Archive of Our Own

"Teeny, if we don't leave in like, one hour at most, we're gonna miss the appointment." Spamton sat in an almost comically large armchair compared to him, in Tenna's (and his, now. He always has to remind himself. His) dressing room, checking his watch ever so impatiently, one leg crossed over the other and bouncing. Tenna stood in front of him, hands on his midsection protectively, tie and tailcoat off.

"I'm not going, Spamton." His hands run up and down in a nervous, mechanical motion along his bump, considerable enough that it was impossible to mask it under his shirt anymore, but not to the point he had to ditch his normal attire entirely for a wider and comfier wardrobe. He couldn't wait for that moment to come, but for now he contented with the soft linen of his shirt under his gloves, and he was certain of his decision.

"C'mon, it's just a few hours drive, we can get a nice meal after and come right back." Spamton was still trying to negotiate through his impatience. Tenna looked back to his own reflection in the full size mirror, also willing to negotiate, like two good businessmen.

"Can't you tell them to come here, like they've done before? It, it can't be that hard to arrange."

"Teeny, if you wanted that, you had to book it in advance." Spamton lifted his glasses and pressed his thumb and index finger on his eyes for a second. "I booked the last one for you but I can't be on top of this all the time, I told you to get that appointment, what, two weeks, a month ago?"

"I've been busy, Spamton, it's—"

"Yeah, busy, here's what you told me," Spamton opened up his mouth and left it ajar, playing a voice clip from his voicebox, Tenna's voice clear as a mirror. Tenna hated when he did that. " 'I'll have Mike pencil it into my schedule, darling.' And then guess what, darling, you didn't. So I had to do it and in Cyber World they don't make exceptions for you just because you're rich." Spamton finished, but then dipped his head to the side, contemplating his own words. "Well, they do, but not the needles. They're pretty strict about fairness."

"Well, they're going to have to, because this TV is stationary!!" Tenna crossed his arms, and Spamton groaned, rubbing his face. This guy was gonna be the death of him.

Every step of this pregnancy was like pulling teeth. Spamton couldn't wait for it to end. The show host had this idyllic, gentle, paralyzed idea of it that was just a short, sweet waiting game where nothing wrong could ever happen, because everything he ever knew about the world was TV, and those things never show anything bad happening unless that was the point. Spamton had never gone through pregnancy himself but he'd caught a pamphlet in a clinic. He's done a web search. He didn't know what could go bad in a pregnancy, but he knew it could, and he couldn't count out the possibility of something terribly, horribly wrong happening because it was already abnormal as it was (he had a hunch twins in whatever Tenna's pregnancy was like weren't exactly as common as they were for addison clutches), let alone what the differences between the two of them could mean for those poor children. Every time he thought of it, something on his stomach would tense up, he felt nauseous as all hell — and Tenna's quips didn't help. "It's funny, I'm the one knocked up and you're the one getting morning sickness!!" — and he felt this agitated urge to just leave it all behind. If Spamton ran away he didn't have to worry about anything anymore.

Of course he wouldn't do that. He couldn't. But sometimes, when Tenna tested his patience, it would float by his head.

"Teeny, it's not gonna fucking kill you."

"Of course not! But what about THEM!!" Tenna turned back to face him, both arms protectively around his bump. "I've never changed my height since they came along, even though it was HARD sometimes, what if it hurts them?? What if they get stuck and it's bad for them, or, or what if they don't change with me??"

"Just try, Teeny, try." Spamton leaned forwards until the tips of his shoes touched the floor, elbows on his knees, hands pleading. "Just enough to fit in the car."

"I don't want to get small enough to enter that itty bitty CLOWN car of yours!!"

"Hey, it's a nice sports model—" Spamton started, hopping down from the armchair and hands on his waist. Tenna kept talking over him, raising his arms and gesturing with the theatricality Spamton was used to seeing from him.

"Has it never occurred to you that I don't like it and you won't even take my needs into account?! Me, the father of your children, you never think about how I feel!!"

"That's not true!" Spamton kept his palms open, but his tone was not very close to apologetic. "I'm always thinking about you, Teeny, I can't catch a break from thinking about you, it's maddening!"

"Clearly not enough if you want me to ENDANGER my children's lives and make me go to that miserable place you call a hometown to—"

"It's because that's where the doctors are, you fucking moron!!" Spamton raised his voice in a way that gave Tenna pause. Spamton had a strong set of pipes in him, but he rarely ever used them in situations like this. He took so much joy from sounding like the level-headed one between the two of them, that to Tenna this was new and hard to process. "You don't like 'em, fine, but you still need to see 'em! Do you think whatever's happening to you is normal?! D'you think that if you just wish hard enough everything's gonna turn out fine?? You keep testing me! You're always on some new bullshit," he started gesticulating, broad and expressive, a harsh contrast to Tenna's rehearsed and measured — almost canned, really — body expression. " 'can't do this', 'can't do that', 'can't go there', 'it's bad for the bab—' you don't even know that!! Cuz you won't go to a fucking doctor to check! You keep arguing for everything, it drives me crazy!! I'm not asking you to do this because I want you to suffer, I'm asking you to do this because I want to make sure they don't suffer!" The salesman pointed vehemently to Tenna's bump, just a few inches up from his eye line. "It's like you don't even want them!!"

The silence that fell in the room after this damning line was mortifying. The tension between them was shocked, laid dead on the floor, replaced with an air of utmost pain from Tenna and the suspicion that he may have gone a bit too far from Spamton. His straightened arm and pointed finger slowly lowered, recoiling through the silence. Tenna held a hand to his chest, the other on the underside of his belly, cradling his children, and spoke quietly.

"…How could you say that?"

A suspicion is almost never enough to make a good salesman back down, though.

"You'd think you're the one that benefits the most from getting doctor appointments but by how much you avoid them, the only thing I can think of is that you either don't wanna know if your kids are okay, or you don't care. So which is it?"

Tenna was speechless, for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was charged with the tightness of tears.

"H-how could you be so cruel to me?"

"Waterworks, this soon?" Spamton crossed his arms. "You gotta at least get some quips in, Teeny. It won't work on me like that."

The tightness in Tenna's chest rose up at these words, through his choked sobs and, rather than despair, transformed into scalding hot anger through his neck to his tube. Tenna couldn't cry, he did not have the tears or the ducts to let them out, but his screen still went red, his nose still ran. But he was not about to stand there and take all that defenseless, his fuming rage would make sure of it. He widened his stance and put a clawed hand out, stepping closer to his partner.

"I think—" The show host didn't fight tears nor sobs, speaking through his ragged breaths. "I think you h-have the wrong idea of what this is like." He stepped forwards again, and Spamton's scowl quickly turned a few degrees meeker. "I'm not your, your little pregnant wife for you to boss around and—and SCOFF at!! You think I'm b-being silly, I know it, it's, it's all over your face! You don't GET to speak like that to me!!" He pushed at Spamton's shoulder, hand wide, but only his pinky and ring finger touched him. It wasn't meant to hurt. The little mailman almost lost his balance when he stumbled backwards onto the dressing table, wind knocked out of him a little bit. "You don't GET to say things like that to the father of your children!! You act like, like I'm being unreasonable, you DARE say I don't care about them?? You make me SICK!! I'm the only one wh-who knows what my body is like and if I say it worries me it's because it MATTERS!!"

Spamton truly had no rebuttal to a fifteen foot tall television looming over and yelling at him, and, after a brief pause to recover his breath, Tenna continued, speech slowly devolving into a wail.

"G-get out of my sight, Spamton!! Go rot in a ditch!! I hate you!! I hate you!!"

And Spamton obeyed, making himself scarce. The man was such a coward he wouldn't even dare comfort him.

Tenna had to contend with bawling with his face buried on his pillows, venting the frustration until it evaporated, the better half of an hour later. He felt so small, and when the characteristic skin-tightness made itself clear, he couldn't bring himself to worry, not because of his mood, but because of his children — who moved all sorts of ways in his womb, like telling him he shouldn't worry. The thought was comforting enough to quiet down his aching emotions. He ran a hand over his bump, curled around it in his bed.

"I'm sorry you had to see, or, uh… Hear that, my darlings…" Tenna started, his voice breathy from tears but still so soft, gentle, gentler even than the voice he would use for the youngest of contestants in his game shows. "He's just—" he stifled a sob. "Your father is a very honest man. Sometimes… Sometimes more than he should be."

His children kicking and moving were a novelty, still. It started as something like a flutter, something he could easily mistake for his organs settling after a meal, but quickly enough it became obvious that it was them, and the flutters started feeling more like punches and kicks. Recently, the show host could even start telling apart when they were interacting with each other. Pushing, wrestling, play fighting, he'd imagine. During the day, they'd usually give him some respite, keeping quiet as he worked, but at night, close to sleep, they'd hear him and Spamton talk, and they'd move like they wanted to be part of the conversation too; Spamton, close to his stomach, would poke, tease and jokingly lecture them on the dangers of getting on Tenna's bad side ("Never too early to teach good sense, eh?" He'd say often). Oh, how his heart would melt at those moments. Why couldn't Spamton be like that all the time, instead of only in the opportune, short, intimate moments?

Last time a doctor visited, Tenna got to see them. Hearts-in-a-chain, inherited from their other father, just so, so bright in the monitor it was even hard to see the outline of what their bodies looked like, but it gave him such a rush of emotions. No TV show he's seen ever truly captured the explosion of love and excitement he felt himself when he saw those two metal hearts in the monitor. If they're fine now, it would certainly hit the spot to get to see them again. See how much they've grown since the last time, in real terms, not just by how unfitting his shirts and pants were now, or how utterly impossible it was now to bow and bend over. Tenna mused on this, until he heard a familiar throat clearing behind him, and turned back just enough to see the man of the hour, head dipped down, glasses slid about halfway through the bridge of his nose, offering him a tenna-sized can of soda, almost too large for him to hold in one hand. It was an apology.

Tenna's had cravings for most of his pregnancy; finger food, sodas, sweets and, surprisingly to those who knew him, even fruits. He'd pester Ramb almost every break in shooting and every time he walked past the green room for portions of fries, peanuts, m&ms, and even sent him and Spamton on a wild goose chase once looking for fresh tangerines late in the evening. Those preferences would wax and wane, but fizzy drinks were something that would always lift his spirits. Tenna fully turned back to him, maneuvering his bump, antennae drooping over his face, and sat up. He was maybe a foot taller than the mailman, now, and held the can of fizzy orange soda with both his hands, grounding himself against the cold condensation slowly soaking through his gloves.

"I'm sorry, Teeny." Spamton said, after mulling over his shoes a bit, and fixating on his partner's belly another bit. "Looks like nothing happened." Tenna frowned at him, but Spamton lifted both of his hands in an immediately apologetic gesture. He was pushing his luck. The argument wasn't even cold yet. "I went out of line. You don't have to go if you don't want to."

Still frowning a bit, Tenna took a swig of the soda, letting the bubbles hit the roof of his mouth, then guzzled a good part of it. This really was grounding. Even his children seemed to settle.

"I think I want to go. Is there still time?"

Spamton's eyebrows almost hit his hairline, and it took most of his strength to not interject and nag about it. No reason to drag an argument back from its tentative grave. "Well, there's no speed sensors in the Void Between Worlds. We could get away with some rushing there after we're out of TV World."

"Are… Are you sure that's safe?"

"What am I gonna hit out in the Void, nothing?" Spamton shrugged, and at the indicative motion that Tenna was getting ready to stand up, he offered a hand, gratefully accepted; those kids were starting to get heavy, and the television was just about small enough right now he could get away with actually using Spamton's help to hoist himself up. The mailman braced a foot behind himself for better positioning and took his free hand to Tenna's forearm to help pulling him up. Then, once they were both upright, threw a hand out, dismissively. "Hey, if we hit a deer out there, I'll cook you venison tonight."

To this, Tenna laughed, a bit shocked, on the tip of his toes to reach his tailcoat on its hanger. "What is wrong with you?"

"Whatever's wrong with you." Spamton knit his eyebrows, a squint and a smile — a cheeky one Tenna would never not fawn over. "You laughed."

The show host chuckled, mouth closed, as he put his tailcoat on; the tails adjusted to his size, as a good garment ought to be for someone like him, and shook his head, checking his cufflinks and all. "I'm still mad at you."

"Okay!" Spamton stood leaned against the door, hands on his pockets, waiting for Tenna to decide if he wanted to tie his tie or not; he decided not to. Then, he ditched the tailcoat and started looking for a less cumbersome coat to throw over his shirt, that wouldn't constrict his midsection if buttoned. Truthfully, what Spamton was fishing for in his abrupt pause was an apology for throwing him around like a ragdoll, but he wasn't about to ask for it, and his partner was certainly too busy to notice the weight of said pause. When Tenna started considering cardigans, he cleared his throat. "Teeny."

"Oh, sorry!" The television grabbed a maroon cardigan from its hanger and quickly put it on, so they could go already.

Tenna decided to clear his mind from their argument, focusing on the appointment instead. If he framed it as being able to get a sneak preview of his babies before their debut, the whole thing felt lighter to him. The poking and prodding of ambyu-lances like he was a test subject was more tolerable, if it meant he got to see them at the end. An advanced screening, and, if the plans Spamton was babbling about in the background were true, it was to be a private advanced screening, just for himself. As much as he wanted his partner to be with him, he also delighted on having them all for himself, secretly. The little mailman could yap about his worries until he went red in the face (though, that wasn't very hard to achieve, Tenna mused), but at the end of the day, they would be only with Tenna at every step and turn for the next four months. Give or take. He'd treasure their closeness forever.

As for how the the trip to Cyber World went, they did not have venison for dinner.

An addison's heart-in-a-chain anchored itself to a small compartment in the darkner's ribcage, made of a gold and copper alloy, strong, malleable, but susceptible to oxidation, and works incessantly from the egg to pump magic and life through their body through its tug and pull mechanism. Tenna's own heart, as far as he knew, was nowhere as biologically sound; locked in place in a motherplate somewhere inside his upper torso, underneath the layers of skin and steel wool fur, it simply beeped, too low to hear if one did not put their heads against his chest. It was only a signal, a diagnostic tool to prove he was still alive. Sometimes, when he held Spamton dearly against himself late at night, he'd conjure a small bit of magic somewhere in the space between his circuits, something that could bounce off and emit some sort of mechanical feedback of its own. He couldn't quite replicate what Spamton's heart sounded like, but the rimshot felt close enough to be worth it.

He wished he could've recorded how their hearts sounded, in that appointment. Strong tugs and pulls, bright and alert. They weren't just a little beep in a sea of tubes, wires, blood and guts, but their very own vital force. Alas, he had left his VCR capabilities back home. His doctor risked an explanation for how they were — the bodies of one of a kind darkners such as Mr. Tenna worked in unpredictable ways, and darkner bodies sought stability in the way they operated, homeostasis, they called it. It was not surprising that they would end up working more like their other parent, but this didn't rule out hybridization completely. Just for the fact that they were placental and not developing in their own little eggs that would've been laid months ago, it was already clear he was not expecting just two run-of-the-mill addisons. Of course he wasn't! His offspring could never be run-of-the-mill, even less if Spamton was in the mix.

Frankly, all these big scientific words were a bit too much for Tenna. All he cared about was that they were fine, and his doctor's incessant yapping about it felt less like it was for himself and more like it was for their own morbid curiosity. These Cyber City darkners really just wanted to put him in a vat and dissect him, is what Tenna was certain of. Surely, he was unique, larger than life, but he was also not a simple hunk of flesh they could experiment on with no consequences. He had his dignity and he would keep it.

Stepping down from the parental clinic onto the street outside, Tenna watched the cars zoom by in an unknown road with his antennae pinned back and suddenly felt immensely disprepared. He never needed a cellphone — his antennae could just patch him through anyone he'd like, back home. Here, he had no power, and they had no signal. It didn't really occur to him before that he would need a way to communicate with Spamton to pick him up, and he held a hand to his tube. How could he have forgotten something as crucial as this? Was this the 'pregnancy brain' people talk about?

He couldn't really go back inside the clinic to ask for a phone. He might have vocalized his feelings about being gawked at like Frankenstein's monster a bit too vehemently to want to show his face again, hat in hand. He knew Spamton would be at Queen's mansion by the time his appointment was over, and the overhead lights and towering ruler iconography wasn't really all that far away. Tenna considered the dread of walking the four or five blocks there on his tentatively aching and swelling ankles, when a cab drove by, and he once again berated himself for not thinking of the obvious. Get your screws tight now, Anthony. He flagged another one down, and soon enough was at Pandora Palace's doors.

The Palace was the only place in Cyber City he felt moderately comfortable, mostly because of the tall, opulent ceilings and the help willing to do anything to serve them. The show host scanned the seating area past the entrance hall, across the room from the Color Cafe, and the worries on his chest settled when he saw Spamton, in a couch with a handful of yuppies of some sort, a cat woman with penetrating eyes, Her Majesty sitting across from them and her loyal head butler by their side. It seemed like a quiet enough gathering, Tenna thought as he approached, and Spamton's yelled greeting for him with his arms stretched calling for a hug really did dissuade the rest of the tension weighing on his shoulders (or was that his head? He could definitely use a nap, in any case). The animated conversation died down when he got close enough.

Tenna sat next to Spamton on the couch, who quickly snapped his bear trap arms around his bicep and started rubbing his face all over him, dragging out every other word. "Hiii Teeny… My Teenyyy, hmm… I like hiiim..."

As endearing as it was, the television wasn't really all that comfortable with these sorts of display of affection in public, especially surrounded by all these darkners he didn't know. People would talk, and the rumor mill was always so cruel to him. He cleared his throat, waved at the people around, and tried to pry a conversation open.

"Hello everyone! Boy, is he affectionate tonight, eh? If he were this way at the studio we wouldn't get anything done!"

"Ha Ha Yeah." Queen already had a tinge of flush on her cheeks, and had her hand lifted to place her goblet of acid at the tray her butler held out, bobbing it around a few times until the bird darkner met the flared base of the glass where it was. "He Is Always So Funny When He Is On: E."

Tenna didn't know what "E" was, but it was obvious now that she mentioned it that Spamton wasn't clear headed the moment he started digging under his glove to touch his fur. The mailman loved rubbing his fingers on his fur when under the influence. Something about the texture and the zest of the light shock from the buildup of static electricity. This had a higher impact on Tenna's mood than he thought it would; call it mood swings or deserved disappointment, it didn't take much longer for Tenna to duck out of a conversation that did not have space for him and go rest up at Spamton's room upstairs.

It was so much smaller than his own, back home. Smaller, and nowhere near as personal. A spacious bed in the middle, two bedside tables — one of which with a freshly replaced ashtray — a closet, a dresser, and a dressing table. It was obvious Spamton only ever came here to sleep, and the empty, bleached spaces on the walls that once housed the decorations Tenna had asked him to bring when they started living together taunted him as he scanned the room. This is what you did — you turned a man's home into something as impersonal as a hotel room. And the only thing left of his personality here was a measly beanbag chair, one that, as much as Tenna wanted to sink into and immerse himself into his partner's personal space, he knew very well that he would get stuck in. Maybe two months ago he could've sat in with no problem, but right now, there was no way. Tenna needed to stop himself from thinking about this before it got him into another crying fit, and the last thing he needed whenever Spamton sobered up was to look the part of pregnant and hysterical.

He took off his clothes so he could hop in bed and folded them on the back of the chair near the dressing table, which held a few trinkets he hadn't seen when he walked in. Freshly bought blankets, red and yellow with stars in each opposite color, two sets of baby clothes. Optics be damned, he could be hysterical all he wanted.

Once he settled down, hands on the space where his bump and the bottom of his chest met, he watched the dim light of his screen reflected on the overhead chandelier, modern, rough designs twinkling away. The show host sighed, and let the coarse but soft sound of his hands running on his bump fill the air, with their accompanying backing of little harmless static snaps.

"Hm… What a lousy day, right, my little stars?" He mumbled under his breath. The children must've been asleep, though he could really use the company. If he steadied and held his breath and concentrated inwards, he could feel something that could even pass as being their heartbeats, though right now he had a feeling it had always been wishful thinking at best. Tenna wondered — would they feel more comfortable if they could hear a heartbeat of his own? They were mostly addison, after all. Surely they would identify something like that.

Brow knit in concentration, he produced the magic that would often bring him closer to his partner, faint and soft, in the recesses of his chest. Ba-dum, tss. Nowhere close to the ultrasounded ba-thump-thump he memorized, but for his sake, it had to be enough. A few repetitions later, a sudden dull pressure against his diaphragm knocked his breath out briefly; one of them had sharply repositioned up to hear it. Tenna had to control the flutter of joy in his chest so he could keep his false heart bouncing. A few more rimshots later, their sibling joined, a softer, more agitated movement, like it was trying to reposition a few times to find the best way to hear it. Tenna dimmed his screen fully, and let his facsimile of life lull himself off to sleep.

Tenna briefly woke up with the feeling of something heavily plopping down next to him, some time in the dead of night, but only fully woke up in the morning, with that something wrapped around his side and leg hooked around his thigh, and that something's alarm going off at the bedside table across. The television rolled to reach it, sleep still hazing his mind, until the something he was rolling over sharply brought him to his senses.

"Hey, hey Teeny, woah!!" Spamton cried while being smooshed between his entire family and the mattress. Tenna stopped right there.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Tenna quickly stretched his arm to finish his motion and turn off the blasting alarm, earning a loud whine from his partner, and then rolled back to his previous position. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, it's fine." He sounded deflated. In the odd night that Tenna steamrolled him in bed, he was usually more chipper than that afterwards, even if he was woken up from desperately needed sleep; he'd brush it off, say he liked the pressure, then cuddle back up. Right now, he was just… Not quite. Tenna mulled over his words, propped on his elbows, watching Spamton rub the sleep off his eyes, and decided to give them a soft pitch.

"Are you… Alright?"

"Of course not, you almost turned me into a pancake!" He sat up; his words were uncharacteristically harsh, cut edges on the soft air of the morning when Spamton was usually the kind to start a morning morose like molasses and about just as sweet. Tenna decided he wasn't much for matching energy today.

"Spamton…"

"Sorry." He raised his hands apologetically, then sighed, rubbing at his scalp. "Comedown from ecstasy isn't nice, I shouldn't take it out on you."

"So you were high." Tenna lowered his head with his brow knitted, antennae bouncing down to follow. "I thought we discussed it loud AND clear, Spamton, I don't want you doing that anymore. Not with the…"

"It was just once, it's fine! Listen:" His palms bounced to his words like punctuation. "I'm already feeling like shit. Can that be my punishment, please?"

"…Fine." Tenna murmured, still not convinced about leaving his lecture on the cutting room floor.

"Let's just have some breakfast and go home, okay?"

Spamton procured his glasses, abandoned on the floor next to the bed, and put on some clothes as fast as his headache would allow, bracing himself for a long drive. Tenna took his time getting dressed — he wasn't one to start his mornings in a hurry, and would also take the care to maneuver around his bump. There was still something on his mind, from the day before, coming back to him again and again no matter how many times he tried dismissing it. It was there in the speeding drive through the naked expanse of the Void Between Worlds, it was there as he got ready for his ultrasound, it was there as he flagged the taxi and when he put on a magic show for his babies. Something Spamton said, installing itself in his tube like a flea infestation.

It was very easy for the show host to convince himself of things, given proper rumination, but this was a stubborn one. He needed the reassurance. Turning his head to the spot Spamton was tying his shoes at, he started digging into the grave of a dead argument.

"Spamton, am I… Not normal?" The little addison craned his neck up, full undivided attention. "D—do you think this—" Tenna gestured to his own body, making his intentions clear. "—is not normal?"

"Oh, no, no, Teeny, that's not what I meant." Spamton quickly sat up and scurried to Tenna's side, holding his hands in his own. "I…" He didn't know what he meant, but he figured he'd conjure that up as he spoke. "I mean, you're exceptional. I'm pretty sure that's not really normal. I just… I worry. About you, about them. I can't have faith that things will just go smooth like you, I don't think I'm wired to—to trust fate like that. Sorry that I'm prickly about it."

"But what did you… What did you mean by it?"

"Nothing, I don't know. You should forget about it."

"Well, when you say those things they sound so… So personal. Like you're saying them just to hurt me."

"I don't…" Spamton sighed, shaking his head gently. "You're not a freak, Teeny. And our kids aren't either. Not if I'm not one."

"You are kind of freaky, though."

"Then we'll be freaks together." To this, Tenna smiled, tired, tentative; the flea infestation was still there. But the smile was what Spamton was looking for. He reciprocated it with his own —exhausted, depressed — and raised a hand to hold onto the side of Tenna's tube. "Let's go get something to eat."

Tenna almost never spent the night in Spamton's place in Pandora Palace, mostly due to the size constrictions, and because leaving his world overnight always gave him a sense of unease. Of course, the studio would run smoothly on its own, if it wasn't a recording day. The little buzzing city around it was about as self-sufficient, even if not as big and sprawling as the one tethered to Queen. But still, Tenna felt a bad mucking tar raising up inside him if he were not on top of the place all the time. If he spends too much time away, they might realize they don't need him at all. And if he wasn't needed in his own dark world…

Spamton lead him by the hand around the bottom floors of the mansion, avoiding the other invited residents looking for a butler to order breakfast, quickly distracting his partner through an adventurous game of hide and seek, mumbling about how those butlers are birds of prey, so they're quieter on their feet than they look like they should be, and if they caught them he'd miss his go-to crashout meal and would never be able to get the day starting right. Tenna played along as they scurried through the narrow corridors of the staff areas, using his antennae to capture some sort of signal the swatchlings gave that Spamton couldn't hear, though the addison had to urge him to stop snickering quite a few times. Eventually, their prized destiny was in sight: the staff kitchen.

It was not as well-equipped as the kitchen in the Color Cafe, where the swatchlings would cook all of the guest meals, because it didn't have to be; it was simple, small, had a hint of what Tenna described as "folksy", even. There was a humble pot of coffee ready for a taker, and a fridge full of color-coded and labeled containers, plus a few 'freebies', as Spamton explained, leftovers grabbed from Queen's cocktail parties and assorted guest requests.

Bread, cheese, ham — all ingredients for a fairly run-of-the-mill sandwich, of which Spamton prepared two straight down on the counter, while Tenna bounced on his own heels standing off to the side, hands folded over his bump, treasuring this little secret trespassing. Spamton opened the fridge again and squatted to dig through the contents in the far back, then turned back to look at his partner.

"Teeny, can you do me a favor?"

"Yes, darling, what is it?" Tenna approached, rubbing his hands, excited to get to do something more. In an instant, Spamton lifted above his head a can of peeled peaches, perched on his fingers.

"Open this for me with those claws of yours, eh?"

Tenna's antennae briefly flicked in confusion, and he daintily picked the can from Spamton's hand, inspecting it. Seemed too caramelized, or too sweet, or too fresh. A whole half of a peach, slime and all, in those two sandwiches laid bare on the counter? He turned his screen back to his partner, not quite succeeding in suppressing the slight tint of nauseated green fading in.

"Are, are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's great. Good pick-me-up when you feel like death." Spamton stood up and put his hands on his waist, waiting. Tenna looked this side and the other of the can, then braced it against the counter, and then turned back to him.

"But isn't it going to be, uh… Won't it have poor structural integrity?"

"Hm?"

"When you lift up the sandwich." Tenna demonstrated with mimicry. "The peach will fall right out."

Spamton rolled his shoulders in lieu of a shrug. "Not the way I do it."

"But you can't expect me to know how to do that!" The show host looked at his hands. "And the SLIME is going to seep through my gloves, and…" He shuddered. Trying to avoid having to clean his sick from the floor before they left, Spamton ceded.

"Fine, you big baby, I'll dice 'em up!"

That seemed like agreeable terms. Tenna unsheathed a claw and made quick work of the can. Even though he wasn't at his full strength, it didn't take much of it at all. Spamton grabbed a knife, a cutting board that was out to dry already, and spread the contents of the can on it, mincing the fruit and stealing scowls up at his partner. Tenna watched patiently with his hands folded in front of his stomach and a soft, close-mouthed smile. After the peach was sufficiently mushy and mixed with its own goop, he maneuvered it over the two sandwiches with the knife, spread it around, and sealed it in its cold-cut tomb. Then, he took the knife to one of them and cut it diagonally in two triangles, remembering something Mike had told him.

Spamton pulled up a stool for Tenna to sit, and leaned on the counter himself. Both took a bite at the same time. The television moaned in surprised delight, and didn't even realize how hungry he was and how well that hit the spot. He was about to burst into tears.

"This is WONDERFUL, Spamton! You came up with this?"

Spamton nodded.

"Really?!"

He nodded again.

"Do you think you could show Ramb how to make it? Or the shadowmaids back home?" Tenna took another bite and once again felt like the entire world didn't matter anymore. "D'you think it works with other fruit? Things that aren't slimy, but, but still sweet?"

Spamton couldn't help but sketch a smile at Tenna's enthusiasm over his hungover meal of choice, and shook his head nonchalantly. "It goes with everything, Teeny."

This was nice respite. It didn't have to be all arguments buried and reburied, picked apart and laid bare, it could be just a nice sandwich, a silly diversion, a quick quip to extract a laugh. Spamton mused as they left for the journey back to TV World — back to where he was tentatively having to call home now. Their relationship had taken its fair share of beating over the last few months. No matter how many children you have, they can't straighten something crooked, he didn't have to seek advice from anyone to know this, but he figured it was a matter of time until all these ups and downs evened into something nice. Something he could be happy to return home to. And even now, he could see these moments, a speckle of light shining in a turbulent sea at high tide. Tenna was volatile, he was inflexible, he had his own way to see the world and didn't want anything else. But every once in a while he played the part, like the good actor he was, of an adventurous lover, innocent, willing to compromise, and it reminded Spamton of what made him fall desperately in love all over again. Why couldn't he be that way all the time?

The addison sighed, as the roads faded into the dark abyss of the void, and stole a glance at his partner, who had dozed off some time before. Tenna fell asleep in those long trips quite easily, even the ones in his own world, traveling to his various vacation homes on his private jet, and when he did they would often be completely silent. Spamton wasn't fond of silence, but he'd gotten used to it as the years went by. Letting his mind meander, he considered that, not too far from now, the backseat would be filled, and those trips would never be silent again.

In his chest, he felt the stronger tug of his heartstrings at the thought, and the drive went by easier.