Chapter Text
Alphys had always found sanctuary in numbers.
People were difficult, too many shifting variables and qualitative observations to keep track of. Numbers, though? Numbers were familiar, safe. Numbers made sense. There was a certain satisfaction in solving an equation and knowing it would work, seeing it work, seeing the solutions scribbled out on paper or logged on a screen and knowing they were right. Even better was the feeling of creating a design, calculating all the dimensions of the different parts, and seeing it all come together into a working model. For example—
At that moment, the door to Alphys’s dorm room slammed open, and the yellow lizard monster just about jumped out of her skin. “Aaalphys!” her best friend (and roommate) Mettaton sang as he rolled into the room. “Are you done unpacking yet?”
“I-i-in a minute!” Alphys grinned back sheepishly, hurriedly going back to pulling books out of a cardboard box and stashing them on the shelf above her desk.
It had only been a few months, but Alphys still felt a thrill run down her spine each time she saw Mettaton move around in his robotic form and realized, That was her design, and it was working. She’d made that possible. When they had first met up over ramen and ghost sandwiches three and a half years ago to discuss his request for a working robotic body, she’d never dreamed she would actually succeed, but here they were.
At the moment, Mettaton was casting a disapproving glance around the room. His own half was already unpacked: the bed was decked out in glittering pink and black covers and pillows, the closet was practically bursting with a variety of outfits, and the desk was adorned with various textbooks, makeup supplies, and glitter-covered notebooks and pens. Alphys’s half, on the other hand?
Boxes. Boxes and boxes and a couple suitcases and other bags, and the only one that seemed to be open was the box of books she was currently emptying onto her desk.
“Alphys, darling,” the robot drawled, “I hardly think you’ll be done in a minute. You’ve barely even started!”
“W-well, I meant… relatively s-speaking…” The lizard offered an apologetic grin as she stashed her final volume of the Mew Mew Kissy Cutie special edition manga next to Principles of Engineering. “It w-won’t t-take me all that l-long, I swear!”
Heaving a dramatic sigh, Mettaton flopped onto his – stomach? – and buried his (face?) in one of his medium-sized white-faux-fur lined pink pillows. “Aaaalphyyyys,” he whined.
Heaving a sigh of her own, Alphys spun to face him, hands on her hips. “What?” she demanded.
“Hurry uuup, I wanna go shopping!” He was waving his wheel back and forth, and she was sure that if he had them he would be kicking his legs. (Legs, right, he’d asked her to make sure his legs were extra fabulous…)
“Well, you c-could help me out, you know,” she pointed out as she tore open a package of clothes hangers and started hanging them in the closet.
“Eh… I’ll pass.”
“Then no c-c-complaining!” Alphys tried to sound annoyed, but she had to duck her head back towards the closet to hide her grin. Mettaton was one of the only people she was close enough to to be comfortable bickering with, and she could feel herself relaxing with the banter.
“Fine,” Mettaton pouted, and Alphys lost the battle with herself and began to laugh out loud.
Mettaton shot her a look (somehow, she wasn’t sure how he managed it with his blocky prototype form) and dramatically put the back of his hand to his (forehead?). “You wound me, Alphy darling,” he declared. “Laughing at my suffering – how could you?”
Still laughing, Alphys shook her head and chucked a pillow at his face. He caught it, rolled onto his back, and hugged the pillow to his boxy form in a single smooth move. “Your pillows are so boring,” he grumbled, his disapproval belied by the way he was still hugging it. “So drab and dull. What you really need is some glitter. Glitter makes everything better.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she countered. “It just g-g-gets everywhere. And it’s im-p-possible to get out of my scales.”
“Well, I’m sorry, darling,” Mettaton said, not sounding at all sorry, “but you’re living with me, now, remember? I practically live on glitter. You’re going to have to deal with glitter getting all over your stuff, like it or not.” The squares on his screen flashed in a glittery pattern, which Alphys had learned was his equivalent of an evil grin.
“I knooooow!” Alphys wailed, briefly throwing her head back and putting her hands over her eyes. “I don’t know if I can s-s-survive it, Mettaton. They’ll f-f-find me and I will have been glittered to death, and it w-will be all your fault.”
This time it was her calculator-shaped friend’s turn to cackle. “Nooo, Alphys! You can survive, I believe in you! And if you do end up glittered to death, I will personally see to it that you are glittered back to life.”
“Oh, stars,” Alphys said, turning to him with a look of abject horror that only made him laugh twice as hard. “I’ll be a g-glitter z-z-zombie. A glittery F-Frankens-stein’s monster.”
“Well, I mean, we are already monsters,” Mettaton pointed out through his giggles as they tapered out. “And also, Frankenstein’s monster was completely misrepresented by the movies. He was by far the superior character in the book.”
“True.” Alphys looked at the mattress cover in her hands, then at the vinyl-coated mattress in front of her, then back to the mattress cover. She pulled a face; this part was always such a pain. “By the way,” she said as she began her valiant attempt to hook the cover around the edges of the mattress, “why d-d-do you want to b-buy so m-many new c-c-clothes now anyway? J-just, c-c-considering that what f-fits you now won’t fit your f-f-final f-form anyway.”
“Never say never, Alphy darling!” Mettaton countered, waggling his finger at her. “But really, I just got this new form – thank you again by the way – and I’m enjoying it. After all, for the first time, like, ever, I actually can wear clothes.”
Alphys nodded, thoughtful. “Can’t argue with that.” And then she went back to struggling to get the fitted sheet over the final corner of her mattress, which she had to kneel on the mattress to reach.
Leaving the hardest-to-reach corner for last had been a mistake.
“…Do you need any help with that?” Mettaton asked. He was sitting up on his side now, (head?) propped up on one hand, watching as she scowled at the corner that just- wouldn’t- budge-
“Yes, p-please,” she begged.
Mettaton contemplated her for another moment. “…Actually, I don’t feel like it. It’s more fun to watch you suffer,” he said, flashing the lit-up squares on his screen up and down in an imitation of wiggling eyebrows.
“Asshole,” Alphys muttered under her breath as she finally managed to slide the edge of the sheet down to the base of the mattress. Now she just had to figure out how to lift the corner of the mattress while kneeling on it to actually pull the edge of the fitted sheet underneath –
“Aaaand we’ve entered the final round!” Mettaton said in his T.V.-announcer voice. He was now fully sitting up, and had procured a microphone from somewhere which he was holding up to his speaker. “The drama! The suspense! Will the Brilliant Soon-To-Be-Doctor Alphys manage to get the sheet on the mattress? Or will she be defeated by this basic tenet of dorm-life, forced to retreat with her tail between her legs?”
Alphys’s cheeks were blazing. “Shut up,” she hissed. “I s-swear, Metta, I will m-make sure your final form has snakes for hair –”
She froze. Mettaton was cackling again, into the microphone, and the sound was… echoing!?
“M-mettaton.” She swallowed, suddenly shaky. “I-is that m-microphone t-t-turned on!?”
The robot’s laughter died away, and the lights on his screen dimmed as he held up the microphone and examined it. “Oh,” he said. “Whoops.” His words echoed through the… the hallways??
“W-where are the s-s-speakers, anyway?” Alphys said slowly, almost afraid to ask. Mettaton didn’t tend to be careless with his belongings, it would be very out of character for him to leave his speakers out in the hallway, especially considering that they were technically his cousin’s. But she wasn’t sure how else the sound could be echoing more out in the hallway than inside the room itself…
“Ah, well,” Mettaton hedged, and Alphys felt her stomach drop. Mettaton didn’t sound sheepish. When he did sound sheepish, it generally meant Bad Things. Bad Things like – “…I may have accidentally grabbed the microphone that I hooked up to the building’s intercom system?”
The words echoed through the hallway – no, through the entire fucking building.
“…Sorry, Alphys,” he said, these words echoing as well, and Alphys snapped out of her stunned stupor.
Tumbling off her bed and running over to him, she hissed, “What are you waiting for?! T-turn it off!”
He pulled the microphone away from his speaker for a moment. “No, no, wait, let me fix this –” he whispered back, then moved the microphone back to his speaker. “Hellooooo, Beauties and Gentlebeauties, my name is Mettaton, and I would like to apologize for being an asshole, and say that Alphys is actually a truly amazing person and should be an inspiration to us all –”
“You’re not helping,” Alphys whispered harshly, finally managing to snatch the microphone from his hands and switch it off.
“…Sorry,” Mettaton mumbled, at least having the grace to look guilty.
Alphys sighed, only a little shakily, and tried to get her heart to stop pounding so hard. “I-it’s f-f-fine, M-metta, I kn-know it was an accident…”
At that moment, someone pounded at the door, and they both froze, Alphys’s heartrate picking back up. So much for calming down.
“Shit,” Mettaton swore. “Alphys, if it’s the RA, I swear I’ll take all the blame, I’m sorry –”
Shakily, Alphys walked over to the door and pulled it open to reveal…
A skeleton, wearing a fluorescent green shirt that read “Cool Dude”?
And –
Oh dear stars oh dear stars oh stars oh stars Oh Stars –
There in the doorway stood the most attractive fish lady Alphys had ever laid eyes on, a fierce grin pulling her lips wide.
“Greetings, potential friend!” the skeleton beamed, and Alphys forced her eyes back at him. His voice was loud and piercing, practically a shout. “You are the Brilliant Soon-To-Be Doctor Alphys, are you not? I am the Great Papyrus” – he posed dramatically – “and this is the Amazing Captain Undyne!”
“Hey there!!” shouted Attractive Fish Lady, and Alphys’s gaze was immediately pulled back to her. “We heard you needed help with your mattress?”
Her skin was a mesmerizing iridescent shade of pale blue, with patches of even more iridescent scales scattered over her face like freckles. The long red fin at the top of her head was tied back like hair, contrasting pleasantly with the blue of her skin, and a single eye gleamed golden above that fierce grin that tilted up a little more on one side than the other. The other eye was covered by an awesome looking eyepatch, her teeth were pointy, and she was skinny but somehow also rippling with muscles. And her grin was… dropping…?
Oh… oh! She was waiting for a response, of course, come on Alphys quit ogling a complete stranger –
“Oh – um, w-w-well… s-sure?”
That was… she didn’t know whether that was really the right response or not, because Gorgeous Fish Lady’s grin twisted up maniacally in response, and she barged in, grabbed the mattress – holding it over her head!? – and slammed it to the floor, upside-down.
Or, at least, she tried to. The mattress stopped at the last moment with barely half a foot to spare, glowing… blue?
“Undyne,” a the skeleton chided, and Alphys spun back around to see him – right, he was still there, too – standing with one hand outstretched, also glowing blue. Sweat stood out on his skull above a nervous grin. “You can’t just supplex people’s mattresses without asking first!”
Blue magic, huh… fascinating.
“Well, I did ask!” Gorgeous Fish Lady – Undyne – retorted.
“You asked whether she needed help with her mattress, not whether you could supplex it!”
“This is helping!” Undyne snarled back, then paused, deflating a little. “Or, uh, well – is this helping?” she said, more quietly now, turning to Alphys with a surprisingly hesitant look in her eye. Her vibrant golden eye with its sharp black liquid pupil was fixed on the lizard monster, practically pulling her into its depths.
Alphys vaguely noted that her mouth was hanging open. This is surreal, is what she really wanted to say – but, no, that would be rude, no matter how strange it was to have the most gorgeous fish lady in the world barge into her room and throw her mattress to the floor, only for it to be stopped in midair by another monster who had blue magic, all because her best friend had somehow accidentally announced across the intercom that she was struggling with a fitted sheet.
…Oh, wait, crap, she still hadn’t responded… “W-well,” she hedged, mentally cursing herself for being so hesitant, “m-maybe… L-let me t-t-try something.”
Walking around the mattress to the offending corner, she grabbed the sheet and yanked it into place, then turned back to the fish lady – Undyne – with a shaky thumbs-up.
“Hell yeah! Teamwork!” Undyne cheered, grabbing the mattress and flipping it right-side up and back onto the bed (with her skeletal friend using blue magic to slow it down for the last foot to keep it from actually slamming into the frame).
Alphys was way the hell out of her depth here, but she still managed a smile. “Th-thank you both,” she said.
“What about me?” a robotic voice called from behind her, and she spun around with a scowl. “I helped!”
“You m-made fun of me over the b-building intercom!”
“Okay, one, darling, I wasn’t making fun, I was simply having fun. Two, I really didn’t mean to connect to the building intercom. And three – it worked. Your mattress is fixed now, right?”
“Y-you’re unbelievable,” Alphys groaned. “K-keep this up and I’ll make s-sure your f-f-final f-form is as boring as p-p-possible. It w-won’t have any glitter or sh-shiny s-surfaces. A-and no bishonen eyes!”
Metta gasped, putting a hand to either side of his screen. “Noooo! You wouldn’t!”
“I would,” she shot back with a rare smirk. (She really wouldn’t. But it was fun to tease him – and besides, this time he deserved it.)
“So, uh,” Attractive-Fish-Lady Undyne said, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand, and Alphys immediately spun back to her. “I hate to cut this short, but we’ve got to run!”
Alphys felt her heart plummet from where she stood on the seventh floor all the way down to the basement. “…oh,” she managed, wishing for the thousandth time that her voice wouldn’t sound so small.
“It was nice meeting you, though!!!” Undyne yelled, standing stiffly for a moment with an almost painfully wide grin before turning and sprinting back down the hallway.
The skeleton stood for a moment watching her dash away, eye sockets (somehow) dancing in amusement, before turning back to Alphys. “I enjoyed meeting you as well, Soon-To-Be-Doctor Alphys! I’m sure we’ll meet again!” He turned to leave, but just after he stepped out the door he spun around one more time to add in a stage whisper: “She’s single, by the way! (Audible wink!)”
And then he was gone.
The squares on Mettaton’s screen flashed off and then back on again – his equivalent of a blink. “Well. That just happened.” He turned back to Alphys, who was still standing frozen, staring at the open door with a red flush staining her face. “Alphys, darling, are you alright?”
Alphys let out a sound like a boiling teakettle.
“Thought so,” Mettaton said, hopping off his bed and rolling over to one of Alphys’s boxes to start placing her clothes on hangers.
Alphys unfroze just enough to turn to him with a look of sheer disbelief. “Oh, n-now you’re h-helping!? After you w-went out of your w-w-way to make things d-difficult?”
“All things considered, are you sure you shouldn’t be thanking me?” Mettaton reasoned as he hung up a black dress with white polka dots that Alphys never wore. (He was doing the screen-equivalent of wiggling his eyebrows again)
The yellow lizard let out a strangled groan. “Metta, p-please.”
“Fine, fine. Then consider it an apology, my dear,” Mettaton said airily. “And besides, if I wait for you to start functioning again so you can finish unpacking your things yourself, we will be here for the rest of eternity. And then I will never get my new clothes, and I shall perish.”
She sighed, scrubbing her face with her hands. “Y-you are unbelievable.” A pause. “But th-thanks. I guess.”
Mettaton closed the closet door. “Anytime, darling. Anytime.”