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Horror, despite his upbringing, was quite selfless when it came to food. He always had a fear of his friends going hungry, so he would always give them more than he ever gave himself (although, he’s not even sure if he realized this).
Unfortunately, bad habits always have consequences. For Horror, these consequences were sharp hunger pains waking him up at around 1 in the morning.
His eyes shot open, only one glowing a dim red, his body not moving. He knows these pains all too well, so his body doesn’t move at first. It’s only when he REALIZES what these pains are he begins to silently panic.
”shit” he thinks, memories flooding back to him too suddenly for his liking. Memories of clawing at his ribs in pain, memories of selfishly trying to eat live beings, memories of his brother’s rotten, spoiled cooking filling his torn up house with an awful stench.
To anybody else, these pains wouldn’t be anything but a slight inconvenience; a feeling easily subdued with a simple bag of chips. But to Horror, it’s no different than the pains he’s felt as he was starving to death in his own universe.
He finally finds the willpower to move, to get up, to do anything. Breathing heavily, he hoists himself up from his bed and slowly begins to stumble to the door. His mouth waters as he steps outside his room and into Nightmare’s castle, slowly passing by Dust’s, Cross’, and Killer’s rooms, along with Nightmare’s ‘office’. He could care less about the noises he makes as he drags his feet and his hand moves along the wall, searching for any kind of leverage. His breathing is harsh, and his eye keeps dimming and getting brighter. He uncaringly stumbles his way down the large flight of stairs and continues walking to his destination. Drool runs down the side of his mouth and his pupil only shrinks more and more as he stumbles. Slowly but surely, he eventually reaches a door. He claws the doorknob, leaving unnecessary marks and walks only a little ways more before he is in the dining room.
Dust is no heavy sleeper, so he’s not very surprised when he wakes up way too late into the night. What he IS surprised about though, is the noises that woke him up. He stares at his door, an unpleasant scraping sound slowly getting louder, and louder, and suddenly it’s right outside his door, but then it gets quieter, and quieter. He can hear messy footsteps creep around the house, assuring dust won’t fall back asleep. He sighs, slowly getting out of bed and throwing his hoodie on before making his way out of his room. Only a quick glance and Dust can see that Horror’s door is the only one open, therefore he must be the one walking around, but what on earth is he doing awake NOW? He should consider himself lucky that Killer is such a deep sleeper (most likely because he never sleeps) and Cross makes SURE he gets enough sleep so he’s always on his best performance. Though, he shouldn’t be celebrating just yet, hopefully Nightmare is still asleep because who knows how he would react to all that noise Horror was making, especially whenever they have a job tomorrow. But, no more worries. For now, Dust just wants to make sure Horror SILENTLY gets back to bed, so down the stairs he goes.
As much as they do all like each other, sometimes they tend to favor someone’s presence over another’s. Dust and Horror are a good example of this, both enjoying the quiet company they receive from each other (minus horrors jagged breathing but that’s neither here nor there). It’s because of this, that’s got dust confused about how or why his friend is carelessly making so much noise so late into the night. Dust shakes his head, ridding himself of any worry. “Of course he’s okay” he thinks to himself, “it’s Horror, he’s fully capable.” And he keeps walking.
He stops in front of the kitchen door, where he catches a glimpse of light yet desperate scratch marks near the doorknob. The door is only partly open, so Dust opens it all the way and immediately stops in his tracks. He has yet to turn the corner to actually LOOK in the kitchen but… he hears… this strange, tearing noise. He thinks for a long moment, still standing, observing the noise. “Is that…” he pauses, “chewing??” He swiftly looks behind him, contemplating if he should go grab the others, but he quickly decides that he’s already come this far, so there’s no turning back.
Slowly, he steps forward. Slowly, one foot after the next, and slowly he peeks his head just slightly around the corner. There, he sees Horror bent over on the floor, his face and hands being covered by an open fridge door. The chewing is loud and disgusting, and there’s a smell that suddenly hits Dust as well. He continues slowly walking around Horror, trying to see what he could be eating, but also trying to get closer to his friend.
“Horror? You alright?” … no response. He walks closer, finally seeing what Horror has his hands on. Meat, raw meat. Horror digs into chunks, easily ripping it apart and messily shoving it in his mouth, both hands and face covered in just a slight red from the juices of the raw meat. There’s torn plastic around him, presumably where the meat was being kept. Even the fridge itself is messy, empty containers littered around and plenty of things knocked over. Dust hardly bats an eye as he keeps walking up to Horror, his hand slowly reaching out until it meets Horror’s shoulder, causing him to jump. Horror looks over his shoulder, panting and breathing like his life depends on it. He stares up at Dust like a rabid dog, his eye scanning him until his breathing suddenly hesitates. He looks back over to the mess in front of him. It’s disgusting, meat chucks and juices litter the floor like a crime scene. His breathing speeds back up, but it’s not the desperate grunting anymore, instead his demeanor is filled with slight panic. Dust just worriedly stares at him as he comes to his senses, giving him time to think.
“I… I don’t know… what happened.” Was all Horror could bear to mutter. He’s eaten worse, WAY worse, but he never thought he would ever willingly eat any sort of raw meat ever again. What would his Papyrus think? Did he ONLY eat what he sees in front of him or did he… no, he doesn’t want to think about that. He knows he’s eaten worse, he knows he’s had all of this worse, but still, he can’t help but gag. The smell gets to him too, reminiscent of the drastic measures he had to force in Snowdin after his almost lethal encounter with Undyne. For someone with a bad memory, his thoughts sure are vivid. His hands finally let go of the meat as he holds his head injury with one hand and claws at his face with the other.
“Woah horror it’s ok” Dust tries his best to comfort him, but no one in Nightmare's gang is really good at doing that. “Try and calm down and we can get you washed up.” He carefully reassures. Dust grabs both of Horror's shoulders, slowly helping him up. Horror’s expression is one of stress and fear and almost of anger (though, he always looks a little angry even if he isn’t) as he follows Dust’s guidance.
He stays completely silent, his hands shaking as Dust turns on the sink for him, letting Horror wash what he could. Dust then turns back to the mess in front of the fridge and silently sighs to himself. He couldn’t, or shouldn’t let Horror clean this up, but he was absolutely not about to let Nightmare see it either, so he guesses that leaves the job to him. He grabs a fresh trash bag, a cleaning liquid in a spray bottle, and some napkins and goes to work.
A few minutes pass and it’s completely silent other than the running faucet and the noises of Dust’s cleaning supplies. He’s moved on to cleaning the inside of the fridge, throwing away anything empty (or destroyed) and tidying up any knocked down containers. Leaning over the sink, Horror slowly scrubs at his face with just his hands, refusing to look at Dust. Eventually though, Dust gets done with his cleaning, briefly walking to a far trash can outside of the kitchen. Horror doesn’t move, he just stares at the running water, his hands barely under it. Dust comes back, silently walking up to Horror. Neither of them says anything for what seems like hours until Dust leans over Horror and turns off the sink.
“Horror…” Dust looks at him as he just continues staring where the running water once was. They both remain quiet.
“I don’t… want to go back, Dust.” Horror says, not moving an inch. “I’ve gone so long… without eating before… but…” his hand goes up to his fracture, “I can’t bear… to be hungry. I can’t bear… the things I… the things my body craves. It’s almost instinctual… isn’t that… disgustingly ironic?” Horror smiles to himself, his rugged breathing back to normal. Dust just listens to him, his hand somehow made its way onto Horror’s shoulder as he was talking.
”I understand, Horror.” Dust no longer looks at him, both of them staring into their own nothingness. “I’m nothing like killer but… sometimes that feeling, that urge just suddenly comes back. Probably from all the LV I’ve gained…” He laughs to himself and looks back to Horror, now both slowly making eye contact. “I still sometimes regret what I’ve done, but things like that don’t just go away.”
Horror stares at Dust, and Dust stares at Horror, both with the newfound comfort that they’re not alone. Now, Horror would never initiate something like this, so he’ll say Dust stepped forward first (though, that may not all be true), but they both found themselves in a tight hug. Seeing as Horror is quite large, he slightly towers over Dust, but that adds no problems to the embrace as they stand there.
”The worst part…” Horror tries his best to whisper, “Is that I’m… still hungry.”
Dust just nods and rubs a hand across Horror’s back in circles. “I’ll cook you something, just sit down for now.” Horror nods back and after just a few more minutes, they both let go. Dust turns to the stove and Horror takes a seat not too far away from Dust, as to not be alone.
Early the next morning, a confused Killer stands in front of the fridge as Cross, Horror, Dust, and Nightmare (who’s reading some old newspaper) sit down at their large dining table, making small talk as they all eat breakfast.
“Uh guys.” Killer starts as he continues staring at the fridge, “who ate literally… half the entire fridge???” He begins to search with his hands as if that would change the selection of food in front of him. All he was trying to do was grab something to drink.
“Probably you.” Cross mutters, smiling at his own joke before Nightmare shoots him a dirty look.
”We can always grab more supplies.” Nightmare calmly states as he doesn’t look up from his newspaper. It isn’t even recent news, just some old paper from some random AU he took for brief entertainment.
Dust and Horror exchange glances before quickly going back to eating breakfast.
This time, although it will take a lot of getting used to, Horror has just as much food on his plate as the rest of the group.