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Tnk. Tnk. Tnk.
Countless moths swirl around the porch lantern, a fluttery, out of season cloud of snow in the humid summer night. Lacking the elegance of butterflies, their white wings carry them along a clumsy, meandering path to the hypnotizing glow of the bulb. A false moon encased in glass. It renders them blind and leads them helplessly off course. The most daring or desperate of the insects break free from their disoriented orbit and fly directly into the lamp's metal framework.
Tnk.
They tumble back into the darkness.
Presumably, they gather their bearings and start the journey anew.
When in fleshy company, Papyrus switches the lantern for an electric trap. The moths don't know the difference. Time, place, and a skeleton's sense of courtesy all carry equal weight in determining their fates.
"Ya think that's merciful or cruel?"
Papyrus, sitting on the porch's edge and inspecting his rucksack for holes, pauses and gives his brother a long, searching look. It's the first time Sans has spoken in three days. Papyrus doesn't count the mumbled non-answers Sans supplies when asked if he'd like something to eat.
"What?"
Not meeting Papyrus's gaze, Sans points at the lantern.
"Why not always use the bug zapper?"
"I don’t like it. It buzzes with an unpleasant hum."
Sans chuckles. There's not a hint of humor in it.
The twisting dread squeezing around Papyrus's soul constricts a little harder. He doesn't know why, but he regrets his answer.
Life on the surface was supposed to be better than this. They were free, weren't they?
The human world is complicated and difficult to navigate. Every day, Papyrus manages to break yet another invisible, arbitrary rule that everyone else understands but refuses to explain to him. He feels foolish. Lost. Unwelcome. Though he never grew close to anyone in Snowdin, the townsfolk there had at least treated him with kindness and warmth. The surface feels much colder, even in the suffocating summer heat.
Sans sidesteps such uncomfortable challenges in the simplest way: he stops engaging with anything outside the confines of their house. Sometimes he restricts that further, engaging with nothing at all.
"Quit staring at that thing, Sans, I don’t want you seeing stars until after we’ve set up the telescope."
When they'd first relocated, Sans had spent many nights relaxing on the hilltop not far from their new home. He'd shown Papyrus the constellations and explained the phases of the moon. One particularly memorable evening, the two of them had cooperated to take photos of Saturn. They'd visited a print shop the next day and turned the best photo into a poster. It still hangs where Sans placed it, in a protective glass frame mounted above their hearth.
Papyrus figures outer space remains a personal passion for Sans, even in his zombified, blanket mummy state. A quiet visit to the hilltop for some stargazing could be the only bait powerful enough to tempt him out of his room. He'd begged Sans all week to join him. Why Sans is able to pull himself out of bed this evening when he found it impossible on the others is a mystery to him, but Papyrus isn’t about to question a miracle.
"Are you certain you don’t want me to carry that?" Papyrus asks, gesturing to the oblong case at Sans's feet. Sans had always treated his telescope with a comical level of tenderness, but tonight he drags it behind him, allowing it to bounce against his heels.
Sans shrugs, still watching the moths.
“I’m bringing snacks and the picnic blanket. Some trail mix. We still have a few scones, courtesy of Ms. Former Miss Majesty. Perhaps a thermos of iced tea or coffee…?”
Tnk.
Tnk.
“Well.” Papyrus zips his rucksack and throws it over his shoulder with far more force than necessary. “Nevermind. Let’s be off!” He stalks toward the familiar path in long, stomping strides. He doesn’t look back to see if Sans is following him. He can hear his telescope case cracking against rocks as it digs a new trail through the dirt.
“I only know how to assemble the stand, I’ll need your assistance with the rest.”
“It’s tubes. Tubes and mirrors. Nothing to it.”
“Well, yes, but, they’re delicate tubes! Fancy ones! With, with knobs and lenses and things! You’ve never trusted me with them before, and, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t trust myself either!”
“Tonight, I trust ya. Go for it.”
Papyrus eyes the muddy carrying case and wonders how much his brother’s faith in him is worth.
“No. My hands are too big, Sans. Big and powerful. Do you honestly want to watch your telescope crumble in my grasp like some pitiful aluminum can? I think not. And there are no instructions for me to follow anyway. You have to help.”
Sans remains flat on his back on the picnic blanket, eye sockets closed. He flicks a hand out like he’s swatting a fly.
“Treat it like a puzzle. Have fun with it.”
“...don’t you want to look at the stars?” His voice wobbles, despite his efforts to keep it level. He wants to scream. Papyrus isn’t sure what he’ll do if Sans says no, but the telescope probably wouldn’t escape the ordeal unscathed.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, all right.” Sans sits up with an undignified grunt.
Masking his relief with enthusiasm, Papyrus follows along as Sans guides him through the assembly of the telescope. A patient and methodical teacher, Sans explains what each piece does and demonstrates how it fits into place. He hands the disassembled parts to Papyrus two or three at a time, gently coaching him when he gets stuck. The process really is like solving a puzzle, the way Sans teaches it.
For a little while, Papyrus tricks himself into believing things are normal. Sans is smiling, soft and gentle, and he sounds like he’s enjoying himself. He's spoken more words tonight than in the last month, and he's even supplied a lame pun here and there.
But he never looks Papyrus in the face.
It's infuriating.
Within the hour, the telescope stands complete and ready to use.
“May I do the honors?” Papyrus asks. He only wants a quick peek to make sure everything works as it should.
“Knock yourself out.”
Papyrus uses the collar of his t-shirt to clean the sweat from his face, then peers through the eyepiece. It’s a clear night, and the Milky Way streaks through the sky in a dazzling display of color and stardust. Papyrus thinks it’s pretty, but he’d feel the same way looking at a photograph of it. He knows Sans appreciates the act of using the telescope on a deeper, personal level.
“All right. Your turn, space geek,” he calls in a sing-song voice, rising from his crouching position.
“What, already?”
“Yep!” Papyrus flops down on the picnic blanket and searches the sky for any constellations he recognizes. “I think I prefer the normal view anyway.”
“Oh.”
After fussing around in his rucksack and popping a few raisins in his mouth, Papyrus continues his scavenger hunt in the stars, intentionally ignoring his brother. He can’t very well leave Sans alone out here, but he does feel like he’s intruding on a private moment. Oddly enough, he doesn’t hear Sans move to sit at the telescope for several minutes. Only the chirping of the crickets. He almost calls him out on it, but the familiar clicks and whirs of Sans adjusting the lenses cut him off before he can air his annoyance.
The night drags on. Papyrus manages to spot both big and little dippers, as well as the scorpion constellation. But without a star chart or Sans to guide him, he feels like he’s staring at random collections of glowing dust bunnies. Instead, he turns his attention to the fireflies that occasionally bumble their way into his line of sight. He reaches an arm towards the sky, freezes it in place, and counts how many of the clumsy beetles land on him. Six. No, seven. Eight?
“Tch.” Sans scoffs.
Embarrassed, remembering where he is and why he's there, Papyrus brushes the insects off his bones. When he turns to face his brother, he’s still looking into the telescope.
“Figures,” Sans mutters.
“Hmm?”
“Y’know, I thought maybe seeing the stars again would help. Really seeing them, with the scope. You have any idea how many more stars you can see with this thing? Tens of millions. And some of the things that look like stars are galaxies. A dot with billions of stars inside it. And who knows how many planets. It’s impossible to imagine, the worlds we don’t know about.” He adjusts the lens. “There’s supposed to be an overwhelming sense of awe. I’ve felt it. Real inspiring. But tonight?” He snorts. “Maybe looking into the endless, yawning void isn’t healthy for a coward like me. This just hammers the point home with all the subtlety of a nuke. Talk about a disappointing night out.”
Papyrus sits up, nervous magic thrumming through him hard enough to vibrate his ribcage. He’s caught his brother hinting at such thoughts before, but he’s never spoken this openly. “What do you mean, Sans?”
“We’re specks. We’re nothing. Compared to all that out there. There’s no order to any of it. No sense. No purpose. No caring, guiding force.” Sans laughs quietly, not moving away from the eyepiece. It's an ugly, empty sound. "It makes it hard to care. Knowing none of this really matters. Not in the grand scheme of things."
Papyrus stares at him. A choir of crickets pierces through the heavy silence with their shrill, repetitive performance. A stray firefly lands on Sans' skull, pulsing gently with a light not dissimilar from the skeleton's softly glowing soul. It loses its footing, pitches over, and disappears into the wet, overgrown grass at his feet.
Papyrus shakes his head. "I don’t understand."
Sans pulls away from the telescope and shrugs. "Heh. Don't worry about it. Nobody really understands the infinite."
“No, not that, the universe is unfathomably large, we are dust motes in the eye of a flea on an elephant, so on and so forth, I understand that, but I…” Papyrus falters, brows knitting together as he tries to put his feelings into words. "That makes me care more, not less.”
"Oh yeah?"
"Yes." A pause. Sans had sounded amused. Papyrus growls, repeats himself, louder, more emphatically. "Yes. Yes, it does. A lot more!"
Sans, facing Papyrus for the first time all night, shakes his head and gives him a look full of fondness and something akin to pity. It's a look Papyrus gets a lot, one that he hates, the kind typically reserved for puppies in bow ties and toddlers in church clothes, but he's never received it from Sans.
"That's nice, Paps."
Papyrus lunges at him, wild with months of bottled-up hurt and anger, lifting Sans by his shirt collar and yanking him close. He'll apologize for it later, but right now he needs to be heard, and he can't risk Sans retreating behind his habitual barrier of averted eyes and clever words. He wants his brother back, the real one, not this callous, empty facsimile of him that haunts their house and all of Papyrus's darkest, terrible fears.
He's tired of wondering whether he'll come home one day to nothing but a pile of dust.
"Now you listen here! I don’t care about grand, cosmic schemes!" he snarls. "I care about here and now! I care about you. I care about my friends, my neighbors, my life, and everything in it. Why would space rocks a billion miles from here change that?!"
The crickets cease their songs, Papyrus's echoing fury cracking through the darkness like a lightning strike. The fallen firefly, backside flickering, clambers out of the grass and flits onto Sans's shoe.
"You say nothing out there cares, right?" Papyrus shouts, jabbing a finger at the sky. "That means it falls to us. We have to care! Our oh-so-insignificant world falls apart when we don’t! It’s our responsibility! And it matters!! To all of us specks of comparative nothingness!!” His shoulders quake. Ghosts of memories flash through his mind, strange, difficult conversations with Flowey he's unsure he's imagined or dreamed or actually participated in, but Papyrus is certain of his convictions even if he lacks the eloquence to express them succinctly. "Order and purpose?! Of course you can’t find that with a telescope!" He taps a digit to Sans's chest, indicating his soul. "It’s right here!! Right where it’s always been!!”
Sans, limp and dangling at least a foot above the ground, blinks. For once, he looks awake.
"Oh," he manages.
His temper rapidly flagging, Papyrus falls quiet but refuses to break eye contact.
"That…makes some sense, actually."
It's not a dramatic change of heart, but Papyrus doesn't expect one. Sans had listened. Without jokes, without sarcastic quips, and without that awful, condescending look. For now, that’s enough. Real change could come later.
With a heaving sigh, Papyrus carefully sets his brother down and returns to his seat on the blanket. He pinches his eyes shut and rubs circles against his temples. Even by his standards, that had been a lot of shouting.
"Forgive me, Sans. The summer heat makes it difficult to keep my cool."
Sans snorts. "It's fine." The firefly has navigated its way to the complicated framework of one of his small, bony hands. He watches it stumble and blink in his palm, keeping as still as he can manage. "Sorry to get you so rattled."
"Feh."
The crickets resume their sharp chorus. Papyrus flops to his back and stares into the cold darkness of space, his vision too bleary to see the stars.
"S’kinda funny, yeah?" Sans says. "How we can look at the same thing and reach opposite conclusions."
"That’s why I prefer math. Math and puzzles. There’s always a set solution. You’re either right, or you’re wrong."
"Ehh. I don't think that's true in advanced mathematics, actually. Things get weird."
"Puzzles, then."
"It was freeing at first, y’know? Not caring."
"..."
"Guess it hurts either way."
"Unfortunately."
"...I’m sorry, Papyrus."
"What convinced you to accompany me tonight?"
"You serious? With how pushy you were, I thought you'd throw me in a baby buggy and trundle me out here if I refused."
"We don’t own a pram."
"True."
"But we do have an office chair. And extension cords."
"Y’see?"
"I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have forced you a-trundle. I’m not an a-trundler."
"You're hypothetical-izing it."
"You planted the idea, don’t complain when it germinates."
Sans chuckles and lumbers over to sit with his brother. He holds out his hand, one finger extended as a perch for his curious insect visitor. The two of them watch the firefly in silence, following its rhythmic glow as it takes off and disappears into the backdrop of stars.
"Papyrus."
"Correct, that’s me."
"Listen. Imagine I told you an asteroid was hurtling toward us."
"What’s an asteroid?"
"A huge space rock."
"Oh brother, more of this space garbage?"
"Yep. And it will destroy everything. Leaving no trace of us, anyone, or anything we've ever done. No hope for a future. Nothing." Sans claps his hands to emphasize his point. "Everything gone in an instant. What would you do?"
"I’d call it a dramatic excuse to avoid folding your laundry."
Sans sputters a moment, then doubles over with laughter. Papyrus bolts upright and watches him with concern, ready to rescind his flippant answer, but the warmth in Sans's voice tells him the reaction is genuine rather than hysterical despair.
"Oh my god!" Sans gasps. "You would! You totally would!"
"Heh." Papyrus isn't sure he finds that funny. "Eheh heh." It's a joy to hear Sans laugh again. "NYEH HEH HEH!" What an absurd, horrible night. He laughs himself to tears, his confusion, fear, sorrow, and relief intermingling and dripping down his cheekbones. He dares to hope they've reached a turning point. The twisting grip on his soul unravels, just slightly.
"No, I get it, I think," Sans eventually says once he catches his breath. "You only think about what you can control."
"Life goes on regardless. Until it doesn’t, I suppose."
"..."
"In the meantime, you’ll always need clean clothes."
"...the here and now, huh?"
"Like how now my back hurts, and I’d like to get out of here.”
"Yeah. Lemme pack up the ole scope. It's kinda tricky to put away."
"Thank you for talking to me, Sans."
"No prob."
"It was and is most certainly a prob. A difficult one. The trickiest I’ve encountered. But…we can manage it.”
"...Yeah. Yeah, maybe we can."
In the weeks that follow, Papyrus sets aside a portion of each day to build a screen around the porch. Sans volunteers more commentary than help, but Papyrus appreciates his company all the same. The less time he spends in bed, the better. After a few mishaps with power tools and several visits to Dr. Alphys for first aid, the skeletons have a comfortable, if slightly lopsided lounge area to enjoy some fresh air and entertain guests. Sans manages to answer the door and greet Toriel when she stops by to see the finished work. He even plays a few rounds of Rummy.
He has yet to travel farther than his stargazing hilltop, but it’s progress. His world is small, but he’s more involved and engaged.
As Toriel excuses herself and the skeletons wave their goodbyes, Sans notices a familiar metal frame mixed in with the scrapped wood and detritus in the garbage.
“Yo, Papyrus.”
“Yes?”
“You threw out the bug zapper?”
Papyrus steals a move from his brother’s playbook and pointedly averts his gaze. He’d hoped Sans wouldn’t notice the discarded trap. “Yes,” he replies airily. “Its insect frying services are no longer required.”
“You sure that’s a good idea? I mean, even with the screen, bugs get through. You want the kid getting mobbed by mosquitos?”
“No, of course not. We’re merely switching pest thwarting tactics. You’ve seen the candles, correct? The chemicals in them frighten and repulse the nasty little crawlies away.” Papyrus, still refusing to look up, shifts uncomfortably under his brother’s scrutiny.
“... the zapper worked fine.”
“You told me it was cruel.” Papyrus peeks at him, but only for a second. “For the moths.”
“Huh.” Sans hesitates for a long moment. “Well. Uh. If it makes you feel better, those things don’t live all that long anyway. The ones that got fried had maybe a day or two left, tops. It doesn’t matter.”
Papyrus glares at him.
“I think it matters quite a lot to the moths.”