The bells over the entrance jingled softly as he opened the door, alerting the girl behind the counter. She stood from her crouch behind the display case, just having finished putting away another batch of sugar cookies, dusted off her apron and bloomers, and, without looking to the door, tittered, "Welcome to Spider Confectionaries! I've just put some croissants in the oven, how does one sound-"
A pair of eyes looked to the figure in the doorway. Black hair, bangs, and a shining smile in more ways than one greeted her. "Oh, Mettaton. It's you." Her face fell, five eyes and all. "Come again to loiter around and not buy anything? I'll have to start charging you for stinking up the place."
He rolled his eyes, "Why, Muffet, sweetie, can't I drop in to see an old friend? Or are reminders of the past unwelcome here?"
She snorted. "Feh. At this point, I'll take any reminder to reminisce about." One of her spidery legs shot out under the counter to snatch a rag. It passed it to one of her more dominant hands, and with it, she started to furiously wipe down the counter. Another hand motioned him in. "Come in, come in, you're letting the heat out. It's bad for the bread."
Mettaton just then realized the coldness in his metal in the crisp autumn air, and drew his hands to hold his jacket across his chest. He's glad he went plainclothes today; he would have surely been a metal popsicle without the extra layers.
He took a step in and turned to close the wooden door, only to find a little tarantula, adorned with a tiny bellboy cap, had begun to close it for him. He waited for it to finish, then crouched down and dropped a hand in its path.
It stopped a moment, then continued its way onto his glove, up his arm, to stop on his shoulder and rest.
Mettaton smiled at the sight. He reached up to gently scratch it. "What a lovely little doorman you have here, Miss Muffet."
She scrubbed harder. "The general populace disagrees, dearie. They've all got the willies about my little web spinners," she grumbled. "I think there's arachnophobia in the water supply."
"I don't think that's how it works, darling."
"No, it must be. How else can you explain it? It's not like my spiders ever did anything to them in the first place." She huffed and angrily slung the rag over her shoulder. "So what if they're creepy!" She jammed a finger in Mettaton's direction. "You're creepy and they just adore you!"
He took a few more steps forward to the countertop and promptly collapsed over it in a fit of drama. He rolled across it and cried out in mock pain, "Oof, your words hurt me so, my darling! And I thought you weren't a venomous spider!" He opened an eye to see her frowning away a giggle, and let out a small one himself. "Just how am I creepy, anyway?"
She smirked at the question, and playfully said "Oh, the reasons are aplenty, dearie! Enough to fill up all my arms and then some."
"Let's hear it then. I'm in need of a good critique."
"Well, for one, as you're exhibiting right now," She took a step back from where he laid on the counter in in assertion, "You have no respect for people's nor property's boundaries. Look at that, you're getting your robot cooties all over the place!" She leans over and whacks the top of his head with a nearby wooden spoon. It clangs loudly, startling the spider still on Mettaton's shoulder.
"Muffet, you're forgetting that these are a star's robot cooties. They're good for business."
"And another!" Muffet yells, "Your attitude! Oooh, how it ruffles my skirts!" She whips her spoon around in the air above her. "You must be the biggest flirt on the continent, my goodness!"
He puts up a finger to interject, but is slammed down with a rap of the spoon on the counter.
"Shoosh! I'm berating you! And get off my counter, you heartless heathen! You're close to crushing Terrance." With a huff, she went back to her scolding.
Truthfully, the tarantula, Terrance apparently, was very close to being caught between shoulder and countertop, and Mettaton slid up and off in order to not crush the little doorsman. He had a very important job to do, after all. The spider wiggled his thanks, and began wandering around the rest of the robot's body. Mettaton didn't mind of course, let the bug be one of the few to have explored the flawless body of a rising star. He can brag about it to his spider friends.
When he tuned back into Muffet's chidings, he found that they had slowed, and that all five of her shining eyes were on the pocket of his jacket, where an envelope peeked out one of its corners. "...What is that?"
He grinned to her, but she, with as many eyes as she had, saw through the gesture. "My darling, it's what I came here for." He pulls it out of his pocket and throws it on the counter. "A dozen donuts, please. Oh, and some of those cookies I saw you put in earlier, they're just the cutest!"
The baker's mouth was just the slightest bit ajar, at a loss of words for the first time since he had seen her last. Suddenly, she shook her head, her pigtails bobbing back and forth. "No, Mettaton, not this again. I can't-"
"Take it, sweetheart."
She froze a moment, shocked. She then drew in a hurried gasp, and rushed for the envelope, ripping the top off with a third arm and reaching inside with a fourth.
Out of the envelope came a scrap of paper, with the Blook family crest watermarked in the background, Mettaton's signature, and a high four-digit number.
"Payment for the goods." Mettaton said. "And a tip." He flashed a show-stopping smile and a lady-killer wink.
Tiny hands gripped opposite ends of the check, tensions rising, fingernails leaving indents on the parchment. Muffet gasped again, spastically looking to and from Mettaton and the check.
In a single movement, she slammed the paper on the counter, grabbed the lapels of the other's coat, and slammed him into the counter, utilizing all available arms to do so.
"You lunatic!" She snarled, fangs bared and eyes fierce. "You absolute goody-two-shoes! There's no way in hell that I'm going to accept this… this 'charity' again!" She banged him on the counter once more with a resounding clunk. "What are you even trying to do? Make me happy? Satiate my thirst for living the high life? Get a discount?! I don't get it! I don't understand this! I don't fucking understand you!"
He winced through another smile, "What is there to not understand about supporting my favorite bakery? It'd be a shame if this place went under before it was recognized. You could be on that show, Cupcake Wars or whatever-"
"No, Mettaton, this isn't about the bakery, I know it's not!" Her hands gripped tighter.
If Mettaton needed to breathe, he probably wouldn't be able to.
"It's no lie that this place would have gone under the second it started, if not for your help, but I don't care about that anymore!" Muffet took a deep breath in, and admitted in a low voice, "I know that you're not financially stable enough to do this. Sure, you've got a constant cash flow, whatever, but it's not enough to just give away thousands of dollars. That huge, costly, tour you went on came out of your pocket, and your pocket alone. You're rolling in debt, I'd bet."
He shook his head as best he could. "No, no, no, darling, you've got it all wrong, I- I was on TV just a week or two ago, I've got enough-"
"Mettaton!" She screamed at him. "I know my money, I have, and always will be, the biggest cheapskate monster within a 100 mile radius. And let me tell you, that. Is not. Going. To cover it." Her voice was going hoarse. "Are you trying to compensate me for something? Or do you do this with every luck-lost demon you can get your little white gloves on?"
He has a feeling he shouldn't answer that.
"Mettaton!"
He lowered his head, just enough for his bangs to cover his face and hide him from prying spider eyes. Might as well come clean. Mettaton gulped, then cleared his throat. "...I'm an idol to them." he admitted, somewhat shakily. "Someone once called me the 'bridge between the groups' of humans and monsters. The humans like me, the monsters love me, I've got the best of both worlds. And the little people who came from the underground, my people, your people, they're stuck as outcasts of society! No money, no jobs, nothing! What else am I supposed to do, just let them wither and die with their dreams unfulfilled?"
Muffet let out a shocked and angry gasp. "Is that what this is? Some sort of guilt complex?"
He took a breath, flipped up his bangs, and beamed at her. "Anything for the fans."
The punch she gave him hurt almost as much as the words out of his mouth.
When he came to from his short dizzy spell, Muffet barked at him, "Look at me!"
He forced his neck to right itself and for his eyes to face hers.
"Listen here, dearie." Even with the pet name, her harsh tone and glaring stare hardened the words. "You're stopping this right now."
"Wh- Muffe-"
She cut him off with a hand to his mouth. "Shut your piehole. I will not hear any excuses."
"You are going to stop giving out your hard-earned cash, you are going to stop hurting yourself and your family, and you are going to stop feeling so guilty about this, you hear me?"
He stayed quiet.
"Do you hear me?" She repeated, warning in her words.
"Yes... yes, I hear you."
"Good." She finally released his coat, and backs away from the counter. Her heel pivoted on the ground, her body turning with it, and walked a few paces away from him, giving the robot some well-deserved space.
She then suddenly stilled and said, with her back still towards him, "And dearie, another thing."
"Yes?"
"You are not going to disappoint anyone." It was a statement. Not a suggestion, not a flimsy prediction, a rock-solid statement.
She believed in it.
If he had a real heart, it would be breaking.
Muffet spoke again. "You said it yourself, you're an idol to us monsters, you symbolize the funny, the dramatic, the serious, everything. You're the closest to a human any monster could possibly get, and it's especially obvious now, in your stardom with both races. The humans, they fawn over you, fawn over just the idea of you, and us, we're freaks. Look at me, I went and splurged on a cottage bakery on the edge of the human suburbs because I thought they would be excited to see me, excited to find something new, and look at where that got me. Hell, not even the spiders up here will talk to me, the pretentious little dimwits. But you have the chance, you have the opportunity to be a success with everybody, and with that, you can bring the two races closer than they have ever been before. It can be done through your entertainment, through your fanbase.
"But now, I want you to ask yourself, how would those fans feel if they saw you struggling under the weight of living, with bills and payments and the multiple stressful jobs you must need to take on just to keep the electricity running. Do you think they want to see their shining star fall because of guilty charity? Hm?" She cocks her head to the side, waiting for an answer.
Mettaton stood, stricken. He had never thought about that. The fans, the humans, his family, Blooky… how would they feel? He felt his stomach drop.
Muffet caught him in a sideways stare, her eyes still as black and shining as ever, and she smiled. "You get it now, don't you. I can see it on your face." She giggled, and began to walk towards the counter. "Ahuhuhuhu, you're quite expressive for a robot."
She lifted the partition between showfloor and back behind the counter, her little mary jane's clicking on the newfound tile, and made her way back to where she had stood before, behind the display case, and found the piece of parchment that had started it all. She fingered it, playing and sliding it around the countertop, before taking it between two fingers, and, while looking Mettaton in the eye, a tiny smile lurking on her lips, ripped it in two.
He jumped to protest, to scream at her, to beg her to fix it, something, anything, but nothing came out, as he watched her defile it more and more, tearing it to thirds, fourths, fifths, tenths, going on and on until the fraction was unable to identify.
With a satisfied breath, Muffet swept the paper pieces off the counter, them raining down like confetti to the floor below, asking to be swept up later. She then reached under the counter, and pulled out a cake box, bent down to open the case, and began counting out lovely iced donuts and spiderweb sugar cookies, thirteen of each, a baker's dozen.
While reaching for the freshest donuts, she began to mutter to herself, just loud enough for Mettaton to hear. "I'll be fine. I might have to downgrade, maybe even close up shop for a while, but I'll manage. I don't need any charity to make my dreams come true. But," she grinned to herself. "I wouldn't mind a few more customers. Not for finances, but for friendships. Spiders aren't the greatest conversationalists."
Her counting done and confectionaries placed into the box, she sealed it with a black ribbon and spider sticker, she was always a stickler for appearances.
"Twenty-seven, sixty-three, dear." She said to Mettaton. "And not a cent more."
Still in a bit of a shock, he slowly pulled out his wallet, counting out bills and fumbling over change, until he could drop it on the counter and have Muffet grab it with a fervor for money that no arachnid should have.
She flipped through the bills, counting it up with a finger, when she stopped at one, and threw it out of the pile. A ten-dollar bill fluttered onto the countertop, an unexplained amount in the exact change he had given her. "...I'll chalk that off as a miscount, dearie." She narrowed her eyes at him, and when he tried to play it off with a smirk, she spoke once more. "Don't let it happen again, or I will sic my little lovelies on you. Now, Terrance," The spider popped his head out from one of Mettaton's inner pockets, much to the surprise of the wearer. "...Show him out. We don't particularly like customers who can't eat what they buy."
Terrance dropped down with a spun web to Mettaton's glove and wiggled in a "yes, ma'am," before walking to and opening the door.
As he left, Muffet called out, "Bye, sweetie! I'll hope to see you again soon!" It was no different to what she called out to every customer who had left through that door, no different than any other call to the few monsters that frequented the place.
He halted a moment, realizing this, then weakly waved with the hand the box did not reside in, as the door was pushed closed behind him.