Love in Lowercase

Chapter 7: SOUL to SOUL

Frisk was back at her house, having been asked to leave Toriel's after Chara got mad and stomped away from her flirting lesson. She had just used that as an excuse to actually flirt with Chara, but she didn't have to act like that! And even getting Toriel to kick her out! Frisk crossed her arms and sighed, as her dad walked into the living room where she sat on the couch.

"Hey there, Frisk! How was your day?" he asked in his caring dad voice. Frisk loved her dad, he was just... Hardly around. He was a famous businessman, who wrote a lot of things and had ties with the local governments of every town in the Mount Ebott region, so he didn't really have time for Frisk. 

"I'm fine, Dad," she said listlessly, staring off at nothing.

"Well, you don't seem fine," he said, patting his daughter gently on the shoulder. Frisk hugged herself, and her dad backed away. "I get it. It's a you thing. Honestly, with your responsibility as the ambassador, I'm surprised you're happy most of the time." He walked off upstairs, probably to go to his office. "And there's a microwavable meal in the freezer if you get hungry!" he called out to her as he walked away.

"Whatever," Frisk muttered to herself. She just felt bad. She was now realizing that she may have made Chara uncomfortable. She took after her dad a lot, and seeing how overbearing he was, Frisk could see how Chara had viewed her not too long ago. A loud, obnoxious, somewhat self centered idiot. And Frisk knew that she and her dad weren't actually those things, but they could definitely come off as such. Frisk sat alone in the living room, unable to hear her dad upstairs, and feeling... Alone.

Frisk raised a hand in front of her chest, and summoned the glowing red heart of her SOUL. She looked at it, as it bopped up and down slightly and gave off little glows of red energy. She sighed. Could this thing help her? She tapped it, and nothing happened. Frisk sighed, and batted her SOUL away from her. That wouldn't help. All her SOUL did was push deadly Determination into her body. Well, deadly to monsters. It was beneficial to her, and gave her the ability to get through everything, and even persist after death.

'Determination? Yeah, more like Determines my awful choices in life towards the girl I have a crush on,' she thought, glaring at the red heart. Frisk felt like her SOUL was the reason for a lot of things in her life. It had been the thing to supply her with the determination to climb Mount Ebott, it was apparently a deadly substance to monsters, and it was found in every human SOUL, so people with full Determination SOULs were very uncommon. 

Suddenly, before Frisk could start throwing hands with her SOUL, her phone rang. It had been sitting next to her on the couch, and the familiar ringtone of the song that Mettaton played during her fight with him came out of it. Why she had made that her ringtone, she had no idea.

"Hello?" she asked, answering the phone. She hadn't been looked at the caller. What did it matter? She just wanted to talk and calm down.

"Frisk," the voice on the other end said softly. Frisk felt her breath catch in her throat. It was Chara's voice. She pulled the phone away from her face and looked at it. Sure enough, Chara's name was at the top of the screen. Chara Dreemurr. Frisk put the phone back up to her ear, and spoke to Chara.

"Chara I- I'm sorry," she said, feeling tears start to well up in her eyes, and her voice get shaky from all the emotion building up, ready to break. "I'm sorry for how I acted. I'm sorry for being so forward, I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable, and I'm sorry for- for just not being straight to the point with my feelings." Frisk usually had a good control on her emotions, and hardly ever cried. But now she broke, and felt tears rolling down her cheeks. She had hurt Chara, and she felt awful about it.

"Hey, hey... Calm down," Chara said. Her voice was steady and smooth. And... more sincere than normal. Even when Chara had been guiding Frisk through the Underground, her voice was always kind of sarcastic and joking, unless it was a very real and serious situation. But her, even her strange monster-inflection seemed to disappear. She sounded more human than she ever had before. 

"But I-" Frisk started, but Chara quickly cut her off.

"I acted rash. I should've been the one to come to terms with my feelings. I had always felt something towards you. Something... different. I hate humanity, I hate myself, and I hate almost everything. Except you. You were so kind to monsters, you freed them all, and you've made peace again. You're different than any other human I've ever met. You make me feel like life is really worth living. And I should've faced these feelings earlier and given in to them, and not made you feel awful for trying your way of telling me how you felt," Chara explained, her voice soft and caring. Frisk smiled, although Chara couldn't see it. Her words just made Frisk happy.

"So.. Does this mean.." Frisk let out a little laugh. "You Chara-bout me?" Chara laughed from over the phone. Not a snicker, or a condescending dry laugh, but real, genuine laughter.

"Yeah. I do," Chara said, her voice still level, with only hints of her laughing fit present in it. "Frisk... I love you."

"I love you too!" Frisk squealed, her eyes welling up with happy tears of joy this time. She clutched her phone to her chest and hugged it, imaging it was really Chara. She cried again, but this time from sheer, overwhelming positivity. She wanted Chara to be her right now. But she'd have to wait.

"I've gotta eat dinner. We're going out somewhere," Chara said, her voice small from the phone being shoved against Frisk. Frisk pulled the phone away and put it back up to her ear.

"Alright! I mean, it's only 8," she commented, looking at the time.

"See you tomorrow," Chara said lightly, a gentle, contented sigh in her voice.

"You will," Frisk said dreamily, trying to imagine Chara right next to her. Her phone beeped, and she was greeted with her lock screen. But it was fine. She was imaging all the wonderful things she could do as she stared at the picture of Papyrus freaking out about human pasta that she had made the background of her phone. Frisk laughed at it, shut off her phone, and laid down on the couch, thinking about her beloved Chara.