Work Text:
Mettaton sat at his desk, tongue carefully poking out between his lips and brows furrowed as he wrote.
Distantly, he was aware of his body telling him it needed to charge but he ignored it. He was so close to finishing the latest script, he didn’t have time to plug himself in. Sure, he was tired, but he also knew he’d fall asleep not long after plugging himself in, so he wanted to get this finished first. It was taking a bit longer than he’d thought, but he was so close that surely it wouldn’t take much longer.
He had just finished a sentence when his door opened. He didn’t even glance at it—only Alphys was home right now. Undyne was with Papyrus. He also knew exactly why Alphys was here.
“Go to bed. You need to charge.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” he fired back, getting started on the next sentence.
“B-bullshit. I know exactly how long your battery c-can last, and it won’t last much l-longer now.”
“I’m almost done, darling. Then I’ll go to bed.”
“I know you. I know y-you’ve been saying that to yourself for h-hours now.”
“Well, maybe I mean it this time.”
Alphys watched him for a moment before sighing. She went up to Mettaton.
“A-alright, come on. Get up.”
“What? I’m busy writing. I’ll go to bed soon, okay?” He looked over at her briefly before writing the last word of the sentence he was working on. He bit his lip as he ran his gaze over it. It was almost perfect, but not quite…Ugh, this would be easier if he didn’t feel so tired, but he was going to finish this first.
“I don’t c-care that you’re busy writing. Get up or I’ll d-drag you out of that chair myself.”
“...Can you even do that?” Mettaton asked, raising an eyebrow as he turned back to her.
“I m-made sure that your body was light enough that I could at l-least drag you if I needed to. And I w-will.”
“Honestly, you can’t wait 30 minutes?” Mettaton turned back to his script. His fingers tapped some sort of beat as he tried to figure out why the script just wasn’t perfect.
“You can’t wait 30 minutes. Your body’s going to c-crash, and trust me, you do not w-want that to happen.”
“It can wait 30 minutes.”
Alphys groaned. “O-okay, that’s it.”
“What?”
Alphys grabbed Mettaton’s pencil out of his hand, ignoring his protests. She pocketed it before turning to Mettaton and putting her hands under his arms and starting to pull.
“Wh—hey!”
“Last chance to c-cooperate with me.”
Mettaton crossed his arms together. “Why can’t you just let me write?”
“You’re going to p-pass out any moment!”
Mettaton huffed, a staticky sound. “I’m fine.
Alphys ignored him, now too focused on dragging him over to the couch. It was a good thing he was on the first floor—neither of them wanted to deal with the stairs.
“You made me too tall for this,” Mettaton complained as his feet dragged.
“Well, you could make this e-easier.”
“Hmm...nah.”
It took some effort, but eventually Alphys was able to dump him on the couch. She opened the port on his backside and plugged him in, much to his discontent, and piled blankets on the couch.
She put a movie on—he didn’t pay attention to what movie—and sat on the couch next to him. She organized the blankets so they covered both of them.
“It won’t work,” Mettaton insisted. “I’ll stay awake.” Truthfully, he could already feel the pull of sleep, but he fought it as long as he could.
“Mmhm,” Alphys hummed noncommittally. “Sure, Mettaton.” She leaned against him.
It didn’t take long after that for him to finally fall asleep, slumping against Alphys’ side.