Chapter Text
Arthur Walton could see nothing. Nada. Zip.
A blindfold will do that to you.
He had his hands out in front of him, being held and guided gently by his friend, Delilah.
Delilah Keen majored in biology, backing it up with a minor in psychology. She enjoyed studying how living things worked. Birds, mammals, fish, plants, you name it. She liked studying the human body the best though. Especially how they acted. During their time in college, many discoveries and improvements had been made in the area of biology, mainly in microbiology. Although that was interesting, Delilah was more invested in larger, multicellular, organisms.
On the other side of the spectrum, Arthur preferred to know how machines were run. He didn’t want to know why he felt a certain way. He wanted to create something that could last years on end and still be functional. Mechanical engineering was his type of thing.
Arthur quite liked animation as well. It was something about making something two-dimensional come to life, if only on a screen, that really appealed to him. Sometimes after classes he would make small “episodes” of a show he made himself. Nothing much. He would sometimes show them to friends if they asked. What could he say? He was a man of many interests.
The two had been friends for quite a while, ever since middle school, actually. But they were not interested in each other romantically. They did flirt jokingly, though.
Dililah enjoyed watching his short films. Arthur’s characters were unique enough to make you remember them, but simple enough to draw over and over when animating. In other words?
They were perfect.
Recently Arthur had seemed really demotivated with his studies. In the past couple weeks, he had started spending more and more time in his room, working on various small projects. He was neglecting to do basic things, like brushing his hair.
Delilah had entered his dorm that evening holding a thick black blindfold. She’d looked… almost giddy.She had told him to turn around, that she had a surprise for him. When he did turn around, she’d quickly tied the blindfold around his head and messy brown mop of hair.
“When was the last time you brushed your hair?” She’d asked, a bit annoyed at his self-neglect.
“Does it even matter for this?”
A smile had escaped her lips then, and though Arthur couldn’t see it, he could hear it in her reply. “Guess not.” A pause. Then, “Alright, Im’ma guide you there Arty~”
“I told you to stop calling me that— y’know what, it’s fine.” He’d sighed. He knew better to fight her on any of it. She was too stubborn.
—
Now, Arthur could feel the cool rush of air and the slight squeak of hinges that let him know they were currently entering a building. By the distance they’d walked, it was still on campus.
“Where are we even going?” He asks his friend.
“I’ts a surprise, I already told you!” Delilah chirps in response, which makes Arthur groan. He hated not knowing things. Delilah knew this fact about him. So she made this journey as mysterious as possible, just to frustrate him.
It was funny when he was frustrated.
She guides his hands to a railing, saying, “Careful, there’s some stairs.” She leads him carefully up a few flights of stairs, holding one of his hands while the other was on the railing, steadying himself. Delilah was humming, and it was a song Arthur recognized, one of her favorites: Claire De Lune.
The area now felt somewhat familiar to Arthur. Something about how many stairs there were before a turn. Were they going to Delilah’s lab? She was a straight-A student in her classes, even doing extra work for her biology professors. She TA’ed for some freshman classes, and was granted her own lab as a thanks for her help. It wasn’t much, but it was more than was usually provided in class.
Arthur wondered what the surprise was. Delilah had been acting secretive around him for months at this point, starting around the time she had been granted the lab. She’d also been more interested in his characters and animations. He didn’t complain about that, specifically, though; it was nice to have someone be invested in it other than himself. But the general secrecy got to him.
When they reached where they were headed—finally— he heard Delilah say from his left, “This floor.” He nodded. This confirmed his suspicions that they were going to her lab. It was on the fourth story, which explained why they climbed the stairs for so long. Arthur’s shins throbbed; although his arms were pretty muscular due to working with machinery, his legs were not.
“Finally,” he muttered, stooping down to rub his sore legs.
Delilah slapped her palm to her forehead, seeming exasperated with herself. She was smiling, though Arthur could not see. “Shit, forgot there’s an elevator in this building now. Used to climbing the stairs, I guess.”
“You always take the elevator, Delilah.” Arthur knew full well that she hated taking stairs. However, she liked teasing him more than she hated stairs. He raises himself, and Delilah takes his hand once more.
“Yep!”
Arthur grumbles. “Fuck you.”
She just laughs. “Fuck you, too, Arty.”
|| I see them as really good friends with a sibling-like relationship okay leave me alone this is a blessing compared to what I have in store ||
Delilah opened the door on their platform, marked with a sign bearing a red four. The rusty metal hinges creak like something out of a horror movie.
Delilah takes the wooden doorstop from the hallway beyond the door, lodging it underneath the heavy door. This keeps the entryway open while she and Arthur make their way through. Or rather, she makes the way through, guiding him along behind her. Nudging the doorstop from underneath its burden, Delilah lets the heavy door close with a loud thud. The noise echoed through the stairway, though muffled to the pair of friends now on the other side of the door.
The two walk down the hallway. Delilah starts to speed up, seeming excited. Arthur follows close behind, and with their height difference and the fact that they were holding hands, they looked like an overworked and his overexcited daughter. Save for the fact that they were both adults, of course. And the blindfold over the father’s eyes.
Finally—finally—they stopped, after many twists and turns through the large building. Arthur hears the jangling of keys as Delilah unlocked the door. She moves to open it, then hesitates.
“I need you to promise not to freak out. Or…” She falters. “Report me.”
That got Arthur’s attention real fast. He whips his head to face Delilah, or at least, where he thought was facing Delilah. “Why would— why would I do that?” He’s genuinely confused. First off, why would he freak out? What kind of thing was waiting for him in that room?
Second, why would he report her? Was this against the rules? Or— or illegal? No; Delilah was a great student and role model. She would never do something like that.
“Just promise me.” She said, “Please, Arthur.”
“Of course. I promise.” That makes Delilah let out a sigh of relief.
“Alrighty.” She takes a deep breath, seemingly bracing herself for something. “Wait—” She pats her pocket, feeling for something. “Okay. Got it.”
Delilah hastily opens the door, pulling a startled and off-balance Arthur into the lab behind her.
The first thing he noticed when entering the room was some noise he couldn’t quite place.
“Can I take off this damned blindfold now?” Arthur asks.
“Wait a minute.” There’s some shuffling as Delilah goes to look for something. “Yeah. You can.”
Arthur, relieved to finally be taking it off, unties the blindfold from his head.
At first, he doesn’t understand what the surprise is. He was standing in Delilah’s lab, which looked messy, as it always was. Then, he spotted Delilah looking at him from the other side of the room. She was grinning, looking extremely proud of herself, excited. “C’mere. Come see him.”
Him..?
He realizes the object—person? creature?—he was to see, must be on the ground, hidden by the counter with various vials of black sludge on it.
He walks over to where Delilah stood.
There, sitting on the ground, was a humanoid creature. It was stacking plastic blocks, the kind you would see a little kid playing with.
The creature turns at the noise Arthur makes when he spots it.
Because this creature was all too familiar to him.
And to anyone else who had watched his animations.
Slowly, Arthur turns to stare at Delilah—who was still smiling, albeit softer now— to ask what was happening.
Because this was something straight out of fiction.
Because this was something that shouldn’t be happening.
“Delilah— what— what the— how the—” He stammers, trying to just make sense of it all.
“Arthur. Meet Dandicus Dancifer. Dandy.”
The creature—Dandy—perks up at the sound of his name, looking over at them from where he had resumed playing with his junior legos. He stands up on his short legs, walking over to the pair of college students.
“Hello. Are you Mr. Arthur?” The toon—which is what Arthur had taken to calling his characters— asked, tugging on the hem of the man’s sweater.
“Dandy—” Arthur looked absolutely dumbfounded. “But— but he—”
“Is fictional no longer.” Delilah goes over to where the two stood. Bending over, she scoops up Dandy with a practiced grip, plopping him straight into the arms of a very, very, confused Arthur.