Work Text:
i will only let you down
The single most important weekend for the Dreemurrs each year approaches gently on a damp fall weekend in October. The weekend where Asgore and Toriel take separate cars to drive 3 hours east despite complaining about gas prices. The weekend where Toriel asks Kris which car they want to take down to university, despite them choosing Toriel’s every time. The weekend that means that Toriel will spend way too much money on a good Airbnb just for Asriel to say that he wants to sleep in his dorm, but appreciates the sentiment.
This time is no different, but at least Asriel let them know in advance that he’ll be staying on campus this Friends and Family weekend, giving Kris just enough time to invite a friend to make the journey with them.
The choice is a no-brainer; Toriel hardly had to ask which friend Kris wanted to bring before she was already opening the door for Kris to head to the apartment complex to ask for Susie.
It felt silly- nearly 18 years old, and begging at Susie’s complex’s door for her to drop her weekend plans to travel halfway across Massachusetts just to spend it bored in a stuffy Airbnb in a city she’d never been to, but regardless, she agreed. They knew she would. She always does.
That part is tough for Kris. Always has been.
Kris often has to remind themselves that despite the wonderful things Susie does for them, it’s nothing more than friendship- it never has been, and with how her relationship with Noelle has gone for the past two years, never will.
But it’s hard to let go of something so dear like that. It’s hard to consider that charisma is a trait and not a sign. It’s agonizing, actually, to feel a hand on your shoulder and remember it means nothing.
It starts because Toriel falls asleep on the sagging pull-out sofa by eight-fifteen, worn thin by three hours on the turnpike and Asgore’s endless complaints about highway tolls. The airbnb smells like mothballs and radiator dust, the heat clicking in the pipes with a dry, suffocating rhythm that makes the small rooms feel ten times smaller.
Kris only has to glance toward the door before Susie is already grabbing her jacket from the coat rack, grinning like she’s been waiting for an excuse all day.
Outside, Cambridge is washed in a damp October mist that makes the brick sidewalks gleam under the orange streetlights. The air is sharp and smells of wet leaves and river water. Kris practically has to pull Susie by the sleeve down a narrow side street, drawn toward a rusted iron sign hanging over a flight of damp stone steps that lead beneath the sidewalk. Susie teases them the entire way down, shoving their shoulder and calling them a massive music nerd for having some kind of internal radar for basements that smell like stale beer and instrument cases, but she follows without a single real complaint. She always does.
The restaurant underground is small, cramped, and overwhelmingly warm. The low ceilings are supported by rough, exposed brick arches, draped with soft strings of amber fairy lights that barely cut through the dim, smoky haze of the room. The tables are tiny wooden two-tops tucked into dark alcoves along the walls—tables clearly built for couples sharing plates in hushed tones, leaning over flickering votive candles set in heavy glass holders.
It’s even harder to sit in a dimly lit restaurant five miles from your airbnb, surrounded by the twang of guitar and the acoustics of raspy singing, without looking at the girl in front of you and thinking about how unabashedly beautiful she is.
Even while she spills water across the dark wood table and directly into Kris’s salad bowl, swearing under her breath. Even while she laughs a little too loud at the startled squeak Kris makes, making the older couple two tables down turn their heads with mild disapproval. Even while she leans forward, squints at the tiny votive between their plates, and blows it clean out with a puff of air because she genuinely thought it was one of those fake, battery-powered LED candles.
She’s horrifyingly beautiful in the flickering amber gloom, her dark bangs casting sharp shadows over her eyes, grinning as she strikes a match from the counter to light it again.
And Kris has to deal with that. Each day of this stupid trip that they never should have agreed to, trapped in the orbit of someone who takes up all the air in every room she enters.
Up on the low wooden platform in the corner, a two-piece band is playing, just a worn-out Martin acoustic and an upright bass played with a bow. Kris finds their ears perking up immediately, their fingers unconsciously tapping out the awkward 5/4 rhythm against their paper napkin. The chords are dense and melancholic, moving through strange, unresolved jazz voicings that make Kris desperately wish they knew the name of the group so they could look up their setlist on the walk back.
Susie clearly doesn’t know what to do with the quiet, intricate music; she’s built for trash cans being banged together and blown-out car speakers, but she watches Kris’s hands twitching against the table. She leans her chin onto her palm, tilting her head toward the stage. "Hey, how does that guy do that, like how is the bass guitar so low and stuff?"
Kris explains in a quiet murmur that he’s using harmonics, pointing out the subtle shifts in the player's wrist.
Susie nods along, looking between the stage and Kris with genuine, focused curiosity. She doesn’t care about jazz theory, Kris knows this, but she cares that Kris cares, asking dumb, earnest questions just to watch Kris light up and dissect the song. And that attention fills Kris’s chest with a sickening, shameful warmth. Kris knows exactly what it is: Susie being the best, most attentive friend in the world. Knowing that only makes the flutter in their ribs feel dirty, like an unearned reward Kris is hoarding behind Susie’s back.
“Yo, do you think they’ll let us sing?”
Susie’s voice rings out slightly too loud in the sudden absence of song, dropping right into the quiet space between the changing of instruments and the polite rustle of applause.
Kris almost lets themselves feel something dangerous, their heart jumping at the sheer reckless brightness in her eyes.
Instead, they snicker, quietly telling Susie that there’s no way in hell anyone in this room would look at the two of them and mistake them for folk singers, and that they’d probably get thrown out onto the curb before they finished the first verse.
Susie snorts, loudly enough that the table next to them glares again, but Kris doesn’t care, never has. “Guess so, but they can’t deny that we’d put on a hell of a show. Plus, you’re good at piano and shit! You could definitely pull it off, that’s what you’re planning on doing anyway...”
Susie trails off at the end, her voice losing a bit of its booming edge as she fiddles with the edge of a paper coaster.
Kris hates when she does this. She takes these sudden, quiet moments to bring up the fact that Kris is planning on attending Berklee College of Music in the fall, three hours away in the city, while Susie stays behind to work with Asgore at the shop. It feels like a subtle, clumsy guilt trip, even though Kris knows she isn’t doing it on purpose. Susie doesn’t possess that kind of malice; she’s just bad at hiding the fact that things are changing.
Kris rolls their eyes to keep the mood light, reminding Susie that Noelle will be only twenty minutes away at Smith. Kris tells her that she’ll have Noelle right there in town, that she won’t have time to be lonely, and that whenever she gets bored of quiet nights, she can always call Kris and listen to them butcher practice scales over the phone, because according to her, that’s all music majors do anyway.
“It isn’t the same.” Susie rests her chin in the cup of her hand, a small, crooked smirk crossing her lips that causes the air in Kris’s throat to burn and twist until it aches. “I can’t press random keys over the phone to ruin your rhythm. Then it’s no fun.”
The silence settles between them again, thick and heavy with the smell of old beer and damp brick, while the band on stage tunes their guitar strings with a soft, metallic chime.
Kris looks down at their lap, their fingers digging into the rough denim of their jeans. Every second across this candlelit table feels like an elaborate, private torture, a stolen simulation of a date with a girl who has been deeply, happily in love with someone else for two full years. Every soft look, every moment of genuine care, is an innocent gift from Susie that Kris greedily twists into something painful and pathetic in the dark of their own head.
Kris stands no chance of looking back up at her, let alone answering. She makes it impossible every single time.
Susie squints through the dim light, studying Kris’s face for a second before letting out a dry huff, clearly misreading the sudden weight in the air as nothing more than an empty stomach or a bad mood.
“You look like a zombie,” she says, leaning back against the wooden booth with a low creak. “Your face is all pinched up. If you pass out before we get back to the couch, I’m not carrying your ass five miles through the cold.”
Before Kris can even formulate an excuse, the server slides a small vinyl folder onto the edge of the dark wood table.
Kris immediately reaches into their coat pocket for their own crumpled bills, but Susie’s large, clawed hand shoots out across the table and slaps down over the checkbook, snatching it away with effortless speed.
“Hey, put your crap away,” Susie says, flipping the folder open and pulling a thick fold of cash from her back pocket, waving it around in a way that suggests that she's not used to carrying that much on her at one time. “I’m taking care of it.”
Kris tries to object, quietly telling her that they can pay for their own food, that she doesn’t need to waste her savings on overpriced diner burgers in a city she doesn’t even live in.
Susie just rolls her eyes, tossing two crinkled twenties onto the receipt with a flick of her wrist. “Shut up. Your dad cornered me at the shop before we left and shoved forty bucks into my jacket. Told me to make sure you actually ate something that didn’t come out of a gas station microwave, and said I could keep whatever was left if I kept you out of trouble.” She flashes a sharp, toothy grin that makes Kris’s ribs ache. “So technically, you’re on my payroll for the night. You’re my responsibility, freak.”
And yet, despite the sting to their pride, Kris sits back and lets her pay. Worse, they feel the quiet, shameful flutter of warmth in their chest as Susie pushes the bill toward the edge of the table.
They like it.
They hate how pathetically easy it is to sink into the feeling of Susie taking care of them, of being shielded by her broad shoulders and her loud, effortless authority. It is greedy and sick, taking comfort in a gesture that was bought and paid for by their own father, but Kris swallows the guilt down anyway, chasing it with the melting dregs of their ice water.
Susie slides out of her seat, stretching her arms until her knuckles pop with the sound of snapping kindling. “Man, this place is actually pretty sick, though,” she mutters, glancing around at the low brick arches and the amber string lights as she zips up her leather jacket. “I gotta remember where this is. Maybe Noelle and I will head over to visit you and I can totally drag her here. She’d go crazy over that acoustic stuff, right, Kris?”
The sentence settles like lead in the pit of Kris’s stomach. Kris manages a small nod, keeping their eyes trained on the empty glasses, silently agreeing that Noelle would love it.
It’s completely innocent. Susie isn’t trying to hurt them; she never is. She is just thinking of the girl she loves, picturing the future with the casual, unguarded certainty of someone who has spent two years being cherished. But the image of Susie sitting in this exact booth, leaning across the candle to hold Noelle’s soft, antler-framed face in the flickering light while Kris is miles away in a sterile dorm room, it feels like a slow, deliberate carving out of Kris’s chest. It is cruel and unfair, and Kris despises themselves for even thinking it.
They push through the heavy wooden door and climb the cold stone steps back out onto the street. Maybe the cold air will numb the slight cracking of their bandaged heart.
The damp October air hits them immediately, sharp and biting against their overheated cheeks, smelling of rain-soaked asphalt and fallen elm leaves. Behind them, the muffled thrum of the upright bass dissolves into the night, swallowed by the distant rumble of city buses and the hiss of tires on wet pavement.
Susie walks with her hands jammed deep into her pockets, her broad shoulders hunched against the mist. She is energized, bumping her arm against Kris’s every few steps, loudly humming a mangled, out-of-tune version of the jazz melody they had just heard in the basement. She laughs at her own terrible singing, her breath billowing in thick white plumes under the yellow streetlamps.
Kris walks quietly beside her, watching the condensation from her mouth drift into the dark. It strikes them, with a dull, hollow clarity, that tonight will be a defining memory they will turn over in their head for years. Every glance, every brush of leather, every flicker of candle flame burned permanently into their memory, just as it has for years. For Susie, it’s just a funny Friday night in a damp town, an ordinary detour before they go visit Asriel tomorrow.
Kris has always been good at that misinterpretation thing, always failing to protect themselves when it came to Susie and the idea of choosing.
They turn the corner into the open expanse of the square, where the red brick plaza opens up under the glow of ornate iron lampposts.
Despite the cold, the square is alive with people. A small crowd has gathered in a loose circle near the center, drawn by a trio of street musicians playing an accordion, a violin, and an acoustic guitar. The melody is rich, lilting, and slow—a warm, melancholic waltz that bounces off the brick walls of the old university buildings. Scattered across the plaza, couples in heavy winter coats are swaying together on the slick pavement, laughing into each other’s scarves as they turn clumsy, lazy circles in the mist.
Susie stops dead in her tracks, her eyes lighting up beneath her dark fringe. “Dude, look at that!"
Kris feels a sudden, sharp spike of dread.
Susie looks over at them, a crooked, challenge-hungry smirk spreading across her face. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Kris immediately shakes their head, telling her in no uncertain terms that they are horrific at dancing, that humans don’t possess whatever graceful instinct she thinks they have, and that they will literally stand by the trash can and watch from a safe distance.
Susie barks out a loud, genuine laugh that makes two people nearby look over in surprise. “Hell no! You’re the one going to Berklee, piano kid! You’re supposed to have rhythm and shit! Don’t be a wimp!”
Before Kris can take a single step backward, Susie’s clawed fingers wrap firmly around their wrist.
She drags them forward with effortless momentum, pulling Kris straight past the edge of the crowd and into the open space under the amber streetlights. The cold air bites at Kris’s neck, but the instant Susie pulls them in, the chill completely vanishes under the sheer, overwhelming heat of her presence.
Susie doesn’t know how to waltz. She doesn’t know steps or posture or counts. But she doesn’t care in the slightest.
With unhesitating, terrifying confidence, she plants one broad, heavy hand flat against the center of Kris’s shoulder blade. Her palm is warm even through Kris’s thick sweater, burning against their back with steady, unrelenting pressure. With her other hand, she grabs Kris’s hand, lacing her thick fingers roughly between theirs and holding it up in the space between them. She pulls Kris in until there’s barely an inch of space left, the rough, worn leather of her jacket brushing against Kris’s chest, the familiar scent of damp autumn leaves, pine soap, and cheap spearmint gum entirely consuming Kris’s senses.
From here, there's an ease to looking at Susie, like maybe, they are finally supposed to. Her nose is awfully close to theirs, close in a way that if Kris wants to, and God they want to, they can count the exact number of freckles embedded in Susie's skin, and agonizingly recognize that they may already have the number memorized.
And she has grown so mature, not in the way that most adults would have hoped, but in the way that Kris has watched her become herself unabashedly in a way that people may think is impossible. She wears a smile like a clothing item; she greets people as if there is no consequence. Everything she dresses in is uniquely hers; every scent that she wears is piercing to Kris's focus. She's only become more of everything as the years have gone by.
This dance is slow. It is close. It is violently, suffocatingly intimate.
Kris’s entire body goes rigid, their breath hitching in their throat. Their heart hammers so violently against their ribs that they are terrified Susie will feel the vibration through her palm.
“Relax, dude,” Susie mutters, grinning down at them as she begins to rock their bodies back and forth in a clumsy, off-beat sway. “You’re stiff as a board. Just move your feet.”
Kris tries, but their balance is completely shot, their mind screaming in a tangled mess of panic and longing.
On their second turn, Susie’s heavy, steel-toed boot comes down squarely on top of Kris’s sneaker.
Susie flinches, pulling back slightly with a guilty grimace. “Ah—shit! My bad, my bad—”
The sheer absurdity of it, the towering monster girl trying to gracefully sway to a street violin and immediately crushing their foot, breaks through Kris’s panic. An involuntary, breathy laugh slips out of their mouth before they can stop it, a quiet, genuine sound that crinkles the corners of their eyes.
Susie freezes, watching Kris’s face soften. A wicked, mischievous spark flashes in her golden eyes.
“Oh,” Susie says, her voice dropping into a teasing purr. “You think that’s funny, huh?”
She deliberately lifts her boot and stomps right back down on Kris’s other foot.
Kris gasps, shoving weakly against her chest and telling her she’s an idiot, but another laugh bubbles up, helpless and bright against the cold night air.
Susie laughs with them, a booming, triumphant sound that echoes across the brick square. She tightens her grip on Kris’s back, pulling them even closer as she spins them in a wild, stumbling circle beneath the falling mist. “See? I told you! You’re having fun!”
Kris lets themselves be turned. They let their forehead drop forward just enough so their bangs hide their eyes, resting their hand lightly against the heavy curve of Susie’s shoulder.
It is intoxicating torture. For these three minutes, surrounded by strangers under the streetlights of Cambridge, it looks like they belong together. It looks like a slow dance at the end of a perfect date.
And it is entirely hollow.
Kris knows, with a sickening, razor-sharp certainty, that Susie isn’t holding them because she loves them like that. Susie holds them like this because Susie loves fiercely, openly, and without fear. She holds Kris because Kris is her best friend, because she finally has a life where she is allowed to reach out and touch the people she cares about without being treated like a monster. She is utterly, completely innocent.
The romance exists only in Kris’s head, a shameful, parasitic thing Kris has built out of innocent gestures and friendly warmth. It belongs to Noelle. The soft, gentle, romantic part of Susie belongs entirely to the girl waiting back home in Hometown, the girl Susie checks her phone for every twenty minutes, the girl Susie wants to bring back to the basement restaurant.
Kris feels a hot, sharp sting of guilt behind their eyelids. It is disgusting to stand here, feeling Susie’s heartbeat through her jacket, wishing desperately that things were different. It makes Kris feel like a traitor to Noelle, who has only ever been kind, and a liar to Susie, who trusts them with everything she has.
Yet, despite the shame, despite the agonizing knowledge of how much it will hurt tomorrow, Kris doesn’t pull away.
Selfishly, greedily, Kris lets their fingers curl tighter against the rough leather of Susie’s jacket. They close their eyes and let their feet follow the clumsy, heavy rhythm of Susie’s boots, letting the sound of the violin wash over them, allowing themselves to pretend, just until the song ends, that they are the only two people left in the city.
The violinist draws out the final, sweet note of the melody, letting it hang in the cold mist before resolving into silence.
The small crowd in the square breaks into scattered, polite applause.
Just like that, Susie lets go.
She steps back, dropping her hands and giving Kris a hearty, unceremonious slap on the arm that almost knocks them off balance. Her cheeks are flushed pink from the cold, a wide, triumphant grin plastered across her face as she exhales a cloud of white steam.
“Told you,” she says proudly, turning on her heel toward the street that leads back to the airbnb. “You’re not that terrible. Now come on, let’s get back before your mom wakes up and thinks we got kidnapped.”
Kris stands on the cold bricks for a fraction of a second longer, the sudden absence of her hands feeling like ice against their back.
They shove their hands into their pockets, let out a slow, quiet breath, and follow her down the sidewalk. Susie is already rambling about breakfast tomorrow, completely unaware that she has just handed Kris a memory that will break their heart for the rest of their life.
And do they regret it?
Terrifyingly, not for a second.