramb was silent as he picked up his glass (the same one, Mettaton noted) and went back to polishing.

It took Mettaton a moment to place the flavor beyond ‘liquid dessert’ before it came to him in a flash. He sipped again just to make sure, and his pure wonderment turned into a laugh. “Cheesecake? Raspberry cheesecake?”

“Right-o. Thanks, luv.” In lieu of winking, Ramb ticked his head an inch to the side. Tenna often did the same thing. “Must’ve got something right when that’s the happiest I’ve seen you today, and for someone who always looks like the cat that got the cream? Bit concerning, innit?” He took Mettaton’s half-empty flute and shuffled around to run it under the faucet. Soft-spoken though he was, the bar’s acoustics plus Mettaton’s sharp hearing helped his voice carry. “Point for your thoughts? Might want to know that some of the pippins think the two of you are in a row.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake. All for playing hooky one time?” It wasn’t like Mettaton could blame anyone but himself for not having the foresight to drag Tenna into a dressing room to give him the news. At least then the gossip would be saucily salacious and not embarrassingly personal.

Ramb set the glass on a tiny drying rack and washed his paws. “Not like you to call a sick day, is all,” he said, croaking a smidge louder to be heard. Shaking his paws didn’t do anything to make his purple fur look less sodden. “Everythin’ alright?”

The wet dog reek of him forced Mettaton to discreetly switch off his olfactory sensors. “I’ll be fine.”

“Mhm.” Toweling off his paws, Ramb got back to polishing, flat face unreadable.

The last thing Mettaton wanted to do was pour his soul out to Ramb. That wasn’t a slight against Ramb specifically, mind. The same went for anyone who wasn’t his beau.

Tenna was the only person in the studio who knew that Mettaton wasn’t ‘really’ a high-tech robot, but a no-name ghost monster puppeteering a metal cocoon. When it came to going-ons about his life in the Light World, he preferred to keep up a mysterious mask. It had the duel-pronged benefit of both privacy and sex appeal. Manufactured or not, it always gave him a tantalizing thrill to hear unfounded rumors about his background through the studio grapevine.

Yes, Mettaton was quite content to keep things as they were, so that meant zipping his lips until filming wrapped and he could talk things out with Tenna. He knew his partner well enough to know how personally he was probably taking an abrupt absence. Nothing a little private tit-for-tat and spoiling couldn’t help. Defogging pesky hazes of cathode panic was second nature to him.

Ramb’s doggish ears suddenly perked up. Spidery static crackled from deep within his mop of hair. “Early dismissal, sounds like.”

“Hm?” Mettaton turned to him, then to the double doors.

Sure enough, they slammed open. Gaggles of pippins stampeded inside and jockeyed for spots on the couches. Whatever higher power that had a paw in designing them was onto something with those pilling felt limbs of theirs. It made them much quieter than the zappers and shadowguys dragging their paws behind them in a second wave.

There was no sign of Tenna, which meant it was time to go.

Mettaton slid from his stool and tipped a silent nod on Ramb’s way. Better to slip out without comment and pretend that there weren’t multiple pairs of beady diecast eyes goggling at him.

“[XXXX] us, right?” one of the pippins lucky enough to lay claim to both the couch and one of the game controllers hollered over the caterwaul. Miraculously timed bleeps punched through his PG-13 and up swears. “Seriously, he hasn’t been that much of an [XXX]hole since—”

A shadowguy interrupted him with a flurry of off-key notes and frantic pointing in Mettaton’s direction.

The pippins, wild-eyed, glanced around, spotted Mettaton, and squeaked in surprise before ducking deep behind the cushions.

On a better day, Mettaton would have defended himself. As if he’d ever tattle! Gossip, yes, but not tattle. There was a clear split between the two.

Instead, he clicked his heels over to the nearest Darkner, a zapper slouched over the far side of the bar table. “Excuse me, dear. Last I checked, filming was supposed to go until four. Did you all wrap early?”

“Hm?” The zapper looked up and leaned over in Mettaton’s direction. “Oh, yeahs.” The red light on the top of their head flashed to punctuate each syllable. “Boss said to buzz off or we’d be chopped.”

“Bless that man. I’ve told him that’s not what that means.” Mettaton fished for the compact in his pocket. Clicking it open, he got to work in freshening up. Keeping busy would help him concentrate. “Did something happen?”

The zapper was quiet for a moment. Mettaton watched him point his LED over to the loud-mouthed pippins and jittery shadowguy from before. The two were obviously eavesdropping and doing an abysmal job of acting like they were focused on their cart racing game. Mettaton didn’t know much about video games, but he was pretty sure that the goal wasn’t to repeatedly careen over embankments.

The trio seemed to share a telepathic conversation with one another before the zapper looked back at Mettaton. “Um…” They fidgeted with their mitt-like paws.

Mettaton smoothed over the bumpy smudges of his lip gloss. “Well?” he prompted, trying to sound teasing instead of impatient. “Cat got your tongue? I don’t want to dawdle, but I need to know what happened. Can you give me the sitrep?”

“Sorry, Boss 2.”

“Mettaton, sweetie. You don’t see me begging for the responsibility of your payroll, do you?”

“Uh...” The zapper clicked their speaker off and on. “Um, I-I’m not so good at the quiz segments.”

“Get it together, pinhead!” Never before had an attempted stage whisper been louder. The pippins didn’t seem to notice. “You want me to tell him?” he hissed.

“Tell me what, exactly?” Mettaton snapped his compact shut. The anxious pangs in his chassis were starting up again. Not for himself this time, but still just as bad. He preemptively sped up his cooling fans and crossed his arms. “Go on. I don’t care who. Cough it up, anydarling.”

The pippins shook himself hard enough to make his die spin. Grunting, he clasped it to a stop with both paws. “Sorry about them, sir. They—”

“Ah, ah.” Mettaton waggled his claw. “Did I say to be rude?” He made a mental note to send a nice fruit basket to the zapper sometime soon (ideally after relearning what their name was.)

“Course not, Mr. Mettaton, sir!” The pippins drew a manic red-lipped grin. “Sorry! So!” He scuttled over the back of the couch and plopped to the floor. His bright green poncho and felt-like limbs crumpled in a pathetic pile before springing back up to form a sharp salute. “The first two shows weren’t Tenna’s best. Pretty sure he was planning on some surprise improv with you with the physical challenges. It was okay, though! We only needed a pawful of retakes, and the understudies for you were long-haulers, so they knew how to play along okay enough. Didn’t really give Tenna much to work with though.”

Great, now Mettaton was anxious and guiltier than he already was. He couldn’t be bothered to care how loud his cooling fans were. “And the third show?”

“Yeah, that. Right, so…” Scowling, the pippins placed his paws on his sides and glared down at the tiles. The tip of their boot traced along a grooved scuff mark. “Your understudy for the third one was a newbie. I don’t think he was really getting how off Tenna’s game was. Energies were completely [XXXX]ed.” Their six-sided face paled. “[XXXX], sorry.” They coughed. “A-Anyway, he kept trying to rile him up. Egg him on, or something? His idea of flirting, I don’t know, but—”

“Wait.” Hearing each second tick by on his internal clock was getting to be agony, and Mettaton’s gut was suddenly telling him to prioritize haste and have Tenna speak for himself. “Sorry, dear. Let’s raincheck on that. Do you know where Tenna went?”

To his credit, the pippins didn’t seem too put out, but the poor thing probably needed to get checked over by an optometrist for how much his eyelid kept spasming. “Sorry, sir! Of course! Well, he made everyone clear out pretty fast.”

“Oh, I know dis one! Boss stayed put,” the zapper added helpfully. They fiddled with one of the bar coasters. “I was one’a da last ones out, yeah? So’s I heard him say somethin’ about cleanin’ up.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier!?” The pippins cried. Behind him, the shadowguy trilled something nastily off-key.

Even if Mettaton was able to understand musical notation, he wouldn’t have heard. It took only seconds for him to leg it out the double doors and down the hall.

Mettaton turned his olfactory senses back on as he creaked open the soundstage door. He adored the musty smell of an old theater, and he wanted to take any opportunity he could to slough off the worry bearing down on his shoulder pads. It didn’t work.

“Tenna, darling?” he called, forcing a smile to help brighten his voice. The lenses that masqueraded as his irises whirred and widened. Every part of the room was doused in darkness save for the stage. Dust motes floated under the spotlight beams.

Tenna was sitting at the edge of the stage at half his usual height, his screen switched off. If those two antennas of his hadn’t been twitching his way, Mettaton would have assumed his beau had gone into sleep mode while sitting up. That was one example of a laundry list of unhealthy habits they were working on.

At least one thing went right today when I went with the Chanel No. 5. Tenna seemed to pick up citrus notes better than floral ones. If he was trying to play ‘dead,’ it wouldn’t work.

“There you are, sweet thing. What’s wrong?” Mettaton kept his pawsteps as light as one could in five-inch stilettos. His partner was extra sensitive to loud noises when he was upset. “Your cute little feelers are reaching for me, you know. Don’t pretend to sleep.”

Tenna’s screen didn’t blip on as he sighed. His tail flicked and thwacked the stage floor once before he grabbed the plug end and roughly yanked it into his lap. His paws worried at it as his speakers spluttered to life. “Honk, snew...? Mimimi?”

Mettaton tutted. He leaned half-against the stage and half-against Tenna’s thigh. “Tell me what happened?” he asked, voice muffled as he nuzzled his face into sweat-damp slacks, his arms lengthening to coil around Tenna’s leg in a boa constrictor’s hug.

No reply, but that was alright. Mettaton could be patient, and he gave his beau’s thigh a reassuring squeeze to show it before closing his eyes and letting himself go limp.

It didn’t take long before he felt a large paw rest on his back. A dull claw swept away strands of his hair to pet the bare nape of his neck.

“You came back?” The compression in Tenna’s voice was much stronger when his screen was off.

Mettaton tilted his head to look up, though all he saw was his own shadowy reflection in his partner’s face. “Darling, I never left.” He stretched his left arm to its limit. It gave him just enough leverage to be able to patter his claws along the curved glass. “I was waiting for you in the green room.”

At this point in their relationship, Tenna could hardly call himself touch-starved. That didn’t stop him from dipping his head to chase Mettaton’s touch. “Really?” He gently pressed his palm into Mettaton’s back.

“Of course.” Mettaton angled his claws up and idly scratched under the bottom of Tenna’s frame. “You know how much I love it here.” How much more he adored it than the Light World was the part that always went unsaid.

Tenna let go of his tail in favor of grabbing Mettaton’s slender paw between two claws. He held it up to his screen, just enough so that the balled ends of his antennas could bundle themselves against a steel palm. “I thought, since you were gone all day yesterday, you’d wanna do a marathon…”

“I did want to, dear, but that whole reunion fiasco was just…”

“…Just?” Tenna pressed his dormant screen against Mettaton’s paw, antennas tip-tapping away. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask how it went earlier, you know? I, um, wasn’t sure if it would be okay to, considering…” He trailed off, then plonked Mettaton’s paw back against his face.

There was a pulsing noise, a click, and a weary groan. Degaussing took a lot out of his dear Tenna these days.

Mettaton didn’t look up when he felt warm lips engulf his paw. His mind cleared. “You did nothing wrong. I thought that prancing about onstage would help, but I suppose my battery life isn’t as good as I assumed it was.” He squeezed his coiled arms a bit tighter. “I’m the sorry one for stomping over your schedule.”

Tenna’s mouth stilled. He lifted his head away, just enough to speak. He knew how much Mettaton loved the feeling of residual electric fuzz. “I don’t want you to be sorry, hon. You didn’t do anything!” It was nice to hear his voice back to its usual clarity, or at least as feedback-free as it could be.

“Alright, then I’m sorry you had to put up with whoever covered for me.” Mettaton blindly waggled his claws until Tenna evidently got the hint and drew his face back within reach. “Some of your crew mentioned one of my understudies not behaving himself?”

The paw draped over Mettaton’s back tensed, and the claws around his waist stiffened. Tenna heaved an exasperated sigh and rubbed his face against Mettaton’s paw, his voice a whine. “Ugh, I keep telling them to stop being such… chatty cathys!”

“Does that include me, darling? Because I’d be all that and more if someone yelled at me for something above my pay grade.”

“You’re the star.” Tenna’s long nose tickled the segments of Mettaton’s stretched arm as he drew it closer to kiss his wrist. “You can do whatever you want as far as I care.”

As delightfully stubborn as ever.

Mettaton was always more than happy to let himself get manhandled, and while his beau’s thigh was exceptionally soft and had just the right sink, it didn’t leave him many options to reciprocate outside of surprising whoever was on dry cleaning duty with a pop quiz in how to get lipstick stains out of pleather.

Huffing, he slowly retracted his arms and flinched at the heartbroken “whuh?” from above as he straightened up and took Tenna’s paws in his own. “Shush, don’t worry,” he soothed. “Why don’t we move this over to our dressing room, hm? I’ll carry you.”

“Really?” Tenna was already making good on his namesake and shrinking down to a courteous carrying height. “I, ah, had another surprise for you in there...” A coin-sized dahlia slowly unfurled from the tip of his nose as he smiled. “The white elephant gift exchange didn’t happen to have a triple-decker chainsaw in the prize pool, did it?”

“You didn’t! Tenna!” Mettaton squealed and scooped Tenna up to his chassis, though not before catching his buzzing mouth in a deep kiss. Static bristled across his face. “Thank you, dear. I’m feeling better already.” Tittering, he paused to lick the numbness from his lips before securing his bridal hold and guiding Tenna’s boxy head to his shoulder. “How does a girl’s night sound? We can cuddle on the floor and clean your revolver collection over some of that puppy chow TV slop you love so much.” He tried not to squirm as he felt a tail wind around his waist.

Tenna furrowed his brow and cupped his dwarfed paw over Mettaton’s cheek. “Boy’s night,” he corrected gently. “You… you know that, right?” His voice crackled with all the sincerity befitting a dirge.

“You drive me wild.” Mettaton laughed. He couldn’t help it, and he was quick to apologize by peppering Tenna’s face in messy kisses. That screen would look like a constellation map once he was through with it! “Anyone can have a girl’s night, my dear. It’s a state of mind! Maddy and I used to have them. Did I ever tell you that?” He pulled back with a grin, squinting under the soft buttercream light of Tenna’s lovely glow. “We’d pretend we had nails to paint and draft elaborate murder mystery dinner theater scripts. Well, Maddy wrote them. I just designed the costumes and helped punch up the dialogue, but if the murder victim just so happened to have the same name as our bully of the week? Well, you know all the pesky legal hocus pocus better than me. Say it with me, darling!”

“Plausible deniability?” Tenna guessed with a dazed, squiggly smile. “Oh, oh! Or fair use? I guess it would depend…” He kicked his legs in thought.

“Exactly.” With that, Mettaton made for the exit at a brisk walk. “Let’s have Mike fetch us food and you can tell me all about the rake who spoiled your temper. Do you want me to punt him across the catwalk for you?”

“Aw, it wasn’t so bad.” Tenna blushed. “I need to, um, hire everyone back though…”

The hall was still empty, but Mettaton didn’t want to take any chances. “I’m quite sure they knew you weren’t being serious.” Holding Tenna close, he powerwalked down to the nearest corner and veered left. “But I’m sure they would appreciate an apology.”

“Maybe…”

Their dressing room door wasn’t far from the soundstage, much to Mettaton’s irritation. He loved the Dark World, but Angel if it didn’t get claustrophobic at times.

Stop that. It wouldn’t do him any good to try and imagine something beyond the scope of what the fantasy was capable of. A dressing room could be a house. A Tenna-sized couch could be a bed. A yard? It wasn’t like Mettaton went outside. He didn’t need all the bells and whistles of a ‘normal’ life.  

This was enough for now.