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Susie was starting to wonder when she would get to sleep in her own bed again. Kris had invited her over three times in a row after the first night, always promising pie or chalk or moss or something else to snack on. They’d also bought like four new monster movies to watch with her. In any other situation, Susie would obviously go. Why turn down monster movies and snacks? But it was starting to seem like Kris had some alternative reason for doing all this. Every night Susie came over, they would sit there for a while and stare at her. If Susie were smarter, she might say they were trying to psyche themself up for something. Now, Susie obviously knew that Kris wasn’t, like, crushing on her or anything. That would be super weird, they were just friends. Plus, Kris knew that Susie liked Noelle, they had even helped Susie ask her out once. There was no way Kris was trying to confess something like that. But there was something there. Something below the surface of their almost always neutral expression. Something that made their mouth twitch and their jaw clench. Something that made them curl their hands in the hem of their sweater. Something that Susie was about to have to beat out of them if they didn’t just fucking say what it was already because oh my GOD Kris, OUT WITH IT!
Anyway, Susie was once again on Kris’ couch. They were in the middle of some monster movie with lots of fast cars and romance that they both gagged at. The Fast and the Ferocious 7, Family First. Susie was three yawns closer to curling up to go to sleep, but Kris sat up straighter once Toriel left the kitchen to go upstairs to bed. Here we go, Susie thought.
Kris turned on the couch to face her, tucking their legs up under them and grabbing the hem of their sweater tight. Susie turned to look at them, raising an eyebrow.
“Kris?” she said, trying to sound casual.
They sat there a moment, before they did the same thing they always did. Their mouth twitched, their jaw clenched, and their hands curled into fists.
“What?” Susie said, trying something different tonight. “Tired of sleeping on the couch?”
Kris froze, blinking at her.
“Doesn’t your room have, like, another bed in it?” Susie was gambling right now, really poorly. Kris’ room also had Asriel’s bed in it, which Susie had understood was off-limits for sleepovers, even if no one had said that. It was super weird, Susie thought, how the town treated Asriel like he was dead or like he was some prodigal son that would return one day to fix all their problems. Big shoes to fill, she thought dismally.
Susie almost missed the way Kris nodded; once, very fast.
“Then let’s go,” she said, getting up. Kris shot up off the couch too, grabbing their shared blanket and running for the stairs.
The upstairs of the Dreemurr house was somewhere Susie hadn’t seen before that night. There was a locked door that Susie assumed was Toriel’s room, another door that was also locked that might be some kind of office, and then there was Kris’ room. And Kris’ room was… really fucking sad. She wasn’t going to sugarcoat it for anyone. Their room was tragic.
On Asriel’s side of the room, there was a bed with specially printed bedding and pillowcases, shelves full of awards and certificates, glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the walls, a bedside table with a small book propped up against the lamp, an alarm clock next to those, a computer at the end of the bed, and even some clothes and things under the bed. On Kris’ side of the room… There was a bed with gray bedding that lay unmade, with shelves that were full of dust and were chipping from age, a clearly hand-me-downed bedside table with an older looking lamp on it, and a wagon with an empty bird cage at the foot of the bed. In short, Asriel’s side of the room was full of personality and life, while the side of the room that belonged to the person who still lived here was dull and devoid of any of that. Like they themself were an afterthought. Susie’s heart twisted.
Kris hopped onto their bed and lifted their hands to sign to Susie.
“You don’t have to sleep in his bed,” they said, pointedly not looking on that side of the room.
“You want me to share a bed with you?” Susie asked, and Kris seemed to realize how that sounded.
“I meant that you don’t need to feel obligated to sleep anywhere specific, you can sleep wherever, my bed and I’ll sleep on the floor, or you could sleep on the floor or-” Kris was signing at light speed, until Susie started laughing.
“It’s fine! Seriously, I know what you meant.” She walked over to their bed and flopped onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. “But wherever we end up sleeping, I have a favor.”
Kris leaned over her face, raising an eyebrow.
“Would you just tell me what’s been bothering you already?” she asked finally. Being in their room felt like a security blanket, even if Asriel’s side of the room felt unwelcoming in a strange way. Kris stared down at her, then leaned back to sit against their headboard.
Susie pulled herself up to sit against the wall. Here we go, she thought again.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately,” Kris started, glancing at the other side of the room. “About my brother.”
Susie swallowed, but tried to make it seem normal. She probably failed.
“I think about this a lot.” Kris sighed. They forced themself to look directly at the other side of the room. Susie kept her eyes on them instead. They turned back to look at her. “I don’t mean this to be rude to anyone, including you, okay?”
Susie nodded.
“Not once has anyone in this town asked me how I feel about Asriel leaving.”
The statement made Susie’s eyebrows shoot up. That just couldn’t be true. Could it? Toriel must’ve asked them, right? What about their deadbeat dad? He had to have, right? There was no way everybody could’ve forgotten to do that, right? But… Not even Susie had thought to ask, even after they were friends. “Nobody?”
“No one.” Kris sighed again, looking down. “I’m not asking for pity or for an apology. I’m realizing that there are a lot of things that don’t happen when Asriel isn’t around.”
“How do you feel about it?” Susie asked, interrupting them. Kris looked up at her, their face characteristically unreadable.
“Angry.”
Susie blinked. Angry? “You’re mad? That he left?”
“For that, yes. I’m angry for childish reasons, like ‘he chose college over me’ or ‘he hasn’t emailed in X amount of days’ but I’m also angry for different reasons.” Kris cracked their knuckles, which Susie had learned meant that they were about to talk a lot. Susie liked when Kris talked a lot. “People in town ask me when Asriel is coming back, or they promise he’ll be back soon, and at first I was okay with both those things. I knew the approximate date that he would come back like the back of my hand, and when people would say he was coming home soon I would say ‘I know, I can’t wait to see him’ or something. But now, I’ve been realizing that they aren’t asking me how I’m holding up, they aren’t worried about how I’m doing, they always just ask where Asriel is or when he’s coming back.”
Susie frowned.
“I’ve been realizing that even when we were kids, I was the tag-along kid. I was the troubled human that was always following the good example kid. If I ever did something wrong or made a mess, Asriel would clean it up. I stuck to him like glue, because what else was I supposed to do? Whenever I played alone with others, they were put off by me, they thought I was weird. Whenever I played with others when Asriel was around, they were clearly more comfortable knowing my good example was around to tell me not to do certain things or to keep me from making messes.” Kris stopped to look back at the other side of the room. “I never did any extracurriculars in school because I never…”
Susie said nothing, waiting for them to keep going.
“I never thought it was worth it. When your brother is the best in the class, what would your accomplishments look like to everyone else?”
“Lackluster,” Susie supplied.
“Exactly!” Kris exclaimed. “It would look like dogshit next to the marks he got! What’s even the point in competing with that? There is no point, so I didn’t try.”
“And that made you look lazy and not engaged,” Susie continued, feeling their chest tighten. This sounded very familiar.
“Exactly. So my reputation was that of the kid trying to coast through school with no idea what they were doing with their future,” Kris went on, their hand movements getting more harsh. “I was just going to be playing the part of the lonely sibling left to wait for their brother to return and give them purpose again.”
Susie wanted to console them, but they kept going.
“And the worst part about it all is that they were right. I don’t know what I’m going to do, much less what I’m doing right now. I can’t even tell what I’m interested in to try and figure out a path for the future. Alphys has been hounding me lately to try and find something I’m interested in so she can help me look at career paths, and it all makes my chest hurt.” Kris ran a hand through their hair. Susie got distracted by a scar on their forehead that she’d never seen before. She would’ve asked about it if they weren’t in the middle of a serious conversation. “Anyway, the whole thing sucks. I do miss him, but now I’m starting to resent him for the reputation he left behind. He was the golden child, now all that’s left is his shadow.”
“That’s not true Kris,” Susie said, reaching out to them. They took her hand instantly, which surprised her. “You- you don’t have to compare yourself to him.”
Kris took their hand back. “Hard not to.”
Susie glanced at the other end of the room. “True. But you are your own person. You’re strong and brave and- and you’re really good at puzzles!”
Kris snorted, the corner of their mouth rising against their will.
“You’re smart and funny and cool, all on your own!” Susie insisted, putting a hand on their shoulder. “And maybe Asriel is better at a lot of things than you and maybe he’s everyone else’s favorite, but you’re my favorite, Kris.”
They hung their head a little, hiding their eyes from her.
“You don’t have to live in his shadow, you shouldn’t have to feel like this. You have your own friends, you have your own interests, you have your own life. It’s nobody else’s to tell you what to do with it, you know?” Susie squeezed their shoulder.
They barely nodded, and when they did small droplets of water fell onto the bed. Susie didn’t move until they did, leaning toward her. She wrapped her arms around their shoulders, barely feeling how they shook with tears against her.
“Everything reminds me of him,” they whispered. Susie was so shocked by it that she couldn’t even ask what they meant. “I see his face everywhere, I wish I could just fucking leave this place.”
Susie wanted nothing more than to get Kris the fuck out of here in that moment. The best she could do was offer a chance to get out for a short while. “Do you want to get out of here? Of the house?”
Kris sat back away from her, wiping their eyes. They looked up at her, confused.
“We could go to the graveyard or out to that weird bunker- or even just run around in the woods for the night, you know?” She smiled, her sharp teeth jutting past her lips in odd places. “Have a sleepover night adventure all to ourselves, no one will ever know.”
Slowly, a smile crept over Kris’ face. They wiped their eyes again, and finally nodded to her.
They walked as quietly as possible out of the house. Kris stopped to listen to Toriel’s snoring to make sure she was really asleep and wouldn’t notice they were gone. Once they had left the house, Susie took Kris’ hand and ran into the woods. She scraped an arrow into a tree, pointing back toward the house.
“This way, we can find our way back,” Susie said, putting her pocketknife away. Kris nodded and then took her hand again.
They ran through the woods, occasionally stopping for Susie to scrape an arrow into another tree. Eventually they found a small clearing in the woods, untouched by anyone before them it seemed. Kris picked up a few rocks to look for moss and Susie looked up at the night sky, sparkling with stars.
“Man, I can’t remember the last time I stayed up this late. The sky is so full of stars.” Susie was mostly talking to herself, but she heard Kris hum a little ways away.
She had been trying to find constellations she recognized when she heard Kris drop a rock. It startled her, and when she looked to see why Kris had dropped it, her heart sank. On the underside of the rock they had just been holding, carved into the bottom, was a little “A” with a heart next to it. Turned out this clearing wasn’t untouched.
“Kris?” Susie called quietly. They were turned away from them, but she could see their shoulders trembling. “We can keep going, see if we can find a new one?”
They turned their head swiftly, like they were about to shake their head no. But then they turned around and Susie almost fell over with the severity of their expression. Their face was never filled with much emotion, small movements here or there, maybe their forehead would wrinkle if they were very upset or confused. The face they were making now was… Fury.
Kris leaned down and grabbed the rock, then turned and hurled it into the forest. The rock slammed into a tree and snapped right in half, falling to the ground with two loud thuds. Kris’ shoulders kept trembling, their hands shaking now. Susie heard them mutter something.
“What?” she said, against her better judgment.
“Everything is his,” they said again, louder than Susie had ever heard them speak. “Everything has his name on it, everything here has already been found by him or claimed by him. Everyone here loves him. Him, not me. I’m a fucking afterthought.”
Susie’s chest filled with guilt. She had had the same thought earlier.
“I’m so fucking tired of this,” Kris said, suddenly on the brink of tears. They crouched down and held their head tight, knees by their ears. “I’m so fucking tired of being here, I’m so tired of not having any control over my own life, I’m so fucking tired, Susie, I’m so-”
“I know, Kris,” Susie said, going over to sit next to them. “I am too. I know it’s not the same, but I relate to a lot of what you’re feeling too.”
They sniffled, wiping their nose, frustrated.
“It feels like you have no control, but I promise you do.” Susie put a hand on their back. It made them jolt. “If you tell your mom how you’re feeling-”
“I can’t do that,” they said instantly, looking at her. They were a mess.
“I know, but if you did,” she went on. “She would apologize, she would realize what she’d done, she would do her best to try and make you feel listened to. That’s who she is.”
Kris kept watching her as she spoke, their eyes looking between different parts of her face.
“If you told Noelle, she would do the same thing. She’s a nice person, she would hate to make you feel unimportant. Even Berdly would probably back off.”
Kris made a face that suggested they doubted that, which Susie understood.
“What I’m trying to say is this: if you don’t tell anyone how you’re feeling, no one will know.” Susie sighed. She needed to follow her own advice. “If you keep pretending like nothing is wrong, people are going to believe you. Because the one thing you’ve already proven about yourself is that you don’t lie. Supposedly.”
Kris snorted at that. There had been plenty of times they’d lied or not told the whole truth.
“If you keep acting like nothing is bothering you, you’re going to keep suffering alone. And then what happens when Asriel gets home from college for the summer?”
Kris’s face seemed to drain of color. An interesting reaction that Susie filed away to ask about later.
“He’ll get home, everyone will be excited and want to talk to him about what college is like, and what else will happen?”
“I’ll feel ignored again,” Kris answered quietly.
“Exactly. Look, I promise to be there for you and back you up when that time comes, but you need to realize that that situation is going to feel a whole lot worse if you don’t let other people know you’re struggling. At least your mom or something.”
“But you-”
“I’m not family though, I can’t tell other people how you feel for you,” Susie said, patting their back. “You have to tell them, you can’t keep having other people talk for you and talk over you.”
They stared at her, then eventually nodded. Then they let out the deepest sigh Susie had ever heard and fell back onto the forest floor in a huff. Susie followed them, tucking her hands under her head.
“We could even sleep out here you know?” Susie offered, glancing at them. “Your mom will be worried in the morning, but whatever right?”
“We might get sick,” Kris said softly, sniffling again.
“So what? That’s a week off school, think about it logically.”
Kris laughed, a soft rattling of their chest, but it was a laugh nonetheless. “I guess you’re right.”
“I’m always right,” Susie said self-importantly, shifting to puff out her chest.
“Yes, of course,” Kris said, nodding.
They didn’t end up sleeping outside, instead waiting until the sky started to get lighter to go back and warm back up. Even if summer was approaching, the woods still got cold at night. Kris let Susie into their room instead of going back to the couch. To Susie’s surprise, Kris walked to Asriel’s bed and lifted the covers for Susie.
“Are you sure?” she asked, stepping toward the bed.
“It’s just a bed,” Kris insisted softly.
They slept across from one another and Susie spent the few moments she was still awake wondering how Asriel could’ve ever left his sibling when this was the view he had had of them. They looked so small, curled up into a tight ball while they slept. The dull colors of their room and the dust collecting on their shelves… The dark red stain at the foot of their bed that Susie hadn’t been able to see before… Asriel really had abandoned them. She would never forgive him for that, she decided. Only a heartless person could leave someone like Kris behind.