Merry Christmas Ollie
Ollie, you are one of the best friends I have ever had. My whole life has improved since I’ve met you, you just light up all of my sad moments and I can’t believe someone can even be as absolutely kind and dependable as you. So Merry Christmas, and I hope that this year gives you all the joy you so utterly deserve.
Here’s a present! It’s under the cut, and I hope you like it! It is, surprisingly, not rottenberry. I wanted to give you something unique, something for you instead of what’s just easier for me. I wish I could give you more!
~~~
"The person you think of as yourself exists only for you and even you don't know who that is. Everyone else creates a version of 'you' in their head. You're not the same person to anyone. There are thousands of versions of you out there"
Slim is damaged.
He stands on back porches with a cigarette between two shaking fingers, staring up at the sky like it holds answers he’s been searching for his entire life. He grins at Sans’ puns out of the corner of his mouth, like he’s trying not to think they’re funny.
There have been so many times when he’s come out of an unoccupied room, and he just stiffens as soon as he sees the other people in this one. Sometimes he walks out. Sometimes he doesn’t. Either way, his eyelights go dim.
Looking down at Sans, he always seems to have a smile on his face. He’s not sure it’s ever been real, not sure he’d even know the difference if it was.
He’s a very good actor. At least, Sans would like to think so.
Slim is a force to be reckoned with.
For the most part, he tries to hide his power. But Fell has seen him angry, he’s seen him fighting. He’s never seen him fight for his life, but he thinks he might know how it looks. Fell has an image in his head, of fire and fury and magic. He’s pretty sure not even a different reality would change that perception.
When Slim takes a breath, his ribcage moves out. This is not unusual by any means, but it moves out like it’s a chore, as though taking in a breath is the most irritating thing he’s had to do this week. Fell wonders if he wishes he didn’t have to.
How many times has he seen power under Slim’s bones? Even sprawled across the couch, his magic is pulsing. Even lifting his brows in faux amusement sparks his eyelights, broadcasting his every expression for all to see. If it were Fell, he would have long ago brought the display of emotions under wraps. He’s certain, however, that what Slim broadcasts is not what he actually feels.
Slim is a disruption.
His constant joking is influencing Blue’s brother for the worse. His pranks are messing up the house and his habits are irritating. Slim is everything Blue doesn’t want, but he can’t help but pity him.
His relationship with his own brother has suffered. That much is obvious. Not even Blue dislikes him enough to blame him for that. Razz was never very good at being his brother.
He’s quiet. He’s far too quiet when he doesn’t have that shit-eating grin across his face. Blue knows he should prefer the happiness, the giant smiles and joking laughter. He doesn’t think he’ll ever admit that he prefers the quiet, not matter how damaged that silence may be. If he did admit it, he thinks Slim might laugh. Maybe to spite him, but more likely for the sake of the laughter. He doesn’t seem to care much what Blue thinks. That suits Blue fine.
Slim is always tired.
His eyelights seem to droop, despite the scientific impossibility. He’s always looking at the ground, but Red doesn’t mind bringing it up. It makes Slim laugh when he jokes that he’s looking for the nearest Sans. Once, he responded yes, he was looking for the nearest Sans. Where else was he going to find a good soccer ball?
Red laughed. Slim didn’t. But when Red looked up, his grin was crooked across his face, staring at a wall to his left with those tired eyelights. Slim didn’t make eye contact very often.
“I’ll bet you’d get a kick out of picking on a shorter guy.”
There was the laugh.
He never seems to sleep. Red could find him at midnight, hanging upside down in a tree by his knees, just to see if he could. It could be three in the morning, and Slim could be found watching movies on the couch, raiding the pantry, doing sit-ups on the floor in the hall. Once, Red thought he saw the other staring into the cutlery drawer, no lights in his sockets. He had been half-asleep at the time. Slim claimed to have been sleep-walking. Red informed him that you can’t sleep-walk without sleeping, and the look of shock on Slim’s face had looked genuine.
Red was really beginning to realize how often Slim lied.
Slim is hilarious.
He always has a joke on the tip of his tongue, is constantly getting caught in the middle of a prank. Stretch loves to listen to him run his mouth for two minutes for the sake of a one-word punchline. That happens fairly often, probably more than should be comedically acceptable, but when’s the last time either of them cared about acceptable comedy?
One of the best things in the world is the look on anyone’s face who’s just been pranked by Slim. Stretch’s pranks are genius, of course, but Slim’s are pure art. There’s no simple bucket on top of a door with him.
Of course, Stretch pretty commonly has to talk him down from physically harming or mentally abusing someone in the same of pranking, but that’s not his fault. He’s from a Fell world, after all.
Stretch sees himself in Slim. It terrifies him, most of the time. He doesn’t like himself, but in Slim it almost seems outwardly acceptable. The tendency to draw into himself, or to joke about things that are decidedly not funny, is one they share, but it fits Slim better. He’s smaller, he’s more broken. It makes sense.
Sometimes, Stretch isn’t sure if it’s envy or pity he feels when he looks at his friend.
Slim is a good person.
He is. And it frustrates Papyrus to no end that he refuses to believe it. He’s seen him do amazing things, be kind in ways he never would have imagined. But any time Papyrus tries to tell him that, Slim tells him to fuck off. He knows it’s meant to be friendly, that that’s just how Slim is, and he truly doesn’t mind the language. He just wishes Slim would believe it.
That’s not to say that he doesn’t scare Papyrus sometimes. It’s not to say that there haven’t been times he’s wanted to pick up the nearest book and swat him on the back of the head with it. Slim is kind, but he is also unbelievably frustrating.
But no one is perfect. No one ever has been and no one ever will be, and most of the people Papyrus knows didn’t have to go through what Slim has had to go through. It’s not that Slim has done his best, because he really hasn’t, but he’s survived. Coming out of a world like that unscathed or perfectly stable would be impossible. But Slim has come out of his world supportive and strong. He’s the best friend someone like Papyrus could have ever asked for.
And if Papyrus sometimes has to watch where he steps? Choose his words carefully and check the other’s reaction to what he does say? It’s worth it. Being there for someone like Slim will always be worth it, and he wouldn’t give it up for the world.
Even that time when Slim had tried to stab him. It’d been awkward the next day, with Slim refusing to make eye contact. It hadn’t taken long for Papyrus to figure out that he didn’t really feel bad. He didn’t seem to regret the act of trying to stab someone. He just wished he hadn’t tried to hurt Papyrus. He seemed to think that Papyrus was going to stop being his friend. Sometimes Slim could be really stupid.
Slim is broken.
Razz has known that his brother isn’t quite right inside for most of their lives. Some of it is his fault, he has no doubts about that, but even when they were very small, Slim’d had something in his eyes that had always thrown Razz off. He couldn’t put a name to it at the time, but as they’d grown, he’d thought maybe it had been mischief. Nowadays, though, it was something altogether more dangerous.
He had never been… good. He had never been kind. Their world was unkind, all on its own, but Slim never made much of an effort to be different. Razz supposed he had himself to blame for that. He had set the worst kind of example. Who could expect someone who couldn’t even be motivated to pick up his laundry to take his world into his own hands?
Maybe he should have expected it.
Now that they were safe, though… Razz wasn’t sure. He still didn’t think that Slim was, in the sense he was used to, good. He didn’t think he was unselfish. But he could see him trying. More than anything in their lives, it seemed that Slim craved peace. Peace like this world was dangling in front of his nose, like was offered to him in every corner of this place, if only he could leave his memories behind.
Apparently, that was the difficult part. Leaving it behind. No matter how much he seemed to want it, he was fellverse through and through.
It made Razz feel better, though. It had been Razz that led them down their path, that had inspired his brother to be anything but good. It only made sense that Razz should get the opportunity to pave the way towards peace.
Let Slim follow again in his footsteps.
Slim is…
Looking at himself in the mirror.
His fingers are trembling, but he can’t remember when he last had a cigarette. The shaking doesn’t concern him at the moment. His gloves are ripped, just a little bit up near the top. That does kind of concern him. These were fuckin’ expensive, what the fuck.
He shrugs at his reflection. Shoots it some finger guns. Stuffs his hands in his pockets, then pulls them back out.
Wow, he thinks. This is a shitty mirror. It’s making that guy look like a dumbass. His mind is telling him it’s not the mirror’s fault. His heart kindly tells his mind to fuck off. His mind is more than a little confused about what’s talking to it, seeing as he doesn’t actually have a heart.
He snickers to himself, grinning at the reflection staring back at him. Then he turns around, grabs his coat off the bed, and leaves the room.
The room doesn’t know if it feels lighter or not.