Chapter Text
The apartment felt too quiet. Not unfamiliar. Not uncomfortable. Just… empty in a way you hadn’t prepared for.
You stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, staring at the unopened boxes still sitting near the dining table. Half of them contained your own belongings. The other half didn’t: Wine’s preferred coffee beans, Coffee’s favorite instant noodles, extra blankets, and a game console charger Coffee constantly forgot to bring home.
You exhaled softly through your nose before opening one of the cabinets. “Okay…” you murmured quietly to yourself. “This is fine”
The divorce finalized three days ago. Ten years reduced into paperwork, signatures, asset division, and one disturbingly calm conversation between lawyers. At least it ended cleanly. Well… mostly cleanly. You accepted the settlement without much argument. Ten million was excessive, honestly. More than enough to comfortably rebuild your life somewhere quieter if you wanted to.
But moving far away never really crossed your mind. Because realistically? The boys would probably still visit sometimes. Maybe Coffee would stop by after classes when he got overwhelmed again. Maybe Wine would continue raiding your kitchen at midnight pretending he “just happened to be nearby.” A faint smile tugged at your mouth despite yourself. Yeah. You could work with that.
You opened another cabinet and paused. “I should probably buy more mugs” Wine kept breaking them.
The thought came so naturally it almost hurt. Your phone rang. You blinked before reaching for it from the counter. Unknown number. You answered absently. “Hello?”
“Good afternoon, ma’am. This is Attorney Hale from Dr. Gaster’s legal department. I apologize for disturbing you after the settlement was finalized, but there are still several clauses requiring verbal clarification”
You leaned against the counter slightly. “That’s fine. Go ahead”
The lawyer continued professionally, “Regarding the property transfer timeline and the non-contact agreement-”
Your brain stalled. “…The what?”
A pause. “The non-contact clause, ma’am”
The kitchen suddenly felt very far away. You straightened slowly. “I’m sorry. Repeat that?”
“The agreement prohibiting direct communication between yourself and Dr. Gaster’s sons following the divorce”
Silence. Your grip tightened around the phone. “There’s a clause preventing me from speaking to the boys?”
Another pause. “Yes, ma’am. It was included within the finalized settlement conditions”
Something cold dropped violently into your stomach. “There has to be some mistake”
“I assure you there is not ma’am”
Your pulse started pounding hard enough to hurt. You pulled the documents sitting nearby toward yourself, flipping through them quickly. Dense legal text blurred together beneath your eyes. Then you saw it. Page thirty-seven. Subsection four. No further contact.
Your vision blurred for a second. What the fuck.
“What exactly qualifies as contact?” Your voice came out dangerously calm.
“Phone calls, text correspondence, physical visits, social media interaction, indirect messaging through third parties-”
You hung up.
The silence afterward rang loudly in your ears. For a moment, you just stood there staring at the papers in front of you. Then anger hit. Not sadness. Not grief. Pure, blistering anger.
Coffee asking if he could still visit during exam weeks. Wine stealing leftovers straight from your fridge while pretending he wasn’t emotionally attached enough to miss you. Ten years. Ten fucking years. And Gaster thought he could reduce all of it into a legal clause?
“Oh, absolutely not” You grabbed your coat immediately.
──────•✦•──────
The elevator doors opened, and the entire executive floor immediately knew something was wrong. Your heels struck sharply against the marble flooring with enough force that several employees looked up from their desks almost instantly.
“Mrs. Gaster?”
You ignored the greeting entirely. Someone else straightened nervously in their chair. “Should we-”
“Nope” another employee whispered immediately. “Absolutely not”
Because everyone in the company knew two things: Dr. Gaster’s wife never caused scenes, and if she finally was? Nobody wanted to be involved.
You reached the office doors without slowing. The assistant barely had time to stand. “Ma’am, he’s currently in-”
You opened the door anyway.
Gaster glanced up from his paperwork. “You’re here earlier than expected”
“What is the meaning of the non-contact clause?”
Silence. Even the assistant outside froze. Gaster stared at you for a moment before calmly setting his pen down. “I assumed the lawyers already discussed that with you”
“You assumed wrong”
His expression barely shifted. “Then allow me to clarify now”
The calmness in his voice made something dangerously hot twist in your chest. “You are no longer permitted contact with the boys following the divorce settlement”
You laughed once. Not because it was funny, but because your brain genuinely failed to process the sentence. “Excuse me?”
“It is the cleanest arrangement moving forward”
Cleanest? Like Coffee crying himself sick would be clean. Like Wine pretending he didn’t care while wrecking half the house would be clean.
You stared at him in disbelief. “You cannot be serious”
“I am”
“And you thought you didn’t need to discuss this with me first?”
“The marriage was contractual from the beginning” His voice remained maddeningly level. “You accepted the settlement”
Your stomach dropped. Oh- Ohh.. he genuinely fucking thought- “You think I took the money and stopped caring”
Gaster remained silent. That answer was enough to make something inside you snap.
You crossed the room before he could respond further. Gaster brassily had time to stand before your hand closed around his tie sharply enough to yank him forward. The movement startled him. Not because it hurt, but because in ten years of marriage, you had never once done something so openly emotional.
His hands instinctively caught themselves against the edge of the desk as you glared up at him with genuine fury. “You do not get to decide whether I can speak to those boys”
Your voice shook violently with restraint. “I raised them for ten years” Another sharp pull of his tie. “They cried to me. I attended every conference. Every fever. Every breakdown. Every birthday”
For the first time since entering the office, Gaster looked genuinely caught off guard.
“You think I stayed because of a paycheck?” Your laugh sounded sharp enough to cut glass. “Congratulations, doctor. You are somehow even more emotionally incompetent than I originally estimated”
Somewhere beneath the anger, Gaster felt something dangerously close to fascination. You looked furious. Alive. Real in a way he had not seen in years. And for one horribly mistimed second… he thought you looked beautiful.
Then you released his tie abruptly. The fabric snapped back against his chest.
“See you in court, jerk”
The office door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass walls behind you. Silence followed immediately afterward. Several employees outside pretended to work with the intensity of people trying to survive a natural disaster.
Meanwhile, Gaster remained standing beside his desk, staring silently at the closed door. His tie was still crooked. And for the first time since finalizing the divorce, he realized he may have made a mistake.
A very catastrophic mistake.