"Gah… stupid puzzle…"

Flowey threw his pencil on the ground in frustration. He was trying to solve one of the word puzzles in the kids' portion of the newspaper. Crosswords? Easy. Word search? Piece of cake. The only word puzzle that Flowey struggled with in all his lifetimes was Junior Jumble. He never could seem to make sense of the disarranged letters.

Of course he'd never admit that to anyone. He was too proud to ask for help with a word scramble that would be easy to anyone else.

Flowey huffed and pouted. He was bored of wrestling with this, but he was simultaneously determined to finish it before the day was out. He picked the pencil back up with a root and stared hard at the letters.

"Hello, Flowey!"

Flowey jumped and the pencil went flying across the table. "Papyrus? What are you doing here?"

The skeleton who had somehow miraculously appeared in the kitchen smiled brightly. "Toriel had to go out, so I've been tasked with watching you and Frisk!"

Frisk waved at Flowey from up on Papyrus's shoulders.

Papyrus squinted at the paper in front of Flowey. "What are you working on? Is that Junior Jumble?"

Flowey grabbed the paper and held it against himself defensively as Frisk hopped down to get a look at it too. "No… well, I mean… yeah, I guess it is."

"Ah, the most difficult of word puzzles. Perhaps I could be of assistance?" Papyrus posed heroically.

"No, I don't—! Okay, fine," Flowey relented as Frisk and Papyrus both sat at the table to study the puzzle. "Whatever."

As it turned out, working on the puzzle with friends was more fun than Flowey anticipated.

"Hm, this first one is weird…" Papyrus mused.

"Yeah. The x was throwing me off for that one."

Xylophone? Frisk signed.

"There's no p or y in the list," Flowey sighed.

"I think this one might be 'shirty.'"

"Is that even a real word? That's not a real word, Papyrus."

"It most certainly is! It's how I'm feeling right now!"

"Uh, okay. I'll take your word for it."

"This one kind of looks like 'boondoggle,' but I'm not sure…"

"Okay, that's definitely not a real word."

"It is too. I'll look it up on my phone right now and show you!"

Kids' puzzle, Frisk reminded Papyrus.

"Yeah, dude, this is a kids' puzzle. They're not gonna have weird, big words in a kids' puzzle."

Papyrus sulked slightly. "What's the point of such a puzzle if it doesn't have big words?"

"Hey, if I took some letters out of this one, I could spell the f-word."

"Flowey, that's so rude! Don't make me put you in time-out!"

"I'd like to see you try, skull boy. You can't put a nine-year-old in time out."

Focus puzzle! Frisk slapped the table.

"Okay, okay, sorry, Frisk."

An hour passed and they were still working. Toriel arrived home and soon she was wrapped up in helping to solve the puzzle, too. It was nearly dinnertime when they finally finished.

Papyrus stretched. "Wowie! My brain feels a hundred times smarter after figuring out all that."

Frisk beamed at Flowey. Had fun?

Flowey grinned against his will. "Yeah, I did."

Thought he hated to admit it, solving the puzzle with other people had been a lot of fun. He hadn't felt stupid or embarrassed. He'd laughed, he'd thought hard, he'd said silly things along with his friends.

He'd have to remind himself that asking for help wasn't so bad after all.

oooooooooo

A/N: This was a teeny tiny drabble I wrote for a friend's birthday a few months ago and I decided to go ahead and post it. I like it when Flowey's happy (at least as happy as he can be). Sure, he's a little shit sometimes, but people often forget he's a (literally) soulless, traumatized child, and the way he gets sometimes gets bullied in fics really bothers me.

Which is why I try to offset my uncomfy-ness with stuff like this.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed!