Work Text:
A loud shout from downstairs let Asriel know that his parents were fighting. Again.
He jumped a bit upon hearing Mom yell, grip tightening on the strap of his unzipped backpack, then sighed and pulled out a neatly organized folder. Letting the backpack slump back to the floor, he stood up and glanced at the clock on his bedside table. It read 2:17pm. He sat down at the desk opposite his bed with a small grumble. Truthfully, he thought it slightly unfair that he’d have to do homework on weekends now that he was in high school. But then again, life’s not fair either, is it?
‘It should be fair,’ he found himself thinking.
He decided to do his math homework first. He liked math. He’d always been good at it. He wrote his name at the top of the paper—Asriel Dreemurr, in tidy cursive—
And then Dad yelled something he would’ve preferred not to hear.
He couldn’t tell what they were fighting about. A small part of him wanted to know. But it wasn’t really his business, and he knew that it would only make him feel bad. Satisfaction wouldn’t be able to scrape that cat’s guts off the road. So he gritted his teeth and turned back to the worksheet in front of him.
Simplify the following expression: -3x-2(x-4)-5.
Mom screamed at Dad that he “always does this.”
‘Easy. -2(x-4) can become -2x+8.’
Asriel wrote -3x-2x+8-5 beneath the original expression.
He gently bounced his right leg a little bit.
‘-3x-2x is -5x.’
Dad grunted in frustration before launching into an angry tirade.
‘And 8-5 is 3.’
Asriel wrote -5x+3 in the blank space beneath the problem, then circled it to make it clear that it was his final answer.
Without really noticing it, he bit at the claw on his left thumb.
Combine like terms: 14x+3y-6x+4z-5y. Simplify if necessary.
Mom interrupted to refute something Dad had said.
‘14x-6x is 8x.’
Rain started to pitter-patter on the bedroom window.
Asriel let out a small huff through his nose.
‘3y-5y is -2y.’
Dad yelled over what Mom was saying.
Asriel’s left eye began to twitch.
‘Easy. This is easy.’
Asriel wrote down 8x-2y+4z.
He scratched at a bug bite on his arm.
Mom and Dad continued to shout at eachother.
‘Wait, I can simplify that.’
Asriel could tell that neither of his parents were listening to anything the other one had to say.
He wrote down 2(4x-y+2z).
‘Easy.’
As he was circling it, his pencil lead broke.
He stood up from the desk to get the pencil sharpener from his bag, and caught a glance at the clock as he did so. It was 2:31. He’d only done two out of the twelve problems in nearly fifteen minutes. Usually, he’d be more than halfway done by now.
Asriel picked up the pillow from his bed, buried his snout in it, and screamed.
His scream turned into a choked sob, then another, and soon he was just crying into his pillow. And he stayed there for a minute or two, just sitting on his bed and crying.
‘Why does it have to be like this..?’
He wished he could go back to when he was younger, when his parents got along. When he’d run up to them and headbutt their legs and they’d laugh. When he’d help Dad in the garden and get covered in dirt, and Mom would look on fondly. When they’d all go to the diner together after church service, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t glare holes in eachother the entire time. When they were really a family.
All four of them.
The house fell silent. It was sudden and brief, followed by what sounded like… frantic apologizing? Small footsteps came hurrying up the stairs, and Asriel dried his eyes on the pillowcase. ‘Come on now, big kids don’t cry.’ He put the pillow back in place just before the door creaked open.
Kris stood in the doorway, looking down at their scuffed-up sneakers with an unreadable expression. They clutched their horned headband tightly in their right hand, and their hair and clothes were damp from the rain. After a few seconds, they closed the door behind them.
Asriel got up and walked over to them, then crouched down so he’d be closer to their eye level. (According to what he’d read online, Kris was a bit tall for an eleven-year-old human, just barely clearing five feet. But Asriel was only fourteen, and he was already six-foot-seven.) “Hey, is something wrong?” he asked softly.
It was obvious what was wrong. But he asked anyway.
Kris didn’t respond, they just looked at him. Their eyes glittered a little bit.
And then they burst into tears.
It took everything Asriel had not to do the same. He hadn’t fully cried himself out by the time he had to stop. He found it a bit unfair.
‘Life’s not fair, though.’
“Do you want a hug?” He opened up his arms a little, and Kris shoved their face into the crook of his neck. Asriel scooped them up like a toddler and sat down on his bed with them, gently rubbing circles into their back. “Alright. There, there. It’s okay.”
(They both knew, of course, that it was not okay.)
One of Asriel’s earliest memories was of when Mom and Dad had first brought Kris home. He was three at the time, and very curious about the small, squishy lump that had started screaming pretty much the moment Mom tried to sit down on the couch with it. As she tried to comfort it, she explained to him that it was a Human Baby, and it would be staying with them for a while, maybe a couple months, because its human parents couldn’t take care of it. After a few minutes of rocking and shushing, it fell asleep, and she gingerly passed it to Asriel’s arms upon being asked if he could hold it.
They stirred slightly, and their eyes opened a bit. He stuck out his tongue at them. They didn’t react.
Two months turned into four, which turned into six, and the baby was still there. It was very clear that they would be staying for much longer. By their second birthday, Kris Dreemurr had been formally adopted, and they were not leaving anytime soon.
The yelling from downstairs started up again. Asriel laid back on the bed, resting his head on the pillow, and sighed.
“Azzy...?” Kris’s voice sounded smaller than normal.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Mom and Dad are going to split up?”
Asriel thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he lied.
Kris sniffled a little bit. “It’s not fair.”
“...Life’s not fair.” The words hurt leaving Asriel’s mouth.
“It should be, though.”
He ran his fingers through their hair and closed his eyes.
“You’re right. It should be.”
He supposed that, technically, no harm would be done if Kris saw that he, too, was deeply affected. They would understand.
He began to cry again.
That, at least, could be fair.