#skeleton ocs

So have my skeleton twins prize and twize :D

Cw: Blood, child abuse

Chapter 1: Easy Peasy Part 1

“I dunno about this.” your shorter friend backs into you. Bones rattling, teeth chattering and intakes whistle. If you weren’t watching the whole thing, you would’ve thought some experimental band came to town. Even eir nerves rattles to a beat. “I must confess, I didn’t study at all.”

“Bullshit.”

“not a single moment. Anytime I even thought about rehearsing.” Ey throws up eir arms at you. “What’s that for?! I’m dead serious.”

You scoff. “Yeah, sure, tell that to the joy you’re tutoring…. The kinda person who flips tables at math… you can teach and yet.”

Ey waves it off. “Learned that nonsense years ago. This is different.”

“uh-huh.” You smirk, stepping into em so ey can’t back away any further.

The grocery store towers over the adjacent buildings. Big blocky green letters read Peasley Easly Grocer. You can even imagine their theme song. ‘Come to Peasley’s Easyly, where you won’t feel measily~ Cuz it’s easy~’ Admittedly, ever since Oakland dropped off the map, the advertising department was never the same. Neither the design department, soon after the world forgot about Oakland, the new owner. Peasley’s husband, Easyly decided it was time to give the old grocery store a makeover.

Between its Corinthean columns and the paint job, it’s like you’re walking into somewhere important. Then you hear the sliding doors and the whole illusion is ruined. It’s only the one side too.

You shake your head.

You massage your friend’s shoulders. Waiting for eir rattling to drop a notch, savoring the way ey leans back into you. Fuck, somedays, you forgot how nice it was just to… exist.

The satisfying draw of smoother than smooth warm bones beneath your phalanges taking you into a whole other dimension. It’s just you, hands, and the most beautifully sculpted collar bone on the planet.

Sadly, oh sadly, reality always comes a knocking.

A scent of navel oranges invades your nostrils along with the familiar chill of an AC. You open your eyes, finding yourself in the home of your agoraphobic friend. “Dude… we talked about this.”

Ey steps away.

The two of you stand in the living room.

Eir back tall as if this meant nothing. Not even the local Ancient Greek themed Grocery Store could bring down the Great Mathematician. And yet, 50 attempts later, you still got eir groceries.

Each time your friend came up with the same excuses. No, not excuses, you’d seen em the one-time ey had gone inside.

Little joy nearly shook emself to pieces by the cash register. Back when you’d only known em as your tutor, you hadn’t even seen eir out of the profile of a computer screen yet you knew part way across the store that was em.

Few monsters, after all, could rock a cardigan and skirt quite like the mathematician could. Plus, the spiderweb of vine marks etched into eir skull helped. Dozen skeletons in town and not one of them had that distinct of a cranial design.

You remember that day clear as day.

The cashier attempted to talk em down while a general manager loomed over em. Tears gathered in eir vacant sockets. Words sputtered out but too soft to be heard.

“Yo, Teach!” You call, all three turn their heads. The little skeleton snapping harder than the rest.

You ignore the humans, kneeling beside your tutor. “Good luck comes to those with a pocket full of tissues as my nopa says.” You grin, revealing a seemingly endless line of tissues you pull from your wrist, somehow still attached to each other. A lite magic trick that always cheered up your younger siblings.

Though, your soon-to-be friend barely took notice. Staring up at you like the grim reaper had some to get em. “not supposed to see you until next week.”

You shrug. “I got stuck.” You plop down beside em. You write out a problem along your arm in sharpie Like a blood hound on the scent, eye snatches your arm and marker.

You must’ve been staring for a while because the cashier clears their throat. You stand up, your new shadow following behind you, scrawling on along your arm, only to raise a brow. A look you’d seen enough time to know what ey wanted without saying a word.

You sigh. Did you really have to go over this in a grocery store? You could make it up, couldn’t you. “see I know how to factor but all completing a square triangle stuff.. it isn’t clicking. Can’t I just get the vertex and be done with it?”

Ey nods. Though, you’re still not sure if ey heard you. Ey scribbles with renewed enthusiasm muttering, “your basic arithmetic needs some work.”

“that’s why we have calculators, old timer.”

“Lazy,” ey mutters.

Magic sparks from your other hand. You clench your fist, finishing up purchasing an assortment of vegetables, fruits and soup cans.  You toss them in a bag, walking out the door.

“You factored out the ‘a’ divided resulting ‘b’ by 2 and square it but you need to subtract it inside and outside the parenthesis. The outside one you need to multiply by ‘a’ again so when you distribute the resulting c inside and outside will cancel out each other.”

Just like that, it feels like your back in session. Your skin burning to get the fuck out. “I didn’t order alphabet soup…. Oh look at the time, I got to head to do things.. Looks like you’re good to go. Bye!”

Despite eir smaller stature it takes more effort than you would’ve thought to extract your hand from eirs.

In the low setting sun, shadows seem to stretch for miles. Your races ahead of you, soon joined by another. “Dude. Stop following me.” You sigh.

Eir gaze stops you in your tracks. The absence of eir eye lights. Ey always has eye lights. No matter how small. Eying the road around them, you notice the humans who usually kept to their yards, venturing out along the side walk. The strangers stall just long enough as if to remind them just who drove the lot of them under the mountain in the first place.

The mathematician nearly bumps shoulders with you. Hovering just within range that you feel eir magic react to yours.

“Stickers.” Ey tugs on eir coat. “Give them to me.”

 You grab eir hand, dragging em down a side path away from the suburbs. Only once you’d looked back several times seeing nobody following did you relax a touch.

Out of nowhere, the shadow shoves a hand into your pocket, extracting your stickers.

“HEY!”

“Factored GCF.” Ey puts a star on your original work. On your arm. “You divided ‘b’ by 2 and squared it, ditched the ‘negative’ correctly.” Star. Star.” “And…” Ey frowns. “Did something in and out.” Star. “4 out of 5. Better than last time.”

Chill the fuck out. You’ve been down her a million times, it’s just the burbs. You barely even process your shadow’s constant babbling, merely accepting that that’s just your life now. The idea of being alone, much less leaving a monster alone with them, even the annoying ones.

Once back into a better part of town, you ask, “anybody you want me to call? Think the taxis handle these sorts of things.”

“A maths lawyer.”

Wow, the sass from the joy. Rarey is ey this biting. The usual timidity entirely vanished.

Ey forces you to sit on a log, gesturing as ey writes equations in the air.

So in the zone, the usual faint scrunch to eir face eases Like this is just another problem. The only things you can’t write off is the faint tremor in eir hand. the dude could write for hours before without breaking a sweat.

After the fifth rewrite, you noticed ey isn’t all that different. Similar style problems. It’s all as if ey is reproducing em as a self-soothing technique rather than to teach. Not that you mind now. You’d upend the log and any nearby trees if you had to hear another problem you suck at but if eir’s just going to jabber, whatever.

Then your tutor looked at you. Even then you were stuck by the intense concentration the joy always made everything appear so effortless like ey conducted an orchestra of equations.

As the conductor raises eir hand, you notice a bead of sweat roll down eir neck. Eir mouth hangs open, ready to catch flies.

Ey frowns, trying again. this time ey tugs at your hand.

A spark jolts through your arm again as the magics intermingle. The strange connection stronger this time. You barely even notice how bright things got until it glared you in the face.

The scent of oranges draws you from eir hand. The ground below is no longer a gravel path but a matted blue carpet. You wrinkle your nose at the strength of the smell.

Rather than the familiar forest, the two monsters are indoors. The shorter hurrying away tossing back a few pills before slumping onto the couch. It’s one of the motel rooms, huh, you’d never taken em for the type to stay here long.

“Damn, didn’t know people still did porting magic.” No response, just a long belated sigh as the smaller skeleton pinches eir nasal ridge.

Taking it as your cue to sit, you plop down beside em. Judging form, the glare, that must’ve been another wrong.

Shrug, relating into the comfortable couch.

It’s stiff but the litany of pillows makes it infinitely more comfortable than your mattress back home. No maneuvering required to avoid an arrant spring. “How do you ever get anything done?” You melt into your forever home. “Temp’s perfect. Got all this storage.”

You gesture to the walls packed with shelves. Shelf housing maybe 20-30 boxes around the circumference of the room. In one such box you spy a flashing light. Like a moth to flame, you investigate it. Looks like a DIY machine of some kind. There’s no label to what it is, just a bunch of exposed wire and circuits.

How hadn’t you noticed any of this during your sessions?

Only way would’ve been if ey covered the wall with a sheet. There’s not a single piece of exposed drywall.

In another drawer, you find compact robots while others contain an infinite array of circuit boards. Some so small they could fit on the tip of your pinky phalange while other so large they take up the entire box.

Hard to tell much else. Your expertise begins and ends with microwaving meals and smacking computers to turn on again.  

A force tugs you back from the drawers. The telltale blue glow covers your waist. “Touchy, touchy.”

The bugger already prying eir precious tech from you.

“I was just looking.”

Ey opens either mouth to protest but quickly thinks better of it.

Oh yeah, that’s still going on.

“Speaking of, need any help like… I’ not an expert in this…”

Ey raises a brow, glancing at the shelves.

“Oh! Hahaha… not that. I mean the other stuff. Mutism and stuff.”

Ey shakes eir head, setting aside the machines in eir respective containers.

You nod surveying the place again. “Cool..”

Pin prick glare up at you. You can’t help but smile. “So.. all good?”

It’s then you feel a tug at your arm and the dust of something blue on the smaller skeleton’s cheeks. Ey whirls around, dragging you into the kitchen before you can protest, a Tupperware of egg salad is shoved into your hand before you’re promptly shoved out the door.

You stare back curiously at the door.

Weird.

Usually when you go poking around, people rarely give you things.

You hold the Tupperware tightly. Huh.. that gives you an idea.

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Cleaned it up! Still thinking I might adjust Ryu's hight some more but for now this will do.

… But the moon needs time.

Credits :

Zackary belongs to @raymp4x

beautiful commissions for the lovely and awesome SharaX!!!! YES THE SHARAX!!!!