Chapter Text
You had dreams in life. Real, achievable ones that you worked hard for. You went to college for art, worked your ass off in school to graduate with honors, majored in painting and minored in art education. You were a patient person. (Okay, that was a lie. You weren’t patient but you were tolerant with waiting. So… maybe a perserverent person.) You applied to every school in the state to be a teacher, and no dice.
It started out small, getting an intern job at some random celebrity’s agency. You designed profile photos and Twitter banners while working as a waitress, occasionally drafting ideas for their media to your managers. It was fun at first, even if the money wasn’t great. You quickly moved up in ranks until you were the celebrity’s personal assistant. Until then, you hadn’t even met her. Adaline.
Her persona was regal, elegant, and pure. Her white hair and yellow-amber eyes made her a very recognizable model. Adeline promoted many makeup brands and clothing lines, but you’d seen her on a couple perfume ads as well. She wasn’t a celebrity you’d see much talk about if you didn’t directly follow her and what she did. In her interviews she seemed kind and grateful.
It wasn’t until you became her assistant that you got a true taste of how much of a bitch she was.
It started with the coffee. You always wrote down her coffee order and just handed it to the cashier to avoid any error, but Adaline always had a problem. Whether you ‘forgot’ the cake pop she definitely didn’t ask you for, or the coffee was too hot, too cold, not enough sugar, too much sugar-
-
“I’m really sorry, Ms. Adaline. They didn’t have soy milk, but they said skim was a very close option.”
Adaline wrinkled her nose in disgust, “Why didn’t you just go to another Starbucks?!”
“...I did. I went to three.”
She threw her hands up, rolling her brown eyes, “You made me wait that long and you didn’t even bring me the right coffee?!”
…..don’t be violent. Don’t get violent. You need this job. You need this job.
“UGH. Whatever!”
She drank the whole thing anyway.
-
You began to tune her out after the first two weeks of apologizing for your ‘mistakes.’
You were tasked with making sure she knew her schedule each day, which Adaline demanded be read to her while her makeup was being done to save time. That part honestly didn’t bother you, it was smart and respectable, but the way she talked to her makeup team truly irked you. She had to do her own mascara, then complained when it wasn’t even (it looked fine), she had to pick every color, then freaked out when they didn’t look well together, and she talked shit the entire time about how she could do so much better, then expected you to agree with her.
The level of entitlement was insane to you. You genuinely couldn’t comprehend it. Well, not until you found out she was one hell of a nepo-baby. Her dad had about as much reach as Elon Musk and her mom had her fingers in Vogue and many other high-demand brands. You wouldn’t consider yourself poor by any means, but being middle class and being the 1% was a big gap.
You were required to wear her lipstick, but had to buy the $100 set with your own money. You honestly almost quit your job then and there, but apparently you had the patience of a saint and stayed for another two years. At least your clothing matched the dress-code.
-
“Oh, honey. All of my assistants, even you, have to wear my lip kits.”
You blushed, embarrassed, “Oh, yes, of course, Ms. Adaline.”
She’d stopped in the middle of a full tangent to call you out on it. Apparently one of her ‘snake’ friends wore the same very popular dress as her within the same week and had the audacity to post it on instagram and maybe get extra likes. Also, Adaline’s ex, Adam, commented a whole three fire emojis under it, and Adaline was having an absolute mental breakdown over it. No one told you being a personal assistant also meant being a pocket therapist. Go figure.
You’d brought her the correct kombucha, opened it for her, and canceled everything on her schedule for her since she refused to shoot her reality show that day because of the totally serious definitely personal spite against one of the other actors.
“I brought her up from nothing. She was nothing without me. You know I got her onto this show? That’s right. Me. And she has the audacity to do this to me.”
You watched her face scrunch weirdly due to the amount of botox shoved into it and forced your expression into something resembling sympathetic, “That’s… horrible, Ms. Adaline.”
She took a sip of kombucha and jutted her lip out, “I KNOW ! I begged the executive producer to let her on and this is how she repays me?! Go- Go on my account and comment snake emojis on her post. At least ten of them. Like, three times. She’ll know.”
You clenched your jaw and nodded, honestly not caring about the backlash Adaline would probably get for it. If anything, you were trying not to laugh.
Adaline fixed her hair for the five-hundredth time and pouted, “I’m going to have the executive kill off her character.”
“Mhm…” You nodded a little, mid-commenting little snake emojis on Adaline’s ex friend’s most recent post. Which was an hour ago. Honestly, the friend looked cute in the dress, you could see why Adaline was jealous.
She went on an even longer rant, which diverged into Adaline cutting the girl’s wig up and sprinkling the loose strands around the set, which almost had you pissing yourself with how hard it was not to laugh.
“Oh. You’re not wearing my lipstick still.”
You mentally groaned. You hadn’t even left yet!
-
It was genuine hell for a long time. You dealt with the same petty bullshit, stacks of paperwork, constant complaints, and having to treat Adaline like a genuine princess until she finally got bored of you. You weren’t fired, but shifted to a different celebrity. Claude.
And so the cycle continued.
The same petty bullshit. The same stacks of paperwork. The same complaining over shit you wish you could have the luxury of complaining about. The same stupid questions and babying and pampering. The only difference was that the new celebrity made consistent sexual remarks about you. HR didn’t care in the slightest until you got it on camera and threatened to sue. Did you have the money to sue? Of course not. But you could always go to the public for it and get the guy canceled, so you were ‘let go’ with a large bonus and a non-disclosure agreement.
You were still a good employee, and an unfortunately good sport about the whole thing, so HR pulled some strings to land you a job in the capital. The capital of New Ebott, that is.
You never had a problem with monsters. You found them delightful, actually. Every monster you served at the restaurant tipped well and gave you no problems. Even if the food was wrong or there was a mistake, they just told you straight up without any condescension and you’d fix it. You hadn’t worked with or for monsters until this job, though.
You were honestly tempted to pray that this new job would work out. Hopefully this ‘Papyrus’ guy wasn’t too bad off camera.
Papyrus was mostly joking when he offered to be the mascot of monster kind. It made much more sense for Frisk, Undyne or even Asgore to be the face of their kingdom. Sure, Frisk was the ambassador, and Undyne was on Asgore’s protection detail, and Asgore was… well.. the king, but surely there was someone that would’ve better suited the role.
…
Mettaton said no. He preferred being his own celebrity.
So… this was Papyrus’ job now! Don’t get him wrong in the slightest, he was elated to be a celebrity! He’d make so many friends and he’d be SO popular and Sans would finally stop worrying about him!
This was a good thing!
And he loved it for a solid year! He worked directly with Mettaton, Alphys, and the human to make sure he was representing the monster population in the best light. It was fun! A lot of rides in fancy cars and planes, getting to see beaches and big cities with his friends!
It wasn’t until a little while after monster’s rights were confirmed that things started going a little down-hill. Once they were confirmed as American citizens, they were expected to follow American law and American expectations. Which wasn’t bad! It was very good that they were given rights! He very much liked those! But! Because of that, Papyrus’s job got a little more complicated.
The moment it was legal, he was suddenly being asked to form hundreds of brand deals that he didn’t really understand the importance of, and his friends were exactly zero help.
-
“What? PAPERWORK?? Just PUNCH it!”
“THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.”
“Oh YEAH?! I’LL SHOW YOU HOW IT WORKS!”
“DO NOT NOOGIE THE SKELETON!”
-
“Oh darling, they just want to see your handsome bones everywhere! They love you! Do them all.”
“...METTATON THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF THEM. THIS ONE’S FOR A HAIR CARE PRODUCT.”
“…Maybe not all then, darling.”
-
Thankfully, his brother was there to help! Sans was lazy, but tended to have good advice!
“…maybe you should hire an assistant. or a man- ager. you could pay them to figure it out for ya, paps.”
“THAT SOUNDS AWFULLY LAZY, SANS.”
His brother snickered, “hire a human. they’re going to know how it works a bit more than a bag-of-bones, bro.”
“…MAYBE. WOULDN’T THAT MAKE ME LAZY?”
Sans hummed, looking up from where he was scrolling on his phone, “…nah. you’re the one working yourself down to the bone.”
“SHUT UP, BROTHER.”
-
Papyrus hired a manager. She was blunt and no-nonsense and Papyrus had to work his tailbone off for three full months to get on her good side. She was very good at her job though! They worked together easily in deciding which brand deals to go for, and Papyrus would occasionally ask King Fluffybuns for input.
It was complicated and frankly exhausting after six months. He still loved his job, and kept to positivity, but there were times that it genuinely got to him.
Papyrus could deal with racism. Genuinely! They were just confused and had yet to meet such a great skeleton such as himself! The only issue was finding humans willing to work with him!
He wasn’t hiring anyone directly to his ‘company’ just yet, but when he went in for photo shoots, he was often stranded. He was seen as rude if he went on his phone to check the schedule, rude if he asked for the time because he didn’t want to go on his phone, rude when he asked why everyone else was catered with clearly friendship-filled sandwiches, and rude when he asked why he was invited if the photographer was racist and wouldn’t take the photos.
Papyrus was a patient monster! He could understand mistakes and miscommunication easily, but when it happened for every single outing, he found himself with a clenched jaw and a worried brother.
It wasn’t even that he truly minded the wait, just that it wasted his manager’s time and the time of other agencies that might actually accept him. It was becoming quickly clear that a lot of the brands, like the hair-care one, didn’t even look at what type of monster he was, or.. genuinely anything about him before sending an offer. His manager, always blunt, told him that they frankly just wanted to say they were willing to work with a monster so more monsters would shop there and they’d get support from monster-lovers. A lot of the time, they apparently didn’t even tell the makeup and PR teams that he was a monster, just that a ‘ new upcoming celebrity is coming to promote our product!’ which is why he faced so much surprise and disdain in a lot of meets.
He tried his best to convince them to feel safer and more accepting of him and monster-kind, but it didn’t always work. He would never stop trying though! He believed in them!
His manager had enough and hired his own team after one brand made him wait for a meeting at an office for 6 hours before telling him to leave because their own teams weren’t willing to deal with the ‘intricacies’ of taking a monster’s photo, though.
And suddenly, Papyrus had his own photographer and assistant! After another year, he had his own office building, a full photography team, a media advisor, his manager, his manager’s many assistants, a makeup artist, and his own personal assistant. He had watched the numbers slowly climb in the beginning, elated when his two followers (curse that troll) jumped to twenty, then twenty thousand, but after a while it had snuck up on him. Six million followers. And that was just on Instagram! Across all platforms, Papyrus had garnered six- teen million followers. He was showered in fan-mail and cute drawings from excited kids and teens hoping for a more accepting future.
With such a large team, he was able to get a lot more done, and he was suddenly making enough money to pay his employees far above the truly abysmal minimum wage as well as treat his friends and fully support his brother (if Sans would let him. Apparently his brother isn’t that lazy, which is a lie. They’re on the surface and the sock is still there.). It was hard work, but it was fun again. At least, for a little while.
His makeup artist quit for a dream job, which he would never look down upon them for, but instead of hiring a new one, his manager decided to lump in makeup as a responsibility for his personal assistant if he needed anything. It had a good pay upgrade, so his assistant didn’t mind at all.
She was a nice girl at first, all smiles and sharp makeup and fake glasses. Papyrus almost never needed makeup, since he was a skeleton, but during an ad campaign where they wanted a fun ‘day of the dead’ look, he quickly discovered that he was allergic to face-paint. Thankfully it was nothing serious, just a light rash and a burning sensation, but it wasn’t pleasant.
She didn’t last long. Apparently her fake glasses were one of those fancy cameras and she was trying to get evidence for an anti-monster expose that a highly racist company was paying her handsomely for. Sans had called it out after visiting the office to have lunch with his brother. Papyrus had offered to let her stay.
-
“MS. MANAGER, I TRULY DON’T THINK THAT FIRING HER IS NECESSARY! I BELIEVE THAT EVERYONE CAN CHANGE AND DESERVES SECOND CHANCES! IF SHE CAN JUST-”
Sans looked away, unwilling to tell Papyrus he was wrong or chip away at Papyrus’ forgiving nature. It was part of his little brother and he loved him for it. His manager pinched her nose bridge and sighed, “Papyrus, I know you feel that way. And that’s great , truly. There needs to be more people in this world like you, believe me. But she doesn’t… care. If you let her stay, even if you take the glasses, she’s just going to get more risky because she knows she can get away with it. She’s racist, Papyrus. She’s not doing it because she needs the money, we both know you paid her far more than just a living wage. She’s doing this out of hatred. Sometimes it’s not worth it to keep that around you.”
Papyrus clenched his jaw, “...ARE YOU SURE? I REALLY…” He remembered the way she had almost snarled at his brother when Sans had asked why her glasses had a camera. She was mean and vicious and… hateful.
Sans frowned, “..i’m sorry buddy. i guess she’s just bad to the bone .”
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.”
Sans snickered with a lightly guilty expression, “it was handed to me, paps, i had to.”
-
Horrible puns aside, life moved on. His second assistant, this one with several background checks being performed before hire, was a sweet guy. At first. He stuck around for about 3 months before he exploded on Papyrus for asking a question about how humans work. It was an innocent question too, just about why humans preferred some foods over others so heavily. Apparently, the man had enough of his questions. Papyrus tried to fight for him to stay, same as his previous assistant, but his manager convinced him.
-
“I know you’re upset about this Papyrus, but think of it as an opportunity to give someone else a chance to work here. Someone who will really love it and appreciate you. Someone who really needs the job.”
“...OKAY, HUMAN.”
“You’ve got to stop calling me that. If you want to be professional, feel free to call me Ms. Manager again, but I've got a name Papyrus. We’ve been working together for over two years.”
Papyrus blushed, “APOLOGIES, BRENDA.”
“Thank you.”
-
The next assistant was another woman. She was a little older than his last assistants and seemed to have to no-nonsense attitude that Ms. Brenda had. She lasted six months before calling him monster scum and quitting. He didn’t even argue after that one.
A younger girl stayed around for two weeks. Not only did she ignore his allergy to face paint twice but she quit after she found out she wouldn’t see Mettaton, who she was an actual fan of.
A man who put rat poison in Papyrus’ catering. It was only Papyrus’ extreme sense of smell from being a monster that saved him from a very miserable time. The guy was only there for a month.
-
Ms. Brenda was at the point where she was offering to take on being his personal assistant as well as her other responsibilities. Papyrus told her no because her previous words stuck with him.
“MS. BRENDA, I’M SURE THERE IS SOMEONE WHO WOULD APPRECIATE THIS JOB! JUST AS YOU SAID, THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR SOMEONE NEW!”
She grimaced, “...That was before someone tried to kill you, Papyrus.”
Papyrus smiled and shook his head, “PESTICIDES WOULD NOT HAVE KILLED ME, MS. MANAGER! I AM FAR TOO GREAT FOR THAT!”
Brenda stared at him for a moment, calculating, before she cracked a smile, “..Of course, Papyrus. But it still would have made you sick, which means a loss of time, no?”
He hummed, tapping his chin, “I SUPPOSE YOU ARE CORRECT! BUT MY SENSE OF SMELL IS A LOT BETTER THAN A HUMANS! I PROMISE YOU, THERE WAS NO THREAT!”
“...If you say so, Papyrus. I’ll find another assistant for you.”
-
You were handed to Brenda on a silver platter from the HR of the biggest celebrities around. You had an incredible background in the field. No write ups, rarely late, both jobs prior let you go with no negative feedback and high praise for your work ethic. Brenda genuinely had no idea how you hadn’t been snatched up before, but after multiple background checks, you seemed to fit the role just fine. Hell, you were recommended for it. After working for Claude and Adaline, there was no conceivable way you were under-qualified.
Papyrus smiled when he got the email from Ms. Brenda confirmed his new assistant was officially selected and invited for an interview. Papyrus believed in everyone, of course, but he couldn’t help secretly hoping this one wasn’t racist. He was really tired Sans worrying over him all the time! He’s the great Papyrus!
He’s sure this new assistant will be just fine.