sooo the idea is kind of him bringing reader to a SDN dinner party or corporate celebration with colleagues and friends, honestly up to you to decide the general context, and reader (who is a close friend, but think her feelings for robert are unrequited!) just keeps internally spiraling over the fact that robert is lowkey ignoring her and feels very insecure about the whole situation with blonde blazer (if she's dating phenomaman or not is also up to you) so... yeah! just very angsty and hurt but with a lot of comfort and fluff at the end, if you could mix bits of jealousy (maybe from both sides 👀?) or a kind of will-they-won't-they thing.
sorry if this was long or if i ran over any boundaries or something, i'm a first time asker desperate for robert content!! anyways, thank you 😊
hi bb! thank you for the request—and no, you're not overstepping!! i absolutely adore long requests, don't worry—especially with how much detail they have?? i eat it right up. and i'll have you know yours sent me on tangent that left me at least 3k words on my doc for this idea.
far enough to let me go (close enough to stay), chapter 1; robert robertson x reader
chapter notes: fluff, childhood(ish)-best-friends-to-(?), yearning, angst (my favourite thing to write), things left unsaid
author's notes: since we don't have much canon information yet, this is assuming all goes well, the villains are defeated, everyone survives, and robert goes back to being mecha man.
*i've split this into chapters because it got a bit too long. will post the next parts in the coming days. hope you all enjoy <33
not beta-read, we die like robert's father.
masterlist
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PR events had never been your thing, but being the youngest heir of two of the most prominent business figures in the city meant that you were acclimated to the environment. The suffocating dress codes, the flashing cameras, the smell of expensive perfume that never fully masked body-odor, the small-talk and the cold food from the buffet—yes, you’d practically lived in galas and social events when you were younger.
That’s how you’d met Robert, actually; both of you barely out of high school and stuck in a gala that felt a size too big for your legs and a tone too grown-up for your brains. You were crammed into a back table for some mandatory icebreaker, trying not to knock over your water glass while your parents flitted around, nodding and laughing at conversations you couldn’t care less about.
He was there too, slouched in his chair like it was a throne only he could see through, picking idly at his plate and surveying the crowd like it was a TV show he’d already seen too many times, until his gaze landed on you.
“Come here often?” he’d asked, deadpan.
You’d snorted. “I wish I could say I didn’t.”
He’d grinned then, and it had been history from there.
Even after his parents had died and yours had moved to an entirely different country, even after he’d had to keep up Mecha Man despite the financial ruin, even when your aunt had stolen the business in all her corrupt glory—hell, even after you and your siblings had finally taken back your birthrights and Robert had gone back to being Mecha Man under the SDN—somehow, you’d still stuck together.
Through all those nasty apartments, the piles of medical bills, the shit SDN put you both through—you’d stuck it out until the worst was over, and you were finally free to live the lives that you wanted.
Well, mostly.
Because as you continued climbing the SDN’s dispatching ranks and Robert began prioritizing his Mecha-Manning under SDN’s supervision, that meant that neither of you would be escaping the biggest PR event of the year.
You’d manage to skirt around all the others: “I have a prior arrangement, sorry!” and “Family business. You know how it is.” but Blonde Blazer had told everyone that this was mandatory for all high-level dispatchers and superheroes—meaning they’d be taking attendance like you were school children.
The knocking at your door came again, and Robert’s muffled voice floated through the entrance hall.
“You ready?” He calls, “because if not, I’d uh—I'd really not like to freeze to death.”
You roll your eyes and clip your second earring on, shutting off all the lights as you make your way methodically through your living room, giving your cat one last pet before grabbing your purse from the side table. “Be out in a sec!”
Robert grumbles something you can’t make out, but he does stop knocking.
You make a beeline for the shoe rack and grab the lone pair of dark heels that managed to survive the years of disuse, wincing at how tight they squeeze your feet once you manage to slip them on—fuck, you think to yourself as you shut off the light to the entry hall, I need to get a new pair.
It wasn’t often that you wore heels, but you made it to the door without tripping or wrinkling your dress, so you count it as a win.
Pulling the door open, you sling your bag over your shoulder and find Robert there, fist poised as if to knock again.
He’s actually fixed his hair for once, slicked back, though a single strand falls stubbornly into his eye. His stubble—neatly trimmed after weeks of your teasing comments about how he ought to be careful, otherwise he’d end up looking like Flambae—highlights the sharp lines of his jaw, and, maybe it’s just the lighting, but his freckles seem more vivid than usual. They scatter across his cheeks and neck like constellations, as if the universe decided to grace him with its design.
You can’t help but trace them, your gaze lingering, searching for patterns you could map out if you only had the chance—if only he'd let you. Your fingers twitch with the urge to tilt his chin, just so, to study the way the light shifts across his skin and see if the stars there change, too.
But you don’t.
Roaming your eyes further down, you note his suit—pressed, fitted perfectly to him—a little chrysanthemum peeking out of his breast pocket.
His tie, though, for some unknown reason, was haphazardly done. It was uneven on one side, and the end of it was crooked as it fell across his chest.
You raise an eyebrow and step forward, lifting your hands to begin untying it—but you stop just before you touch the tie, looking up at Robert with a question in your eyes.
He’s… he’s staring at you, you realize, something strange in his gaze that you’ve never seen before. Admiration? No, you’ve seen that many times—something else. Something gentler. Curiosity? But you’ve seen that too.
Before you can place it—he glances away, rubbing the back of his neck as a flush climbs over his cheeks and he gives you an almost imperceptible nod.
You sigh as your fingers begin to fiddle with his tie, pulling it a bit closer to you and steadying the man as he follows along with the movement.
“Just what happened to your tie, Robertson?” You demand, “I thought this is how you gain rapport with the newbies?”
Robert’s flush darkens. “I was in a hurry," he mutters. “And don’t last-name me—if anything, I should be last-naming you.”
Pointedly, he glances at his watch, before dragging his gaze back to you and raising a brow.
“Half-past seven.” He deadpans. “Remind me what time we were supposed to be there?”
You roll your eyes, finishing his tie and stepping back, a hand on your waist. “There.”
A gentle breeze gently brushes the strand of hair out of his eyes, and for a heartbeat, you feel your hand move up to do the same—before aborting the movement and taking another step back.
Under the flickering streetlamp, Robert looks—
Well.
Handsome.
No other way to put it, really.
He looks like he could be yours, though, doesn't he? Your traitorous mind supplies, like he could show up like this on your doorstep every weekend, teasing you about being late? Like he could take you dancing or out to dinner and walk you home afterward? Like you could see him standing at the end of a long aisl—you banish the those thoughts instantly.
Robert wouldn’t want that. Couldn’t. Not when he had all these fans, when he had Blonde Blazer sneaking him glances across the room, or Water Boy stuttering and blushing with every word out of his mouth—that last one had increased exponentially after the kid had been promoted to an actual field team just months after training.
Not when Robert was Mecha Man and you were just somebody’s kid with a ton of privileges you didn’t feel like you deserved.
And besides. You’ve known each other far too long to entertain that last thought.
Robert’s staring again, that unreadably gentle look in his eyes—and you're not really sure if he's about to tell you that your outfit doesn't fit the dress code, that the event got cancelled, or something else entirely. You smooth down your dress self consciously, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.
“What?” is the first thing out of your mouth, “do I not look alright?”
It’s silent for a damning moment, and you almost turn right back around, up your front steps, and back into your house never to be seen again—until Robert speaks.
“You look beautiful.” He says quietly.
You feel a flush begin to creep up your neck as your breath catches in your throat—along with your spit.
Oh fuck.
You jerk forward, coughing and spluttering and trying not to ruin your clothes.
“Shit—” Instantly, he's at your side, gentle hands rubbing circles onto your shoulders, steadying you as the coughs pass and guiding you back upright.
You stare at the asphalt and beg it to swallow you whole.
Still, Robert’s gaze finds yours, concern flickering in his warm, brown eyes. “You alright?” He asks, brows furrowing, an adorable crease forming between them that your fingers itch to smooth out. You clear your throat once more.
“Yep,” you smile, straighten up and give him a small shrug. “‘M not dead, am I? Let’s go.”
It’s no secret to anyone who’s spent any time with Deltarune Chapter 2 that Spamton has some serious underlying issues. More than any character in the game, Spamton has apparent struggles in his life that seem almost impossible to fix with how abundant they are, how he’s in a deep, heavy spiral through no fault of his own.
But one thing not many people will read into is Spamton’s struggle with identity.
More specifically his struggle with his own presence.
Now I’m not saying this in a sense that Spamton feels like his own spot in the world is undeserved though that certainly is the case - what I’m centering this around is Spamton’s internal conflict of being “big” and being “small”.
Spamton is, in a literal sense, small. In his regular form Spamton is shorter than Kris, he’s shorter than all the Addisons, he occupies a space that is undeniably “small”. But applying this to a more general sweeping statement, Spamton, his whole entire life, has been small. He’s been pitied and looked down upon by the other Addisons presumably when he was still hanging out with them even, people treat him as if he’s “lesser”. He’s always been “lower in the food chain” than his peers, having a particular string of bad luck. He didn’t initially accept those mysterious phone calls out of a urge to grow his brand but out of sheer desperation. He did it because he was at a breaking point and had no other choice. And even then he was made to be a backseat passenger in his own life, being doomed to be a puppet once whatever was giving him success decided they’d had enough of him.
But despite everything working against him, more than anything, Spamton wants to be big. He wants to be something, be someone. To prove to the world that in spite of how fate has treated him that he can still rise to the top.
When Spamton talks about “being a big shot”, he’s not talking about achieving success in a monetary way.
He’s talking about making a direct impact on the world.
Spamton knows he won’t ever get to be a “big shot” like he was before, for his own smallness has been the cause of that. Because he wasn’t used to achieving the success he did back in 97, he wasn’t strong enough to take a step back and realize that something could be amiss here, he was too busy caught up in the fame to care. This fleeting feeling that he’d made it big led him to cutting off his would-be friends, and surrounding himself with people and consumers who didn’t really care about him personally but saw his success and fed into his spiral in lieu of it.
He knows his chances of getting successful in that revenue is gone, so he chose to go another route: surpassing everyone that failed him. Not just in success, but in presence.
He prayed every night to his perfect body in a basement, a big, hulking metal thing covered in wires and tubes, something that was not of his world, something made for a body more real than any fake realness he could aim for. Spamton saw something there, a glimpse into that great beyond, and it drove him. He wanted to be there, to be among greater people, people who weren’t the ones who had discarded him like an old playing. To be free. To have a new life. To have a clean slate. And he prayed, and he prayed. And one day, his prayers came true - but not without fate catching up to him.
Even when he’s the most physically big he’s ever been Spamton’s own smallness holds him back. The strings keep him at bay. He walks through the air like he so wanted to do but it’s not the air he wants - it’s old air, dark, dreary, and set against a backdrop of a city skyline filled with the remnants of his own old self. He walks through heaven but it’s not full of clouds or pearly gates, it’s made of bricks. The whole thing is a sham. A false sky for a fake angel.
In this supposed perfect body, Spamton struggles to even move on his own accord. He’s twitching uncontrollably, his head is moving and snapping around at random intervals…the shell Spamton found himself in is actively not one made for him. It’s made for something else to manipulate how small he is, and to show him to be careful what he wishes for.
But in all this undeniable hopelessness, even when his final grandest wish has been exploited like he himself has time and time again, he still wants to make a change to the world.
He still wants to do a great amount of good.
Before Spamton hits the ground, he says that from now on, he’ll live for himself. Himself and his friends.
He wants to take the “privilege” he sees himself as having - that being that there is something beyond this, something even greater than a luxury room in a tyrannical monarch’s condo building, something even greater than being a bit shot - and share it with other people. He wants to let them know that there’s more to life. He no longer wants to make an impact to spite his naysayers, but to benefit those he misunderstood, or perhaps give a second chance to those who likely didn’t understand the full picture. He wants to make a good impact on their lives.
But that’s not something he’s allowed to do.
He’s literally cut short before he can do any of the things he said he wanted to do. And just like that, he’s back to being small again, as brief as his stint with being anything but was.
Then, Spamton offers you something. It’s his last resort at making a change, and he knows it’ll seal his fate, if it wasn’t already.
Spamton offers to become your strength.
Spamton, even though he struggles to accept it, will always be small. But he can never go back to being the same small he was before, he can’t go back to being small like he was when his wares were struggling to sell and when he’d run his mouth at nights set against the backdrop of a grill. Even though he cannot be helped, he knows that the power he’s been bestowed upon will help you more than it has “helped” him.
Perhaps he couldn’t be anything but a simple puppet after all.
But that doesn’t mean he’ll stop trying to make a bigger impact.
If you want to earn your wings my sweet
You’ve got to pay your soul
Take a gulp take a breath
GO AHEAD AND SIGN THE SCROLL
King Dice, now I got her, boy
The Boss is on a roll!
This poor, un-fortunate, soul!
((Finally got this all drawn and done out with my Devil’s Contract AU
To sum it up simply, it’s a Cuphead BATIM Crossover AU Where Alice signs her soul to the Devil to get her wings! Which in turn she becomes the Devil’s servant ala Megara and Hades from Hercules! ^u^
I got more stuff in my Devils Contract AU tag like Alice’s look after she signs the contract vuv))
((Asks are Open!))
