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You were never the type to believe in magic and fairytales. Ever since you were a child, you were always a skeptic, a nonbeliever. Everything in this world has an explanation, and you were far more interested in finding those explanations, no matter how appealing an alternative fantasy might seem.
You had no time for princes and princesses and knights and castles, and you most certainly had no time for monsters underneath your bed. You were down to earth as they come, which made for a great joke about your decision to study geology. (And that was about as whimsical as you would generally ever get.)
But sometimes, the answers aren't the ones that you expect.
Sometimes, monsters are real, and they aren't just a metaphor for human nature. Sometimes, monsters are actual, literal monsters from underneath the earth you've always stayed grounded to. And sometimes you have to stop being in denial about it, even if it takes you several months after the announcement.
Monsters were, in fact, real. Wow.
You didn't expect it to change things. Not really. Maybe that was the denial talking, or maybe just a conflict with your ideals and beliefs so great you couldn't process it. After all, you didn't have to. Even if monsters were real, there weren't that many of them, and the chances of one ending up in your little college town were astronomical.
And yet, unlikely doesn't mean impossible, as you were learning more and more. The Dean opened up a scholarship, and somebody took it.
He was tall, and enthusiastic, and he was a living, fleshless skeleton, made of bone, held together by magic, and utterly terrifying in his very existence.
When you first met him in an otherwise empty hallway, you screamed.
He apologized and tried to talk to you, but you ended up running away. It was a bad first impression by any means, and it was only later that you asked yourself to register the utter embarrassment of what you'd done. He may have been a skeleton, but he was a student here like any other, and you were just going to have to get over yourself.
The second meeting went much better.
You were the one to approach him. He was wandering around the geology department, carrying a rock. You didn't expect a skeleton to be so expressive, but he was, and you could tell immediately that he was lost. And so, it was your duty. You asked him if you could help.
“HELLO YES I AM LOOKING FOR A GEOLOGYIST PLEASE.” He didn't seem to remember you, or at least, he was pretending he didn't. His smile seemed a bit tight.
You explained that you were a grad student here, and that you weren't officially a geologist yet but you worked with most of the professors here. You also explained that everyone was gone for the day.
He looked disappointed and fidgeted with the rock in his hands before tucking it carefully in his messenger bag. “I GUESS I'LL COME BACK TOMORROW THEN!”
Something in you snapped before you even had a chance to understand your own thoughts. You asked him if he wanted to go out for lunch.
He did. And you did.
And it was… weirdly really nice.
And suddenly, you and Papyrus were spending a lot of afternoons together.
He told you about his home, the Underground, and the structures within the caves down there. He wasn't a geologist (you weren't sure what he was studying) so he couldn't answer most of your questions, but you were absolutely fascinated, and he seemed very happy to indulge you, even if the only thing you ever seemed to talk about was rocks. He talked a lot about pasta and bones, but the subject always turned back to your passions. He seemed to enjoy just hearing you talk, or maybe he was just really interested in rock.
You started going out at night, too, to movies and dinners and laser tag and bowling. It started with Papyrus making a confession, that he'd never eaten Italian food that wasn't made with garbage and magic. He never saw a real movie. He never bowled before. He never heard of laser tag. He never did so many things, and you delighted in each and every introduction to life on the Surface you could provide him.
There was nothing more beautiful than the way his face would light right up, and you wanted more and more of it.
As the months passed, you realized you… didn't really know what you two were anymore.
You were normally the straightforward type, but… Papyrus had a tendency to avoid answering any question he didn't like, and you hated to see him like that, all shut off and canny.
One time, you remembered introducing him as your friend, and his face was… confused, almost. Maybe slightly disbelieving. And then he nodded and reiterated that he was your friend, and that you were his friend, and that you were both friends. A pair of friends. You couldn't tell if he was upset or what. It was hard to read him sometimes, even if he seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve.
Maybe he thought you were more than friends. Maybe you were. You never really let people get this close, but Papyrus… he was special.
So you stuck with this in-between of a relationship, never quite sure where it was going, or what words you might use to describe it, but whatever it was, it was the best time of your life.
And then, graduation started approaching.
It was almost summer, and Papyrus was maybe going back to Ebbott, back home to his family and his friends and all the other monsters, and you would have to consider where you, too, would be moving on to. Papyrus would be back next year, of course, but would you be there waiting? At the beginning of this year, you hadn't planned on it, but academia was taking a backseat to this newfound passion.
You started to notice a change in Papyrus. He was becoming more and more intense, and it seemed like he was… Testing you? It was weird, and when you bright it up, he would, as suspiciously as possible, deny doing it. But it was hard to ignore the sudden “sparring sessions” at laser tag, or the puzzles he would build in front of your home, or how he would insist on trying to “trap you” with random bowls of badly cooked spaghetti placed in inconvenient locations. He was also always trying to help you study, but his questions about geology had turned harsher and more frenzied, like you weren't being encouraged to speak so much as you felt like a contestant on some sort of terrible gameshow.
Most things could be explained by his being a monster with his own traditions and expectations, but still, you needed to know what was happening. You were a scientist, after all, and you never let yourself get complacent before.
So you did some prying. Some investigating. You weren't breaching his privacy as much as you were… Collecting data. Though there was less data to be found than you expected.
You met with Papyrus's roommate in the dorms, and he didn't have a lot to say. But as you were leaving, he quipped “I think he wants to give you a stone.” And then the door closed and locked and that was it. A new question.
A stone? Did he mean like… a ring? Because he knew you liked rocks, and stones, you were a fanatic and he knew, but something about that seemed like more.
And maybe… maybe beneath your panic, you were hoping for a ring.
For the next week, you could not stop thinking about it. You were so caught up, you almost messed up the increasingly difficult puzzles in the lawn every morning, but you were determined to prove yourself, and so you did not fail.
Two days before your graduation and the end of Papyrus's first year, you two going yourselves on the top of a hill where you both loved to come to watch the sunsets. Papyrus was usually enthralled by every one of them, even the least impressive. But today, he wasn't looking at the sky and the sun.
Instead, he was looking at you, and there was something in his expression that was so vulnerable and uncertain, that you weren't sure how to feel besides the same. He asked you some more questions about geology, and as always you indulged him. But you were nervous underneath it, and you were certain it showed.
He looked at you with a look of awe, the sort he normally reserved for the sun itself on a particularly beautiful day. And then he whispered —whispered!— “I think you really are the one…”
You sat up with a jolly to try to understand, and Papyrus was already rooting through his bag, searching for something.
Time felt like it past in slow motion.
And then, he pulled something out, hidden by his gloved hands, held so, so very gently. He was on one knee, hands outstretched towards you. And your heart most have stopped in an instant.
His name left his mouth with such reverence, and then, he opened up his hands.
“WOULD YOU PLEASE TAKE CARE OF THIS ROCK FOR ME?”
And the fantasy you had built around you came crashing right down to the earth you used to think you were tethered to.
“What.”
In his hands was a pebble. It was gray. It looked like common granite.
“YOU SEE, MY BROTHER'S PET ROCK HAD A CHILD! AND I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR SOMEONE TO TAKE GOOD CARE OF HER! YOU'RE THE PERFECT ROCK PARENT!!!”
“What.”
“AFTER ALL THESE MONTHS, I KNOW YOU CAN TAKE GREAT CARE OF THIS LITTLE BUNDLE OF ROCK!!! DON’T WORRY! I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!”
“What.”
“W-WILL YOU DO IT?”
He looked so vulnerable and desperate despite the grin… how could you not say yes?
“Of course I’ll take care of your rock, Papyrus. Of course.”
Relief washed over him as his smile grew wide and bright as the rising moon on the horizon. He pulled you into a tight, squeezing embrace.
After letting you go, he gave you what was unmistakably an attempt at a kiss, right on your lips. Then he stared, as if he, too, was unsure of what he was doing.
“WHAT.”
“What.”
“WHAT.”
“Did you just kiss me?”
“OKAY I HAVE TO GO NOW SEE YOU AFTER THE SUMMER HAVE A GOOD DAY-- ERR NIGHT OKAY GOODBYE!!!”
He literally flew off. You heard him shout from the sky above “AND PLEASE REMEMBER TO FEED HER EVERY DAY!!!!”
…
And that’s the story of how you became a parent.
Yep.
Fairytales have nothing on reality.