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Spamton G. Spamton has never felt better.
Sure, things got a little rough not too long ago but that was water under the bridge. Every big shot has their day and he had his. Now he's fine!
He still has his business. He still has his business partner. He still has the ‘help’ that speaks through the phone.
Everything is going great!
Except it's not.
Despite the bright smiles and cheery atmosphere, there's a distance between two people that no one else seems to have noticed except for Spamton. It's impossible for him not to notice it.
It's his partner that's making it between them.
After the…incident from a couple weeks ago, Tenna has been a bit ‘hands off’ with Spamton. At first Spamton didn't mind. The thought of being handled by Tenna so soon after all of that made his crest stand on end.
Spamton was never one that enjoyed physical contact too much, and Tenna did that plus more.
He’d felt overstimulated the next day, like his skin was tingling due to the air itself. The thought of being touched while like this made him want to bite someone.
Unfortunately, that wouldn't have been very ‘big shot’ of him.
It took a couple days of dodging physical contact, bullshit explanations, and some much needed alone time, but Spamton G. Spamton was eventually in a state where he felt like he could function somewhat normally. The air no longer made his nerves feel like static. He no longer wanted to shred anyone for just standing next to him. His plumage was all freshly redyed and in pristine condition.
His eyes no longer tracked Tenna's hands when they were next to each other.
Honestly, the ad thought he was doing pretty good all things considered. He wasn't quite ready to reach the level of closeness he and Tenna had before, but he knew wanted it again eventually.
He just needed some space at the moment.
After a week or so, Spamton no longer wanted that space. He'd spent that time mulling over everything that had happened that day and, while he was still somewhat upset with Tenna, he was ready to sit down and talk about it with him. He wanted to bridge that gap.
Tenna did not want to bridge that gap. In fact he seemed to be making it bigger.
Now Spamton wasn't too worried at first. He had needed time to make sense of everything that happened. Maybe Tenna needed time too?
But then it had been a week.
Then two weeks.
Then three weeks.
Then a month.
And Tenna still wouldn't meet him halfway. Even when Spamton went out of his way to offer olive branch after olive branch, the TV acted like he didn't want them.
Or rather he acted like he didn't think he deserved them.
See, what Spamton noticed was that Tenna seemed to be treating him like glass. Like the most delicate of fine china. He acted like if he talked too loud, or moved too fast, or pushed too hard, Spamton would break.
Tenna wouldn't look at him for too long.
Wouldn't talk to him for too long.
Wouldn't sit with him for too long.
Wouldn't smile as wide as before.
Wouldn't laugh as loud as he remembered.
Hell, he wouldn't even go out on break with Spamton. The ad always had some sheepish crew member with some excuse waiting for him when he arrived.
Worst of all, Tenna wouldn't touch him at all . He wouldn’t even offer a hand to step in.
He was punishing himself for something Spamton had already begun to forgive him for.
And frankly? It was starting to piss Spamton off.
If there was one thing Spamton G. Spamton didn't like, it was people making assumptions about him. And Tenna was making an awful lot of assumptions about him.
Well.
It's about time he fixed that, yes?
Knowing Tenna's schedule made this a cake walk. After all, Tenna's schedule was also Spamton's schedule more times than not. It was easy enough to catch Tenna off guard and slide his way back into their old routine.
Oh, you need to get some paper work done? What a lovely coincidence, so do I! Let's go do it together. Accounting was never my strong suit, you know.
Quick. Simple. Easy.
The walk back to Tenna's office was a slow one. Part of the reason was Tenna dragging his feet the whole time. The other part was because Spamton was actually walking next to him.
Tenna's office wasn't his green room which was a plus in Spamton's books. There was less potential baggage in this place. The door wasn't sized for 4 ½ foot tall people so he had to wait for Tenna despite getting there first for once.
With one reluctant press of the door’s thumbturn, Spamton invited himself into a room he hadn't been in for a month. Walking in ahead of the TV, he wandered towards a familiar desk whilst looking around. From what he could see the room didn't look too different from what he remembered. Same filing cabinets. Same chairs.
Same furniture that was too damn big.
Most of the furniture in here was sized for Tenna's 10 ft height. It wasn't his max because he said something about that size being inconvenient for his crew? About not wanting to give them banner-sized letters?? Regardless, Spamton had no hopes of climbing this stuff on his own. If he wanted to ‘help’ Tenna with paper work, he’d need to be lifted to the desk.
Which had been his intention from the start when he chose to catch Tenna now of all times.
A door clicked shut behind him, and a pair of clicking shoes approached not too long afterwards. Pretending to be more interested in the new papers pinned to the cork board, Spamton waited for Tenna to engage with him. To say something to him. Yell at him. Anything .
The shoes stopped and lingered next to him for a second before…continuing over to the office chair?
Wait, was Tenna actually gonna leave him down here?
“Oh [Papers please!],” Spamton groaned loudly, “don't tell me I have to ask."
“W-what do you mean?" stammered Tenna, sounding uncertain about what was wrong.
“How do you expect me to get up there [color bars]?” the ad stated bluntly as he rounded the corner of the desk to look at Tenna. “This room isn't scaled to your biggest, but it's still too big for me!”
“Ah well, I can go get you the stepping stool-”
No this bitch did not just say he was gonna go get the stepping stool.
Spamton made palm up motion. “Hand."
"Um I don't-”
"Hand."
"W-well you see–"
"I will climb you.” Spamton deadpanned while taking a step forward and flexing his hands.
“Okay! Okay." Tenna sighed deeply before crouching down, offering his hand to Spamton.
Damn. He acted like Spamton was pulling teeth here.
Spamton stepped into the hand without a care in the world despite the slight trembling he felt beneath him. Standing in one hand while Tenna was this size was a bit uncomfortable–there’s the second hand.
Perfect.
Tenna sat his hands carefully on the cluttered desk, a desk that Spamton promptly ignored by turning and pouncing straight for Tenna's shoulder. He missed and latched onto his upper arm instead, but can you blame him? It's been a month since he's done any Tenna climbing. The TV stood ramrod straight as Spamton pulled himself up and over the shoulder.
“Spamton I don't think you should–”
“You expect me to read from down there? You know most of these papers are poster sized, [Cathode]. I've always needed a higher vantage point.”
“Yes I know, but…”
The show host’s voice trailed off. His fingers slowly gripped the desk. Spamton could feel the shoulders beneath him starting to shake.
…Heavens above, this TV better appreciate everything Spamton does for him.
"Tenna.”
Everything freezes.
Spamton shuffles to get into a more comfortable (more familiar) position. His grip on the shoulder was light enough to avoid putting wrinkles in the suit. He'd be surprised if Tenna even felt it. The tips of his shoes rest lightly around the middle of Tenna's back, careful not to rub any dirt into his suit.
“You know I'm not that upset with you about that night, right?”
There's a second of silence only broken by the sound of documents beginning to crinkle under Tenna's curling fingers.
“You should be,” the TV warbled out after a couple more had passed, sounding more upset at himself than anything.
“Yeah you're right. I should be, and I was for about a week. But now I'm not. I'm more upset now that you won't meet me halfway so we can talk about it.”
“You shouldn't want to meet me halfway.”
“Says who?” demanded Spamton, leaning forwards to see the CRT's face. He managed to see a wobbly frown before Tenna turned away. “Because I don't remember saying that.”
Tenna didn't say anything. The silence felt like it droned on forever before a couple whispered words reached Spamton's ears.
“You were terrified of me."
…Huh?
“Terrified of you??”
"Don't play coy with me!" The TV suddenly snapped back, his shoulders bending as he hunched over the desk. “I could feel it. I know you were!"
Spamton didn't respond to the spiraling happening next to him because he wasn't sure what the hell Tenna was talking about. Sure the ex-Addision didn't agree to be tossed back like a cough drop, but he wasn't afraid the whole time he was in there. What was he going on abou–
Sudden and unprompted, the feeling of encompassing plastic returned to him. It was slick yet plush, and it held his arms firm when he tried to move them. His claws had barely broken the surface of it in an attempt to stop the weird falling sensation he was feeling. It didn't work, and he couldn't find a good foothold to help catch himself either. A loud mechanical rumble reverberated through his body and scattered his already frazzled thoughts. Surrounded by rumbling, humming, whirring, clicking, and a vinyl that squeezed and breathed, he could just barely hold onto the fragmented thought that he was in something –
Ah. That.
That had been one of the things he wanted to talk to Tenna about.
But why was the TV getting so worked up about it? Tenna was always an emotions-based guy but he was never this emotional about something. It was almost concerning.
“Tenna,” Spamton paused to choose his words carefully for once, “you do realize that if I was genuinely terrified of you at any moment during all of that, I could've gotten myself out of the situation very easily, right? I had several opportunities to make any fear I had clear–”
“You couldn't have ‘very easily’ done anything. You could barely even move in there. You didn't stand a chance against me.”
Okay. Ominous ass statement. Not entirely wrong though he seemed to be underestimating Spamton if you asked him.
He wasn't sure how he felt about that increasing raw edge to Tenna's voice though.
“ Yes ,” Spamton conceded with a frown, "but I definitely had more space to move after that . If I wanted out, I would have gotten out."
“How??" Tenna countered immediately, "You could barely keep your head up let alone carry on a sentence."
“Alright sure, my thoughts-to-speech abilities hadn't been the most fast or functional program at the start,” the ad snipped back with a furrowed brow, “But there was another way for me to make that clear to you–”
“You’re lying!"
The vibrations of Tenna's anguished yell echoed off the walls of the room. The echo was slowly replaced with the sound of hot air wheezing out of Tenna's mouth and vents.
“You're just saying things to appease me,” the CRT rasped in a crackling trembling voice. “You have to be. I know what I felt. I know, I know, I know…”
His words petered off into an illegible rambling only he could hear. Spamton squinted as his ears continued to ring.
Okay, he's actually upset about this.
Slowly opening one eye, he looked at the man he perched on. Tenna's head and antenna were hung low, and heat coming from his vents felt like steam on Spamton's face. Leaning forwards, the ad couldn't see if Tenna's screen was on or not.
He leaned back again, sighing soundlessly to the heavens.
And here I was thinking I was gonna be the one fussing today about my boundaries. This man has already beat himself up about it for me.
Spamton had been hoping this would be a quick and easy conversation. An ‘I didn't like this but I didn't mind that’ type of chat, but no. They were gonna have to have a heart-to-heart before they could even get to that.
(blagh…)
Reshuffling to lay down over the TV’s now mostly horizontal back, Spamton decided to dig up that buried past of his for a moment. He hadn't been lying to Tenna when he said he could've escaped if he wanted to. Maybe a little story would help make it click for him? Besides, a little bit of opening Pandora's Box never hurt anyone, right?
His fingers traced nonsensical lines and patterns into Tenna’s back as his plumage settled down from the shock.
“Ok. I'll be honest with you for a second. Completely and utterly honest. Will you let me speak my piece without interruption?"
Spamton didn't get an answer but he wasn't expecting one. Tenna's fervent rambling had stopped about a minute ago, replaced by silence and a heavy breathing deep enough to lift the salesman.
“I've been exhausted like that before, you know? Back when I was an Addison. I'd run myself rugged, trying to get something to work. Pulled all kinds of awful all-nighters. Stopped eating. Got dulled messy feathers. The whole sha-bang.
“Some of the Addisons tried to intervene, kept trying to tell me I wouldn't get anywhere like this." His aimless drawing paused. “They were right, but I didn't listen. I just kept thinking ‘If I do this, if I just do this, then maybe. Just maybe. Something will work.’"
The back beneath him didn't seem to heave as high as it did before.
“...It didn't work of course. And all that was left was some washed up white Addison without a sale to his name and an exhaustion so deep he didn't glow.
“They thought I died, actually." Spamton chuckled humorlessly as the CRT jolted in his direction. “When they found me curled up tight with my lighting gone. I'd wandered my way back to our old shared community home after a real bad night and passed out somewhere. I think it was under a chair? Scared the hell out of them when they found me and I wouldn't wake up.
“They actually called an Ambyu-Lance for me.” Spamton laughed a little more, still as forced and emotionless as before. “Do you know how stingy Addisons are when it comes to spending their money? And then they spent it on someone else? Someone else that couldn't even pay them back?? Unheard of.
“Someone went to pick me up. I think it was Vide, a pink one? And, well, you know my boundaries about that. I don't like being handled much. I used to have to remind the ad flock of that over and over again. It happened so much that I had a phrase for it. I think I told it to you once. Do you remember it?”
The ad waited patiently for the TV to respond to his prompt. He knew Tenna already knew the answer but he wanted to hear the man speak.
"...‘I might be small but I'm no doll’?"
“Exactly~ Ah, not that it mattered much in the long run,” Spamton snorted, keeping his tone light as if he wasn't talking about the most blatant disrespect he'd ever felt. “Those Addisions trampled that boundary whenever they thought they could. ‘Oh I forgot!’, ‘Oh it's just for a couple seconds!’, ‘Oh I can't help it!’. Bullshit, all of it. It caused me to develop quite the bad habit in order to deal with it.
“So, in my barely conscious state, can you guess what I did when I felt those oh so familiar hands raise me upwards?”
Tenna paused for a bit before asking, "...What did you do?”
"I took one blurry squinted glance at Vide’s hand…and I bit the shit out of it."
“YOU WHAT? " Tenna's whole shoulder jumped as he turned to look at Spamton.
“Yessirree, bit down hard and would not let go. Broke several fingers in a single crunch. The screech that ad let out probably woke up the whole damn neighborhood because it certainly woke me up. And you wanna know what I did once I was slightly more awake than before?"
“What??"
“I readjusted my grip so they couldn't fling me away like they usually did when I nipped them and I bit down even harder. Oh, I was like a little wolverine. The Ambyu-Lance had to tranquilize me just to get me off. It was bad enough that it hurt to move my jaw for days afterwards.”
Tenna tried (and failed) to sputter something out in response. Spamton just preened, listening to his attempts. It wasn't his most civilized moment, but it was one that worked.
They all kept their hands to themselves after that.
For better or for worse.
“I just…why? You said they were your flock, your ‘ad flock’. Why would you harm a member of your group?”
“Hmm. I don't think I could give a concrete answer to that if I tried, Tenna. I was worse off in that moment than I was with you if you could believe it. You stopped me before I got that bad again. But I think,” Spamton paused for a second, recounting the scraps that he could from the incident, “I think it was because even in my semi unconscious state, I could tell I was in a vulnerable situation that I did not like with someone…I didn't fully trust.”
The room went silent as Tenna's head turned away from him again. Spamton continued on, lost in his own thoughts.
“It didn't matter that they were my ad flock. Didn't matter that I'd known them all my life. They’d violated my wishes and boundaries so many times that I couldn't bring myself to fully trust them when it mattered the most.”
Even when I wanted to.
“So!” The salesman clapped his hands, continuing on in a forced cheerier tone, "I can assure you of this Tenna: If you did something to me that I really did not like? Be that picking me up or ‘worse’?"
The antenna closest to him twitched in his direction.
"You would know it. And you would know because you would be missing a chunk of your stomach lining or finger off that hand. Even when I saw those claws of yours–”
The shoulder he's on flinched hard.
"–I never bit down. I don't think I even shied away from your hands.”
He could feel the heat from the vent next to him slowly cooling as Tenna mulled everything over.
“...Why? Why would you let me do any of that? What makes me so different from your flock?"
“Oh [Heaven knows], don't make me say it," Spamton bemoaned dramatically, looking away from the CRT. He hoped the man wasn't looking at him as he felt his cheeks heat. “You know the answer to that. We both know that you know the answer to that."
It's because I trust you dumbass.
"...Even now? After what I did?” His voice was hushed, barely audible to Spamton's ears. His shoulders hunched a little higher as he held his head low in shame again.
Spamton sighed. Oh here we go.
“...I admit, I was terrified when I woke up like that.”
The sound of claws suddenly dragging across wood echoed below him. The increased tension in Tenna's body was enough to cause his shoulders to spike. A sharp gasp was pulled through the TV’s vents as Spamton ran a hand across the CRT's throat.
He'd never paid it much attention before. Gray, with horizontal lines going across it, and a texture similar to a thick cord's rubber.
It was hard to believe he was in there just a couple weeks ago.
"But that was less that I believed you would hurt me and more that I didn't know it was you to begin with. You're not exactly easily identifiable in there.”
Removing his hand, he resettled his grip on the shoulder and leaned his head against Tenna's.
“I was fine the moment I realized it was you.”
The tension finally bled out of the CRT’s form and he dropped into the office chair behind him. He sunk his screen into his hands.
His voice sounded tiny as he asked, “Do you mean it?"
“Yes Tenna. I said I was gonna be [Honesty Hour] with you for this."
There was a moment of silence before quiet “oh my stars" emitting from the CRT’s hands. It sounded like a whine, and Spamton squeezed and rubbed the shoulder beneath him lightly in response. After a minute, he broached the topic he'd wanted to talk about from the start.
“That being said, I would prefer it if you asked next time,” stressed the ad, keeping his voice calm yet blunt. “I know it didn't seem like an option before but I assure you, it definitely was. I was more coherent during all of that than you realized.”
I probably would've said yes if you asked the first time.
“Ohh…”
The show host sounded horribly embarrassed, but Spamton would take embarrassment over the guilt-induced self-hatred from earlier. Spamton pressed onwards.
“Yes, ‘oh’. Look Tenna, I really–” like you "–enjoy working with you, and I would hate to–” lose you "–be forced to end my partnership with you over something like this. Especially when I know you had nothing but good intentions.
“But that's my line in the sand. My [Do not pass GO]. You’ve gotta respect that for me, okay? You have to ask before doing things like this with me. I,” Spamton's voice trailed off, his vigor leaving him in an instant, “I don't want more of them out of you.”
The TV’s antenna had been slowly lowering until they were flat against the top of his head throughout Spamton's rant. The only thing he said at the end of it all was a quiet, subdued “Okay.”
"Okay?” Spamton leaned most of his weight against Tenna's head, barely causing the CRT to move.
Do you mean it?
Tenna tips his head back into Spamton's side, almost knocking the salesman off his now slightly smaller shoulder.
"Okay.” Yes I mean it.
The following silence was a comfortable one. It probably lasted 10 seconds before Tenna's pinned back antenna shot straight up in the air, and the TV followed not too long afterwards. The abruptness of the movement from hunched to upright almost launched Spamton clean off his back. The TV turned to look at the ad as he scrambled to regain a good grip on the now bigger shoulder.
“Wait, ‘next time’?”
He had no right sounding that excited about this.
(Of course he was. Tenna couldn't pretend he didn't enjoy all of that if he tried.)
“[Don't count your eggs before your chickens]”
“That's not how the saying goes.”
“Shut the [&$#@] up.”
The TV snorted at the sudden bluntness of it and laughed something subdued but true.
It was a laugh that shook his shoulders.
It was a laugh that made his nose wrinkle.
It was a laugh that showed off every tooth he had (even as he tried to hide it behind a hand (it never worked)).
And Spamton thought, as he watched his partner try to stop his laugh from becoming a cry,
Maybe now, things will be alright.