Chapter Text
Everyone has a dirty little secret.
As the Underground's best, most dependable, and only mailman, Spamton's seen every kind of secret message there is. They contain everything from codes to cyphers to glitter bombs.
(And if the monsters didn't want him snooping through their parcels, then they could deliver it themselves, couldn't they? Hah. Fat chance.)
That's just part of life. Everyone's got something they want to hide, whether it was big or small, microscopic or earth-shattering. Everyone, absolutely everyone, is hiding something.
Tenna hides his past. Suzy and Ralsei were hiding something - their names, at least, and maybe more.
But hey, Spamton was in no position to judge anyone else. Not for their lives, not for their choices, and certainly not for their secrets.
After all, he had something to hide, too.
The Cungadero.
It was his prize and joy. Sure, it was a little beaten around the edges, but that gave it character. And if he could just get the rest of the parts, he'd have a fully-functioning prototype to base more off of. An entire car empire, ripe for the picking - the likes of which the Underground had never seen before.
It was a harmless little thing. Way back when, it had been his obsession, something he spent every free moment slaving over. Hours upon hours combing through the trash in a frenzy, cobbling his masterpiece together.
Tenna, in some ways, made that fever state worse. Now he had a huge helper to assist with finding the pieces of his life's work. Never once did he breathe a word of his project to Tenna, and never once did Tenna ask why they could possibly need to find engine pieces and wheels and muffler pipes. Heck, Tenna probably would have crawled around looking for bottle caps and toothpicks if that's what Spamton told him to do.
(More than once, Spamton had the thought that a few of the CRT electronics could be salvaged and repurposed, if the old bucket of bolts would ever give up the ghost and die already. How ironic that his imagination back then featured so heavily in his nightmares now.)
Only about a year in their partnership did Spamton realize that he'd started putting more parts, and even more work, into Tenna over the Cungadero. The oil meant for the oil tank repurposed to ease Tenna's joints. The headlights borrowed to help Tenna's screen brighten easier. There were some days, wrapped up in chatting with his new partner and making careful repairs, that Spamton forgot to work on his vehicle at all.
At first, it was cause for alarm. The Cungadero was his one chance to get big again, to build something better. He didn't have time to care about someone else - especially someone who would never, ever have a chance to be big.
So Spamton pulled away. Slept in his car, sewing seat cushions and fixing wires and putting in mirrors. Told himself that he didn't need a partner, that the television was just a distraction from his real purpose.
It was only hunger after days of nonstop work that drove Spamton back to Tenna's home, intent on stuffing his face and leaving again just as quickly. If he was lucky, he could ignore Tenna altogether.
Instead, he opened the front door to see their kitchen table, piled with spare parts. Everything Spamton had ever saved for Tenna, like bolts and copper wires and even the extra bottles of WD40 they kept handy for Tenna's joints.
A static noise erupted from inside the house. Spamton dropped his bag and ran to the living room.
Tenna laid halfway fallen off the couch, powered down completely. His chest hatch was partially open, his limp hand around his battery.
Spamton's first thought was not to salvage him for parts. It was not to grab the stack of stuff and go.
He surged forward, wrapped his fingers around Tenna's, and slammed the battery back into place. His heart thrummed wildly in his chest as Tenna's internal mechanisms slowly whirred to life, coming online after what must have been days of disuse, until finally his disoriented face popped back onto the screen.
"Sp-mton," the CRT managed, static overlaying the words. His legs twitched unsteadily, trying to right himself, and Spamton, who had yet to let to of his hand, scrambled to help prop him up. "You're b-ck, Spam-n."
It was mainly autopilot that had Spamton reaching up to adjust his antennas. It was easy for them to get knocked out of place, especially when he fell like that. And especially if he had - if he-
"To: Tenna. Of course I'm back, [Trash Heap]," Spamton started, voice just trembling with what he pretended was just anger. "What the hell are you doing?"
Tenna reeled back a little, hand slipping out of Spamton's grip. The mailman tried not to wince at the loss of contact as Tenna sized him up with a forlorn, nearly lost expression.
Finally, Tenna gestured to the coffee table, which had its own heap of parts overlaid on it. Spamton's stomach twisted as he recognized the pieces he'd used to repair Tenna before. The headlights for his screen, the tape, the little plastic caps that protected his wires.
He'd taken all of them out.
"You left," Tenna said at last. His voice broke a little, and Spamton touched his knee without thinking. It gave Tenna the strength to suck in a breath and add, "I - I thought you were tired of m-me, haha. So I got your stuff together, b-but then I remembered you were the one who gave me all these doodads to fix me up, and I don't have any kromer on me to pay for keeping them, s-so..."
His next laugh bordered on hysteria, and Spamton watched with a mix of horror and numbness as Tenna reached for his dirty battery again. "You found me this new battery when my other one ran out, remember? I think the old ones around here somewhere. So I tried to switch them out again, except - well, that hardly went to plan, huh? But you're here now! So you can - you can make the switch yourself! That way ol' Tenna can't screw it up again-"
Tenna's screen flashed in surprise as Spamton grabbed his raggedy tie in one fist, and then he jumped when Spamton yanked him down to meet him halfway.
Looking back, it was certainly an odd place to have their first kiss. But that was also the moment that Spamton realized that, no matter what new shape his life took, he needed this ridiculous, stupid CRT in it. He could always find a spare battery or a front fender, but there was no replacing his partner.
Spamton spent all night repairing Tenna. With every part reinstalled and the pile on the table shrinking.
"Dear Tens:
Promise me that you'll never do this to yourself again."
and
"Dearest Ant,
Promise you'll let me do the work on you from now on."
and
"My beloved CRT:
Promise that you'll stay."
That last one wasn't entirely fair; it had been Spamton who left, after all. This was Tenna's home, and he rarely left home anymore.
But Tenna agreed to all of the demands. His busted tail wagged and his screen flickered with a pink hue and his hand could hardly be pried off Spamton at all, looking more and more like the machine Spamton loved with every fix.
This was his priority. It had to be.
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But of course, that wasn't Spamton's big secret. It was a story of his past, yes, but Tenna remembered it, too. Heck, even Suzy knew that story by now, when Tenna brought up the more comedic mishaps of their deal.
No. That wasn't all.
Here's Spamton G. Spamton's first secret;
He kept the Cungadero.
He told himself he was going to get rid of it. The car was a reminder of all the things he'd craved so badly back then: freedom, riches, notoriety. Spamton didn't need those things now - he had a good life, right here, with his partner. He even had an apprentice-kid, for goodness sake.
But he couldn't bring himself to forget it.
The keys sat in the bottom of his messenger bag. Every time he finished a route early, or got the itch to run away, or on the rare occasions he actually argued with Tenna, this is where he would end up. In the back corner of the garbage dump, halfway buried under a mountain of junk, the 'Dero waited for him.
The best parts and pieces went into maintaining Tenna, of course. But everything else, even the stuff that would probably sell well, went here.
It doesn't matter, he told himself. It was healthy to have an interest. It was healthy to have a hobby. Spamton was allowed to have some privacy.
He'd tell Tenna about it eventually. Probably. One day.
But what Tenna didn't know couldn't hurt him.