Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The competition was going well. At least that was what Airy thought. Maybe the contestants didn’t agree, and maybe they wanted to go home, but she was having fun. Plus- SOME of them were having fun! It was clear that a few of them actually really wanted the prize. And that made her happy. So if she wasn’t the only one excited, was this really hurting anybody? She didn’t think so. It would end eventually anyway! And it wasn’t gonna take that long.. A few weeks, maybe a month? Standardly game shows last a lot longer than that! At least she.. Thought so? The main reference she had to go off of was a show called Inanimate Insanity..

Inanimate Insanity. Or, II for short I suppose. It was her favorite show, and it had been running for a few years now. Hell, it was the thing that inspired her to make her own gameshow in the first place! She loved the show, the concept, and especially the host.. MePhone4 was just so pleasing to watch on the screen. Every word he spoke, every move that he made, every challenge he set up- it was all so inspiring to Airy in a way that she couldn’t explain. So that’s why she was here now, hosting her own gameshow. MePhone4 was her idol. She wanted to be like that.

Season 3 of Inanimate Insanity had just wrapped up. Cabby won. Personally, Airy thought Balloon deserved the win more. I mean, after all the development that he had gone through throughout the show, a NEWCOMER got the win? Partially expected, considering the structure, but… still, it upset her a bit. She turned to look at The Plane. If she was being honest, she wanted Moldy to win. She figured she could get the most out of the wish. Which yes, was real… technically. She could manifest things with the computer, so whose to say she couldn’t manifest cash or something like that? That’s what most people would probably ask for anyway, she figured. Moldy was part of the original cast of Season Two that she had brought in. Maybe that and the combined anger with Balloon not getting the win was the reason that Airy wished for her victory.

…

But, that HAD just given her an idea. An idea that caused her to shift up in her chair, it creaking beneath her. The thing was probably at the brink of breaking, but she wasn’t thinking about that right now. Not like it was that important anyway – she was sure nothing TOO bad could happen. But whatever. She started typing on her computer, pulling up window after window and program after program. Confusing to those who were untrained, maybe, but she had plenty of time over the years to figure out how to get this thing to work.. She had been here for about, what, at least three years? Didn’t really know, didn’t really care. Anyway, back to her idea.

What if she just.. Took some of the contestants from Inanimate Insanity and brought them to The Plane and had them compete on her show? They’d likely be willing to compete, she thought, and she already knew enough about them to where she wouldn’t have to put in the same amount of research as she did with the others. That was the part she hated the most; having to learn so much about the lives of the contestants she did pick. It was boring! She always wanted to just.. Skip right along from that part and just put them in the show already. But with the II contestants? Well, she could do just that.. And she was sure the others wouldn’t mind another group. Maybe it would extend the show, but it’d also make it more exciting! And give everyone a chance to form more bonds! She liked watching everyone interact… In a way you could compare it to a child observing a bunch of ants in an ant farm. Watching and waiting for them to do something, occasionally giving them the food and nutrients that they need to survive.

Oh, yeah. Airy had been feeding the contestants. Do you think that they could just.., survive on their own without any food or water? No, that was silly. She’d give them berries she picked from the forest, maybe occasionally some meat from a rabbit if she found one. They were around here, but they tended to stay away from her and the cabin. Not that she minded, she didn’t like killing them anyway. It made her feel bad. But back to the topic at hand.

She didn’t think of it as replacing MePhone4 necessarily, no.. sure, she could do a lot similar to him and was also using that power to host a gameshow, and now she was taking his contestants, but… she wasn’t replacing him. It was just inspiration! Her show was different. Different enough for this to be morally acceptable in her eyes. She would’ve felt bad if it was just directly copying her favorite show, she didn’t want that. She glanced over at all her contestants, asleep at the moment. She frowned at the state of Backpack, though. A broken leg; rather nasty break at that. She had given him a cast, though. He’d be okay. He’d heal. She’d just.. Have to treat him a bit more carefully than the others. That was fine – it happened! She could do that. She looked back at her computer screen.

It didn’t take her that long to decide who she wanted to take. She had her favorites, she would admit; those being Trophy, Silver Spoon, OJ, Paper, Fan, and of course Balloon. Balloon was the whole reason that she had gotten this idea in the first place, really! She had to give him some sort of credit for it. And that credit was putting him in the show. Plus, she wanted him to try and win at least one game show. He deserved it… but she shook her head. She let out a sigh, then focused on the screen again. She didn’t want to have too big of a bias. If the host was biased, then the show wouldn’t be fair! And she wanted everything to go smoothly. Just like they were now.. She needed to do one thing, first. And that was to set up their profiles on The Plane Database. Not that difficult to do, but just a bit.. Bothersome, if she was being completely honest. Bothersome and boring. But oh well, it kept things in check. And that’d be good for later! She didn’t have the best memory sometimes. She suspected it had something to do with how she got here in the first place, that damn car crash.. She didn’t like thinking about it, so she wasn’t going to.

She opened up the website, the familiar webpage serving as some form of comfort to her. She thought it was comfort, anyway. A nice feeling at the very least, it made her feel good. Thinking about the show in general made her feel good… it was her life purpose, she thought. A great life purpose at that. She dragged the mouse cursor over to the button to create a new page, and got to work. It wouldn’t take long. There HAD to be solo pictures of every person she was looking for, right? No cropping or blurring required.. That part also always annoyed her. It was always the little things. But it was like that with most people. The cave was filled with the clicking of the mouse, the pressing of keyboard keys, and the occasional soft snores of the contestants on The Plane. She was gonna wait until morning to teleport everyone there, it was only fair. She didn’t wanna make them up in the middle of the night. Or, well, it was still bright for them, but that was because she.. still couldn’t quite figure out how to set it all to night yet. It probably wouldn’t be THAT complicated, but it wasn’t anything she had ever taken the time to think about or learn. She needed to get on that after this now that it was in her brain.

It took a while. Maybe an hour and a half, 45 minutes? One or the other, she didn’t keep track of time that well other than occasional glances beneath the vines that stood at the entrance of the cave to see if there was light shining through. The sun was starting to rise, she believed. That meant everyone would start waking up soon, or she would start waking everyone up soon. Whichever came first, but it would probably be her waking everybody off. She yawned, but rubbed her eyes. She could sleep later, right now she needed to double check everything.. Just to make sure she had it right. Preferred identities, mainly. Those were important to her, she wanted everyone to be as comfortable as she could get them.

Everything was in order, though.

Now all she needed to do was run the teleport command, and things could get started.. And gods, she was excited. This was going to go great – she could feel it.

Chapter Text

Hotel OJ was.. A fairly peaceful place…. Not really. That was a big lie. But, compared to the intensity of the show it was kind of peaceful. OJ and Paper really tried their best to keep things running the best that they could. It was hard, just being a two man job, but they did their best they figured! And at the end of the day, they could always just.. Crawl in bed with each other and talk about it. Talk about all of their problems and make each other feel better. And that made everything okay again, they thought. Both of them had noticed everything feeling a bit lighter since they started doing that, it was nice to just get things off their chest with the person they loved the most in the world. Things had been looking up since they officially started telling people that they had gotten together, too! Other than Salt. But Salt was always a problem. Always had been, probably always would be - but that was besides the point, really. They were happy, that was all that mattered.

Right now, OJ and Paper were in their bedroom. They weren’t getting ready for bed or just waking up or anything, they were just… hanging out. Realistically, they probably had things they needed to be doing, but that wasn’t on their mind for once. They didn’t get moments to themselves like this often, especially during the middle of the day no less, so they were soaking in it, work oriented as OJ normally was. No words were being exchanged, it was just peaceful silence for the most part. Spare for the occasional creak of the hotel or noise coming from outside, it was quiet. And both of them would be lying if they said that at least a part of them didn’t prefer it that way. Paper was sitting on their bed, legs dangling off the end and slightly kicking. OJ was standing across from him, just watching. He liked to stare and just to think about the fact that he could actually call the gorgeous man in front of him his now. It was a feeling that never failed to bring a flush to his cheeks and butterflies to appear in his stomach. 

Paper let out a breathy chuckle,

“You’re blushing.”

“No I’m not.”

The haste that OJ replied with wasn’t helping at all, the glass immediately looking away and trying to prevent eye contact. This only caused a laugh out of Paper. How could he be so adorable? And on top of that, how could he expect Paper not to tease him for it?! God, he was so cute.. He really didn’t know how he had gotten this lucky.

He patted the spot on the bed next to him, causing OJ to look back over.

“Sit down with me.”

OJ stopped the lean that he was doing against the wall, walking over to sit next to his boyfriend without much of a second thought. Once he got himself into a comfortable position, Paper leaned on him, closing his eyes to get more comfortable. This gained a smile out of him, and he pulled the other man a bit closer and closed his own eyes in return, sighing in contentment.

“This is nice, isn’t it?”

Paper chimed up again, though his eyes remained closed.

“What do you mean?”

“Being able to spend time together when it isn’t, like, 11 at night and we’re both half asleep.”

OJ scoffed at the comment.

“Yeah, guess it is.”

Another long silence spanned between the two. They were half expecting a loud crash to ring outside which would require their immediate attention and break the moment, or maybe someone walking in on them to complain about someone else (that had happened before… they were trying to talk to people about it, but you know, it’s hard), or just anything like that. But it never came, it really was just them. This was one of the only times that OJ ever let his guard down and got off of his feet. Paper loved how he was able to affect OJ like that, because he knew that he deserved it more than anything. 

The more time that passed, the more comfortable both of them got. And the less likely it felt like things became for anything to ruin this.

That was until Paper found himself suddenly falling onto his side, the weight of his boyfriend that had been there before disappearing completely. He puffed as he hit the mattress beneath him, a bit surprised as his eyes darted open. At first he had thought that he had just missed OJ saying he was going to go check on the others or something, but as he sat up and looked around, he realized something..

OJ was just gone. The only traces of him ever being there was the faint scent of citrus that lingered in the air and the picture of him and Paper that was framed and perched on the nightstand right beside the bed they shared.

It didn’t register at first that anything was wrong. Really, anyone would be stunlocked in that situation. Having gone from cuddling your boyfriend to him just… suddenly not existing at all was jarring. It was about a minute or two later when the panic started to set in, Paper immediately pushing himself off the bed and into a standing position.

“OJ?”

He felt almost silly calling out the name. He didn’t think that he was going to get a response - realistically he knew that he wouldn’t, but part of him also hoped that this was some sort of.. Cruel elaborate prank. That wasn’t like OJ, though. Maybe Cheesy, but not OJ. The sheet took a step forward, his breathing getting heavy.

“OJ, if you’re in here, this isn’t a funny joke! Come- Come out, I’m scared!”

Was it pathetic for him to get this worried so quickly? Maybe. No, scratch that, he certainly thought it was. But that was one of the last things that he was TRULY worried about. OJ was gone. He wasn’t getting a response. Unless he had left the room? Paper wasn’t sure how on Earth he could manage to do that so quickly, though! The door was a fair amount of space away from the bed, so Paper certainly would’ve seen him leaving between the time he would’ve gotten there and when he first started looking around. That didn’t stop Paper from running over and immediately swinging the door open, though.

He was met with the front counter of the hotel, nobody sitting behind it. That didn’t help. He wished that he could just see the other man sitting there and listening to someone - likely Trophy - complain about some nonsensical. That was normally how things like this went, and it would’ve made him feel better. Hell, seeing someone - probably Trophy, again - waiting at the counter for someone even would’ve made him feel a bit better because it was NORMAL. But there was nobody there. 

He ran out from behind the counter and into the lobby - more so like a living room at this point. There he found people, luckily enough. Knife and Pickle were on the couch playing games to nobody's surprise, Mic and Soap were having some sort of conversation, Paintbrush was merely standing by themself, and there were.. Quite a few newcomers as well. Paper hadn’t caught their names yet - the winner was Cabby though, right? Whatever, didn’t matter.

It didn’t take long for heads to turn to him, though.

“Are you alright, dear..? You look.. Distressed.”

A relaxed female voice that he couldn’t quite recognize spoke up first. Someone new. He didn’t like that. He wasn’t something familiar- he wanted OJ. But the guy had just disappeared right in front of his face! How could he just.. Magically do that? And could he magically just appear again? That’d be great right about now!

“Did any of you see OJ come this way?”

More people started to focus on him as he started speaking, Pickle even having paused the game, much to the annoyance of his sharp friend beside him. Paper always had a voice that was hard to ignore, though. Even harder to ignore when it was in obvious distress like he was now.

“I can’t say that I have. Why, is something wrong?”

At least that was someone he recognized, Soap. He bit the inside of his mouth.

“He just.. Disappeared!”

“What?”

Paintbrush this time. If anything, they sounded more angry than confused or worried. It was fitting for their character, but Paper still couldn’t help but wonder if they thought that he was playing some sort of prank on everyone. He wished nothing more than to be able to say that he was, really. But he couldn’t.

“We were together! C-Cuddling on the bed,”

He hated how stupid he sounded when he stuttered.

“And then I just… fell! And when I opened my eyes, he was gone! I thought that maybe he could’ve gone here and that I was just going CRAZY or didn’t hear him speak, but to get anywhere else in the hotel he would’ve had to pass through here!”

He was looking at everyone now. They were starting to realize that he wasn’t joking, and concern was starting to paint their faces. He was glad they believed him so quickly - though it was likely due to the fact that they had seen significantly weirder on the show during their time there. Someone randomly disappearing was honestly just weekly activities for all of them at some point in their lives.

“And he’s just.. Gone? Just like that?”

“That’s what I just SAID, Pickle! I wish that I could say I was JOKING, but-”

Paper was cut off mid sentence by falling yet again. But this time it wasn’t onto a mattress, no, but rather onto.. Grass? Or at least it seemed like grass, just incredibly poorly.. Rendered? Almost like some kind of cartoon, he noted. Though really this was doing ABSOLUTELY BUMFUCK NOTHING TO HELP HOW HE FELT RIGHT NOW, OH MY GOD SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!

He looked around again, pausing when he noticed other objects. Not ones he was familiar with, though. A backpack, a soda bottle, a candle, a moldy piece of bread, a bunch of others- Jesus Christ, it was bright here. He hissed and brought his hands over his eyes for a moment, rubbing them to try and make them feel a little better. It did nothing.

“Oh, whoops.”

A voice rang out from seemingly nowhere. Monotone and seemingly lacking any sort of emotion behind it. It caused Paper to flinch more than he was willing to admit, but when he did register the scene he was looking at, his breath caught in his throat.

OJ was shattered on the ground. Glass chunks and shards were shattered across it, and the liquid that had once been inside of him was just all over the ground. What could this grass POSSIBLY be made of to mess him up this badly?!

Of course Paper had seen death before. But this was different.

“Hold on, let me fix this…”