Archive of Our Own ^beta

After Horror leaves for work, so does everybody else.

Well, Dust isn’t sure that they’re all going to work. He’s not really sure what Nightmare even does for a living, or whether he even needs a job. But everyone leaves, and Dust gives cooking a shot.

It…doesn’t work.

He gets as far as the kitchen and realizes he doesn’t know how to make anything. That stumps him for a bit—he can reheat things in the microwave, and he could make dinosaur egg oatmeal in his sleep, but that’s not a meal and also he doesn’t know where to find it even if it were enough. He needs to find a recipe for something that might have ingredients here. But that’s its own problem.

Even if he finds a computer to look up a recipe on, they’re all almost certainly set to monitor activities, and no one has told him he’s allowed to use them, so he’ll probably get…something if he does. Using the computers at the compound was reserved for people who could be entirely trusted, punishable by anything from a slap on the wrist to a trip to the Healing Room. He doesn’t want to find out how they correct deviant behaviors here, so Dust doesn’t even look at the laptop he’s seen Nightmare use. Best to pretend he hasn’t noticed it, or maybe he’s stupid and thinks it’s a weird folder, or something.

That leaves recipe books. There are some, clearly visible on one part of the counter, but…Dust flips through them, and every recipe has the same issue.

They all have him touch things. He can’t just use the oven, or anything. What if it has a sensor to prevent fires and it goes off whenever it’s used and then, since he’s obviously the only one here, everyone knows Dust was trying to use it? He tries the microwave (who would bother to monitor microwave use?), but it doesn’t look anything like the one at the compound and it makes such a loud beeping noise when he hits the buttons that Dust is sure for a second that he’s tripped an alarm. A blender is out of the question. Too stressful. Too hard to hear the door over if someone comes home and sees him.

It’s tentatively okay if Nightmare sees him outside of the room sometimes. Only when Dust is sure he’s allowed and only when he’s in approved areas. Someone coming home to see him rummaging through their food and fiddling with their appliances would be disastrous.

He flits through every single recipe book, but barring salads (blegh, he’s not gonna inflict bitter leaf food on Horror), everything else has a pretty similar problem. That leaves nothing but…

Coffee.

They have the same kind of coffee maker here as the compound did. It’s the cheap generic brand that Dust saw at Wal-Mart and admittedly spaced out for around 90 seconds over because he wasn’t expecting to see anything from his former home on the outside.

Dust knows how to operate it, which is what really matters here. It’s not hard. It’s not too loud, either—not so much that he couldn’t hear the door, if it opened. He could make coffee for Horror. It’s lazy, but it’s a gift.

Everything he needs is easily visible, like a sign. There’s even a cute little basket with the coffee grounds and a little ceramic bowl of sugar and some tiny spoons in a saucer. He can do it.

Dust was never a huge coffee drinker before—he liked it alright, and the caffeine helped him keep up with Papyrus when he was going stir crazy and needed a distraction; but he could take it or leave it, mostly. But he liked to make the coffee for everyone. He liked how it smelled, and how every person who woke up would walk in, see the coffee already ready, and say something like “Hey, thanks, Sans. That was really thoughtful.” He didn’t do it too often because he slept in to the last minute whenever he could, but sometimes he was up early enough for that little ritual.

The familiar steps are nice. Dust fills the pot with water. Gets the filter. Grabs the grounds. It’s his own little part of family life.

Except it’s not, because he killed his family.

Dust is a mass murderer, and murder is not a good thing after all, and he’s brewing coffee.

That said, he might as well try not to screw up and get gore everywhere for this one thing. Dust glances around for the blueberry syrup, since Horror seems to really like that stuff. He’s grown a taste for it himself after Horror kept putting it in his drinks whether he ordered it or not. Weird how he’s never seen anyone else take it like that, but it always made Horror smile when he added it, so whatever. Dust doesn’t—didn’t—mind.

The funny thing is, he can’t find the blueberry stuff anywhere around. He’d have thought it would be in the little basket of coffee fixings if Horror likes it so much, but he doesn’t see it.

Dust stares at the cabinet right above the coffee maker.

It must be in there, right? It only makes sense for it to be near the other coffee stuff. They don’t have the whole rack of flavors and fixings here that Horror has at True Loaf, but obviously the essentials have to be around. Dust can finish his present and not fuck up if he opens the cabinet and finds the syrup. He can do whatever the fuck they keep drawing him into doing with their board games and the door and all the conversations. Gifts. He’s reciprocating, he’s playing along. He’s doing it right. He barely understands this language they’re using on him, and it involves a lot of objects and actions that don’t make any sense, but at least he can replicate it and Horror will stop being disappointed.

Not that Dust cares. Or he does care, but that’s because he’s stupid and he’s falling for it, and so he should ignore all the caring he feels. Whatever. He’s not even sure whose side he’s supposed to be on here, because nobody seems to agree about what the sides even are, or what they do.

He just needs the blueberry syrup. He can’t give the coffee to Horror without any. Giving Horror a gift is the right next move. Probably.

The cabinet probably isn’t rigged with an alarm system, right? That would just be annoying, every time someone went to get coffee. Right. Or maybe it does have an alarm and there’s something that disables it that’s painfully simple but impossible for Dust to guess, so he’ll set it off even if no one else in the house would, and then it will hurt and that will suck.

Dust doesn’t want these people to hurt him. Some other people can come along and do it. Not Horror or Killer. He’s beginning to feel like maybe not Nightmare, either. He doesn’t always know how to feel about Nightmare, but he’d rather not know how to feel at all than know that what he should feel is afraid.

Syrup. Cabinet. Is it worth the risk to try it? Probably. Definitely not. Maybe. Dust doesn’t even know what the benefit of doing this gift thing is, so it’s hard to say.

Dust squeezes his eyes shut, flinches, and opens the cabinet.

…

Nothing happens. The cabinet is open.

It has mugs in it. Then there’s a shelf with cups, and another with water bottles and wine glasses. No deadly traps or loud alarms. Maybe a silent, hidden alarm. No blueberry syrup.

Frustrated, Dust continues his quest. He closes that cabinet and opens another. This one seems more promising, with spices and a jar of flour and some vanilla extract. Vanilla is at least a flavor. Dust searches carefully, but the closest thing he can find is corn syrup. Then he searches again for good measure and still finds corn syrup.

Someone in this household uses a terrible organization system. Why would the blueberry syrup not be in either of the two cabinets closest to the coffeemaker?

Maybe they’re out of it.

That would put kind of a wrench in Dust’s plans. Maybe instead of a gift, he should write a note to Horror explaining things and pass it through the door. Horror likes having things written down, and then Dust wouldn’t have to say it himself. That would be a nice solution.

Then again, last time Dust wrote Horror a note, he got kidnapped the very next day.

Then again again, Dust can’t exactly get more kidnapped. Sure, he could be confined to his room or starved or beaten or drugged or carved up or put in sensory deprivation, or sleep deprivation come to think of it, or mutilated or dismembered or disassembled at the joints or they could just take out the bone saws—darn. That’s dismemberment, he already hit that. Go back to start, do not collect $200.

He wonders if Killer would like that joke. Probably. He likes dark jokes and jokes about Monopoly, but he doesn’t like the Journey or anything to do with it, but then again healing torture is pretty non-denominational…

A breeze shifts one of the trees outside, and Dust nearly skitters under the kitchen table to hide from the unexpected noise.

Maybe he should get out of the open. He’s beginning to feel kind of manic, and when Dust gets kind of manic, he has a tendency to commit a lot of murder. Avoiding murder is a good thing, probably, maybe, he doesn’t even know anymore. Killer says the murder he’s already done was good but if Dust kills anyone else ever again then Killer will kill him, Horror says he’s worried about the murder for some reason, Nightmare says it’s wrong, all of Dust’s siblings seem to be of two minds depending on whether they’re the ones being killed or not. Life and death are complex and contradictory.

Dust should write a note to Horror. A note, saying he tried to make Horror some food, but they’re out of stuff and Dust doesn’t know how to make anything anyway. Then if Horror actually even wants Dust’s food, he can teach Dust how to make some, and show him what he’s allowed to use. That seems fine. Nobody’s probably going to do anything bad because of a note.

Dust feels like he’s supposed to be anguished and write a thousand drafts or whatever, because that’s how letters are supposed to work, right? But the note ends up being pretty simple. He has thoughts. He puts them down. If Horror doesn’t like them, well, they’re all he has to give. So there.

The rest of the morning ends up being pretty boring, after that. Dust would kill—well, he’d strongly consider killing to go outside. But corpses still kind of creep him out and he’s never killed another monster before and doesn’t want to start now, so he’d probably have to go out and find someone, which would kind of ruin the point of killing so he can go outside. Going outside and finding someone to kill so he can go outside…

Instead, Killer comes along. Dust likes that better—than the murder part, at least. Maybe not as much as the going outside idea. He’s lived in this same room for a while.

“we got mcdonald’s,” Killer says, when he comes into Dust’s room and interrupts his staring-wistfully-out-the-window time. “hope you like plastic cheese.”

Dust has eaten fast food a time or two. It’s a nice treat that he gives himself to stave off the emptiness after stealing the wallets off of the corpses of his slaughtered siblings. It’s more expensive than ramen, though, so he tries to save it for when he’s got quite a bit of cash or starts to question if he’s even really a person. His normal splurge is always coffee at True Loaf. He saves fast food for when he’s too fucked up to see Horror.

The nice thing about fast food places is that nobody cares if you have just a little bit of blood on you, and sometimes they quietly give you a discount if you look sad and banged up. Neither of those things are true of True Loaf, because if Dust came in with blood or bruises Horror would make a whole big deal out of it. The one time he got hurt enough to panic and come in anyway, it was a whole thing.

…Dust is having kind of a bad day today. It’s the new kind of bad day, the kind that makes him miss Horror desperately and space out a lot and reflect on how he’s actually just an awful, heartless cardboard cutout in the shape of a person who deserves so much worse than what he has.

He never had days like this so much before Papyrus died, because Papyrus adamantly refused to understand when Dust wasn’t up to it on a given day, and demanded his full attention and energy until it felt kind of like Dust had to have some positive feelings sometimes. Because otherwise why would he care so much about Papyrus, right?

Anyway. Papyrus is dead, and today is a bad day, which is probably why Dust doesn’t realize he’s clutching his wrist to the point of pain until someone else is touching it, too. In an instant, he’s on the other side of the room, gasping and panting and feeling like someone wrenched his whole spine out through his sternum. Fucking fuck the collar.

Killer glances around for a second before he notices Dust in the corner and lets out a little relieved sigh. Yeah, Dust would be alarmed to lose track of himself, too. Not that he’s up to much in terms of killing right now, what with the gasping and doubling over.

Ugh. Taking a shortcut with the collar on is possible, but it’s not easy. Dust’s day is that little bit worse. He’s not very good with pain.

“shit, you really can go with that thing on. you hurt anywhere?” Killer asks. “seriously, man, you’re not looking so hot.”

“peachy,” Dust wheezes. He hasn’t had to deal with a lot of pain in his life, what with being on the brink of death for most of it. If he’d been hurt at all before he started killing people, he would have just flat-out died, and a whole lot of things would have been avoided.

It’s really distracting.

“alright, let’s get that off. it’s hurting you.” Killer says.

“i’ll kill you,” Dust tells him, like he does every single time it’s brought up. Killer’s got a really thick skull.

“yep, yeah, i bet. you wanna do it yourself or so you want me to?” Killer nods along, still approaching. He’s not stopping. He’s not giving up.

“back off.” Dust’s voice hitches up and he scoots back as much as possible, plastering himself against the corner near the closet door.

“no can do.” Killer is in arm’s reach, and Dust can feel absolutely nothing where his magic should be rising to defend him. He can’t hurt Killer. Can’t even touch him. He shouldn’t even try, because it’s pointless. Killer is safe from him. As long as he has the collar on.

“don’t do this.” Dust warns. Whimpers. Same difference. “i’ll hurt you.”

So this sucks.

Dust is cringing, all but keening in the corner, hands up like Killer’s gonna hurt him. He never gave a damn when he thought Killer would actually hurt him. No, it’s the stupid collar that scares him. Killer should never have put it on him.

How was he supposed to know Dust would be the most harmless serial killer in the world? He’d barely met the guy back then. But now he knows better, Blueberry’s just a little bunny in wolf’s clothing (with, yeah, some blood on his hands), and Killer’s gone and terrified the guy. It doesn’t feel great. The only thing Killer can think of to salvage some part of this is to take off the stupid collar, but it doesn’t look like Dust is gonna give up on it willingly.

Killer is, like, mostly sure that once the collar is off, Dust will feel a lot better. This cringing thing he does sometimes, where he just desperately appeases Killer and all but begs not to be hurt, that’s gotta be at least partially happening because Dust knows he can’t protect himself if Killer gets violent. That’s bound to get better with the collar off.

Sure, maybe Dust is a little traumatized about how he used his attack magic to kill people and all, but that magic is a part of him. He’s gonna feel better when it’s not half-severed. Dust should have the choice to fight for himself if he needs to.

He sure doesn’t seem to want it, though.

“c’mere.” Killer beckons. He can reach Dust no problem, since he’s pretty much cornered himself, but Killer is pretty sure this will be a lot easier on everyone if Dust is the one to let him take the thing off. “c’mon. i gotcha.”

“no, you don’t,” Dust says. “i’m going to kill you, i’m going to kill you and nightmare and horror!”

He sounds brokenhearted about it, which is a hell of a lot more feeling than Dust usually goes through in a day. He’s gotta be pretty messed up by all that.

Killer can’t say as he understands exactly what Dust was like when he killed all those cultists. He wasn’t there to see it. But he’s pretty sure Dust wasn’t all but crying in a corner and begging them to keep him helpless.

So, yeah. Killer just doesn’t buy that whole ‘definitely gonna kill you’ thing.

“you’re fine. look, it’s gonna stop hurting as soon as you take it off. c’mon, buddy.” Dust is still shaking off the aftershocks, which makes sense. Overloading the suppressor isn’t supposed to be possible without a whole shit-ton of magic.

“what don’t you understand about killing you? i’ll do it. i’ll kill all of you.” Dust says. His tone of voice is all wrong to be threatening, like he’s talking about some completely different person and he’s petrified of them.

“i don’t think so.” Killer says. “i mean, even odds you just hang out and eat some shitty fast food with me and play a board game, just like every day. Minus one ugly-ass accessory.” Seriously, Killer is never gonna see this thing in a kinky light again.

But Dust shakes his head. “you don’t understand. you don’t understand. you took—you—you can’t. killer, please.”

“so you’re just gonna live with that on forever?” Killer asks. “what’s your plan here? ‘cause if it doesn’t come off, then it stays on, and that’s not an option.”

“yes, it is,” Dust argues. “just until i die. that’s not even that long. then you can kill me and i won’t be able to hurt you. that’s the smart thing to do. there’s no benefit to taking it off before then. i’ll just kill you so you can’t kill me, and then i’ll have to kill everyone else, too, and—and you don’t want that. right? you don’t want that?”

His hands hover near the collar protectively, like he’s gonna physically stop Killer from taking it off.

“no, bud.” Killer says softly. He can see where this is going—nowhere good. There aren’t a lot of paths out of this conversation that end in Dust still wearing the collar, and none of those are good. Best thing is to do it quick, right? Like ripping off a band-aid. Yeah.

Dust blinks wide, scared eyes. “so then—?”

“i get what you’re putting down.” Killer flicks his right hand, and a bright red knife shape appears, a mimic of the weapon that slaughtered his whole family way back when.

Dust stares at the attack, then at Killer. For a second, he looks surprised and even hurt, before he relaxes. When he meets Killer’s eyes, his expression is hard to read.

“oh. i understand.” Dust says. Nothing else—just that he understands. He waits placidly.

Killer isn’t sure whether Dust hasn’t noticed or just isn’t thinking about it right now, but he’s not right-handed.

With a gesture from his right hand, the attack sways in the air, and Dust’s eyes are drawn to it with the intensity of someone waiting for his death. Up a little. Just a little more.

Dust tilts his head up to follow it. His hands drop slightly. Perfect opening.

With a quick twitch of his left hand, Killer guides a tiny knife to slice clean through the collar at the breakaway strap.

oh jesus FUCK that hurts is his first thought. The damned thing’s not even on him and the backlash of driving his attack through it stings full-body like he’s been whipped, and not in the fun sexy way. His second thought is oh no you fucking don’t, as Dust brings his hands up to his throat, as if to hold the collar there.

Lacking any better ideas, Killer crushes Dust to him full-body. Dust’s hands are caught between the two of them long enough for Killer to snake the collar of him and stuff it in the waistband of his shorts. With how spooked Dust gets by the bed, there’s about zero chance Dust’s first reaction will be to stick his hand down Killer’s pants now that he’s scared of going full sicko mode.

Sure enough, Dust makes a strangled noise in his throat and struggles, but it’s more of a panicked motion than anything with intent. Killer wraps his arms around Dust and holds tight.

“see? you’re good. i gotcha. you’re not gonna hurt anyone.” Killer mutters roughly. He’s not the guy to comfort someone, but he is the guy who’s here, so. He’s gonna do his damnedest and then call Horror if it really goes south.

“why would—why would you do that, i—” Dust squirms, then stops, and Killer can hear magic appearing with a crackle behind him. Dust says, in a completely different tone of voice. “i’m gonna kill you now.”

Killer squeezes him tighter and sorta sways back and forth. The instinct is rusty, but he used to have baby siblings who would come crying to him when they got scared. This is sort of the same thing, except that Dust is an adult serial killer with enough issues to make a lifelong subscription. He’s gonna need more than a hug.

Hug’s what Killer has to offer right now, though. And Dust hasn’t exactly run away yet.

“sure.” Killer responds belatedly. “fire away.”

“you want to die?” Dust sounds faintly betrayed.

“nah. pretty attached to the whole ‘living’ thing, actually. it’s not such a bad life if you give it a chance.” Killer says, still rocking Dust in a way that’s probably kind of comforting.

Dust vanishes from his arms, and Killer turns around to find him standing at the foot of the bed, not far from where Killer lounges when they’re playing Battleship. It’s pretty absurd to imagine the guy dusting him after Killer has seen him hold little funerals for his plastic ships.

It doesn’t make Dust any less a killer. Killer knows how it seeps into a person, becomes part of what they are. He’ll never be who he was before he picked up the knife again.

But knowing what Dust is doesn’t mean Killer’s gonna be scared of him.

There’s a terrifying array of bone attacks pointed at him, threatening to bludgeon or impale if he twitches wrong. Killer walks through the sea of them, approaching the bed.

They rotate to follow him, like he’s being stared at by a whole room. The ones in his way float back before he can come close. They close ranks behind him so he’s surrounded, and Dust keeps his left hand steady in front of him, directing them with bright, flaring eyes.

Killer bends over and smooths out the bedspread, frowning at the McDonald’s bags. Grease has bled through them to stain the bedspread, and he just knows that’s not coming out easy. McDonald’s guck clings.

Dust watches this intently, moving his attacks with an impressive degree of accuracy so that Killer’s never closer than two feet away from any of them. Not even a chance to accidentally hurt himself.

“the food’s cold,” Killer complains, just to have something to say. “i mean, it’s not gonna do anything to the quality, let’s be real here, but c’mon. cold mcdonald’s. what’s even the point?” He shakes his head.

“shut up.” Dust makes an aggressive moment with one phalanx of attacks, like he’s gonna stab Killer with them, but it’s a feint. Killer doesn’t even bother to flinch.

“man, i’ve already told you. i don’t come with an off switch. if you don’t want me to talk, you’re gonna have to come up with something better for me to do.” with my mouth. Killer generously gives up on the chance for innuendo. The things he does for this guy.

“die.” Dust says. He takes a deep breath, concentrating.

Dust might actually freak out enough to kill him, if Killer lets him work himself up to it. The guy is a little nuts sometimes. But he doesn’t actually want to do it, Killer is pretty sure—so the real trick is not to give him time to overthink and change his own mind. Just prove to him that he’s not gonna hurt anyone before Dust can prove that he will.

That in mind, Killer braces on foot on the bedframe where Dust can’t see it, tenses, and flings himself into a row of attacks.

miss! They disintegrate as he approaches. Dust doesn’t have time to direct them to move, but his knee-jerk reaction is to dissolve them before Killer can get hurt. Killer takes out about a quarter of the room with one reckless move.

“what are you doing?!?” Dust demands. “are you stupid? you could have died!”

Killer wipes some sweat off his brow. Honestly, he wasn’t totally sure that would work. Like, 80% sure, probably. Maybe more.

Looks like Dusty’s got a soft spot for him after all.

“nah,” Killer says with total confidence. He swaggers through the room, and Dust’s attacks dissolve as he passes. Dust himself staggers back a step. “i couldn’t have. you don’t need the collar, blueberry. you’re not gonna hurt anyone. see?”

He reaches out to flick an attack, and it retreats before he can even try. Even the ones in the corners Killer didn’t reach are crumbling. Dust is losing the will to threaten him. Attacking is right off the table.

And Nightmare says Killer takes risks just for the sake of it. Not that Killer will ever be telling him exactly how much risk was involved here, but hey, can’t argue with the payoff.

Dust is shaking hard enough to rattle his bones, looking utterly bewildered as things go totally off-course from how he was expecting them. Yeah, Killer has that effect on people. Serial killers especially, though this particular circumstance is new to him.

“alright. you want me to leave you alone for a bit, or do you want to hang out some?” Killer asks. “wasn’t kidding about the fast food and board games. we can just chill together.”

“…get out.” Dust says. “or i’ll…”

He looks around the room and doesn’t embarrass himself by pretending he’d actually hurt Killer. He’s proven pretty well that he won’t, and after such a pointed demonstration, he’s not likely to try again.

“just leave.” Dust says.

“ok.” Killer tells him. “i’ll leave the food for you. let me know if you change your mind.”

He walks to the door, and doesn’t bother to avoid Dust on his way past. He jostles Dust with his shoulder instead, since Dusty boy is exactly in the way and because he doesn’t want Dust to think Killer’s any kind of scared of him.

Dust vanishes halfway through the motion, and Killer is alarmed for all of half a second before he hears uneven breathing from the closet. Alright. Dust can hide there for a while.

Killer takes the collar back out of his waistband, just to be sure he doesn’t drop it on the way out. He takes it downstairs, pleased with his prize.

Dust stands in Horror’s room.

This will do it. This will show Killer he’s wrong about Dust, he’s dangerous, he’s evil, and he can’t be trusted to be unrestrained. He can’t be trusted at all. He’s a murderer. Caring has never stopped him before.

He just needs to kill Horror.

He clutches the stupid note in his hands, the one he didn’t give to Horror, because Dust was an idiot to think he could ever hack it here. He’s not one of them. He’ll never be one of them. He’s going to destroy this letter and leave the shreds in Horror’s—

in Horror’s—

It’s impossible to think of a pile of dust in Horror’s bed. The dust in rituals is always stored in neat little containers, not spread out carelessly where a person used to be. Dust has only ever seen dust spread out like that when he found Papyrus, before they could clean him up. They never got a chance to clean him up.

This is really, really not what Papyrus would want him to be doing.

“i’m sorry,” Dust whispers to him. “i…just one more. i need to.” Then Killer will kill him and he’ll be done. No more death. It can end.

Horror stirs, and Dust curses himself for talking out loud like that when he has no idea whether Horror is a heavy sleeper or not. He steps forward, ready to just get it over with. He will. He can do it.

He just needs to…he just needs to…

There’s a red glow in the darkness.

Horror’s red eye, a strange ring like a halo, flickers in. He looks at Dust fuzzily. It hits Dust that he’s standing over Horror’s bed in his home, watching him sleep, like…like a lover. Or like Dust imagines a lover would. Horror said he sleeps with the others sometimes.

Dust panics.

“you’re out of blueberry syrup.” It’s the first thing he can think of to say. It is the absolute stupidest excuse he’s ever heard.

Horror makes a sound, half-hum and half-grumble, and blinks slowly. Dust twitches to summon an attack while his eye is closed, but Horror isn’t going back to sleep. He’s shifting in bed. What is he doing?

An arm, massive next to his smaller and infinitely more dangerous hands, reaches slowly over to Dust. Dust watches in frozen fascination as Horror leans over and sticks his whole hand through Dust’s gut, dispersing the ambient magic filling out his clothes. It’s one kind of gut punch.

The other kind of gut punch comes when Horror’s big hand pats around until it spans the bottom of his ribcage and shoves him inelegantly. Dust isn’t expecting it, and teeters on the edge of his balance for a second before sprawling right over Horror.

“hhhhhh,” Dust says. Or maybe wheezes.

Horror makes a content little sound of agreement, clasping Dust in a warm, soft embrace.

Just like when Killer was touching him like that earlier, Dust’s mind shuts down. All he can focus on is that touch, that warmth, the line where Horror is pressed against him. He’s right there. He’s holding Dust. Dust can’t breathe. Horror is holding him.

He’s cuddled closer and Horror nuzzles Dust’s shoulder. Dust makes that wheezing noise again. Horror responds with another content, sleepy hum, getting comfortable.

He’s being held. Dust the skeleton is being held.

A tiny, soft noise can’t quite be stifled. Dust is stiff in Horror’s arms but he’s not being let go.

It’s…well…no one is watching. Horror isn’t even awake. No witnesses. So…

Dust rests his head on Horror’s shoulder, and puts one hand lightly over Horror’s wrist, just feeling where Horror is holding on to him.

Just for a little while. Just for the rest of his life.

Dust settles in and goes to sleep.