Chapter Text
There is comfort to be found within the quietude of a somber hotel room. In the shafts of fluorescent light that stream through the curtains that never fully close, and the steady drone of too-early morning life outside of the window when you crack it open. In the moment where you’re not in some inexplicably harrowing amount of danger, and you can just breathe.
The damp air, while not the freshest, mollifies the dryness of your debris-laden airways. However, that’s about all it does, and your face pulls into one of mild displeasure at the tacky feeling of sweat and dirt clinging to your skin. Is there merit to be found in waking up in yesterday’s dirty clothing? In this case, absolutely. But then, ambiguously nefarious though he may be, G’s respectability in terms of your modesty has only slightly been under question. Everything else seems to be up in the air at any given time.
It’s the thought of the fugitive and all that transpired before your abrupt nap that has you turning from the window to the bed neighboring your own, considering its tousled state and the distinct lack of the expected body. Your reaction is lukewarm at best. The barest reflection of questioning in eyes too tried to actually care. Taking and releasing a deep breath as if it’ll alleviate the insistent throbbing within your skull, you slowly make your way to the bathroom, the intense red numbers of the bedside clock catching your eye along the way. Whether he returns or not, you’ve got a plane to catch in less than ten hours and you’re not likely to get any more sleep until then.
The shower does little to relieve the pain and fatigue; worse yet, once you’ve exited the bathroom, you’re not prepared for your already sore muscles to tense and bunch, teeth gnashing and fists clenching in a spontaneous reaction to the muffled voices drifting through the hotel room door. It takes a moment to will calm back, the pain giving an intense flair at your realization, but once done, you take a step back and grab the nearest clean hand-towel, then head for your backpack and begin rummaging.
When you open the door, you do so with far more force than necessary and take slight delight in Carmella’s small, startled jump. Tiny victories. “Here.” Her adjacency makes it easy for you to shove the bundled towel out to her, pushing it into her stomach until she takes it. “Can’t take it with me.”
To your immediate left, leaning against the wall, arms crossed and orbits half-lidded, G watches the forced transfer. “Wipe it?”
“Course.” You murmur whilst turning and throwing a flippant wave over your shoulder on the way back into the room, intent on preparing for your flight back to normalcy. But Carmella, with her firm grip on your elbow, has ideas intent on delaying your efforts. She’s thrown the towel haphazardly onto the floor and holds steady with one hand while the other tucks the gun between the small of her back and waistband. While her grip isn’t heavy enough to be threatening, it lingers, lending to her want of something, so you turn back, looking from her forced connection to her eyes, and wait.
Carmella hesitates, her gaze holding yours but her head jerking toward G when she asks, “It hasn’t told you anything, has it?” She watches your brows crease and lips pull into a grim line, knowing that you won’t respond to the rhetorical, and continues, “no, of course it hasn’t— whatever, you picked it, so you’re going to deal with the consequences—“
You wrench your arm from her hold. “Get to the point.” You have a myriad of people you can contact should you ever want to be nagged; Carmella is no longer counted among them.
“My point, darling, is that you’re part of the game now,” she says with a scoff and cocked hip. “If you’d trusted me—“
“Trusted you?” You suck in a breath through your teeth as vitriol spears through your core. “You got me into this.”
“And I could have gotten you out, but you chose that. Now you’ve got a bigger mess on your hands, and mine are tied,” she spits back just as intensely. “Consider this your courtesy call—probably the only one you’ll get—from the person that’s nothing to you. The game has just gotten a whole hell of a lot harder.”
“I’m not—" The outburst is sudden and surprising, louder than the previous seething stage whispers, and holds more emotion than acceptable, so you endeavor to reign yourself in. “I’m not… playing this game anymore.”
“Oh,” she returns with a derisive chuckle, “yeah? So, what, you’re just going to fly back home, go back to your fancy little job, and act like none of this happened?”
“Yes.” You rub your eyes in yet another futile attempt at pain relief. “Are you done?”
“You’re not this stupid. We can’t have been friends for this long, only for me to find out that you’re a moron this late in the game.”
“What do you want, Carmella?”
“For you to fucking think!”
An electric lock opening somewhere further down is the telltale sign that perhaps arguments shouldn’t be had during early morning hours in an echoing hallway, especially when it has become apparent that they’re not likely to end swiftly or quietly. Jaw set tight, you stoop down and grab the discarded towel before retreating into the room, door left open for the two that you know will follow.
“I am thinking, Carmella.” You snap back after the click of the door behind her, starting to organize what little you possess. “I’m thinking that I have done everything I can to work around the constraints of these shitty situations— and, y’know, they’re not even normal shitty situations like, I don’t know, getting rear-ended or laid off or something.” Pausing, you stare at your wig in thought, then ball it up as neatly as you can and shove it into your backpack. “These are Grade-A, really fucking weird situations that nobody should have to go through. I’m thinking that I’ve managed to lie low enough—despite a couple of asshole’s attempts—to make going home and pretending that none of this happened a fairly feasible goddamn goal.”
A cellphone is thrown down onto the pair of folded pants at your side. “Yeah?” Carmella asks, high pitched and skeptical, eyebrows raised and a look in her eyes that continues to question your intelligence. “You think so?” She gestures to the phone, clearly wanting you to pay attention to it. Against your better judgment, you do, but use the necessity of hurrying this process along as an excuse. And G, who has situated himself at the provided desk with his feet thrown atop it, leans back in his chair and watches you get pulled in.
The presented video is taken in with creased brows and you cast Carmella a cursory glance before tapping the screen. As the video continues, you stand and walk over to G, holding the phone so he can watch as well. “You missed one.” You say simply while turning the volume up and hitting replay.
With rows upon rows of jerky and hot sauce lining the aisles, it isn’t hard to pinpoint where the video takes place. While it could be any random truck stop, any random truck stop wouldn’t be relevant. And, as the camera turns and jerks, the excessive alien paraphernalia all but confirms the location. “We got ‘em, boys!” The cameraman screeches, the world jostling as he runs up to the red bench and zooms in on the large green alien, then the oddity next to it. G.
“Let’s see them cheeks!” A scraggly looking boy yells, prompting the group around to erupt into hoots and hollers.
For a split second, the muffled makings of logic can somewhat be heard from someone close to the cameraman. “I don’t…he’s prob…weird looking…onster—" But whatever’s left is quickly snuffed out by the exuberance of the crowd.
The exchange proceeds as expected when warnings go ignored and boundaries crossed. Just as cornered animals lash out, so too does G— though his being cornered can be left up to debate. The encounter comes to a head when one of the more brash individuals, a young man that just looks like he’s used to making bad decisions, gets close enough to set G off. As soon as he does, with his phone held out and obnoxiously thrust into G’s face as he makes a show of taking both of “the alien’s” picture, G manifests one of his hands and easily plucks it from the boy’s hold.
The crowd and the boy alike are too astonished by the sight to react quickly enough to stop what happens next. Even if they weren’t thrown off, you doubt they’d have been able to stop him anyway. The hand is harsh as it slams the phone down onto the tiled floor just before it disappears and a hovering knotted spike takes its place, crashing down just as ruthlessly, spearing the phone and sending bits of the shattered screen flying and the boy careening into astonished despondency. Not shortly after, you come storming out of the restroom.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Unsavory similarities between the phone and idol flash within your mind’s eye but are shoved aside with a shake of your head, as are the resurfacing memoirs from the restroom. For another time, perhaps. Or never. “Well,” you drawl while placing the phone onto G’s lap, “you said no pictures.”
Carmella wants you to be alarmed by the video’s mere existence and the fact that you’re in it. But there isn’t a reason to be; the cameraman is far more focused on G than you, and while you are in the video, you can’t really be likened to, well, you. It’s Stacy that whispers to G, her hair, hat, and makeup doing what they’re intended to as she moves with her head down. It’s Stacy that almost attacks the young man that has the gall to reach for her. Just as it was Stacy that held Tony at gunpoint.
This video is G’s problem, not yours.
“Nuh-uh,” Carmella mutters before you can get back to packing, walking over and snatching her phone from G, who’d been staring at it with a scowl. Navigating to something else, she shoves it at you until you take it. Another video. One of last night’s events at the Hollywood Bowl and, honestly, you don’t know if you should be angry because she’s reminding you of what happened, or pleased to see the beginnings of it. Regardless, it confirms that G threw the proverbial first punch via appearing on stage mid-concert and launching sharp, levitating bones at the idol. Because of course he does.
“So much for lying low.” If only you had more energy to put behind the incensed utterance.
What G ignores, Carmella revels in. “Oh, but, hold on— since I know that wasn’t enough to get through to you, here’s one more.” Comes her derisive rejoinder as she moves to watch over your shoulder and navigate to another video. It’s her pièce de résistance, and she knows you know the moment it starts.
Soundless, this one is shot from on high. Just high enough to be above the abject horror that it films, summoned boney behemoth head included. Well, not only did the helicopter make it, but it also caught just about everything you missed after your abrupt nap. The camera zooms in, the image crisp and clear as it captures several viewpoints of you and the culprits. Infuriatingly enough, while your and Mettaton’s faces are displayed in all their glory, G somehow manages to position his hooded head in a way that never allows for a decent reveal. Then that weird goliath of a creature lets off a thick, red-hued beam of bright energy from its maw that slams into the stadium and sends debris flying in the subsequent wind that follows— and finally G’s hood falls from his head. But just as it does, the blast wave makes contact with the helicopter, sending the camera jostling into a frenzied mess of angles before the video ends.
Well, shit.
Resigned but determined not to give Carmella the satisfaction, you hand her phone back with practiced stoicism and continue with your previous task.
But she knows you too well. “Hostage,” she says emphatically with accompanying fingered air quotes, “or not— and you’d better play that card because you’d be stupid not to— everyone is going to be all over you. Kiss that quiet, lavish lifestyle goodbye, Maestra.”
You do scoff at that. Paying too much to live in the combination of one and a half shoebox called a studio hardly constitutes as lavish, and she knows as much, but you suppose that since you’re comfortable and can manage to live in the city at all, she considers you part of the bourgeoisie. That being said, there is no doubt in your mind that she makes more than you.
“Thank you.” You mutter, gratitude doubling as dismissal; as polite as you can give.
Carmella sighs while walking over and crouches at your side, clapping a hand on your shoulder as she says, “the real game’s just started.” Then she’s seeing herself out and you’ve stopped packing. “And you don’t get to quit.”
The quiet that follows her exit is a poor imitation of what once was those few minutes ago. Instead of comfort, there is discontent; the weight of it sitting heavy on the shoulder Carmella touched in simulated commiseration and spreading to the other. Left to your own devices with new information that complicates things further, where do you even begin? For a long time, you sit on the grimy hotel floor, hunched over your unpacked bag with unfocused eyes, stuck in an ambivalent state.
When a chair creaks in protest, you’re pulled back, prompted by some unknown force to turn towards it slack-jawed and dull-faced. G, however, sits comfortably back in his chair, chin resting on his knuckles, with all the regality of an indolent king, yet sharp-eyed and calculating as he is wont to do.
With so much to say, you speak before you have the chance to second guess yourself, soft and in one breath, “what aren’t you telling me?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Gotta be more specific than that, Doll.”
You’re on him faster than you’ve physically been on anyone in a long while. Slapping his dirty boot-clad feet from their place atop the desk and standing between his spread legs with a fist clutching the front of his shirt, you lean forward, bracing against the armrest near your free hand and forcing him closer. “What,” you repeat placidly, “aren’t you telling me.”
It shouldn’t matter.
He smirks, and with its rise, so too does your agitation.
It doesn’t matter.
“Feisty.” he says with a rolling chuckle and leans in further, “Alright, I’ll bite.”
Knowing won’t change what has happened or will happen.
G moves just as smoothly, if not more so than you did a minute ago when he removes your hold on his shirt with ease and slides his other hand along the curve of your waist, pulling until you’re situated atop his thigh. Indignant, you’re swift to pull away, but the attempt is subdued just as quickly as he tucks you firmly against his side, long arm wrapping around your waist.
“We’ll start with somethin’ simple.” He declares as you grumble. “If you stay away from me for too long, there’ll be… repercussions.”
You don’t believe him for a second, whether due to the absurdity of the statement, or the sharpness his smirk takes on when he says it, or both. “Like what?”
“Short-term? Fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, loss of consciousness…” He sniffs, leaning back a little in thought as his voice settles into nonchalance. “If we’re talkin’ long-term, death.”
It takes you a moment to comprehend what he’s said. You’ve your own budding grin now. That has got to be the dumbest shit you’ve heard in a long time. “Bullshit.”
Sitting quietly with his smirk still in place, G watches as you laugh and renounce the notion.
And yet.
Then he nestles his chin into the crook of your neck and runs his index down along your sternum, deliberately pulling away before you have the chance to move him yourself. And accompanying the pull of his hand is your breath and laughter and all the vibrant color of the world. Monsters have been topside long enough that the confirmation and subsequent global acceptance of souls have come and passed. Obligatory contrarians' opinions notwithstanding.
“Some warning,” between stuttering breaths, you send him a withering glare you know he can’t see but hope he can sense, “would have been nice.”
G snorts. “You called bullshit and expected me not to prove you wrong?” Swirling his finger in front of you, he hums as the hovering object follows suit. “Bad play, Sweets.”
And you call it an object instead of your soul because, while part of it looks like your soul, the other half— this weird, extra part attached to it, does not. Last you checked, you had a perfectly normal human soul. Yes, it is the standard heart ideogram showcasing a whirlpool of mercurial colors, but what’s attached— the inverted heart that only churns silver and vantablack, that is new.
As acclimated as one can be without housing their soul, you sluggishly elbow the asshole leisurely spinning the accumulation of your being like a top. “What the hell is that.”
“Us.” G says simply.
Though you don’t comment on it, the fact that his soul isn’t the universally known solid silver-white isn’t lost on you.
“Right. Okay.” You sigh. “But why the fuck are our souls…attached?”
G shifts, not giving you an answer until you turn and look back at him whilst he jostles a cigarette loose from its box and traps it between his teeth. “Ya’ asked for my help,” he says around the stick without so much as moving his teeth or thin lips.
It causes you to pause, having forgotten entirely about his weird ventriloquy ability. The flick of his lighter brings you back. “And?” You ask and grab his wrist, stopping him just short enough to keep him from lighting up. “Non-smoking.”
It’s his turn to huff in irritation, and for a moment, he looks like he’s about to challenge you. “You asked for my help,” he grouses roughly, tucking his lighter back into his pocket and fixing you with a pointed glare, “a lot. So I gave it to you. But you’re such a needy human that you created a link— a type of contract.” A flick of his wrist and the souls disappear.
Energy and the world’s vibrancy returned, you meet his glare with your own, though its effect is lessened by confusion. “How is that even possible?”
“Magic.” He flippantly waves you off when you open your mouth again, already knowing what’s to come. “Most humans have got some left if it hasn’t been bred out. Don’t know how to use it though.” G chews on the stick in thought. Or annoyance. “Ain’t that hard of a concept to grasp. I took pity on you, and your soul got clingy. Now we’re stuck together until the terms have been met.”
“No, no, no.” You breathe plaintively, placing a hand on your forehead and striving for composure. “We… we can’t be—when did this happen?”
Composure is something G consistently has an abundance of. “Back at the hotel.”
“Back at the—can you undo it?”
“Sweetheart, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if I could.” He releases his hold and bounces the leg you’re situated on until you take the hint and move. “I scratched your back, now scratch mine. You’ll be fine.”
His ease and nonchalance only serve to fuel your burgeoning acrimony. “Okay, so…when were you going to tell me?” You hiss acridly after rounding on him, hackles raised. With a life and death situation, he had to be prompted to tell you something that’d fundamentally affect you? Both of you? When he doesn’t answer beyond a shrug, you watch him stand and walk towards the door, then, “you weren’t,” you all but laugh in awe, “wow. Wow! I can’t believe you. You are fucking awful!”
G stops inches from the door and turns to observe you and the rise and tremble of your voice, still chewing on a cigarette, still stoic.
“I can understand that you’ve probably been alone for a long time and you’re not used to looking out for someone else, but come on! “
“You don’t,” he says as his brows knit marginally, “understand anything.”
“You’re right!” You spit back quickly, “I don’t. But it's not like you’re the most forthcoming with anything I should know; you’d rather sit around and brood!”
It only takes him a couple of steps to meet you, as opposed to the many you’d taken previously, and the intimidation factor is unsurprisingly ranked higher than when you’d pulled the move, even without him fisting your shirt. That being said, jaw set and spine straight, you’ll be damned if you back down.
G snorts, smirking as the cigarette bends under the press of his gnashing teeth. “After sitting in a fuckin’ basement under human guard and experimentation, getting out and being attached to one is the last fuckin’ thing I want. This is your fault. Don’t think you have a lot of leverage here, Sweets—the sooner I get what I want, the sooner you’ll get what you want.” The heat within his voice, while lessened, lingers.
“Then tell me,” you cut in emphatically, chin jutting up as you hold his glare, “what you want so that I can be done with you.”
He either sees it fit to make you wait in anticipation as retaliation, or he’s just mulling over thoughts that don’t display on his face, either way, several beats pass before he speaks again. “Alphys.”
An answer that… narrows down his interest in the research facilities. But why the Royal Scientist specifically?
A question for another time, and one that you’re not likely to get an answer to without continuous strenuous effort if G has his way. Regardless, the point still stands. “Then might I suggest some goddamn transparency and communication so we can make that happen? It’d be a nice change.”
He lights his cigarette on his way out, the door harshly clicking shut behind him.
He could be lying—the likelihood is high, though you’ve no evidence backing the notion, and now isn’t the time to test out any theories. Thus, you have to work under the assumption that he isn’t. Be that as it may, after you deal with the current situation, you’re still going to look into his claim.
Left, once again, to your own devices, you take advantage and grab a pillow, promptly place it against your face, and let out a growling scream.
Against your better judgment, or perhaps in light of it, you flip through several news channels.
G enters to the sight of several pamphlets and sheets of scrawl laden paper sprawled about the floor. From your position among the mess, head cradled in one hand while the other fills another sheet, you give him a blasé flick of the eyes in acknowledgment.
“These are the connections you’re going to take,” you say without preamble, arranging stationery until the one necessary is found, then beckon him over with the curl of your index finger. The ballpoint of your pen taps periodically along the side of the list as you talk him through it. What usually takes about three days, will take four. Switch buses frequently. Do everything in your power not to be identified.
“Amazingly, Mettaton isn’t dead—“
“Can’t kill a ghost.”
“But the— wait, what?” Mouth twisting, you fix G with a look, irked.
Throughout the explanation’s entirety, he’s been chewing on yet another unlit cigarette, projecting inattentiveness. Balancing on the back legs of that selfsame chair with an arm thrown over the back of it and ankle resting on his knee. Most of the time, he alternates between looking at you, the list, and the wall. This time G meets your look with half-lidded orbits. “Ghost,” he drawls.
“Not some species of robotic monster?” Apparently, what little information you have on monsters is incorrect.
He sneers. “Possessed pathetic waste of engineering.”
Again, his credibility comes into question; whatever background he has that authorizes such scrutiny remains unknown. However, more importantly, “if that’s the truth, you provoked and assaulted a possessed robot during a live concert—one that was being streamed, by the way, without the intention of killing him.”
The observation brings a small pleased grin to his face.
“Why? For what?” Eyes narrowing from the beginning of a frown, you lean forward. The desire to upset his balance claws insistently at your brain, though you know you won’t be quick enough to do so. “If that was just some weird flex…” You start, tight-lipped as irritation rears its head again, and promising yourself that today won’t just be you throwing yourself at G in a blind rage.
But move, you do, with all the ill-intent of throwing him off balance and causing harm you know won’t happen. And, as expected, he sees the action coming; the Jerry to your grudging Tom, he disappears from the chair before you reach it, reappearing at your side and watching it fall.
“Damn.” He squats down, humming when you don’t move. “You mad, Sweetheart?”
“Shut the fu—“ A long, exasperated growling groan rolls from your lips as you sit back on your haunches. “Whatever. Whatever just—god you are an insufferable bastard.”
“Comes with the territory.” Chuckling whilst you wallow in defeat, G situates himself at your side, reaching to pull your pen and united states map closer and draws a circle around the capitol. “Asgore and whoever your… president is, will have to address Mettaton’s mess—“
A sharp breath in, “no,” you apprehensively cut in, eyes snapping open to pin him with a glare. “Absolutely not—“
“No, what?”
“I’m not going to help you attack two world leaders.” You continue rigidly. A foot put down for both parties present.
“I ain’t askin’ you to.”
Right, well, he never really asks you to do anything, just does what he wants— makes demands and moves and watches you deal with the fallout with only occasional bouts of aid.
“And even if I was goin’ after ‘em, who’d stop me?” A quick, surly reply that accompanies the toothy grin that demeans so much more than your power. “You?”
And here we go again. “Do people enjoy your company?” Comes your skeptical retort. “There has got to be a reason as to why you’re like this. Is it because you don’t have any friends?”
“Aw,” G drawls, not even trying to look hurt, “you don’t enjoy my company, Doll?”
“Not too fond of terrorists,” at this point, you’ve gone back to organizing spare sheets of paper, “so, no.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“You leveled the amphitheatre. While it was in use!”
“Concert was cancelled when I leveled it—you’re actin’ like I did it alone.”
“Where, exactly, on Mettaton’s setlist, was mass hysteria and destruction scheduled? Oh, and the giant fucking skeleton head.”
“Before the fifth shitty song about love, just after he decided not to answer my question.” He has the gall to say, blank-faced and spiritless.
So, this line of argument, as with most that you have while engaged with him, ultimately leads to a dead-end. Just as well; you don’t have it in you to deal with him for much longer today. “Fine, whatever, just… just help me get back to the theatre so I can pick up the car; I’m not paying for those atrocious extra fees.”
Surprisingly, he does as you request, and he even follows through with a somewhat cordial air too. Well, that is until, with that sly grin and general air of ease on the ride back to the rental service, he asks, “so, Roomie, the nearest research facility to us at that point will be the one in D.C, s’that right?”