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As soon as the door was shut, Susie broke into a run. She ran, and ran, and didn't stop running until she couldn't hear the music anymore, ending up well past the school. Finally stopping to catch her breath, she realised she had been crying, and slumped down. Stupid Toriel. Stupid... convenience store guy. Even if she had remembered his name, she sure wouldn't be calling him Mister. It was probably something... something dumb. Yeah.
She thought about going back for Kris's sake. She hadn't meant to leave them on their own like that. But what would be the point, if she couldn't even pull herself together? She started to wipe away a tear on her cheek and, as if on cue, a raindrop splashed down to replace it. Hm. This was probably one of those "metaphors" Alphys had tried to teach her about. The rain started coming down hard as she picked herself up off the road. Whatever. She'd slept through worse. She started heading west - maybe the alley was deserted again this time of night. As she caught sight of the Holiday mansion in the distance, though, she felt a shiver run through her scales. The rain became colder and colder until it turned first to sleet and then to snow. Ah. This was "worse". She could put up with a lot, but being cold-blooded and below-zero temperatures didn't mix.
She did have to find somewhere warm to sleep after all. Damn. Well, Kris's house was out of the question. Noelle's mom would never let her stay over, and anyway, Noelle had been acting... strange recently. The apartment... not the apartment. Damn! What should she do? She recalled all of the sage parental advice she had received over the years, and found that neither idea applied here. Hmm... a place that she can go... no matter what's happening outside...
Suddenly the voice of Ralsei appeared in her mind: "you can stay here whenever you want!" "like a second home to you." Of course! All she needed to do was break into the school!
"Imaginary Ralsei, you're a genius!"
Ralsei stood alone in his room, facing his sole window. He was in the middle of his most frequent activity, which was nothing. It wasn't the same nothing as before. Before, there had been nothing he wanted to do. He knew that in time, he would meet the heroes, and that's when his life's purpose would begin.
That's what was supposed to have happened. What should have happened. Something had gone terribly wrong. The future had always filled him with comfort, even if it had been of the somewhat morbid variety. Since the events of yesterday, it felt as if he was adrift in a sea of ink. No sign of land on the horizon, endless, opaque darkness below him. Now, the nothing he was experiencing only reminded him of all the things that he should be doing, that he so desperately wanted to do. He wanted to figure out what had happened to Kris, he wanted to protect Castle Town and its meagre population, he wanted to help Noelle, he wanted to tell Susie it was all going to be okay-
He did nothing.
He absentmindedly took a seat on the trashcan, his sole possession. Susie had sounded so fired up about filling up his room; it was, he knew, a promise she couldn't possibly fulfill. Though she cared - and she did care, so hard - Ralsei knew that Kris showed no interest whatsoever in the idea. "Of course (not)" - If only he could believe that it had just been a yawn. Unbeknownst to Ralsei, trash cans were generally not designed as seating, and the lid had been straining under his weight while he moped. By the time he came back to reality and felt the lid giving way beneath him, it was too late, and he fell in. The lid, thrown upwards and outwards, bounced off the ceiling with a loud CRASH, crucially obscuring the sound of someone entering Castle Town via the closet doors. Ralsei decided not to get out of the trash can. He was in his element.
Susie tumbled through the window of the unused classroom. Surely, she thought, this is too much climbing for one lizard in one day. She didn't even try to land gracefully, and her efforts were rewarded in turn, hitting her thigh hard on the stone floor. Ow. Whatever. It would go better in the Dark World. What happened in the Light World basically didn't matter. Ow.
She half-walked, half-limped to the closed doors, and threw herself in for what would very hopefully be the last time today. After her flawless landing in Castle Town, her basking in success was cut short by a faint clang from the direction of the castle. If Ralsei were here, he would have said that it sounded like a garbage can lid hitting the floor after bouncing off the ceiling. As he was not, Susie decided to investigate. It wasn't like there was much to see otherwise. Even in the Dark World, the shops had wound down for the night, and few of the town's already-sparse population still walked the streets. In fact, as she passed, the only person she saw was that weird blue Rudinn, looking at her with... was that pity? Hmph. What did he know. She made her way up the castle stairs with increasing familiarity - Ralsei wasn't kidding about "feeling like home", huh. She came to Ralsei's room, and, with her characteristic grace and tact, slammed open the door and barged in.
"Yo, Ralsei! I'm back for another- oh."
"Hi, Susie."
"Uhh, dude, you appear to be sitting face-down in a trash can."
"Yes."
"Do you wanna, um, talk about it?"
"No."
Susie let her all-too-brief experiment with patience end. "WELL, TOO BAD, NERD!" She reached in and grabbed Ralsei by the scruff of his neck. He gave her the expression of a dog that knows it's done something it wasn't supposed to. "Ugh, quit doing that." She set him down. "What, looking cute?" "YES! I MEAN, NO! I MEAN - DAMMIT!" Ralsei snickered, and Susie, despite her fuming, couldn't help but smile at seeing him back to his normal self. Still, they shouldn't stay here, she thought. It was still too... she felt a pang of guilt at not finding a single item for Ralsei's room in the Dark Sanctuary. If only Kris hadn't... no. She shouldn't blame anyone other than herself. She had to make it up to him some other way.
"Hey Ralsei, let's go to my room."
"Um, Okay!" He tried to hide a small blush as he followed her down the stairs. Surely there was a perfectly normal reason that she wanted him to come to her room. Alone. At night. Oh angel, what's she going to do?
"Anything." She sat down on her bed.
"Huh?"
"I said, we can do anything you like. You never really... get to choose what to do, y'know? I want to know what Ralsei wants."
Thoughts raced through Ralsei's mind, not all of them welcome. What was a Ralsei-like desire? Suddenly, his thoughts coalesced onto one thing, and he knew that it wouldn't leave his brain until he said it.
"Um... you know, we never did try... ballroom dancing..."
Susie instantly regretted coming up with this plan. She didn't say anything, but Ralsei could see her face fall.
"I mean, you don't have to if you're not, um, comfortable with it! Maybe you could just, uh, playthemusic?" He snapped his fingers, and a guitar fell into her hands. And, several seconds later, another guitar, as it became apparent that the first was covered in so many spikes as to be completely unplayable.
After marvelling at her instrument for a moment, Susie looked up. "Dude, this could, like, work. But uh, not that I'd question you, Ralsei, doesn't ballroom dancing require... a ballroom?"
"Oh! I can take care of that, if you don't mind?"
"Why would I- WOAH!" As she spoke, the walls of the room moved outward as the ceiling rose. She found herself sitting at the centre of an ornately decorated ballroom, sitting on a musician's chair with a stand in front of her where her bed and drawer once stood. To her delight, she noticed that said decorations remained heavy on bladed weaponry.
Ralsei looked on expectantly, ready to perform. There was only one problem.
"Ralsei? I can't, uh, read this." Susie said, pointing at the offending sheet music. And then with a snap of Ralsei's fingers, the symbols on the page started to shift, and she found that she could read it, as long as she didn't concentrate too hard... probably nothing important.
Ralsei made a valiant effort to perform both parts of a ballroom dance at once. His attempts were not aided by Susie's tendency to skip notes that were too hard to reach, or suddenly stop to find the next fret, or end up playing in truly bizarre time signatures (seriously, who alternates between 11/8 and 12/8 each measure??). Slowly, in fits and starts, she improved. He began to surmise that most of her "mistakes" were made on purpose, to watch him scramble to recover.
After a while, though, Susie's inability to fully carry a tune (and perhaps to elicit a fault out of her dancer) began to frustrate her more than anything. "Ralsei, is there any way to get this thing to play itself?
He gave a faint smile. "Not normally, Susie! But if I just do..." without breaking his rhythm, he gave a wave of his hand, and the strings began to move on their own. It was a somewhat haunting waltz, a little bit slow and a little bit sad. Ralsei couldn't remember where he'd heard it, or if he was supposed to have heard it, but put it out of his mind for just one night.
Susie set down the now quite eerie self-playing guitar, unsure of what to do. Instead of resuming, though, Ralsei stepped towards her, hand outstretched.
"It's okay, dude, you don't have to-" she could feel her resistance wavering each time she looked up at those big, pink eyes. Dammit, when had he taken off his glasses? "I-I mean, I'm not the person this is for-"
Ralsei knew that if he let this continue on for another second, he would lose his nerve and let Susie down. Mustering all his courage, he grabbed her arm and borrowed a phrase: "W-well, too bad, n-nerd!" Laughing, Susie followed.
The relaxed tempo turned out to be ideal for teaching, and Susie, despite her protestations, wasn't nearly as clumsy as she expected. In fact, it was Ralsei, heart beating out of his chest, that couldn't seem to settle into the rhythm. Subconsciously, the song sped up each time he and Susie came closer, until he let her take charge. Catching a glimpse of her smile as they stepped let him finally relax - even if she did blush and look away as she caught his eye. They swayed together, as if automatically.One two three one two three... Ralsei could sense the song drawing to a close, but there was still one thing he wanted to do. Find a good handhold, wait for the right moment and... LIFT!...
For a moment, it must have looked perfect. Susie suspended horizontally a metre above the ground, one of Ralsei's arms supporting her,the other splayed outwards, holding her hand. It might well have been perfect, if Ralsei had had a patch more upper-body strength or if Susie had landed a moment earlier. Instead, gravity exacted its due, and they collapsed on the floor one after the other as the music came to a close. Ralsei's thoughts began to spiral. Why had he done that? What if Susie had been hurt? Surely she would never want to do it again now. He had messed everything up again, and now he - he heard laughing from the heap on top of him.
"Ralsei, that was AWESOME! I thought you were really gonna pull it off for a sec. I'm doing that to you next time, for sure.
He blushed. "Next time?"
"Yeah dude! I should probably sleep at some point, though."
"Oh! Right! I had forgotten all about that..." with another snap of his fingers, the room started to take on its more familiar shape. The walls moved inward, the wood flooring was replaced with carpeting, and Susie fell into a sitting position as her bed reappeared under her. Ralsei pulled himself up off the ground, but as he moved towards the door, he heard a clearing of the throat behind him and paused.
"Ralsei, wait. Don't -"
"Susie?"
The words came out like molasses. "I need - I would be more comfortable - don't leave me tonight, okay?"
Ralsei opened his eyes - he registered, belatedly, that he had been sleeping. He didn't normally sleep, being too caught up in his own thoughts. Before he could wonder if Susie's arrival had only been a dream, he remembered where he was. He was in her room. On her bed. And - yup, she was still holding him like a plush toy, sound asleep, snoring like a buzzsaw. He spotted two pairs of spiked bracelets on top of the drawer, and gave a silent thanks to Susie for taking them off beforehand.
He started trying to wiggle out of her grip. She was holding him tight, though, and every time he moved she started to stir. He strained once more, turning around to get a good look at her face. Susie looked more peaceful than he had ever seen her. Her snout was half buried in the pillows, her hair fell around her face like in a way that was so carefree and, although she would never admit it, cute. Something deep inside him said that he wanted to keep that face in his life just as long as - well, just as long as he could.
He did nothing. And there was nothing he would rather be doing.