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The hot lights glare down onto the cast of monsters and men on set as the director shouts out a loud “cut!” once more. They've been at it all day trying to get this scene correct, but the two co-host can't stop bickering in between takes and goading each other during the scene. Tenna is glad that he doesn’t sweat like the human next to him, who has been fidgeting over the past couple of takes.His antennas twitch as he senses Spamton leaving his side with a scoff and stomping his way over to the director. If he had real eyes he would roll them, of course the little mailman was going to cause a scene. And he thought Mettaton was a diva, at least the eccentric robot seemed to care about his craft. Watching for a second, he debates going over to try and calm down the short-tempered man, although he would most likely just make it worse given their interactions so far. With a sigh,he puts down his puppets of the ambassador Frisk and queen Toriel and walks over with a low annoyed chittering noise.
“-and you two still have NO chemistry, it’s even worse than last week Spamton! Don’t think everybody hasn’t noticed you two going at it as soon as the camera is off you! This last month has been torture for everyone around you two! And all your lines are either flat or awkward! Are you even trying!?!?” The director, a little dice headed monster wearing an all black suit with a green tie is gesturing wildly as he shouts at Spamton.
“Can you blame me? You just stuck me with a huge stick in the mud and then expected me to take all his prissy little “notes” without getting upset? He won't get off my back, and now I have to deal with you getting pissy too? It’s fucking bullshit and you know it Battat!” Spamton says getting up into their director's face. Tenna quickly scans the room to make sure the kids were far enough away to not hear the little mailman's vulgarity. Scoffing, he opens his mouth to reprimand him for acting this way around children.
“Language Mr.Spamton , I understand that you’re ups-”
“No! You don't understand anything “Mr.Tenna”! I’m so tired of dealing with you and everyone else here in this dumb as fuck studio. No one can seem to leave me the fuck alone, including arrogant tight ass giants bugs!” Spamton has abandoned berating their director, turning his fit onto his co-host, pointing up at him with a wild look in his eyes.
The snappy retort about maybe he’d be left alone if he actually did his job died on his tongue when he actually took a good look at the little human. His face was flushed, covered in sweat, and while one hand was pointing at Tenna, it was shaking. His other hand is clawing as his shirt collar. Despite addressing the large monster his eyes keep sweeping the set looking for something, his breathing labored and harsh. Antennas twitching he sniffs discreetly at the air, the strangely slight sweet smell that he usually associates with the hot headed human has soured. He smells distressed with strong notes of pure fear. Kneeling down with a soft comforting chittering sound, Tenna reaches out and puts a hand on Spamton's shoulder.
“....Spamton…are you alright-?” The human flinches at the sudden contact, before throwing his hand off and taking a big step back.
“Don’t touch me! I-I-he- No-”
Breathing hard, he looks legitimately scared. Startled at the outburst ,Tenna drops his arm, hands coming to hold onto each other in front of him. Spamton's hands are clawing at his shirt collar, eyes wide staring in Tenna's direction with a stricken look. He’s muttering unintelligibly something under his breath, Tenna can just barely make out a few small no’s and don’ts in the gibberish. Suddenly, Spamton stops, head down taring at the floor, his hands dropping from his collar to his side limply. With a slow exhale, he shakily brings them back up to smooth back his hair and brush the wrinkles out of his shirt and looks at the two monsters again. With a weak watery half-smile he turns around on the heel and walks off the set, mumbling a weak,
“I’m going to take a smoke break…I’ll be back.”
Watching his co-host leave, Tenna can feel himself shrink a bit. His mind spirals as Spamton flinching away from him keeps replaying in his head. The memory fades into all the strained smiles and startled noises of new humans he’s met over the past three years since the barrier broke. None of them wanted to stay around him either.
Is that why he can't get along with his co-host? Is he that disturbing to humans? They weren’t ever gonna get along were they? Because he’s just a scary beast to him. He has tried to make himself more appealing to humans. He’s tried! He shrinks his mandibles, hides his abdomen, and his weird segmented body and even puts on fake eyes in the studio. He really should have known that even those wouldn't fix his terrifying appearance.
He had thought that the fact that they fought so much would mean that he wasn’t disgusted with him because of his appearance at the very least.The little mailman hadn’t kept his ire at him a secret, but he never seemed frightened at all before in all their arguments. Maybe he was a better actor than he thought.
Antenna drooping, he senses Battat coming over and putting a hand on his arm. He has to look up at the dice headed monster, who gives him an awkward grimace that he thinks was supposed to be a smile.
“Do you want a break, Ant? After we could do a scene with the kids without your “lovely” co-host? How does that sound?” Getting up with a groan, his over extended legs sore from being on the floor for even such a small amount of time.
“We only have the kiddos around for another hour, before they have to go home. There's no time, I’m fine.” He sees Battat raise an eyebrow at him, and does his best to smile. He forces himself to grow back up to his standard studio size of six feet. With an over the top flourish he walks backwards towards the kids. “I truly am fine! Anyways, TV waits for no one!”
‘Except hot headed little mailmen I've managed to terrify.’ He thinks bitterly as he turns around with a bright smile to greet the kids.
The kids all cheered his name,and Tenna puffed up happily at the positive attention. At least the kids weren’t scared of him! He leaned down to see each child, softly greeting each kid before looking around confused. All six kids were supposed to be in this scene, but there were only five before him. Was one child missing? Doing a quick comparison of faces in front of him to all the names of all the children in the cast. The one human child that applied, Kris, is here.He sees Susie making faces with them as they hold Ralsei's hand as he listens to Berdly excitedly talk about some game.The eldest child. Dess is off to the side playing on her phone. Dess! That's who is missing, her younger sister Noelle. He wasn't told that Noelle was sick, they say tv doesn't wait, but surely they aren’t on such a tight crunch that they couldn’t reschedule this scene to later.
“Dess dear! Is Noelle not feeling well today? Oh hopefully she isn’t too sick!” Dess looks up from her phone with a raised brow.
“What are you talking about Tenna? She’s right he-” Looking down towards her side, the young teen gasps. She turns around quickly, sweeping the place for her little sister. “I-she was right next to me!” Whipping her head around, Tenna can sense her breathing getting faster as she gets more panicked.
“Dess honey, breathe! Who was chaperoning you all? Where are they?”
“It’s dad! He- he just had to go to the bathroom real quick!” She points to the bathroom they are right by.
Not wanting to show his annoyance at her dad for letting them out of his sight for even a small amount of time. How hard is it to find a crew member to watch them? Straightening back up to his full seven feet, he lets out a shrill whistle to get everyone on set’s attention.
“Folks, we are missing a child, has anybody seen a Noelle? She’s a small deer monster in a green and red striped shirt. Blonde hair, usually in braids?” He waits for someone, anyone to say they had her or knew where she was. “Ok, we need to find her, now! Everyone go look for her!” With a determined nod from all the monsters in the crew, as well as a kind of confused nod from the humans they started searching around the immediate area.
Catching the attention of one of the director's assistants, A black void shaped cat man, he ushers him over.
“Plues. Do you have anyone who can watch the kids while I try to track Noelle down? It’d be easier if we had a dog knight from Snowdin here, but we have to work with what we do have.”
He says pointing to his antennae that are already twitching trying to see if he can sense the missing fawn.
Pluey makes an affirmative noise, before pointing to himself. Walking closer to the kids and making his musical notes he tries to calm the kids who had all had startled (except Kris) at his whistle and shouting. Thankfully despite it not being words, people can generally just…understand him. Normal for the Monsters, but it always seems to impress the few human members of the crew.. Magic in general still is seen as an incredible thing by a lot of humans, even if they’ve known about the existence of it for the past three years.
Knowing that the kids are in good hands, Tenna maneuvers his antennae every which way trying to catch some sort of hint, a scent or sound to go off of in his search. He can just faintly sense something vaguely noelle feeling in the direction of the lobby. A good start, he makes his way out there as quick as he can without spooking the kids even more.
With his antennae leading him, twitching every so often to process more information in his search for the shy little fawn. Hearing faint laughter his antennas swing wildly trying to find the direction it came from. Down the left hall! He starts running down the hall, it didn't sound like she was in trouble, but who knows what an unsupervised six year old could get into accidentally! He almost passes the unassuming storage closet, before another giggle sounds out from within it. Taking a few steps forward, he walks to the open door. He's about to call out for her but his voice dies in his throat as what he sees freezes him in place.
There, propped up against boxes was Noelle, snuggled up in Spamton’s lap. The normally grumpy star’s hands are gesturing widely as he speaks, a smile on his face when he looks back towards Noelle every so often. Noelle interrupts his wild story about pirates every so often with a soft “Fwah-ha-ha.” Tenna notices that pirates all have names from the kids in the cast. Spamton spins a tale of the kids waking up on a ship and going on a huge adventure. He doesn't know how long he stood there watching the two interact, but eventually the story ends with all the pirates finding the treasure and all becoming best friends. He sees Spamton shift Noelle to his hip before getting up with her with him with a grunt of effort.
Starting to leave the closet, he finally looks up and sees Tenna half blocking the entrance and jumps a bit in surprise. Spamton makes a soft sigh and surprisingly places a hand onto Tenna’s arm as he walks past him, stopping in the doorway with him. Shocked, Tenna just tilts his head toward where he feels the small hand on him. It feels so small and warm and surprisingly gentle. He makes an aborted attempt to say something, when he realizes this is the first time the grumpy man has willingly touched him. With a start, he realizes he wouldn’t mind if it happened more.
“It’s alright big guy, I've got her. She promises not to run off again, don’t you Noelle?” Spamton says in a gentle voice so unlike their earlier interactions. Tenna wouldn’t have believed he could be so gentle if he hadn’t seen it himself. Through his thoughts he barely notices Noelle nervously nodding at him.
“Come on “Mr. Ant Tenna, we should all get back to the stage. Let everyone know she’s ok.” He drops his hand and Tenna finds he misses his touch. A beat passes before Tenna turns and follows silently in a daze. His antennae twitch as he keeps checking the air as he walks behind him, sensing the small man's sweet scent, though he wrinkles his nose at the hint of smoke that clings to him. He can guess now why he was in the area and found Noelle first, what with the alley way that he knows that employees go to smoke at is right past the closet.
When they get to the set , it’s been turned over and is, quite frankly, a complete mess.Tenna grimaces with sympathy for the poor P.A who's going to have to reset all that before the next day. It seems they called everyone into the search as he sees a monster he knew from the theater in New Home underground theater,one he knows is not in the filming cast or crew, comforting a crying thirteen year old Dess. The other kids are being watched by the weird and, kind of off-putting in his opinion, purple dog monster that he’s met in the script department. Spamton makes his way to Dess and clears his throat before calling out.
“Hey we found her! The little sponge is completely fine!” Dess runs over, and Spamton places Noelle on the ground when she gets closer. Seeing her sister crying, Noelle also starts to tear up and starts apologizing for causing such a problem. The two hug before Dess starts to scold her younger sister for running off. Spamton interrupts the lecture with a surprisingly calm,
“She just got a little overwhelmed, who can blame her really. Even with all those rules you kids have, our days are long and exhausting huh? I'll talk and see if we can get more breaks or something.” He says while rubbing the back of his neck, clearly unsure what to do now that the immediate problem has been solved. Thanking Spamton, Dess calls their dad, and lets him know that Noelle is fine.Their dad(Trudy or Rudy, Tenna thinks his name is.) arrives quickly and hugs his daughter and also starts crying. When he finds out who found her, he pulls Spamton into a hug as well, the human stiffening at the contact but not pulling away. Tenna is still a bit miffed at him leaving the kids without finding a replacement chaperone, but figures the scare he just went through with Noelle will encourage him to never make that mistake again without him saying a thing. Rudy pulls away and invites the both of them to his home for dinner as thanks for finding Noelle. Before Tenna can tell him that it was actually Spamton that found her and calmed Noelle down, Spamton had already accepted for them. Confused,Tenna tilts his head at him, but all Spamton offers him is an awkward little half shrug and an exhausted half smile.
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Once everyone was less emotional and the dinner details for next weekend had been hashed out, Tenna notices Spamton trying to sneak away quietly. Curious about many ways his co-host has acted, he follows. Noticing this, Spamton sighs and before letting Tenna catch up. The two stars walk to their split dressing room in silence, Spamton breaking the silence with a huff once the door closes behind them.
“What is it Tenna? I can see your antennae straining towards me, and we're not exactly buddy buddy, so I can't see why you’d walk with me. You obviously want to say something.”
The large monster hesitates before asking a question that's been on his mind since he found Spamton and Noelle.
“I thought you didn’t like kids?”
Like he expected, he can sense Spamton bristling at the question. He opens his mouth, before snapping it closed, and looking to the side past Tenna. He sniffs, before turning away to his vanity, bringing two small glasses out and filling one with a sweet smelling light pink liquid, and the other with a spicy dark brown liquid. Antennae twitching, he takes in the notes of alcohol and scowls. Disappointed but not really surprised, he can't help but say,
“You brought alcohol here!? Spamton you cant drink around the-”
“The kids I know. Look Ant, we aren’t filming anymore today after what happened, there’s no one else here, what's the problem if i kick back a little bit and take some of the stress off. Look, I even put monster wine in your cup. Just- just let me have this.”
Spamton says with a tired sigh, offering the sweeter smelling cup to him. Hesitantly, he reaches out and takes the cup from the human, his gloved hand dwarfing Spamton’s smaller one. Spamton gives the monster a crooked little smile, and sips his drink. Tenna follows suit, and can't help but admit that what wine his co-host picked was very sweet and refreshing. The two drink in silence for a bit, Spamton getting more comfortable as the drink calms him down. He rolls up his sleeves and takes off his bow tie, shifting in his seat. Tenna has sipped down his drink and half the refill Spamton poured him by now and can feel the warmth spreading out throughout him.
“I’m guessing you wouldn’t let me get away with another smoke as well huh?” Tenna can feel his brows furrowing as he readies himself to once more tell him about the dangers of second hand smoke, and how bad it is for the human doing the smoking when Spamton snorts and laughs.
“You should see your face! Yeah… I didn't think you would.” He rolls his eyes and takes another drink of his freshly twice refilled whisky with a chuckle. Antennas shooting up in surprise, the warm feeling from his chest from the wine float up to his cheeks. Had he really never heard Spamton laugh before? It’s a nice sound he decides as he takes another sip.
“You can take off your googly eyes by the way. They look ridiculous. I don’t understand why you wear them, you are expressive enough without them” Surprised, Tenna touches one of the giant googly eyes taped to where his eyes “should” be. His gloved hand fiddles with the rim of the glass as he responds.
“I… scare humans without them. Well I scare them less with them on.” With a fake laugh, he makes half-hearted jazz hands, “Cant be scared of someone with someone with googly eyes right ! It was one of the things that came down into the dump underground a lot, so you humans must have really liked them! They help me not frighten the human cast and crew.” His antennae drop down, remembering Spamton’s earlier fear towards him.
A loud honk of a laugh interrupts his sadness. He looks back over to Spamton to see him doubled over on the couch shaking with laughter, a hand over his mouth trying to stifle his obvious mirth. Tenna would almost be offended if he wasn’t so confused as to what caused the man to lose it. Wiping a tear out of his eye, Spamton gains enough control to stop his laughing fit and looks back up at the eyeless fluffy white ant monster.
“Like you could ever be considered scary! YOU!? HEhehaha- Look big guy, I think you're over-thinking things! You're like the softest least scary person I've ever met. A pain in my ass yeah, but not remotely “frightening”. You're like a big puppy when around the other actors when they praise you, but like a eyeless one with a fat ass?” He snorts and rolls his eyes. “So seriously take ‘em off, they can't be too comfortable. Maybe that’s why you have such a stick up your ass! Hell knows I get pissy when things feel bad on my skin ... .or I guess for you, fur?” He devolves into giggles again.
Gobsmacked, Tenna takes off his googly eyes with a wince, the tape that keeps them on slightly tugging on his sensitive face fur. Afterwards he searches his little co-host for any sign of him lying or being scared of his eyeless face. He doesn’t find any. Spamton looks slightly disheveled, shirt wrinkled with the top two buttons of his button up undone- when did that happen? His face is rather flushed, an easy smile and his eyes are slightly glossy and-oh. Tenna hasn’t actually been around a human after they've had liquor, but he had read about the symptoms of drinking in a “Guide to dating” book a very enthusiastic acquaintance lent him when the barrier first broke. Spamton has three drinks, which doesn’t really seem like a lot, but he has nothing to compare this to, if three is a lot for a human. He is pretty short, which could be why, but anyways, there was one obvious answer to his giggling fit. His co-worker was drunk.
Sighing, he leans over to take glass from Spamton to replace his drink with water. Spamton moves his arm away before he could get to it with a grunt, stretching back on the couch and raising the glass above his head and back as far as he can.
Tenna gives him an unimpressed glare and shuffles closer. He still has almost two feet over the little guy. He towers over Spamton as he reaches to get the glass and feels the human’s unoccupied hand push on the underside of his jaw, close to his shrunken mandibles. Tenna placed his hand over the smaller man's hand- that is much too close to his mandibles for comfort- and pins it to the couch by his head, using his other hand to gently take the glass into one of his much larger gloved hands. When he doesn't hear the expected snark or even get an annoying struggle in return, he curiously moves an antenna down towards Spamton. He is even more red, eyes wide and breathing a bit heavier.
With a curious tilt of his head, he twitched his antenna to get an olfactory reading on the human. Spamton always smelled slightly sweet and inviting ( which annoyingly was the opposite of his personality), but it's much stronger now. A spicy yet cloyingly sweet smell that he can’t quite read has him bringing his other antenna down to rub around the small human's neck. It smells so familiar yet different, but the bug monster can’t quite place it until he hears a small whine under him.
Bright white fur puffing up, he wrenches himself away from Spamton. He had never smelled THAT on a human before, usually its fear or just general discomfort. Putting more distance between him and his aroused co-host he crosses the room to the mini fridge. For a moment he stays still, trying to calm down, hand holding the whisky glass almost tightly enough to shatter it. His antennae keep twitching, sending the tantalizing scent back through his head. He rubs his hand over his face and down his snout, stopping when he reaches his mouth and mandibles. Instead of the nubs they should be, they are almost half way to their full size. Taking stock of his body he realizes that it was responding in kind. He can feel his own pheromones glands sending out a receptive scent,and feels his cock hardening inside him. He swiftly dives his antennae to the whisky glass and takes a huge sniff to try and flush his system. Recoiling at the strong unpleasant smell, it seems to have had the intended effect as he feels his body cool down.
Once he feels mostly unaffected he reaches into the small fridge and brings out two glass bottles of water, before turning back around towards Spamton. The black haired human is lounging across the back of the couch, as if what just happened wasn't a big deal. Feeling the muscle near he eye-socket twitch under his fur in annoyance, Tenna walks back over.
Handing Spamton a water, and takes a seat on the opposite loveseat across from the couch. A very professional and respectable amount of space between the two. Everything is fine and normal! Tenna watches him drink some water with relief, before bringing up his earlier question. Not as a way to ignore what just happened, of course! Call him a curious bug, and the question was just never answered after all.
“You did really well with Noelle today. I uh, saw the tail end of your story, you looked…comfortable? Like you were in your element.I thought… well you called them all brats before. I just don't get you… I thought you hated kids?” Tenna fiddles with his gloved hands as he asks.
He notices Spamton takes another drink of his water, seeming to be sobering up. Maybe? he's unsure, his co-host is just much less red now at the very least.The human kinda purses his lips before moving them to an odd little scowl. Moving his body toward Tenna, he answers,
“Look, I may not like kids, but I'm not gonna like…be a dick to them? I know I'm an asshole, but not that much of one. Noelle didn't do shit to deserve my anger, she's what like six or whatever? Even if she did, I’d rather just leave than destroy some kids' day over some dumb mistake. God knows I know what it's like to be yelled at for no reason just cus some adult had a shitty day.” He takes another sip of water, before continuing,
“As for the brat thing? Eh, I was just trying to piss you off if I'm gonna be honest. Whatever. It didn't even work, I'm stuck here anyways.” He looks past Tenna scowling bitterly before taking another drink of water.
“God i need a smoke…” He mutters under his breath.
Before Tenna can reprimand him or ask another question, like why he was so scared earlier near the set, Spamton gets up with a groan. He wobbles a little bit, before regaining his balance. Tenna gets up as well, warring with himself on if he should go help his co-host regain his footing, but it seems he was unneeded.
“I’m going home, I wanna pass out before we have to be here tomorrow."
Tenna watches awkwardly while Spamton bumbles about to find his jacket. Biting his lip with one of his sharp fangs, Tenna can't help but worry.
“You didn't drive here right?”
He gets another snort in response as Spamton zips up his jacket and puts on his satchel.
“And bring my baby to such a busy lot that's known for collateral damage when moving things into the studio. Do you not remember the email we got warning us that the studio was not responsible for any personal loss? Yeah, No. I walked, I don't live too far from here.”
Moving his antennae around nervously, Tenna considered his next option. He didn’t know how affected a human would be after three whiskeys and then a water. But he also doesn't want to break this odd truce the two seemed to have settled on.
“Tenna, you got to get better at that. Just cus you don't have eyes doesn't mean I can't tell where you are looking, or that you want something. Spit it out, I want to go to sleep.” Spamton groans, shifting his weight impatiently.
“ Let me walk you home.” If something happened to his ornery little co-star he wouldn't be able to live with himself, even if they don't really get along.
With a surprised tilt to his head, Spamton looks the large monster up and down, before shrugging and smirking as he says,
“Sure. But you gotta be ok with me smoking on the way.”
Tenna can't help his snout from wrinkling in disgust, but nods his his ok without comment.
With an amused huff, Spamton leads the two out of the room, closing the door to the room softly. Tenna doesn't see the large disks like eyes, ones yellow,one pink, shining in the dark behind them. Nor does he see the smile that flashes under them just for Spamton’s eyes that fades as total darkness takes over the room as the door closes with a subtle click.