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Despite how absolutely, unbelievably absurd a description of his current arrangement would sound to anyone but himself - hell, he's not even sure he believes this is really his life half the time - Mettaton is happy, for the first time in as long as he can remember.
He had taken surprisingly well to the concept of dark worlds, all things considered, when the two hyperactive teens who had gifted him his TV had asked to come over and 'visit,' before the girl launched into some explanation about fountains and parallel worlds that he still wasn't sure he understands. Regardless, he'd awoken feeling a sense of comfort in his own form that he'd never felt before, having found himself existing within a robotic version of a body he'd been drawing, erasing and re-drawing for years. In that moment, it didn't really matter where he was or why he was there, not when who he was felt so right, for the first time in his life.
And then he'd met Tenna.
Suddenly, the childrens' discussion of the old CRT as if he was a living being made sense, as the robot(?) before him, despite having the head of such, scarcely resembled the old, time-worn television in his living room; tall, confident and handsome to boot, Mettaton found himself enamored with the presence who he had been unknowingly sharing a home with.
And maybe a little bit embarrassed of the things he'd said to the empty screen when he believed no one else was listening.
Somehow, though, it felt as if he'd known the man for ages; perhaps it was his isolation talking, or the fact that the TV had seemed to have a mind of its own from the beginning, knowing exactly what he'd needed to see to help him figure out who he truly was, but it was as if they'd been one in the same for longer than either could remember.
Thus, when a mutual confession was had, no one seemed particularly surprised, least of all the children.
So that's where Mettaton finds himself. In the light, his time is split between planning a way to reach a level of comfort with his own existence, now that he's begun to adjust to that feeling of peace when the lights go out, and looking after the human and their misfit friends when they need a place to run off to devoid of parents or teachers or what-have-you. In the darkness, he spends time with his lover, exploring an inverted version of his own home and the town around them in between joint hosting episodes of Tenna's brilliant spectacle of a show.
Today is no different - the duo had just wrapped up an episode and were preparing to return to the comfortable apartment above the studio that had begun to feel just as much like home as anywhere in the light world, waving their goodbyes to the crew and double-checking that everything had been squared away.
Then it happened again, so subtle that Mettaton would have been sure he'd imagined it, had it not been happening all day.
"Tenna, darling?"
The CRT turns back from where he'd been sorting a few pages of script, facing Mettaton with a smile. "Yes, my star?"
"Your screen is flickering. Are you alright?"
The smile on Tenna's face fades, antennas drooping a little. "Oh, it's still doing that? Huh, I thought I fixed it." He gives a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, I'm perfectly fine, I think some wires just got a bit jumbled - nothing I can't work out on my own!"
Mettaton frowns. "That can't be an easy angle to work from - perhaps it might be easier if you entrusted the job to someone else? This body of mine is robotic, too, so I've had my share of practice sorting out wiring issues."
He seems to consider this for a moment. "Honestly, it's been a while since I've had someone help me out with this sort of thing, and it's not exactly easy to reach some of the components farther to the back on your own," he admits sheepishly. "I don't want to pressure you into it or anything, though, so don't feel like you have to-"
Mettaton interrupts him with a chaste peck on the lips. "Sweetheart, I would be honored to assist you with something like this."
Tenna blushes, before the shift in color to a light pink seems to trigger more of the flickering as Tenna winces. "O-okay, back to mine then?"
"Of course, lead the way."
—
Everything is totally fine. Why wouldn't it be? It's only that the hottest being Mettaton has ever seen is sitting shirtless on the bed before him, back resting against the headboards as he fidgets nervously, seemingly - hopefully - unaware of the effect he's having on the other. Sure, Mettaton would be lying if he said he wasn't a little flustered by seeing his partner in even an admittedly tame state of undress for the first time, even in an innocuous context such as this, but it's fine! He can handle this!
Tenna is the first to break the silence, and Mettaton is suddenly aware of how he's been staring without word for an embarrassing amount of time. "A-are you still sure you want to do this? Again, no pressure, I promise I can take care of things on my own if you aren't comfortable with something this…" intimate is left unsaid.
Get it together, Mettaton, he reminds himself. "Of course, darling, I'm sure. Trust me, I can handle this, so don't you worry your pretty head about it, yeah?"
Tenna's blush intensifies, and with it, the flickering. "Alright, I trust you." The shy, though slightly pained, smile that accompanies those words is something Mettaton wishes he could hold onto forever.
"Gorgeous. So where do I start?"
"Ah, I'll need to open my maintenance hatch, just one sec." He reaches down to a small switch on his side, and the panel covering his abdomen springs open, revealing a mess of tangled wires connecting to ports and plugs Mettaton would probably recognize if he'd ever bothered to give his own dark world form more than a surface-level inspection.
It probably says something worrying about him, Metatton thinks, that the sight of the CRT below him with internal wiring exposed sends waves of heat through his body - he's not sure if it's out of some weird sense of empathy within his own robotic form, or simply due to the uniquely exposed nature of seeing the deepest, innermost parts of his partner laid bare before him, but regardless, the inherently compromising nature of their position doesn't seem to be lost on Tenna either, as his screen continues to take on a rosy hue the longer Mettaton stares.
Shit, he's staring again.
"A-alright, what now?" Mettaton asks, gathering as much of his crumbling composure as possible.
"Well unless anything looks obviously wrong, the screen flickering issues are probably from something being unplugged where it shouldn't be, which, ah, would make sense if things had gotten too tangled. I-I imagine you'd also have a hard time trying to plug it back in unless you untangled the rest of them, but that, uh, could take a while - I may have put this off a bit longer than I should have," he admits.
Mettaton is inclined to agree; the bundles of wires haphazardly secured together with zipties, fraying cables wrapped with electrical tape (and in one case, what looked to be a bandage) and other such temporary solutions to much more lasting problems indicated that he'd been trying to avoid seeking assistance with this for a long time - it's frankly a wonder that the man still functioned as well as he did, he thinks. He's going to have to have a talk with him about the importance of asking for help before problems become this urgent, but the matter at hand takes precedence.
"I suppose I should get started then," he gives the most reassuring smile he can muster, trying to remove both the concern and simmering arousal from his mind to focus on the task ahead of him.
That focus doesn't last long.
In his own defense, every time he maneuvers a wire just a little bit to harshly or untangles a particularly stubborn knot, the man beneath him seems to have to bite back a sound; the thought of essentially having your innards groped and rearranged strikes Mettaton as likely a painful process, and he can't help the anxiety and guilt he feels at inflicting such pain onto Tenna, even if it is to help him.
He winces as a shiver runs through Tenna's body upon plugging in a particularly long wire. "I know, darling, but you're doing fabulously for me. Let me know if you need a break, okay?" If it's possible, Tenna's face flushes even darker - likely out of embarrassment for letting Mettaton see him this vulnerably - and he nods.
Unfortunately, the combination of the sounds Tenna is making, the stress of not fucking up one of his lover's vital components and the uncomfortable position straddling Tenna at an odd angle have begun to take their toll on Mettaton's joints. He shifts to find a less painful position and-
Oh.
All of the noises Tenna had been biting back, the shivering, the squirming, it all took on an entirely different context as Mettaton felt an unmistakable hardness beneath him. It seems he's not the only one reacting in less than family friendly ways to their present situation.
Whether out of curiosity or abject sadism, Mettaton decides that it would be a shame to not utilize his newfound epiphany as he continues his work, sliding his fingers down some wires as if to straighten them, tugging others just a little rougher than necessary and relishing in the stifled gasps and whines that seem to be taking more and more of a concerted effort to silence.
Eventually, he comes across a particularly stubborn knot, binding four or five separate cables into one messy conglomerate. With a few testing pulls, he identifies the wire holding the rat's nest together and gives it an experimental tug. While it put up a little more resistance than previous instances, it didn't appear dangerous to continue, nor did it seem that a firm yank wouldn't resolve the problem, so he plunges forward.
Two things happen at the same time.
The first is that the knot, freed of the chief wire responsible, falls apart and the individual cables separate from each other, entirely undamaged.
The second, and what entirely consumes Mettaton's attention, is that Tenna outright moans, before slapping a hand over his mouth with a look of surprise, the noise just as unexpected to him as it was to Mettaton.
"What was that?" Mettaton asks, fighting the smirk off his face.
"What was what?" Comes the quiet response from Tenna's speakers, entirely uninhibited by the hand still covering his mouth.
"…Never mind, darling." He smiles in a way he knows invokes a cat staring down a cornered mouse. While a part of him would love to press the issue just to watch the man squirm, a much louder part reminds him that the game wouldn't truly be fun if Tenna gave in now - where would be the intrigue in that? Where's the drama? Even alone with Tenna in the older's bed, he can never resist the urge to play to his audience and build the maximum tension into any performance he gives.
He's also a bit unsure whether there is enough blood (do robots have blood?) left inside his head and outside of… other places, to form a sentence long enough to be properly teasing, if he's being honest.
The job continues smoothly, if with a little bit more tugging and groping and twisting than strictly necessary, until he reaches a knot larger than he'd encountered thus far. It was barely fair to call it a knot, when it was large enough to occupy a significant portion of one of the upper corners farthest back in Tenna's… stomach? (He's not exactly sure about the correlation between robot and monster anatomy, despite technically being both.) At the exterior of the tangle, enveloping the other half-dozen or so wires involved in the amalgam, was a bright lime green-colored wire. Giving it his usual experimental tugs, Mettaton finds the wire is pulled too tight to make any headway in untangling.
"I'm not sure I can get this one untangled, there's a wire that won't budge at all," he frowns.
"What color is it?"
"Green."
"…You should be able to unplug it, if that would help," he replies hesitantly.
"Will it hurt you?"
"No, I, uh, I just won't be able to see until it's plugged back in," he breathes.
"Alright, I'll be careful, don't worry darling," he reassures. "Ready?"
Tenna sighs. "Go for it."
He obliges, unplugging the wire as carefully as he can, and Tenna's screen goes blank.
"Are you alright, dear?" Mettaton asks, placing a hand on the corner of his screen.
"Yeah, just, uh, b-be gentle when I'm like this, please? I-it all feels a lot… more, when you can't see anything," he replies.
"Of course, darling. Now let's see what I can do about this knot, hm?"
Using the slack granted by the newly unplugged wire, Mettaton makes quick work of the mess of tangles before him until all are unraveled before him, a feat he finds especially impressive considering Tenna's whimpering and hushed moans, having taken on a greater frequency with the loss of his vision, have made it extremely difficult to focus on the job and not simply give up and ravage the desperate, increasingly hard man beneath him.
Silently applauding his own restraint, he surveys the scene below him. Almost all of the knots and tangles had been unraveled, leaving an unobstructed view of several wires lying unplugged against the metal casing below, including the lime-colored cable controlling Tenna's vision.
Mettaton has a downright evil idea.
"I got the big knot untied, but that green cable is in a really inconvenient place; would you mind terribly if I kept it unplugged a little longer, just until I finished the last of these tangles, sweetheart?"
The only response Tenna gives to the affirmative is a thumbs-up.
"Words, please, darling."
Tenna shudders out a breath. "Y-yeah, that's fine."
Mettaton doesn't need to see Tenna's face to know that the man is losing what was left of his composure at a rapid rate now. He smirks openly, knowing the man beneath him is none the wiser.
"Thank you, dear. We're almost done, you've done such a good job for me," he praises, enjoying the way Tenna squirms beneath him at the compliments; one could argue that utilizing the man's obvious praise kink against him at a time like this is cruel, and while Mettaton could hardly disagree, could you really blame him? Having such a simple way to evoke such reactions from the man is a power Mettaton is sure anyone else would relish in, were they where he is.
True to his word, he returns to untangling the last of the knots, barely disguising the harsh tugs and firm caresses since Tenna couldn't see that his actions were unnecessary anyway, each yank drawing a full-body shiver or delightful whine or hastily-quieted moan from the man. While Mettaton would have been content to draw his torture out for hours, (perhaps an idea for another day,) he eventually unties the last knot with a particularly rough tug before leaning back to admire his handiwork.
"That was the last of the tangles. All that's left to do is plug everything back in, right?" He asks as innocently as he can.
"Uh-huh," Tenna dazedly replies.
Counting himself lucky that matching the ports and wires wouldn't be much of a challenge due to their variance of size and shape, since Tenna didn't seem to be in much of a position to give coherent instructions, Mettaton begins, grasping a thin, round wire and plugging it back in.
Again, Tenna lets out an unrestrained moan, hips bucking up involuntarily against Mettaton.
"Are you alright there, darling?" He teases.
"Y-yup, hunky doody, k-keep going," Tenna rambles.
Mettaton selects a bigger wire, plugging it in with more force, and Tenna whimpers and squirms.
"Oh, are these sensitive?" He asks, feigning innocence again.
"…A little," Tenna admits.
"Don't worry, darling, I'll be gentle," he lies. "It looks like there's only one wire left - oh, besides your visual sensor! I'll plug that back in first."
Before Tenna can respond, he shoves the wire back into its port, and the combination of the sudden visual of Mettaton straddling him, leaned in close to his face, and the sensation of a particularly sensitive wire being forced into him has him keening, his face contorted in a mix of overwhelming pleasure and agonizing pain as soon as his display is back online.
"…You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Tenna asks, catching his breath.
"Doing what?" He asks, his smug grin only growing.
"How long have you…"
"You've not been particularly subtle, darling," he teases, omitting the embarrassingly long time it took him to catch onto Tenna's predicament.
"You're the one who's b-buhhh-" Whatever objections Tenna had been attempting to raise dissolve into a moan as Mettaton cruelly grasps one of the older's antenna, a trick he's become very accustomed to using to silence him in moments like these.
"Do you want to finish that thought, or do you want me to finish putting you back together?"
"F-fuck, please," he whines.
"Please what? I'm no mind reader, darling."
Tenna only whimpers, desperately rutting his hips to try to achieve even a little friction to his now leaking cock.
"Ah ah ah," Mettaton tuts, lifting his hips just high enough off of Tenna to thwart his attempts. "Are you going to be a good boy and let me plug this back in, or am I going to have to draw this out even longer?"
"Please, I'll be good, I'll do anything, just-" his begging is silenced with a moan once again as Mettaton grasps the final unplugged cord, tracing his hand up it torturously slowly. His hand grazes over a section where the rubbery covering had begun to fray beneath - were those bite marks? he'd have to bring that up later - revealing the copper wiring beneath, and the contact sends a pleasurable shock through Mettaton's own internals - one that Tenna must feel tenfold, if the glitchy, near-screamed moan and jackknifing of his hips is any indication.
Another idea strikes Mettaton, and before he can consider the ramifications, the hand around the man's antenna gives a rough tug as his other grasps the exposed copper of the wire, shoving it back into its socket in one movement.
The result is instantaneous - a jolt of electricity unlike anything Mettaton has ever felt, both pleasurable and painful in the best of ways, rockets through his body and the arousal that had been simmering within him since the two had gotten into bed comes to a peak and he climaxes with a gasp. In the same moment, Tenna cries out a distorted and glitched moan, the unmistakable wetness in his pants indicating his own untouched orgasm.
Mettaton flops down beside Tenna, ignoring the inevitable cleaning up that is to come, and they both catch their breaths for a moment, despite neither technically needing oxygen to breathe, before Tenna speaks up.
"That was… wow."
"Wow indeed," Mettaton laughs incredulously. "Does everything seem to be working in there now?" He gestures to the other's chest.
Tenna's screen blinks off and on, then cycles through a few channels before returning to his usual face. "Yup, everything seems to be in working order - actually, I feel a lot better! I guess I maybe should have been getting help with this sooner," he chuckles sheepishly.
"Indeed, though you may also be feeling pleasant from the, if I'm being humble, mind-blowing orgasm you were just given," he teases.
"That too," he laughs. "Shoot, wait, are you okay? I'm so sorry for shocking you, I didn't mean-"
"Tenna, darling, I mean this with all of the sincerity in my heart when I say that that was one of the hottest experiences I have ever had, and I will not be accepting any apologies related to such, unless they come in the form of an offer for a repeat."
"…I guess more regular maintenance wouldn't hurt."