Chapter Text
Sweat dripped down into your eyes, your arms strained and your back protested as you hauled cardboard boxes up seven fucking flights of stairs.
And of course the elevator was out. You groaned internally, setting the last box of who knows what (probably bricks) down in the apartment. The little blond who hired you reached for her crutches.
"Hey, don't worry about getting up." You said, pushing the box over to her chair.
"Thank you and I'm so sorry again. I swear the elevator was working this morning." She said, shaking her head.
"I'm not worried about it." You replied, forcing a smile and pushing your sweaty hair back out of your face.
"I'd have offered to pay more if I knew, but I only pulled out the thirty." The girl said cringing and staring down at the crumpled bills in her hand.
"I agreed to thirty, so that's all I would expect. Enjoy living in Ebbot!" You replied, turning to leave now that the transaction was over with. On your way back down the stairs you pulled out your phone and opened up your odd-job app, marked your current one complete. It looked like the girl had already reviewed you.
Five stars! Fuck yeah. One more review like that and you would unlock higher paying gigs and repeat gigs. Probably still less than minimum wage, but…it was better than nothing, which is what you had been making when you were trying to get a "real" job. You didn't have a car and you had already scraped together enough for rent for the month, so the thirty could go straight into your empty pantry.
You were down to a single egg and a box of kix cereal but no milk. You mentally started making a list; eggs and milk obviously but some noodles wouldn't hurt, a bag of rice could go a long way, if you made Egg fried Rice for breakfast and Spanish rice for dinner. Fresh fruit and veggies were too expensive, but maybe a bag of frozen broccoli stir fry would give you some vitamins. Bread and peanut butter wouldn't hurt. You might even be able to get some ground beef if there was some getting close to its sale by date, the store you went to usually discounted them by a few dollars, so they didn’t go bad.
Thinking about that, the first place you went was the grocery store. The discount meat usually went fast and you would have to get there early if you wanted any. Sadly by the time you managed to force your tired legs to walk all the way to the grocery store the discount bin near the meat section was sold out down to a seven dollar pack of beef tips. Which you could have probably mixed with the stir-fry you planned on getting, but that would have been seven dollars out of your budget to experiment on something you might not even like.
So, you left the beef tips where they were and grabbed a small buggy to start your shopping. Bread and peanut butter first, then noodles, frozen and cold stuff for last. You were comparing different boxes of noodles, trying to decide if it was worth the three cents more to get the whole wheat ones for some extra nutrition when someone cleared their throat from behind you.
“Oh, sorry. I’m just standing in the way.” You replied, stepping back out of there way for the pers- holy shit that was a tall ass skeleton!?
Monsters were of course nothing new, especially living in Ebbot city, so close to the New Ebbot monster district, but he was just so freaking tall.
“NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE HUMAN, I WAS ACTUALLY MAKING AN ATTEMPT TO ASK FOR SOME ASSISTANCE.” He replied, loudly.
“Okay…ummm what kind of help do you need?” You asked cautiously, not because you thought that monsters had a higher chance of being dangerous than any other person, but because strangers approaching you and being overly friendly just raised all your red flags in a city like Ebbot.
Besides, wasn’t there that statistic that walking down the street you pass at least three murderers. So, they might not have been any more dangerous than the average person, but the average person still had a pretty good chance to be a murderer.
“WELL, YOU SEEMED TO BE CONSIDERING THESE PASTAS QUITE INTENTLY! I ASSUMED THAT YOU MUST KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT PASTA TO BE SO DISCERNING.” The skeleton replied.
"Huh, ummm well…I wouldn't say I know anything more than any other person, but…umm what are you trying to make?" You asked looking at the wall of pasta options. Had you really been staring at it that intently, for three freaking cents?
"WELL, THATS THE TROUBLE. YOU SEE I LIVE WITH SEVERAL AMAZING ROOMATES, HOWEVER AS AMAZING AS THEY ARE, THEY CANNOT AGREE ON DINNER. I AM HERE TO TRY AND FIND SOMETHING IN BETWEEN SPAGHETTI, LASAGNA, ALFREDO, AND SCAMPI." The tall skeleton replied, and you couldn't help but feel kind of bad for the guy, because with all those options it would be impossible to find a middle ground between all of them.
However, you did have a couple tricks for when roommates couldn't agree on dinner. "Have you tried getting them to alternate? Like having the spaghetti one night, then the next night the lasagna and so on?" You offered.
"AH, QUITE AN INTELLIGENT SOLUTION…ERM HOWEVER WE DID ALREADY TRY THAT, THEY JUST ENDED UP FIGHTING OVER WHO'S DISH WOULD BE ON WHAT DAY." the skeleton replied.
"Oh shoot…hmmm well the only other thing I could think of if no one is willing to compromise would be…no one gets what they want." You said reaching for some elbow noodles.
"You could make a big pot of homemade mac and cheese with these or a goulash if the noodle dish has to be the main course. You can find some simple recipes online, but the cheapest way to make it is just with a pound of hamburger, some mixed vegetables, spaghetti sauce, and these noodles." You explained on impulse, before your brain caught up to you.
Monsters had come up from the underground with a metric fuckton of literal gold. So, this guy probably wasn't interested in doing it the cheap way.
"THAT IS A PHENOMENAL IDEA HUMAN! THANK YOU SO…AH OOPS, I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IT'S CONSIDERED RUDE TO JUST CALL YOU HUMAN…SORRY." he said, looking at you with a sheepish sincerity, making you laugh.
"Don't worry about it. It didn't bother me." You replied, feeling your guard starting to drop.
"WELL, THAT'S GOOD. I WOULD HATE TO BOTHER SOMEONE WHO HAS HELPED ME SO VERY MUCH TODAY!" He said, flipping his red scarf over his shoulder for it to…somehow billow in the middle of the noodle isle with no wind.
“I’m happy I could help.” You replied, as your phone pinged in your pocket with the sound for your odd-job app, smiling and thinking that that would be the perfect way to excuse yourself from the conversation you checked on it. Maybe if it was close enough you could go back and get those beef tips. Checking the app you were disappointed to see that it was definitely too far away for you to walk there and back and still make it before the store closed.
“OH, IS THAT, THAT GERBIL APP?” The skeleton asked, tossing three more boxes of elbow noodles into his cart.
“Hmmm Gopher? Yeah, it is.” You replied, pocketing your phone and grabbing your own box of whole wheat spaghetti noodles.
“WE HAVE BEEN ADVERTISING FOR AN AT HOME ASSISTANT ON THERE FOR QUITE SOME TIME, BUT NO ONE SEEMS INTERESTED.” He mused absently, pulling out a shopping list from, somewhere, and reading over it.
“Huh…maybe no one in the range for the job has enough stars to apply for it.” You replied, shrugging and beginning to shuffle out of the aisle.
“STARS?” The skeleton asked, in confusion.
“Oh yeah, if you're a worker you need at least ten five-star reviews to unlock gigs that pay over fifty dollars, repeat gigs, and so forth.” You explained, “I only need one more five star review myself to unlock the feature.”
“...OH! I JUST HAD A WONDERFUL IDEA HUMAN!” He said, somehow louder than he was already talking and pulled out his phone. Before you could ask what, he was doing your app went off again and you pulled your phone out to check it.
Right, there was an ad to help someone finish their shopping and put their groceries in the car for twenty dollars, at the grocery store you were at and right next to it was a little red fanged mouth you had never seen before on an ad. Hovering over it revealed that the ad was placed by a monster. So maybe that had something to do with no one taking their gig.
Well, beef tips here I come. You thought, happily accepting the gig from the skeleton.
"Well alright boss, what's next on the list?" You asked.
"NYAHAHA." The skeleton laughed and honestly it sounded kinda cute.
"THAT'S VERY RESPECTFUL AND PROFESSIONAL OF YOU, HOWEVER AS AMAZING AS I AM, I WILL ALLOW YOU TO JUST CALL ME PAPYRUS…BECAUSE THAT IS MY NAME." he said, posing dramatically.
It shocked a laugh out of you and you couldn't help introducing yourself to papyrus, holding out your hand to shake.
"Alright Papyrus, what's next on the list?"
"WELL, THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH VEGETABLES AND MEAT FOR TEN PEOPLE TO HAVE BEEF STEW!" he said cheerfully.
"I…I'm sorry, you're doing the shopping for ten people all by yourself?" You clarified, wishing you had asked for more money.
"YES! I TRIED TO BRING OUT OUR ROOMMATES ONCE AND…UMM WELL…" He trailed off shyly, a light orange color dusting his cheeks and over his nasal ridge.
"They ended up fighting?" You made an educated guess.
"WOWIE HUMAN! YOUR GOOD." The skeleton praised you easily.
"Well…let's just say that I have some roommates that also don't get along on grocery trips." You replied, leading him to the fresh produce aisle.
You set your basket down to help Papyrus finish his shopping and when he was finished you helped him load the metric fuckton of groceries into his shiny red convertible. You were very proud of yourself for only being a little jealous of the amount of food he loaded into the car.
It helped that before he even paid you, he rated you five stars and your options opened up drastically. Then he handed you a crisp twenty-dollar bill, and an extra five as a tip!
Before going back into the store you scrolled through the app some, looking for the ad that Papyrus mentioned that his brother had placed for an at home assistant.
You looked for the bright red fangs mark that meant that it was a monster posted job until you found the one…holy fucking shit.
Was it wrong to say thank God for racists? You wondered looking at the large number on the gig, then reading through the ad you realized it was continuous. There was a large down payment on the labor and then an hourly rate. A large hourly rate. Hell, you could probably apply for a down payment on a house with that.
You didn't even need to think about it. You clicked on the job offer and applied for it. Then you ran back into the grocery store to finish your shopping and get some celebration beef tips.