Blue really shouldn't have been surprised. He let his face sink into his hands as he sighed tiredly. Well. There was really nothing for it. There was no reason to sit here and wait for someone who was never going to come.

He stood quickly, leaving a large tip on the table as an apology for not ever having ordered anything, and left quickly, pulling out his phone.

Red answered on the third ring, his voice even scratchier than normal from lack of sleep. "What?" he growled, but Blue knew he didn't mean anything by it.

"Hey, Red," he said, making his way down the path towards his house. His voice sounded thick, which he attributed to the unshed tears of embarrassment. "Are...are you busy?"

"No...didn't you have a date tonight?"

Blue grimaced before answering, "Yeah. But they...uh...well they never showed. So I'm free! Want to go do something?". He forced a false note of happiness into his voice, hoping it would be enough to save what little face he had left.

There was a long moment of silence, and Blue considered telling the other not to worry about it when Red finally spoke. "Meet me in Taleverse in five minutes." then he hung up.

Blue looked down at the now-silent phone in confusion, then shrugged, making his way to the machine.

Fifteen minutes later, they stood in the middle of a carnival on the surface. Blue's previous sadness was forgotten, and he had both hands covering his mouth as he bounced up and down in excitement. Red was grinning at him, apparently pleased with himself.

"Oh, Red, this is so cool! Look at the roller coasters! And the cotton candy, Ooo, can we get some cotton candy?" he knew he was babbling but he didn't care, spinning around and seizing Red by both hands, his excitement making him talk so fast his words were nearly indecipherable.

Red was laughing, nodding along to the many questions being asked of him and following along as Blue began dragging him around from ride to booth to game. The excitement was contagious, and Red seemed almost as happy as Blue found himself.

Finally, they found themselves walking somewhat quietly between the booths, the sounds of a concert and the shouts of the carnies echoing past them.

"Thank you so much, Red. This was the most fun I've had in ages!" Blue said happily, pulling more cotton candy off the stick he was holding and putting it in his mouth to melt.

Red smiled at him, and said, "Of course. I'm not about to let some piece of shit robot get you down in the dumps."

"Language, Red"

They both laughed slightly, Blue eating more of his cotton candy.

"You know," said Red, looking up at the lights of the huge ferris wheel that towered above them. "This would make for a fun date sometime."

Blue grinned at him, elbowing him slightly. "Thinkin' about bringing Grillby here?"

Red made a face at him. "I've told you before, Blue, there's nothin' going on there. He's just not my type."

"What, not hot enough for you?" They both snickered at the pun before Blue continued. "But yeah, I can see what you mean."

He spun around, his arms thrown wide, almost losing his grip on the almost-empty stick he still held. "This place is amazing! I'd love to have my first kiss here! Or be proposed to or something!"

Red blushed, but Blue didn't notice, still spinning. "Proposed to? Wouldn't that be embarrassing?" he choked out, and Blue paused, arms still thrown out and head cocked to one side.

"Okay," he conceeded. Then he laughed, lowering his arms and coming back over to stand beside Red. "But it's definitely a requirement that they use one of those things instead of an actual ring!" he said pointing at a booth that held ring-pops and smiling widely.

Red grinned at him, blush still very much present, then bought two, holding them out to Blue for him to choose which flavor he wanted. Blue thought very carefully before taking the cherry-flavored one, eating the last of his cotton candy before ripping the little package open and slipping it on, snickering slightly at the sight it made against his bones.

He looked up to see that Red had also slipped the blue-raspberry flavored one on and was still blushing, looking at it very intently.

Blue reached out and grabbed his hand again, slipping back into his chatter and dragging Red in the direction of the ferris wheel, sucking idly at the ring pop whenever he stopped for breath.

When Red woke up, he didn't immediately realize where he was. Instead of facing his cracked ceiling, his face was pressed into something hard and metal, and his bones ached from sleeping in an odd position. He straightened his legs slowly and moved his arms out, pausing when they encountered a cold tile floor.
Oh. Right. Fuck.
He wiggled out of his sleeping brother's hold carefully, doing his best to avoid waking him.

Very quietly, he made his way out of the room and up the stairs, intending to check on Blue. He stopped by the bathroom on his way and grabbed the first aid kit just in case.

When he reached his door, he eased it open slightly, peeking in. Then he caught sight of the empty bed and swung it open all the way, panicking slightly. Where was Blue? Had he run off? Had someone--

He was pulled out of his thoughts very suddenly by a bone construct flying towards his face. Cursing, he dodged to the side to avoid it, then looked around the room for its source.

He found it all too quickly in the form of a small skeleton who was slightly out of sight of the door, shaking from exhaustion and probably pain and looking on the verge of collapsing.

"Hey! Whoa! Hang on, there, no need to attack me! I just brought some medical supplies!" he said, trying to act like he found this whole thing amusing. The cover didn't seem to work well, and he felt himself fall slightly farther into his panic. As far as he knew, Blue didn't attack anyone first, not even that damn human. What the hell was going on?

Suddenly Blue was stumbling, falling to the ground with his arms clutched around his injured ribs. "D-don't hurt me!" he begged, bowing his head.

Red felt his soul drop as he quickly made his way to the other, depositing the first aid kit on the bed before kneeling in front of him. "Hey, it's alright, I'm not gonna--"

Before he could react, Blue's hand flashed out, his face now completely devoid of any fear, reaching under his ribcage and tapping his soul, performing a check and attempting to draw him into a battle. Red's soul, as pumped up with his EXP as it was, resisted the effort easily, but Blue's eyes grew wide as Red's stats were blinked out in front of him.

"You have LV..."

It was a statement, not a question, but Red answered it anyway. "Yes, I do," he said, trying to keep his voice from betraying any emotion. "It's all from years ago, I haven't--"

"Don't touch me!" Blue screamed, jumping back and away from him. "Don't come anywhere near me, you...you murderer !"

Red felt like the entire world had fallen out from underneath him. "Blue..." his voice was so small, so weak. He could feel a burning behind his sockets, and he didn't do anything to stop the tears that started to stream down his face.

"No! Don't call me that! I don't want a nickname from someone who's killed people!" Blue was backed into the wall, but he wasn't cowering. Instead, he looked angrier than Red had ever seen him in the years that they had known each other.

Red took a step forward, immediately regretting it when Blue's eyes lit up with his magic, smoke drifting from both sides. He held up his hands in a placating gesture, trying to calm the smaller skeleton. "I would never do anything to hurt you." he whispered, tears still running down his face.

Blue's chest was heaving, and he continued staring at Red with anger and magic and a threat in his eyes. "Why, exactly, should I trust you?"

There was a long moment of suffocating silence. Then...

"Because you've always trusted me to be better than I ever even dreamed I could be," Red said, simply.

Blue's eyelights went out for a split second, and when they came back, his magic had stopped flaring. He still looked angry, but confusion seemed to be taking some of the fire away. "Do we...do we know each other?" he asked, scrunching his face in a way that Red had long since grown to know very well.

"Yeah, you could say that," he said, still being as quiet and nonthreatening as possible. "Can I please check your breakage? It's starting to bleed through the bandaging."

Blue glanced down, as though he had only just noticed he was injured, then he looked back up at Red, seeming torn. Finally, he nodded and took a few steps towards Red, who beckoned him to lay back on the bed. As he started to peel the bandages away, pulling new ones out of the first aid kit to redress the wound, he could feel the other's eyes on him, watching his every move. The quiet in the room was becoming almost suffocating, and Red worked as fast as he could without injuring Blue further, wanting more than anything to just get out of that room. Blue couldn't have changed this much, could he? He couldn't have just...lost the hope, the trust and kindness, all of the amazing things that made him who he was. That person couldn't just be gone , could he?

Red wrapped the last of Blue's ribs, and made to stand up before a small hand seized his wrist. Red flinched slightly, not having expected the sudden contact. He looked down at Blue, not able to quite meet his eyes. He chose, instead, to focus on the pillow right next to his head. It was graying slightly, an old, limp sort of thing that Red had found in the dump years ago. Blue always said it smelled like him, but he always thought it just smelled like Blue. He used to joke that maybe they were both right, since they were the same person, but Blue argued that he would never go around smelling like tobacco--

"How do we know each other?"

Red didn't know how to respond to that. He was a murderer. Despite his reasons, despite the fact that he hadn't done it since he had met Blue, he was still a murderer. This Blue wouldn't want to know what they were to each other. He searched for words for a few seconds, still unable to meet the soft blue eyes that were almost always shaped into stars or hearts or something of the like but now were nothing more than cold blue circles. "We're...we're real good friends, is all. Known each other for quite a few years." Then he gently pulled his wrist away and took the first aid kit and the bloodied bandages out of the room, leaving Blue to himself.