So this was a thing I posted on dA for a contest a bit ago, and now that it's over I figured I'd put it up here as well. I also figured it would be a good break to my craziness as of late.
"I'm just saying it's a little strange, is all," the monster whispered to her friends as she stole another glance behind the bar.
"Strange how?" her friend shot back skeptically.
The rabbit monster thought for a moment how to best word her assessment. "Well, he's a fire monster. Being out here has to be uncomfortable for him, if nothing else."
Her two friends who sat across the table looked at each other and shrugged. "I don't think I've ever heard him complain," the one said.
"Me either," the other endorsed before turning back to her food.
The rabbit monster frowned at her friends' quick dismissal. She couldn't be the only one who saw how out of the ordinary this was, surely. Fire monsters rarely ventured out of Hotland to visit New Home, let alone come all the way to Snowdin; it was unheard of. And what made even less sense than one moving all the way out to the winter forest town, was that he opened up a restaurant there as well!
She stole another quick glance at the bar. The monster in question was currently pouring the contents of one of the many bottles arrayed behind him into a shaker. She looked away before she could get caught and turned back to her friends. "It still makes no sense," she went on. "Comfort aside, if he wanted to open a restaurant, it would have made much more sense to do it in the capital. He would get significantly more business, for one." The place was next to empty at the moment, aside from a couple in the corner and a few monsters at the bar, every other table was unoccupied. She wasn't even sure it would have been filled if every monster in town was there. "Even if it's only by default," she finished.
Her one friend finished taking a sip of her drink and said with a grin, "Don't let the current state of this place fool you. It can get pretty crazy some days. Everyone seems to end up in here at some point or another on a given day, so there's always something to do or someone to talk to here. Even if it is just Grillby."
"But he's not really one for conversation now, is he?" Her other friend interjected.
"No, but he is a very good listener." The two of them giggled, which made the rabbit monster's frown deepen.
"I supposed he's managed to integrate himself here, at least," she said, letting a little of her frustration out with the words.
When the other two were done acting like little girls, they both nodded. "I guess he has sort of become the center point of the town, now that you mention it," one said.
"I've forgotten how long it's been since you last visited," the other added. "I don't even think he was here when you used to live here."
"He wasn't," the rabbit monster confirmed.
"That might explain why you found it surprising. I suppose we had all felt like that at one point, thought I can't say I can remember a day like that."
"How long has he been here anyway?" The visiting monster asked.
Her friends both took on a considering look. "I'm not sure," the one answered. "It feels like we've been going here forever."
"Where did we even go before coming here?" the other asked.
"It must have been your place, right?"
"My place? That living room is hardly capable of hosting. It must have been Gabriel's house."
"Oh, you know he likes to keep his home to himself, even if that isn't true when it comes to anything else."
The two laughed again as they turned back to their friend. "I guess, to answer your question, longer than we can remember."
The rabbit monster rolled her eyes. "Evidently."
"This place is nice though," she added almost as an afterthought.
The visiting monster questioned that statement internally. The rustic diner was nothing to write home about, really. Every surface of the dimly lit space looked worn, well-used and, not to mention, average. Aside from the fact that it was in the middle of her winter hometown, there was nothing to it that made it stand out. In the capital, it would have been passed over by monsters daily. It was quaint and homely to be sure, and comfortable, but definitely… typical. In that sense, she supposed it fit in with the town perfectly.
Finishing her food, her one friend decided to change the subject. "Enough of all of that. How's the city?"
The visitor's lips drew into a line. "Still as busy as ever," she told them tersely.
"And you? How's that new job you wrote about last treating you?"
"I've adjusted, finally," she answered as she leaned back in her chair. "For a while it was pretty touch and go, almost to the point where I thought I'd have to quit and restart the whole process again, but it all worked out."
"That's good to hear."
It didn't take long after that for the conversation to peter out, and she knew exactly why. They were approaching dangerously close to a topic none of them wanted to really talk about. Unfortunately, it was also her main reason for being there. And soon, there would be no real way of avoiding it.
That is, if the empty seat at their table ever became filled.
They had been waiting a couple of hours already, and were quickly running out of small talk. The monster also found that she was already caught up with her old friends from the letters they shared. It was good to see that one aspect of Snowdin hadn't changed, at least. Time always did seem to move slower in that town.
"Do you have a place to stay?" her friend asked next.
She nodded. "I checked in at my sister's before coming here. Good to know one of them will still talk to me at least."
"It's still odd not seeing the three of you together all of the time," her friend commented. She reached across the table and grabbed her hand. "I'm glad you're doing this."
The rabbit monster wore little more than a blank expression for a moment, before looking at the door. "Yeah, it's long overdue."
.
More hours passed, and still the monster she waited for didn't arrive. Eventually, her friends left to turn in for the night and she found herself at the bar alone, staring at the heavily polished wood, searching the grain for the answers to the questions swimming in her mind.
Suddenly a glass was placed in her vision, nearly making her jump as she was pulled from her thoughts. She looked up to see the bartender, and owner of the place, standing in front of her. Now that she was closer, she could see that his white dress shirt and black vest were completely spotless, despite being the only one she had seen working there and spending the whole day making food and drinks. Large, thick rimmed glasses looked down at her and regarded her with a blank expression, making her look back down at her drink. The two ice cubes sitting at the bottom of the half-filled glass caught the overhead light, giving them the look of gemstones in the amber liquid.
She took a sip and fought back the urge to wince. "Good at reading the mood aren't you?" she said jokingly. The fire monster simply shrugged in response. "Not my usual choice," she went on, "but it certainly feels like what I need at the moment." The monster gestured to the shelves of bottles behind him with a wave of his arm. She guessed that meant he was willing to make something else for her if she wanted and said, "No, this is fine. I'm not very picky."
The fire monster nodded and moved down to the other end of the bar where he started wiping down a glass. The rabbit monster just looked at him for a second. "My friends were right. You really don't talk much, do you?" The other monster shrugged again as he inspected his work.
The visiting monster went back to staring at her own glass. Bracing herself, she took another sip and found whatever it was to be quickly growing on her. "I gotta say," she went on, "you've sure picked a strange place to set up shop. Not that I'm complaining at the moment." The silence was very quickly getting to her, pulling her mind back to places she'd rather not be at the moment, so she tried to keep up the conversation. She paused a moment only to see if the other monster would respond at all. He did not.
"I used to live here myself a lifetime ago, and I can tell you that no one I was close to, at least, ever thought it a good idea to open a restaurant out here. Questionable location aside though, you certainly seem to have won the hearts and minds of the locals." Finishing off her drink, she added, "Though I can't say it's because of how good you guess the drinks monsters like." She chuckled to herself, but was still met with only silence.
The fire monster took another moment to finish wiping down the glass, then set in back down beneath the bar and came over to stand in front of her again. For a long second, the glasses on the monster's head simply gazed down at her, then, with a flash of movement her empty glass was gone and a shaker sat in its place. The monster spun and grabbed two bottles off of the wall behind him. He tossed them both over his shoulders and spun back to catch them both by the necks in one hand before setting them down on the bar. With the other hand, he pulled out a martini glass from the void beneath him. He quickly poured a measure from one of the bottles into the glass, swirled it, and then dumped it out beneath him. The other bottle he poured into the shaker before taking the other half and scooping ice into it with a rather loud noise after how quiet everything had been. He slammed the two halves together and started to shake.
The rabbit monster watched all of this as if mesmerized. His movements flowed from one to the next with something that went beyond just practiced ease. She had seen plenty of monsters in the city able to do tricks by flipping bottles around and pouring drinks in ways that made you think they had to be using magic (which some did), but she had since stopped being impressed by the whole show. This one though, this one made it look like something he had been born to do, and that gave him a satisfaction she couldn't even describe.
The fire monster finished pouring the drink into the glass and dropped a skewered pair of olives into it before sliding it to her. She looked down at it a moment, impressed, before hiding it behind a smirk. "Fancy, but still wrong." The monster snapped his fingers in frustration before moving to put the bottles back on the shelf.
"Do you want me to just tell you?" she asked. The monster shook his head with his back still to her. "Well, as nice as it would be to sit here all night and let you keep guessing, it's getting pretty late, so this will probably be my last." The monster nodded in understanding, and the visitor couldn't help but see a bit of a dejected slump to his shoulders at her words. "I'll still be here a couple of days more than likely," she told him. "I'm waiting to see if someone will show up. Maybe you'll be able to get it before I leave."
The fire monster turned to her and bowed before disappearing to do something in the back room, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Staring into her drink once again, she tapped her finger against the bar, wishing her mind would be as silent as the world around her. She glanced around her for some sort of distraction. Most of the lights over the tables were off now, chairs flipped over on top of them, sconces along the walls burning off the last of their fuel. It made the place feel much more claustrophobic than it had earlier. "Grillby's, huh?" she said to herself as she turned back to her drink and her thoughts turned to the future.
.
"Still wrong," the rabbit monster said as yet another drink was placed in front of her. She couldn't have even said what the orange and pink concoction was, let alone if she liked it or not. Grillby rolled his head and went back to helping the other customers at the bar. She giggled at his retreating back.
The following afternoon had shown her friends were right once again: it had certainly gotten busy in the quaint little restaurant. Nearly all of the tables were now filled with groups in rowdy conversation or in one of several games of cards. Everyone had a smile on their face, several of which were directed at her as one or another old face recognized her. Her body language must have screamed that she wasn't really up for any catching up though, because very view of those who recognized her even came over to say hi. All the same to her.
The visitor had spent the majority of her time there that day studying Grillby. The monster moved quickly between the bar and the tables to get everyone everything they wanted, but he never looked rushed or pressured. It was as if every moment he felt like he was exactly where he needed to be. She envied that sort of peace of mind and had wondered what his secret was more than once.
Occasionally, a few monsters would sit down next to her at the bar while they waited for a drink of their own and she would strike up a conversation with them. "This place seems rather lively," she'd say to break the ice.
"Of course," one monster had said to her. "Everyone comes to Grillby's."
The rabbit monster glanced to make sure the owner in question was nowhere near and asked, "So it seems, but, and don't take this the wrong way, why?"
The monster smiled at her and said, "Newcomer, are you? I was in your shoes once myself, so I'll tell you the same story I tell everyone else." The monster turned to lean back against the bar before going on. He looked out over the other customers while she tried her newest drink. It was way too sweet for her tastes. "A few years back," the monster began, "a group of friends and I got lost wandering around Waterfall and ended up here, and no, don't ask because I still don't know how we managed it. Anyway, after being lost for days, finding this town was a big relief, and we may have gone a little crazy because of that." The monster shook his head at the memory. "I don't think Grillbz will ever forgive me for trashing his place then, but, regardless, at some point during the night the conversation turned to a belligerent argument about whose fault it was that we got lost in the first place – something that would have never happened, I might add, had we not been drinking. My one buddy, being much larger than I, got mad enough to push me over a table. So, while I'm flipped over onto my back, head ringing from the fall and the alcohol, what do I see as my vision clears but the one who would become the love of my life, laughing hysterically at me in that booth right over there." He pointed to a spot in the corner that was now filled with a large group of younger monsters.
"That's what makes this place so great," he finished. "Aside from the fact that the food is amazing, memories are made here. The way it was put to me once is that it's not paint that covers these walls, but stories."
That particular story had made the rabbit monster smile, as did the few others like it she gathered over the course of the afternoon. Sure, there had been plenty of those stories that floated around back when she used to live there, but it seemed that all of them had somehow congregated here now.
Her smile held as evening slipped into night and the crowd finally began to filter its way back to their homes. But as the hour became later and later, it started to fade. The rabbit monster found herself glancing at the door every now and then; it wasn't helping her mood, but she couldn't make herself stop either.
The sound of another drink being placed in front of her once again broke her from her reverie. It was just a simple beer that time. She smiled up at the monster across from her. "You're just guessing now, aren't you?" The other monster made a sound that sounded like a scoff. She had found that he did that on occasion, mostly in response to something to do with her. She had yet to hear him talk though. Maybe he just couldn't.
Either way, she found she was quickly learning to read him in the way he moved, and so she could tell that his dismissive bravado was more than likely a lie. He was guessing. "If you're not even going to take this seriously," she said playfully, "then what's the point?"
The fire monster pushed his glasses up his face, a sign that he was appalled at the suggestion that he was not taking this seriously.
With a breath, she threw up her hands and said, "Fine, I'll give you a little longer, but you'd better start picking up part of the tab, or else I'm gonna start thinking you're doing this just to run up my bill." She was surprised when the monster nodded in agreement. She had been kidding, but apparently he was taking this seriously, a matter of personal pride by this point, more than likely.
"You run this place a lot differently than any I've ever been to in New Home," she said just to make conversation. "There, so many faces pass through a place you'd have to go there every day for a year before they start recognizing you. Is that why you built this all the way out here? The luxury of being able to be personal?"
He brought his hand up and two of his fingers close together.
"A little bit, huh? But there's more to it than that." Her smile returned to her as an idea came to her mind.
"How about this," she said, "I'll try to figure out why you opened a restaurant here of all places while you're trying to figure out my favorite drink, and we'll see who gets it first. Agreed?" She stuck out her hand to seal the deal. Grillby looked at it for a second before quickly taking it in his own to shake. She was surprised to find his hand barely any warmer than hers. "And no cheating," she added before letting go of his hand. "I won't ask anyone for the story and you don't go asking around my old friends for what drinks I like. There's only one monster here that knows what my favorite is anyway." Her last words made her mood dip once again and she let her hand fall.
"We'll start tomorrow though," she said next. "I think I'll take a walk after sitting in here all day."
She hopped down from the bar and went to the door, leaving the beer untouched.
.
"I'm surprised you haven't kicked me out yet." The rabbit monster said to Grillby late the next day.
The whole thing had been largely uneventful. Few monsters had come into the restaurant, and she had spent most of her time staring at her drink or staring at the door. Her mood had only slipped lower and lower as the day progressed. Now she was the only one there, just as the previous two nights, but this night she felt that fact keenly. "I should have left by now anyway…" The fire monster's towering form still had yet to say anything to her and she was trying very hard not to unjustly direct her frustration at him because of it. "I think it's safe to say that what I'd hoped to happen won't…"
The fire monster shrugged as if to say that whatever happens will happen and went to wipe down the other end of the bar.
The rabbit downed half of her drink in a single go without even looking at what it was. She hardly even tasted it.
"It's a shame," she went on. "I think I'm going to miss this place." Turning herself on the stool, she looked over the restaurant. It seemed… different to her now than it had a couple of days ago. "I wish you had been around back when I lived here. Though I hesitate to imagine what would have been different." The rest of the drink went down in another gulp as she turned back to the bar. "You probably won't get another change to try to guess my drink, I'm afraid. I don't think I'll be coming back again anytime soon."
The monster glanced over his shoulder as if to ask, "Why's that?"
The rabbit shrugged. "I have spent all of this time just sitting here. I guess you at least deserve to know why."
She took a deep breath before beginning. "I was hoping to meet up with my sister. I told her I was coming and that I would be here for a few days, but it looks like she still wants nothing to do with me… For a while now, I've been thinking I should bury the hatchet between us, but I neglected to realize that requires both parties to be accepting of it. Now I feel like coming here was nothing more than a waste of time."
Grillby stopped what he was doing to turn and listen to her. He leaned against the bar with his arms crossed over his chest.
"And it's for the dumbest reason that we're fighting," she went on without looking at him. "Years ago, back when I lived here. My two sisters and I took a trip to New Home just for a change of scenery. We used to do that every so often.
"While we were there, we ran into a man." She stopped for a moment and smiled. "Now, I'll spare you the details, but let's just he was worth running into again, and each of us ended up spending a good deal of time with him for the week we were there. We even had a bit of a contest between the three of us, not unusual at the time, to see who could win him over before the trip was over.
"My youngest sister won, while he and I just sort of became friends. I hadn't even realized it had happened at the time. Before I knew it all of my time to try anything on him was gone, lost in hours of just wandering around and talking. And I was kind of okay with that."
She raised a finger in a lecturing manner before continuing. "Now, we had rules between us for games like that: Never argue against a win – if he asks one of us out alone, it was over and that was it. And never seriously go after anyone we fought over. That way we would never get too invested, and it would never be able to drive a wedge between us. At least, that was how it was supposed to work, but it didn't this time.
"When we came back, I couldn't stop thinking about him. I found myself wanting nothing more than just to sit and talk with him forever. Eventually, I couldn't hold myself back anymore. I took a trip out there myself, just to see him again.
"My sister had her suspicions about what was going on, and even though I could already feel the wall rising between us, she kept them to herself, at least until I announced less than a month later that I intended to move to the city for good. She blew up at me, accusing me of being selfish and petty and spiteful. That had been the first time she won, you see. She thought I was trying to rob her of that, and no matter how much I tried to reassure her that it wasn't like that, she only chose to see what was on the surface: that I was breaking the rules.
"In my anger, I snapped at her, told her she was right and that she didn't deserve to win. Along with a number of other unpleasant things. We never talked since.
"And the truth was I was breaking the rules. But it wasn't out of jealousy or spite or because I refused to lose; this was different. I learned that he was more than just a pretty face to stare at. I felt at home when I was with him, like I was where I was meant to be. Somehow I knew I couldn't leave things the way they were.
"Somehow I just knew…"
She trailed off, staring into her empty glass again, remembering those days fondly. "We would have been married ten years now," she continued, "and I should have fixed things with my sister long before now. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was. I wanted to tell her she's an aunt now, but I guess I just messed up too badly…
The fire monster remained impassive to her, not making a sound. She smiled at that; she had expected no less. "I am glad I came back though, if only to see this place. I think the only reason I stayed as long as I did was because of the stories about this place I'd heard the past couple of days. All of those tales tracing back the roots of everyone's happiness… Maybe I had been hoping something like that would happen to me...
"That's the reason you opened up out here, isn't it? Sure, in the city you'd get more business, but restaurants are a dime a dozen, nothing special even if they have something that really does make them special. Here, though, it's the only place like it. Here everyone knows everyone and you can have real connections with all of them. I've never seen this town as close as it is now, and I think you're to thank for that.
"Every monster needs a place to share their memories and make new ones. You've made sure that everyone's is one and the same, bringing them closer and keeping them close. Quite noble of you." She glanced up to see the monster standing in front of her again. "So, am I right?" she asked.
As an answer, the fire monster set another glass in front of her. She looked down and her eyes went wide. It was a mojito: her favorite. "How did you…?" she began before another voice from behind her cut her short.
"So you do still like those things then," it said.
The rabbit monster turned, and her eyes went wider still. "Sis?"
The other rabbit threw her arms around her shocked sibling who slowly returned the gesture as she remembered how her arms worked. "It really is you," she breathed.
"Why did you wait so long before telling me all of that?" the sister said as they embraced.
"You heard?"
"Of course. I was going to surprise you. I had decided it was time I stopped being bitter. If only I had known sooner, I would have stopped long ago."
The two pulled apart. They each had tears in their eyes at the reunion. "I'm sorry I snapped at you," the older said. "It's all my fault that everything ended the way it did."
"Nonsense," the younger argued. "I should have never thought you'd do something like that just out of spite for me. Will you ever forgive me?"
"Only if you forgive me."
The two embraced once more before the younger sister took her own seat at the bar. "Now," she said with a smirk, "about this niece of mine…"
.
Hours later, Grillby wiped down the last table as the bell above the door rang out its last behind the two sisters. They had talked at length the whole time, making up for the years lost and planning for the future. The estranged sister even admitted at one point to thinking of moving back once more, saying it was a much better place to raise her daughter than the city. It was yet another moment that he would keep with him forever.
Finishing, the fire monster threw the towel over his shoulder, looked over his now empty restaurant, and nodded in satisfaction.