Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It always started the same way.

“C’mon,” Susie would grumble, already half-turning her back, “we’re not gonna sit around doing homework, right?”

And Kris, with their unreadable look, would nod. Or not nod. It didn’t matter. They followed either way.

Today it was the fence behind the library. Other times, it had been the creek near the woods, the collapsed train tunnel past the old flower shop, the back of the diner where a radio always buzzed with static and old songs. These places didn’t mean much to most people. To them, they were everything.

They sat down on the cool cement, backs against chain-link rust. Susie pulled her hoodie tighter. Spring hadn’t figured itself out yet—sun-warmed for ten minutes, then cold and wind-bitten the next. She gnawed at the plastic of a soda cap she’d pilfered from the gas station, spitting it out with a shrug.

“You ever think about just…” She gestured vaguely. “Getting in a car and driving away?”

Kris blinked slowly. Their hands were in their sleeves again, drawn up like a child, even though they were both nearly grown. There was a leaf in their hair. They didn’t answer.

“Not like—” she started, then stopped. “Forget it.”

Silence passed like freight cars. Long and clacky.

Then Kris, very slowly, shifted. Took a small thing from their pocket. It was a folded slip of paper—a comic strip from the newspaper, some stupid inside joke from lunch weeks ago. They handed it to her, wordless.

Susie stared. Her throat ached. She laughed through her nose, rough and genuine. “You kept this?”

They nodded.

“Freak,” she said.

Kris didn’t deny it.

Toriel had noticed Susie’s shoes by the door before she saw her.

Her voice came from the kitchen, gentle as warm tea. “You’re welcome to stay for dinner, dear. There’s enough.”

Susie’s voice, a second later, from the living room: “Uh… sure.”

There was a tightness in it. Like she expected something.
Toriel cooked slowly. She hummed—something from long ago, maybe lullabies not even Kris remembered. When she brought out the lasagna (too much cheese, Kris’s favorite), she set a smaller plate in front of Susie, then quietly slid the garlic bread closer to her side. A pie steamed in the center. (Kris’s favorite)

Susie stared down like she’d never seen a meal set for her before.
Later, when Kris was upstairs and Susie lingered in the hallway like a half-welcome shadow, Toriel laid a soft hand on her shoulder and said only: “You are always welcome here, child.”

Susie tensed up like a frightened dog.

But she nodded.

They weren’t dating.

They didn’t hold hands.

They didn’t kiss. Except for that once when they had both been afraid for their lives in the dark of a not-quite-forest and it had been stupid and brief and didn’t count.

They didn’t talk about it.

But sometimes, Kris would lean just enough that their shoulder brushed Susie’s when they sat on the roof of the old school. And sometimes, Susie would light a stolen cigarette, inhale once, and then hand it to Kris without speaking, and Kris would do the same.

It wasn’t about rebellion.

It was about rituals.

About having something that was theirs.

Susie’s house smelled like mold and silence. Her mom wasn’t home. Or maybe she was, but didn’t come out of the bedroom.

There were holes in the couch. A single, flickering lamp. A cracked picture frame turned face-down.

Kris had only been here twice.

Susie never invited them. Kris just showed up. Quietly. With purpose. Like they had heard something in her voice the day before. Or seen something in the slump of her shoulders.

“You don’t—”

“I want to,” Kris said. One of the rare times they did speak.

They sat beside her. On the floor. Where there was give in the wood.
Susie kept her head tilted back, against the cabinet. Her eyes were sharp, teeth always slightly bared, like she was a second away from either snarling or crying.

Kris took out their GameBoy.

Passed it to her.

Susie made a scoffing sound. Played anyway.

Outside, the wind stirred up empty cans and lost leaves. But inside, for a moment, it was quiet. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

Later, they walked again. Long walks. Nowhere walks. Just to feel like they were heading somewhere. The sky had that late-afternoon pinkish cast, like a bruise healing. Kris’s hoodie was zipped too high. Susie had pulled her hood down. Wind caught her hair.

“You ever think about kids?” Susie said abruptly.

Kris turned their head. They gave her a look that said: what kind of question is that?

“I mean—like, future,” she muttered. “You, me, whatever. What if we end up with… like, kids?”

Kris stared ahead. After a pause, they said: “They’d be weird.”

Susie barked out a laugh. “Hell yeah they would.”

A silence fell. Then: “But not bad, right?”

Kris didn’t say anything. Instead, they bumped her shoulder, once. Firm and simple.

It meant yes.

They were unusual. Unsentimental. Undramatic.

But on quiet evenings when the sky stretched out in shades of lilac and dusty orange, and Susie sat on the edge of the fountain and Kris tied her shoelace without being asked, there was something sacred about it.

Susie didn’t go home the night her mom screamed through the walls again. She didn’t call it that—“just loud,” she said, “just tired,” she said—but she didn’t go home either.

She showed up at Kris’s door with her hood up and her tail twitching, smelling like smoke that wasn’t hers. She had one of her mother’s old flannels tied around her waist, the sleeves long and dragging. Kris didn’t ask. Just stepped aside.

Toriel, from the kitchen, poked her head out and said only: “Shoes off, dear. I just mopped.”

Like Susie belonged there.

Like she wasn’t a guest anymore.

Kris gave her the couch and curled up on Chariel. Susie protested, at first—“It’s your damn house, dude,” she said, “I can sleep on the floor, I’ve done it before”—but Kris was already half-buried in blankets and completely silent, which meant the conversation was over.

At some point, when the house had gone completely quiet and the shadows settled, Susie whispered:

“Hey.”

Kris shifted their head to look at her.

The moonlight caught her hair, the jagged edge of her teeth. Her eyes were clearer than they ever were at school. No posturing. No sneer. Just Susie. Bare and real in a borrowed T-shirt, her knees pulled up, her voice a rasp.

“Do you think people like us get to be happy?”

Kris didn’t answer right away.

Then, slowly, they reached an arm out from the rocking chair and touched her hand. Just their fingertips, like they were testing water temperature.

Susie didn’t pull away.

They stayed like that.

They didn’t fall asleep touching. That wasn’t them. But when morning came, Susie had a pillow tucked under her arm that wasn’t hers, and Kris had a blanket they didn’t start with, and no one talked about it.

They weren’t the kind of kids who got asked to dances.

Susie would’ve laughed in someone’s face. Kris wouldn’t have answered.

But when the spring formal came around, Susie showed up in a wrinkled black button-up she clearly hadn’t ironed. Kris wore the same slacks from their cousin’s wedding three years ago.

They didn’t go inside.

They sat behind the gymnasium, where you could still hear the music thudding through the bricks. Someone cracked open the emergency door for a second and let a sliver of disco lights spill out into the dark.

Susie smoked a single cigarette and held the end toward Kris. They waved it off.

“You know,” she muttered, “we could just fake it.”

Kris raised an eyebrow.

“Pretend. Like we’re normal or whatever.” She made a mockery of a voice: “Look at us, we’re a totally average couple with a totally average life, probably gonna go to college and have a dog named Frizzle.”

Kris rolled their eyes. But they were smiling. A little.

“You’d name it Frizzle,” she said.

Kris considered. Then, suddenly and dryly: “I’d name it Bitey.”

Susie snickered, smoke coiling around her muzzle like a storybook dragon.

When the song inside changed, a slow one, Susie looked at them, sideways.

“…you wanna?” she said. Her voice was rough.

Kris stood up.

They didn’t dance well. They barely danced at all. Just stood there, swaying, Susie’s arms loose around their waist, Kris’s hands clumsy at her shoulders. Feet were stepped on a few times But it was enough.

It was quiet. Honest. unlike them.

Somewhere in the distance, the gym lights flickered, and nobody noticed they were missing.

Summer came late that year. Days stretched like melted taffy. The sky was too blue. The lake too still. Kris’s house was always open now—Toriel had taken to buying Susie’s favorite soda and pretending she “accidentally got the wrong kind.”

Sometimes, Susie and Kris walked all the way to the edge of town, to the old billboard with peeling paint, and sat there watching the sun fall behind the cornfields.

The spring fair came and went like a sneeze. Overhyped, overlit, and underwhelming—same as every year.

Susie hated it. The booths with their sticky popcorn bags and sad prize goldfish. The haunted house that smelled like mop water. The carousel that creaked like it wanted to be put out of its misery. She hated the way people got loud here, how everyone had someone to be with.

Kris didn’t seem to mind it.

They walked just behind her the whole time, hands in their hoodie, silent. Not bored. Just there. Which was worse, maybe, because Susie had nothing to be mad at. Not really.

They didn’t go on any rides. They didn’t eat anything. They watched people.

Susie kept thinking about their hands. About how Kris never reached for her. And how that shouldn’t matter. But somehow it did.

She shoved that thought deep.

“Hey,” she said, staring at a crooked stand full of bootleg anime plushies, “you think if we broke in at night, they’d notice?”

Kris tilted their head. Blinked slow.

Susie grinned, a little toothy. “Not sayin’ we should. Just, y’know. Wondering.”

Kris looked away. But she caught the ghost of a smirk on their mouth. She watched it disappear, and her stomach did something weird.

Later, she stayed the night again.

Not officially.

Toriel called up the stairs: “Will your friend be staying, Kris?”

A pause. Then: “Yes.”

And that was that.

Susie didn’t sleep in the bed. She never did. Something was off limits there, be it Kris’s bed or Asriel’s, still made from the morning he left. She curled on the floor in Kris’s room under a heap of blankets and one mangled pillow. The stars on the ceiling glowed green. The room smelled like dust and laundry soap and the faintest hint of cinnamon.

Kris sat at the window, legs pulled up, eyes scanning the horizon like something might come for them in the dark.

“Why do you even like me?” Susie asked. She didn’t mean it to sound so bitter.

Kris didn’t answer. But they turned, and looked down at her, slow and intent. Their face soft in the glow of the old lamp. They didn’t blink.

Susie turned away.

“Whatever,” she muttered.

It rained the next week. One of those thick, almost-summer rains that smells like dirt and moss and asphalt. The creek flooded. The streets turned silver.

They walked anyway.

Susie didn’t have an umbrella. Kris did. But they didn’t open it. Instead, they walked together in the storm until their clothes were soaked through and their shoes made squelching sounds with every step.

They took shelter under the slide at the playground.

Susie sat with her knees up, breathing hard, hair plastered to her face.

Kris pulled a packet of peanut butter crackers from their coat and handed them over. Not a word.

Susie stared at them for a moment. Then took them. Ate two. Left the rest in Kris’s lap.

“…I think my mom’s boyfriend’s coming back,” she said suddenly.

Kris tilted their head.

“She says he’s changed. But she always says that.”

The rain got louder. Hail started tapping at the metal slide.

Kris reached out and placed their hand—cold, knuckle-scarred, soft in a strange way—on her wrist.

They didn’t say anything.

Susie didn’t move.

They stayed like that until the sky cleared.

The next time Kris smiled, really smiled, it was because of something dumb.

Susie had dared them to climb the water tower. Kris shrugged. Climbed.

She followed.

They reached the top and the whole damn town spread out beneath them like someone had spilled it from a lunch tray. Rows of squat houses. Telephone lines sagging. The gas station. The grocery store with one broken fridge that always leaked. The field where Dess used to light sparklers on New Year’s.

Kris sat on the ledge, legs dangling.

Susie threw a pebble.

It missed.

She laughed, loud and full, and looked over—and there it was. That smile.

Not big. Not wide. But real.

She felt a knot in her throat.

“You ever think we’ll leave?” she asked.

Kris shrugged.

“That’s not an answer,” she said.

Kris turned to her. Said, “You want to?”

She blinked.

“…I dunno,” she said finally. “Maybe.”

Kris nodded.

Susie picked at a scab on her hand. The silence between them wasn’t awkward. It never was. It was like a second language. Like a blanket. Like a bruise.

They didn’t love each other.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

But they knew each other.

The way Susie flinched when footsteps were too fast behind her. The way Kris watched people’s hands, not their faces. The way Susie talked too loud when she was nervous. The way Kris didn’t talk at all when they were scared.

They weren’t in love.

But they were in something.

Something that bloomed in the cracks of sidewalks. Something that survived winter, and hail, and nights without sleep. Something that didn’t need a name.

And on days when everything was too much, and the house was too quiet or too loud, and the world felt shaped wrong—

—they met up.

They walked.

They didn’t talk about it.

They didn’t have to.

Chapter Text

Susie started bringing her backpack to Kris’s house after school.

Not because she planned to do homework—nobody believed that—but because it gave her something to fiddle with when she was sitting on their floor. Sometimes she took out the notebooks and drew in the margins, rows of teeth and weird little animals with big claws. Sometimes she just emptied the whole bag onto the carpet and put things back one by one, slow and methodical, like she was proving something to herself.

Toothbrush. Flashlight. Swiss knife. Something canned. A few things canned. A can opener. Birth Certificate. Social Security card. Magazine. Socks. Tylenol.

Kris never asked why. They sat nearby, legs folded underneath them, absentmindedly shredding the corner of a tissue or adjusting the radio dial back and forth until the fuzz turned into the local station that only played piano on Sundays.

Outside, the trees were starting to yellow. The kind of color that doesn’t last—lemon-peel and gold, gone too fast. Fall in Hometown always came on suddenly. One morning, you’d wake up and see your breath, and your mom would pull a knit hat out of the closet that still smelled like dust and cedar.

Susie didn’t have a fall coat. She just wore her hoodie with a T-shirt underneath and crossed her arms when it got cold.

When Toriel noticed, she didn’t say anything. Just left a folded sweater on the back of the couch one day, a navy blue one with a soft inside and sleeves a little too long. Susie wore it the next day without comment.

One afternoon, they broke into the old community pool.

It hadn’t been filled in years, just a cement bowl behind a rusted fence with warning signs (No life guard on duty!) and a faded mural of cartoon dolphins wearing sunglasses. But the gate wasn’t locked—nothing in Hometown was, really. You just had to know where to press.

Inside, it smelled like dirt and old leaves. Someone had spray-painted a heart on the deep end wall. A real one, not the cheesy red Valentine kind—veins, chambers, aorta. Detailed. Kris stared at it a little longer than they meant to.

They didn’t speak much as they climbed down into the empty pool. Susie sat on the ledge for a minute, legs dangling. Then she dropped in, the sound of her boots hitting concrete echoing off the walls.

Kris followed, of course.

They lay down in the middle of it, shoulder to shoulder, but not touching. It was cool in the shade. Their hands rested in the dust beside them like they were waiting for something.

Susie said, “We could paint it.”

Kris blinked.

“Like, this whole thing. Just cover it. With stuff. Words. Pictures. Whatever.”

Kris considered that. Then nodded, just once.

They didn’t have paint, though. Just a Sharpie that bled a little when you wrote too fast. Kris handed it over. Susie uncapped it with her teeth and scrawled something on the wall near her head.

Kris waited until she rolled over to show them.

It said:
IF YOU’RE READING THIS, IT’S TOO LATE

Kris grinned.

On Thursday, it rained.

Not heavy. Just a constant soft drizzle, the kind that made the whole town smell like mud and earthworms. Kris showed up at Susie’s door anyway, hood pulled low, their hair flat and stringy.

Susie cracked the door, blinked at them.

“…You’re soaked.”

Kris shrugged.

She let them in.

Her house was dark. Not pitch-black, just dim. The kind of dim where you weren’t sure if the light bulbs were burned out or just never turned on. A box fan whirred in the living room even though it wasn’t hot. Something beeped in the kitchen—a dying fire alarm or a microwave clock blinking 12:00.

“TV’s broken,” she said, offhand, as Kris sat on the floor. “Blew out a week ago. Haven’t told her.”

They didn’t ask who “her” was. They didn’t need to.

Susie pulled two bottles of soda from the fridge. Flat, but cold. She tossed one over. Kris caught it without looking.

They sat in the kitchen with their backs against the fridge, rain tapping against the window like it was asking to be let in.

After a while, Susie said, “You ever wanna be someone else?”

Kris cracked open the soda. It hissed.

She didn’t wait for an answer. “I think about that sometimes. Like. What if I just… left. Cut my hair, got a job somewhere far. Changed my name. Became, I dunno. Normal.”

Kris looked at her, slow and even.

Then: “You’re not abnormal.”

Susie blinked. The way they said it—it wasn’t a compliment. Just a fact.

It made something loosen in her chest.

On Friday, Toriel offered to drop them off at the thrift store.

“Just browsing,” Susie mumbled.

Toriel smiled gently. “Of course. Take your time, children. I’ll be back in an hour.”

The place smelled like old books and pine cleaner. A bell jingled when they walked in. It was mostly clothing—ugly shirts from someone’s garage, stiff jeans, flannel that smelled like memory.

Susie found a jacket with patches sewn in weird places. Kris found a stack of old cassette tapes with names written in faded marker. They held them up at the same time, like a trade.

“Guess we’re starting a band,” Susie said.

They paid with quarters and linted dollar bills. The old lady behind the counter asked if they were siblings. Kris said no. Susie said maybe.

There was a Saturday when nothing happened.

Not in the big way. Just in the regular, drawn-out, slow kind of way where hours stretched like dough and every room in the house seemed too quiet.

Kris was sitting at the kitchen table sorting a box of old cards—birthday, get-well-soon, congratulations on making the team. They weren’t all theirs. Most had Asriel’s name on them, others were addressed to “Mom and Kris.” Susie sat beside them with her chin on the table, staring up at the ceiling.

“You ever gonna throw these out?” she asked.

Kris shrugged.

“I had a shoebox like that once,” she said. “But it was full of dumb stuff. Like, candy wrappers and ticket stubs. I think I threw it in the trash before another move.”

Kris paused, held up a card that had glitter on it, then set it aside.

“Wanna make new ones?” they asked.

“…What?”

“I have markers.”

So they did. They sat there and made bad cards. Sloppy, jagged handwriting. Hearts with teeth. “Happy Conspiracy Day!” one said. Another read “Sorry for Your Weird Dream.”

Susie made one that said “You Did Okay, I Guess” and gave it to Kris without looking at them.

Kris tucked it into the lid of the old box.

There was a photo booth in the gas station down past the overpass.

Old and dusty, shoved in a corner between the claw machine and a shelf of off-brand beef jerky. No one used it anymore. The stool was lopsided and the coin slot stuck.

Susie found it one Thursday after she’d stormed out of gym class for the third time that week.

Kris followed her there, like they always did.

“I hate dodgeball,” Susie said, crouched in front of the machine like it owed her money. “I hate being the target. I hate when people don’t aim for me, too. I hate that I care.”

Kris didn’t answer. They forced two quarters in. Pulled back the curtain.

They both crammed into the booth. Susie’s knees bumped the wall and Kris’s stomach. Kris sat still, hands in their lap.

The screen blinked once.
Smile!

“Hell no,” Susie said.

The pictures came out five minutes later, too slow and too dark. In the first, Kris was blinking. In the second, Susie was flipping off the camera. In the third, Susie had dug her fingers into the corners of Kris’s mouth and curved it into a smile this side of a grimace.

Kris folded it in half. Tucked it into their pocket like a secret.

On the walk home, they stopped in front of a house with sun-bleached siding and a ceramic gnome with a broken arm.

“I used to know the kid who lived here,” Susie said. “Fourth grade. Marcus something. He gave me half a PB&J once and told me I was cool.”

She shrugged. “Never saw him again.”

The grass was overgrown. There was a torn screen flapping in the breeze.

“Wonder if he got out.”

Kris didn’t answer. But they tilted their head, looking at the house like it held something important. Something invisible. A whole childhood sealed behind a locked door.

Toriel packed Kris’s lunch every morning. Neat, folded napkins. Thermoses that still held warmth by lunch. Notes, sometimes.

Susie’s lunch was rarely a gas station sandwich and a warm soda.

One day, she opened her locker and a paper bag sat inside. No name. No note. Just… there.

She knew who.

Inside was a peanut butter and jelly, crusts off, cut diagonally.

She bit into it and didn’t say anything. Just leaned back against the lockers, chewed slowly, eyes on the ceiling tiles like she could will herself into another place. Not better. Just different.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. To the air. To the dust motes. To Kris, wherever they were in the building, probably watching her from around the corner like a ghost.

They got a ride to the next town over on Sunday.

Kris had a cousin. Or a friend. Or someone with a beat-up blue sedan and bad taste in music. They sat in the back, windows cracked, radio playing old ska songs and static.

It was strange, being somewhere else. Somewhere with different signs, different roads, different gas stations.

They bought milkshakes from a place shaped like a cow and drank them sitting on the curb. Susie’s was strawberry. Kris’s was chocolate. They swapped halfway through without asking.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we just… didn’t go back?” Susie asked. “Like, we just stayed here and got jobs at that stupid cow shack and lived in a trailer and didn’t tell anyone where we went.”

Kris looked at her for a long time.

Then they nodded.

She laughed, quiet. It came out small. “You’re the worst accomplice ever.”

The next week, Susie showed up with a black eye.

She said she fell.

Kris didn’t say anything, but the next day, they slid a little card into her backpack. A weird little one from a stationary set, the kind you’d use for thank you notes. Inside, it just said:

You didn’t deserve that.

She didn’t bring it up. But she did keep it. Folded it in half. Tucked it behind the sticker on her locker door, the one that said Bite Me with a cartoon dinosaur on it.

Sometimes, Kris sat behind the school and watched the birds.

Not in a weird way. Just… watched them. Like they were figuring something out.

One day, Susie joined them, plopping down on the gravel with a bag of sunflower seeds. She cracked them open one by one, leaving little piles of husks in her lap.

They didn’t talk. But after a while, Kris reached over, tapped her arm, and pointed.

A pigeon had landed on the railing. Dirty, gray, a little sickly looking. One of it’s feet was bent.

But it was looking at them. Just standing there. Chest heaving.

Susie smiled. Not wide. Not sweet. Just… real.

“I’ll name him Bad Larry.”

Kris nodded solemnly. Approved.

Bad Larry flew away ten minutes later. But they stayed.

In November, it rained for six days straight. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

The kind of rain that doesn’t make a show of itself—just falls, steady and dull, like the whole town is under a leaky faucet. The parking lots flooded, and the dead leaves clumped together in corners like forgotten chores.

Susie walked to school anyway. Even when the bus drove past and splashed her.

She showed up soaked, her hair stuck to her cheeks, water seeping through her shoes. Kris was waiting, nodding absently to their mom before she padded off to her own classroom. Kris handed her several fistfuls of paper towels from the bathroom they had gathered up beforehand. She dried her face without saying thanks.

That night, Toriel knocked once, twice, before entering Kris’s room. Her voice was quiet.

“Is she alright?”

Kris didn’t answer right away. Then: “She’s just used to it.”

Toriel’s mouth pulled tight in that quiet way it always did when she wanted to fix something but knew she couldn’t.

Later, Susie fell asleep on the floor with a blanket Kris had dragged down from the closet. Her arm dangled off the side of the couch and her mouth was half-open. Kris sat beside her on the floor, reading from a library book with a soft cover and bent spine. Every few pages, they looked over at her.

It wasn’t love. Not the kind from movies or stories or books with neat endings.

But it was something.

It was the way Kris always walked her halfway home, even if they had to turn around and go back. It was the way Susie waited at the corner each morning instead of going inside without them. When Kris pulled a burr out of Susie’s hair without making a big deal of it, or when Susie stood a little closer to Kris when walking past the group of older kids who always made stupid jokes, it sort of amounted to the same thing.

It was heavy and strange and wordless.

That was all.