Work Text:
"Welp. I just hit a new low."
Wally stares at all his laid out shirts on the floor. All of them have a single noticeable ink stain on them. Sammy twiddles his thumbs for a bit. He feels kind of bad for staining some of his clothes. He didn't mean to do that to them but being a creature made of ink wasn't helping.
Wally picks up a shirt with a particularly nasty ink stain on it. It almost covered the whole thing.
"Hmm, I remember how this one appeared."
---
Wally ran in his room and shut the door loudly. He pressed his whole body against it in case his drunken mother would try to open it. Sammy has already slipped out of his shirt pocket and is staring at him with worry.
Five minutes have passed and Wally starts to relax. He takes a deep breath in and walks forward. As he walks forward, he steps on a wet rag he had left on the floor and slips. He didn't have time to scream as he quickly fell forward with a loud 'oof.'
It took a while for Wally to process what happened while also laying face first in the ground. He feels something wriggle under him. Slowly and carefully, he gets up, looking at the mess. Ink splattered everywhere on the floor, his neck, and shirt. The wriggling sensation is still on him.
Wally looks down on himself to see Sammy stuck to him, trying to recover from the impact. The boy got up and saw that Sammy is still stuck on him. He walks around and he's not budging from his shirt. He becomes fascinated by this new discovery. Sammy made his way up Wally's neck and stopped. Wally stops. He stares down at the small creature with wide eyes. Sammy puts both his hands on Wally's lips and opens his mouth, emitting a noise that sounded similar to 'down.'
Wally puts Sammy on the ground quickly and starts to clean up the ink off the floor. He's now slightly terrified.
---
"Might as well throw this away."
He chucks the shirt into a bin with a soft clank. He turns around to his other shirts and notices that Sammy is pointing to a particularly bad one. Wally cocks an eyebrow.
"This?"
He holds it up. Ink is smeered all over it, or rather most of it. There's a big cut that slits the shirt, almost ripping it in two. He tugs at sides of it for a bit and frowns slightly at Sammy.
"Didn't realize that I still kept this around."
---
Wally stuck his tongue out in concentration, trying to screw in a bolt into a tight hole. Thomas was fixing another pipe that seems to holding way too much pressure.
Wally struggles on getting the two finishing turns of the bolt. He is strong, but not that strong. Thomas notices him struggling. He quickly puts the final touches on the pipe and checks up on Wally.
"Need some help there?"
Wally sighs and looks over at him, smiling a tad.
"Yeah. This damn bolt is 'givin me trouble."
He climbs off the ladder and allows Thomas to climb up there. As Wally waits for Thomas to finish up, he starts to hear this weird creaking noise. It starts out soft but then it gets louder. Creaking and creaking, as if two pieces of steel are pushing against each other with immense force.
BAPANG!
Wally stands there, shocked. He's trying to process what just happened. Thomas is looking at him with wide eyes, seemingly trying to process what happened as well. People started coming out of their workspaces to see what that noise was but started to run over to Wally once they noticed what happened.
Everything was in slow motion, but when people started shouting and running, it hit him. The Janitor looked around at what was going on. Everyone swarmed him, but he still saw the pipe that is underneath him. The awkwardly bent pipe that held too much pressure, broke, and almost fell on Wally's head.
He heard some of the people around him.
"Oh dear lord! Is the kid alright?"
"That thing almost squashed the poor fella."
"His apron and shirt! It's been cut right through."
"I swear, if Joey keeps doing business practices from 1880, someone is going to get killed."
With no warning, Wally fell to the ground, hyperventilating. His thoughts became a broken record.
'I almost died.'
'I almost died!'
'I ALMOST DIED!'
'I ALMOST DIED!'
'I ALMOST DIED!'
"Woah woah! Calm down there kid."
Reality began sweeping back but more slowly. Some people gathered around him, others are getting Joey or doing something. Thomas pat Wally's back softly, attempting to comfort him. Wally begins to calm down, slowing his breathing a tad. Thomas smiles a little at him.
"Deep breathes. You're fine, you're okay. Just breathe."
The boy relaxes. Slowly, he attempts to get back up but soon falls backwards into Thomas.
"Hey there! You don't want to be getting up so soon. Here."
Thomas gets up and puts an arm around Wally, keeping him stable. Wally does the same thing and grips his torn and drenched shirt with his other hand. They walk off into the break room, waiting for Joey.
---
Wally grimaces a little.
"This will definitely be thrown away."
He shoves the fabric in the trash bin. Sammy looks at that torn shirt with a little fear. He only saw Wally being walked away by Thomas and that was it when the event happened. He never saw the entire situation play out.
Sammy groans a little. Wally looks at him and smiles sadly.
"I know that it isn't a happy memory but it's true. At least Joey had the sense to give me a week off."
Sammy frowns.
'He has the sense to do that but he doesn't have the sense to get rid of that ink machine.'
They search around a bit more. There's the usual ink stain on the edge of a shirt or in the middle but sometimes they'll find big splats or torn holes.
Wally picks one up and inspects it. He chuckles a little, earning him a glance from Sammy.
"Sorry about that but, do you remember this?"
He flips the shirt around to reveal little inky claw marks running down its back. Sammy stares at it and sinks a little. That was his doing.
---
Today Wally made Sammy mad. Real mad. When he found out that Wally accidentally broke two of his instruments while he was cleaning up, he swore he was going to get him back.
Sammy stalked the hallways, making sure no one was there. Wally is about to clean up this hallway soon so Sammy needs to make a mess. A huge mess.
He slithered over to a pipe and looked around. Above him are multiple other pipes. Some look like they're going to burst soon. Sammy grins.
'Jackpot.'
He slithers up the wall and onto the ceiling near a particularly shaking pipe. Rubbing his hands, he smiles widely, then he gives it a hard push and it bursts open. Ink flowed out of the pipe endlessly. Due to this burst, that pipe hit another pipe, causing it to burst open as well. The scene made Sammy feel a little giddy. Ink quickly flowed down the halls. He waits for the shrieks.
He gives it a moment.
Another moment.
'Any second now.'
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA."
The scream of a woman rang throughout the building. The scream was followed by other multiple shrieks and the patters of feet. Sammy hid between a pipe and the ceiling, sloppily snickering. The speaker went off.
"Wally Franks and Thomas Connor, go clean up the hallway near the music department."
The sound of pattering feet started to get closer and closer. It stopped. Wally stared at the two waterfall's of ink in horror.
"Goddamnit! How in the fuck did two of them go off at the same damn time?"
Sammy stopped snickering and laid there in shock. He didn't expect Wally to be so angry to a point where he would curse. He also didn't realize that he was slipping off of the pipe. Before he knew it, he was shrieking as he fell onto Wally. He caught himself by grabbing the back of Wally's shirt, but he started slipping. He panics. He's trying to get into Wally's pocket safely without him noticing.
Suddenly, Sammy was pick up by an unknown hand. He's soon met face to face with Wally. He looks extremely pissed. Sammy glares back, but he can't help but feel the pricks of fear in his nonexistent stomach. Wally clenches his teeth.
"It was you, wasn't it."
Sammy didn't respond, just glared. Quickly, he was shoved in Wally's apron pouch.
"Of course it was."
---
"I'm still really mad that ya did that."
Sammy shrunk a little and twiddles his thumbs. He slightly regrets doing that since it was a lot of ink, and it caused one of their animations to be late.
Wally sighs and looks around.
"Ya Know, I can't be mad at ya forever for doing that."
He picks up a semi-decent looking shirt.
"This will do for now."
Quickly, he takes off his polka dotted pajama top and puts on the shirt. After that, he picks up the remaining shirts and throws them into a drawer. He sighs again and picks up Sammy.
"Don't try to ruin this shirt please."
Sammy smiles nervously before he is put into Wally's side pocket. Wally uses aluminum foil instead of paper now to cover the innards of the pocket from Sammy's inky body.
He needs to protect his shirt from another ink stain.