Work Text:
“C’mon, Spammy, it’ll be fun! The game needs to be play tested before we can air it, just play one round with me?”
Despite Tenna’s towering height, Spamton can’t help but compare him to an eager puppy when he acts like this. Sighing (but not nearly as apprehensive as he pretends to be) Spamton sits on the couch and picks up the controller Tenna set there for him. He turns the controller over in his hand curiously. It fits perfectly in his hands—almost too perfectly for it to be coincidental. He doesn’t mention it, even though he can see Tenna’s excited expression out of the corner of his eye.
When Tenna presses start, Spamton can’t help but snort in amusement, “Isn’t this just a ripoff of that lightner game?”
Tenna gasps in mock offense, “This is a perfectly original and extremely creative TV Time original! I can’t believe you’d accuse me of something like that.”
“Right, of course, that’s my bad, Tens,” Spamton rolls his eyes. His suspicions about the controller are all but confirmed by the fact that the game automatically spawns him in as a mini 8bit version of himself. “Not exactly height accurate,” he points out, seeing as Tenna’s 8bit self is the same size as his.
“Oh, shush, just play the game.”
Spamton wanders around the map aimlessly, not running into much issue except when he bumps into several cacti, which makes Tenna laugh so he supposes it doesn’t matter so much that his health bar is now only half full.
“What’s this?” Spamton runs into the odd blue vortex on legs.
“A quiz!” Tenna says enthusiastically as the quiz screen opens.
‘Who is Tenna’s favorite employee?’
‘A. Pippins (revolting)’
‘B. Ramb’
‘C. Mike’
‘D. Spamton G. Spamton’
Spamton raises an eyebrow, and without a second thought selects ‘C’. Tenna’s face falls as the screen reveals the answer to be ‘D’.
“I thought that one would be easy!” Tenna complains, pouting over at Spamton. Spamton hardly notices as he stares at the screen and fights back the heat he can feel climbing up his neck towards his ears.
“Oh,” Spamton clears his throat and forces his grin to look more ‘shiteating’ and less ‘flustered and giddy’, “I didn’t know you felt like that, Tens, I’m flattered.”
A second question pops up.
‘Who is Tenna’s business partner?’
“Are all the questions about me?” Spamton laughs, selecting his own name from a list of cheesy pet names. He really tries not to react when all four answers light up as being correct, but he can’t help the way his tail puffs up a little in a surprise that fills him with warmth.
“Just for the playtest! I’ll always make the questions contestant specific afterall,” Tenna gets some of his pep back when he notices Spamton’s reaction.
After one more question (‘How tall are you?’, which would be an annoying question if Spamton didn’t know how much Tenna loves their height difference) Spamton moves on, eventually completing the level.
“Doesn’t seem to be any bugs, don’t know how it’ll run when you get the other staff to play their characters, but so far so good.”
“One more level then,” Tenna looks inexplicably embarrassed as he boots up level two.
Much like the first level, Spamton feels a little aimless, but completes the puzzles with relative ease until he gets the raft. He knows where he’s supposed to go, but decides to explore the rest of the water first until…
“Wait! Hold on!” Tenna yelps, but it’s too late. Spamton crosses into a screen with a heartshaped island.
He raises an eyebrow, more amused than anything else, “What is this?” He stops the raft and steps out onto the island. Because he’s player one, it brings Tenna with him and immediately the trees start flashing rainbow, curly cursive spelling out ‘Tropic of Love’ above their characters. Spamton has to bite back his grin, “This is cute.”
“I had it put in just for this play test,” Tenna admits, rubbing the back of his neck and looking away, “I don’t think I’ll leave it in but… I wanted you to see it…”
Spamton sets his controller down beside him and stands on the couch, walking closer to Tenna and putting a hand on his arm, “You made it just for me?”
Tenna swallows hard and nods, still not looking at Spamton, “Yeah, but it’s so cheesy, huh? Kinda stupid…”
“Super cheesy,” Spamton agrees, watching Tenna shrink a little, “but I like it.”
Tenna shoots back up to regular height, finally looking down at Spamton hopefully, “You do?”
Spamton nods earnestly, “Yeah. It’s… super cheesy, but it’s also super… you. So of course I like it.
A flower blooms out of the tip of Tenna’s nose as he scoops Spamton up in his arms happily, “Aw, love letter, I should’ve known you’d appreciate my romance skills!”
Spamton can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him as he’s lifted up, reaching out to run a finger across the petals of Tenna’s flower, “What can I say, Tens? You’re too cute to resist.” Spamton lets Tenna tuck him against his chest, humming softly, “Someday lets go on a real tropical getaway, just the two of us.”
“Of course we can do that! As soon as our show takes off and we have all the money in the world, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Spammy, just you wait.”
—
The room is dark except for the dim light coming from the screen.
“You were supposed to wait for me.”
Tenna’s voice is hoarse and broken. The gray heart-shaped island stares back at him like it’s mocking him.
‘Please insert controller to connect player two.’