Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Subject S woke up feeling surprisingly warm. There was… something soft?… wrapped around him.

He tried to squirm out of it and realized he had no idea where the ends were. Crud. He was going to have to open his eyes.

He did so, blinking blearily, then sat up and shook his head, biting back a cry when the motion jostled his broken rib. The warm blanket that had been wrapped around him fell away, and he pulled it back into place – a little awkwardly, with his left, dominant arm in a sling, but he managed it.

He was in a room full of stuff he couldn’t put a name to, above the room… Papyrus… had first taken him to, where he’d patched up his bones and fed him. He was sitting on… a bed, Sans had called it… apparently it was Sans’s bed. Subject S didn’t really understand that, but he had no plans to argue.

Wait… no… not Subject S. Blue. That was what the other two skeletons… Papyrus and Sans… had called him. They’d said he was no longer a subject or an experiment and he needed a proper name.

Blue. He smiled and laid back down.

It was dark, but the windows were covered, so he couldn’t have guessed what time it was. When the other skeletons would interact with him next.

He wasn’t sure what they wanted to do with him, and that lack of knowledge had him on edge, but he wasn’t as frightened as he had been when they’d first found him. So far, they had bandaged him, fed him, given him a name, told him again and again that they weren’t going to hurt him, let him sleep as long as he needed, and…

Having his soul pulled out of his chest had been strange. Not because it hadn’t been done to him before, but because nothing bad had happened.

It underscored the main reason he wasn’t planning on running again. Papyrus and Sans were both far stronger than he was. If they’d wanted to hurt him, they could have done so by now.

The fact that they hadn’t didn’t necessarily rule out the possibility that they would, but it did make it seem less likely.

So Blue lay still, patiently waiting for someone to come.

He hoped they were going to feed him again soon. He was hungry.

He wondered if they had any more of that red stuff… tomato soup, they’d called it.

After a while, the door clicked open quietly, and Papyrus stepped in, moving in near-total silence. Blue’s eyes followed the older skeleton as he slowly came closer. He was carrying a bowl of something that was not red, but which did smell like food.

“Blue? Are you-” He cut himself off, then chuckled quietly. “Nyeh heh heh. How long have you been awake?”

Blue didn’t know, so he didn’t answer. He just waited.

Papyrus came up to the edge of the bed and knelt beside him, placing the bowl on the soft surface beside the child. Its contents were beige and mushy and warm and the smell was making it impossible to ignore his hunger pangs.

“Hungry?” Papyrus asked, and Blue nodded eagerly.

“All right. Do you have any idea what oatmeal is?”

Blue shook his head.

“It’s a fairly common, simple food. I’ll need you to sit up…”

Blue did, trying to keep the blanket wrapped around himself. Unfortunately, with only the one hand, he couldn’t manage it this time.

Papyrus reached forward, and Blue froze, holding absolutely still as the older skeleton wrapped him up such that he could hold the cocoon in place with only his right hand. Once it was over, he blinked and shifted back a little, uncomfortable.

Not that he could have said what he was afraid of. Just that he was.

That done, Papyrus filled a spoon with the oatmeal stuff and held it out toward him. Blue leaned forward to take it.

It was good. Not as good as the red stuff yesterday, but better than anything else Blue had ever had, and he eagerly went in for a second bite. And another. He didn’t really want Papyrus up in his face like this, but they both knew it was the only way he could eat right now. Besides, the food was so good…

He wasn’t hungry enough to eat the whole bowl – Papyrus had brought a lot of it – but he did so anyway, some frightened instinct telling him that he should eat all he could while he still could.

Papyrus put the bowl down and looked at him with an expression Blue had never seen before for a moment. It didn’t seem threatening, though, so he just held still, waiting for Papyrus to make the next move.

“I have to go out and patrol today,” Papyrus said. “I can’t miss work very often. But Sans contributes almost nothing of value to the Guard, so he will be doing something useful for once and staying home with you. If you need anything, you can just ask him. Do you understand?”

Blue made a mental note to test that assertion and nodded.

“Good. Remember, you’re safe with Sans.” He didn’t stop to let Blue respond to that one. Perhaps he knew that Blue didn’t feel particularly safe around either of them and there was nothing he could say to change that. “Now that we have that out of the way – before I leave, we need to change your bandages.”

Blue gripped at his shirt above his soul. He’d been hoping the other skeletons wouldn’t touch his injuries.

“I know it’s scary. But we have to do it or the wounds might get infected.”

Blue swallowed, shivering a little. He’d had infected cuts before, and he didn’t want to experience it again. And so far, these two seemed like his best shot at safety.

Papyrus hadn’t hurt him last time. He nodded.

Papyrus had him remove the blanket and lie down flat on his back, then pulled the oversized shirt he was wearing up to around his shoulders, exposing his injured ribs. Once that was done, he threw the blanket over everything below his ribs, which made Blue feel slightly better.

He was still shivering, balling his hands into fists in an effort to keep himself from trying to stop Papyrus from touching him. He did need help. He was injured. He couldn’t look after himself. He needed someone to do this for him.

Papyrus hadn’t done anything to him so far.

As the older skeleton started to peel away the bandages, Blue closed his eyes and tried to pretend he wasn’t there.

Papyrus worked exactly the same way he had yesterday – quickly and carefully, stopping for a moment to apologize every time Blue squeaked or whimpered in pain. At least this time, he didn’t need to set any bones.

Within a few minutes, Blue’s ribs were bandaged up again, and he opened his eyes – just in time to see Papyrus reaching for his arm.

He closed his eyes again, still trying to blank out. He’d done that before, sometimes, during the worst of the experiments.

It didn’t work this time. He remained nerve-wrackingly present as the older skeleton tended to those wounds as well. Once again, Blue was grateful the bone didn’t need to be set this time.

Something thin but strong wrapped around his arm, holding it firmly in place, and then something warm and… nice?… was pressed against the injuries for a moment. During that moment, the pain eased.

And then Papyrus pulled away. “Okay. It’s over now, Blue.”

Blue opened his eyes again, then managed a faint smile. Papyrus smiled back, then reached out to gently run a hand over his skull.

Blue froze. Papyrus pulled back.

There was a moment of silence.

“I have to go now,” Papyrus said, then took the bowl, turned and left.

Blue lay perfectly still, trying to convince himself that he was all right. Papyrus wasn’t one of the scientists. He’d said he wasn’t going to hurt him.

This was probably the best situation he could have ended up in. He’d done it – he’d escaped the lab. But he was a child. He needed to belong to someone.

Papyrus and Sans at least said he was safe with them, and that was better than he had ever gotten from anyone else.

All right, all right. He – at least for the moment, he was fine.

A few more moments passed, and the door opened again. This time, it was Sans who came in.

He just hovered in the doorway for a minute. Blue stared at him with very wide eyes.

“hi there, kid,” Sans said. “do you want to do anything, or would you rather I just left you here to sleep all day?”

As good as sleep sounded, Blue knew he was too wound up and not exhausted enough to manage it right now. He hesitated before he spoke. The sound of his own voice scared him; he never knew if talking would get him in trouble or not.

“I-I d-d-don’t think I can s-s-sleep.”

Sans sighed. “scared?”

Blue nodded.

“want me to leave you alone most of the time?”

Blue nodded.

“all right. I’ll go find something you can blue on your own, then.”

It took Blue a moment to notice the joke, and he kept his quiet snicker to himself until Sans had left the room.

Sans came back soon enough carrying a box. Blue tracked it with his eyes. “you know what a puzzle is, kid?”

Blue shook his head.

Sans put the box down beside him. It wasn’t a plain cardboard box – it had a picture on the front. It was a really dark forest at night, with some glowing, cup-shaped purple things at the center. “well, this is a jigsaw puzzle. You see…” He opened the box, showing Blue a lot of little colorful chips of cardboard. “these pieces fit together at the edges. You try to snap them all together so that it makes the picture on the box. For instance, this piece looks like the edge of one of the mushrooms. I know I jigsaw another piece of the same edge just a moment ago…” He started poking through the pieces, looking for the other piece, and Blue grinned at the joke.

Sans noticed. “liked the pun?”

Blue hesitated, then nodded.

Sans’s smile suddenly became conspiratorial. “good to know.” And then the expression was gone. “you understand how the puzzle works?”

Blue nodded.

“great. I’ll just leave you until lunch, then.”

He left, and Blue turned his full attention to the puzzle. He hesitated for a moment, then backed away, making some space in front of himself so he could dump out all the pieces. Then he thought for a moment and started hunting for the edges.

💙💙💙

By the time Sans came back, the puzzle was complete. Blue was lying curled up beside it, trying to sleep.

“hey, kiddo,” Sans said. “I brought lunch.”

Blue looked up.

Sans dropped the tomatoes he’d been carrying on the bed. “i’m too lazy to turn them into soup.”

Blue sat up, grimaced, and grabbed one of the strange red things, turning it over in his one good hand. “Th-this is wh-what the s-soup w-was made of?”

Sans nodded. “yup. Sure was. Oh, hey, you finished it. Nice job.”

And he could eat these without Sans needing to spoon-feed him. Had Sans had that in mind when he’d chosen not to make them into soup?

He hoped so.

He crammed most of one of the tomatoes into his mouth all at once, and yes, it tasted almost exactly like the soup. His eyelights blazed up as he began tearing through the food.

“woah, woah. Slow down. You’ll make yourself sick. I’ll just go get you another puzzle, okay?”

Blue nodded, too lost in his tomato-induced euphoria to have any clue what Sans had just said anyway.

As soon as Sans had left the room, he started eating as fast as he could again. He was absolutely making himself sick, but it was worth it. The tomatoes were just so good. He hadn’t imagined food like this even existed before.

And Sans had just given him a whole little pile of them. This had to be a dream. There was no way he had succeeded in getting out of his cage and, within twenty-four hours, gotten to someplace so good. There was no way he’d had such unbelievably good luck with the first person he’d run into after escaping. He had to be imagining things.

Except dreams weren’t this detailed or solid. He’d fallen asleep multiple times and still woken up in the same place, which didn’t happen in dreams. The taste of the tomatoes was too real to be anything else. And there was always the constant ache in his bound left arm.

By the time Sans got back, the tomatoes were gone, and Blue was looking down at himself, wondering nervously how Sans was going to react to the scarlet mess he’d made of his right hand, his face, the borrowed shirt and the bed.

Every last one of those things had been white five minutes ago.

Sans froze in the doorway, shifting through several expression and thoughts that Blue couldn’t read while Blue’s soul beat faster and faster. After a moment’s silence, he crawled under the blanket and tried to curl up in a little ball, despite knowing that would only make the mess worse.

And then Sans burst out laughing.

Blue tensed, his wet, juice-covered fingers curling into the sheets below them. No, he was making it worse, if Sans was mad he was making it worse…

“it’s okay, kiddo,” Sans called. It sounded like he hadn’t moved past the doorway. “i’m not angry. I was just thinking… anyway, c’mon out. We need to get you cleaned up.”

Blue hesitated, looking up at the blanket overhead. Some light was shining through, but he wished he could see straight through, see the look on Sans’s face, the way he was standing, figure out if Sans meant what he’d just said.

“or if you need a moment, that’s all right too.” He heard Sans coming closer, and then something was set down nearby him, and then he heard Sans leaving.

He waited for a moment. Sans didn’t come back.

Another moment, and Blue felt safe enough to hesitantly poke his head out from under the blanket, just enough to see what Sans had left.

It was another puzzle box. This one had a picture of a forest, but with something bright blue glowing deep within the trees and spiderwebs in the foreground.

Huh.

Oh, stars. He’d thought that the mess was bad before, looking at it again now…

Sans said he wasn’t mad.

Blue swallowed, then crawled out into the open, looking down at his bright red hand in dismay and being very careful not to touch the puzzle box.

He was young, small, injured, vulnerable, a child, frightened, unaware of how the world worked, at the mercy of any other monster who found him, and, therefore, dependent. He needed someone to protect him.

There was a chance that Papyrus and Sans would. And whether that was true or not, he wasn’t doing himself any favors by hiding under the covers. He needed to know. If they did mean it, if they were going to continue treating him as they had so far, then there was no point in being so scared and dragging things out for himself. If they didn’t, he was going to find out sooner or later.

And given the choice, he’d rather know.

If Sans was angry, he could always run again. Those shortcuts Sans had mentioned the day before…

He didn’t know how to do that again. And he probably wasn’t strong enough to manage it anyway.

Sans came back into the room, this time carrying a wet rag and a bowl of water. Blue jumped.

“woah, woah. Calm down. You’re all right. Hold still. I need to get you cleaned up.”

Blue did as he was told. Trembling, but he did.

Sans was gentle, but in a different way from Papyrus. Papyrus handled him like he was trying very hard not to break something fragile. Sans… Sans also didn’t make a single threatening move, but he was more… casual about it? Like he knew how to handle fragile things so well, the way he did it no longer looked like he was trying to handle something fragile.

It only took the older skeleton a few seconds to wipe away the juice on Blue’s face and hand. His stained sling and shirt took a little longer, but he got that job done. As for the mattress, “well, I tried. I guess I can always turn it over later. Red-dy for me to just leave you with the puzzle now?”

Blue nodded.

“quiet one, ain’t ya? Not that I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, but if I’m a fairly normal sans, then that’s strange. There a reason you’re not talking?”

Blue shook his head. And almost immediately regretted it, because he could tell Sans knew he was lying.

Sans didn’t call him on it, though. “all right. Have fun with the puzzle. Call if you need me. Papyrus should come and get you when it’s time for dinner.”

Blue nodded at Sans’s retreating back, then turned his attention to the box.

💙💙💙

Little Blue’s injuries turned out to be a blessing in disguise, of sorts. Of course, Papyrus wasn’t happy that the child was in pain, or that someone had done that to him in the first place, but in some ways it worked out for the best.

It proved quite difficult for Blue to hold on to his paranoia when Papyrus and Sans had to clean and dress his wounds on a daily basis, and half the time, they also had to help him eat. He was so vulnerable, and to let them help him, he had to be completely defenseless. He couldn’t miss, not for very long, that they weren’t taking advantage of it.

For the first few days, every time Papyrus fed Blue breakfast and changed his bandages, the child tensed and seemingly tried to pass out. Papyrus was so proud of him the day he laid down without being prompted and looked up with his eyes open, relatively relaxed – and he told the kid so. Blue blushed furiously, half his face turning cyan, and looked away. He didn’t seem to notice when Papyrus actually went about peeling the bandages off.

Sans was accommodating enough to sleep on the couch for a while, not that that surprised Papyrus any. Sans had tried to take a nap in the middle of a frozen lake once.

Sadly, it was also unsurprising that Blue didn’t want to leave Sans’s room or interact with Sans for the first several days. He reacted quite dramatically to compliments, but shied away from every attempt Papyrus made at physical affection.

There were ups and downs. There were the times Blue slept through multiple days at a stretch. There were the days Blue seemed perfectly happy to sit alone in Sans’s room and put puzzles together. There were the times he woke up screaming and refused to let the brothers near him. There was the time one such reaction almost killed Sans, not that the brothers let Blue know that. There was the day Blue accidentally jarred his broken arm back out of place, and Papyrus had to set the bone again while the child screamed in pain.

But then there was the day Blue slipped out of Sans’s room during the day and walked up to Sans, wrapped awkwardly in Sans’s blanket, and asked, his voice small and his eyelights huge, if he could stay with them. That day, Blue had broken down crying in Sans’s arms when Sans said yes, and Sans and Papyrus saved their own gushing emotional reactions for later that night.

And there was the day Papyrus had come home and found Sans sitting on the couch, smiling down at Blue, who was sleeping peacefully on his lap.

Those were the days that made it all worth it.

Chapter Text

Six weeks after he had found Blue in the woods, Papyrus came home in an unusually good mood, which was only improved by the no-longer-unusual sight of Sans playing chess with Blue on the couch.

Papyrus closed the door behind him as quietly as possible, which did not prevent either Sans from putting down the chess pieces they were holding and looking up at him. They were wearing identical grins and neither one of them budged an inch.

“Greetings, brothers,” Papyrus said. “I found Blue some clothes.” Actually, he’d been collecting them over time since a couple days after they’d found the child. But now was definitely the best time to first mention them.

Sans just grinned a little wider and said, “all right.” But Blue? The hopeful look on Blue’s face was exactly the reward Papyrus had been looking for. The kid had been wearing the same old shirt of Sans’s since Papyrus had first brought him home, and it was irredeemably stained by now. Blue was a messy eater, at least when he only had one functional hand and it wasn’t his dominant one.

“Stand up,” Papyrus said, gesturing to the same effect. “We’re going to need to get those bandages off before you can change.”

And Blue was perceptive enough to tell that Papyrus didn’t mean he wanted to re-dress his wounds a second time that day. “I d-don’t have to w-wear these anymore?” He was picking at the sling his left arm was still trapped in as he said it.

Papyrus nodded. “You should be healed enough by now.” Six weeks was a bit fast for purely natural healing, but with the help of a little magic food and what healing magic Papyrus and Sans could manage…

Blue got up and stepped into the center of the room, where he stood, waiting. “Th-thank goodness.”

Papyrus knelt beside him and began tearing the sling and bandages off of Blue’s arm like he was opening a Christmas present. He knew from yesterday’s examination that Blue was healed enough that it wouldn’t damage anything, and the kid seemed to be feeding on his enthusiasm. As soon as the last of the bandages were gone – well, lying in a heap on the floor beside him – Blue flexed his left arm for the first time in over a month and made a tight little fist in front of himself, grinning from ear to ear.

The arm had healed as well as the brothers could possibly have hoped. A faint scar ran from his shoulder to his elbow, but aside from that, there was no sign of the ugly, gaping wounds or the near-complete break that had almost taken his arm off. Papyrus couldn’t pull his eyes away as Blue kept messing around, finally enjoying the freedom he always should have had.

And then Blue dropped both hands to his sides, turned back toward Papyrus – still grinning so widely it looked like his face was about to split in two – and charged directly at the other skeleton, throwing his arms around him.

Papyrus was still kneeling, so Blue actually managed to grab him around the neck and end up in his lap, curled against his torso and clinging as tightly as he could. Papyrus sat stunned for a moment, then hugged him back, pulling him in as close as he could reasonably get.

“Thank you,” Blue whispered. “Thank you.”

Papyrus gently patted him on the back. “No problem, little one.”

Blue pulled back a little so he could continue twisting his left arm around, but he didn’t break Papyrus’s grip or crawl off of his lap. The little skeleton was still grinning, but now there were tears streaming down his face.

“I thought I was gonna die,” he whispered. “I-I’m so glad you found me.”

He had been about to die, and Papyrus hadn’t planned on having this happy moment marred by the thought of what would have happened if he hadn’t heard Blue crying that day, so he shoved those ideas aside and tried to focus on how darn happy the child was instead.

After messing around with his arm a little more, Blue giggled – such a sweet little sound – and curled up again, looking like he thought all was right with the world.

Papyrus cleared his throat. “Ah… do you want to get rid of the bandages on your ribs and try on those clothes, too?”

Blue’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. Then he nodded and eyed the floor reluctantly before squirming out of Papyrus’s embrace.

Papyrus pulled Sans’s filthy shirt off of him and removed the bandages on Blue’s ribs a bit more gently than he had the ones on his arm. Blue ran his newly freed fingers over the smooth bone where the break in his rib had been, the softest, cutest little look of awe on his face.

Papyrus chuckled, then pulled out the first couple pieces of clothing he could find – a yellow shirt with orange triangles on the sides that he was expecting to turn out too big and a pair of jeans that looked likely to be too small. There was a reason they were trying these ones first.

Blue accepted them with something like reverence, and Papyrus had to remind him he was supposed to be putting them on while Sans snickered from his spot on the sofa, which he still had not moved from.

Blue blushed bright cyan and started pulling the shirt over his head. Somehow, he had far more trouble with the jeans. Then he looked up at Papyrus and smiled hopefully.

The shirt was, indeed, too big for him, making him look even smaller and more vulnerable than he already was. His eyes were wide – they had to be, to hold all that hope – and that smile. Papyrus was dying inside. Reacting as he wanted to would have been extremely undignified, but little Blue did end up in his arms again.

He seemed okay with that.

“I think,” Papyrus said, trying not to sound choked up, “we have the cutest little child in the whole Underground, right here in our house.”

He could practically feel Blue blushing furiously as he squirmed against him – not like he wanted to get away, but like he couldn’t be this happy and hold still.

“aww,” Sans remarked from the couch. “what are you saying about me, bro?”

“SANS!”

“c’mon, bro. You know he’s a little version of me.”

“You are nowhere near as adorable!”

“oh, come on.”

Papyrus made a big show out of heaving an aggravated sigh, then returned his attention to Blue, who now looked cheerfully perplexed. Then he pushed the child out to arm’s length so he could get another look at how the clothes fit, exactly.

The shirt still looked a little too tent-like. The jeans, on the other hand, seemed to fit perfectly.

“The shirt doesn’t fit,” Papyrus announced. Blue’s smile dropped, and he looked down at himself, tugging at the shirt’s hem. “Oh, don’t be like that, Blue. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, really. It’s just really hard to find clothes that fit a person if he’s not there at the time.”

“Oh.” Blue still seemed downcast. “I-I could come next time…”

“No. Much too dangerous. Don’t worry; it’s not the only shirt I grabbed.”

Blue’s expression brightened.

Just to drive the point home, Papyrus grabbed all seven of the other shirts he was carrying and dropped them on the floor beside the child. “There. See? Which one do you want to try next?”

Blue’s little gleaming eyes flickered over all of them, and he hesitated, wavering between two: one green and nondescript save for the yellow cotton around the hem, sleeves, and neckline, and one bright blue with vivid yellow stripes on the mid-length sleeves.

Papyrus chuckled. “Take the blue one.”

Blue did. It took him a couple of adorably awkward seconds to get the yellow-and-orange shirt off and slightly less time to get the blue one on. It was pretty clear he had no idea how to get a shirt on or off, despite looking to be around eight to ten years old, but the Great and Terrible Papyrus was not going to let that dampen his good mood, dangnabbit. Blue didn’t know it was disturbing, so Papyrus was going to pretend that he didn’t either!

So instead of saying anything, he had Blue turn around a couple times, then declared that the blue-and-yellow shirt fit just fine. It didn’t, exactly – it was also a slight bit too big, but not so much so that Blue looked like he was wearing a dress. The shirt’s slight bagginess was enough to add to Blue’s childish charm without getting in his way.

Besides. At this age, they were supposed to grow fast, right? And Papyrus would imagine that to be doubly true if the kid had suddenly gone from not getting enough to eat to, frankly, overeating. For that exact reason, he was going to hold on to all the clothing he knew was too big.

He glanced back at the small pile of clothes and picked up half of it, leaving three shirts on the ground: the green one, one thick, fleecy white one, and one much smoother black one with a rose vine motif around the chest that was clearly meant to fit loosely. Every last one of them was slightly too big for Blue; that was the point. Papyrus meant for those ones to be used as pajama tops.

“Do you dislike any of those?” he asked.

Blue glanced at them, then knelt beside them and ran a hand over the white one. His eyelights brightened, and he picked it up and rubbed the cloth against his cheek, a sort of dopey, delighted smile on his face.

“Can I keep this one, too?” he asked.

Papyrus’s heart just melted. “Of course you can, Blue. What else do you think I’d do with it?”

Blue looked as if Papyrus had just given the world (and Papyrus wished he could). Then he went right back to rubbing the cloth against his cheek, closing his eyes. A cat couldn’t have looked more content.

Well, Papyrus knew what he was wearing to bed tonight. Although, if the fate of the white shirt Papyrus had made Sans loan the kid was any sign, maybe he should dye this one a darker color. Midnight blue, perhaps.

“What about the other two?” he asked. “Would you be okay with wearing those?”

Blue opened his eyes and looked over at the said shirts, and Papyrus got to see the exact moment of happy, disbelieving realization in his eyes.

“They’re… they’re all for me?”

The sheer, vulnerable joy in his voice, the way he seemed to be expecting so little, the way he was so overwhelmed by such a small gift… it all made Papyrus want to pull Blue back into his arms and hold him tight, keep him away from the world, make sure that innocent little light never went out or even dimmed. If he had thought he was desperate to protect Sans, this little version of his brother somehow made that need burn even brighter.

Speaking of Sans…

“Sans, get over here.”

“why, bro?”

“Just do it.”

Sans muttered something under his breath, then slid off the couch and crawled over to Papyrus’s side.

Papyrus reached out and dragged both of his Sanses into a close, tight hug, prompting the most adorable squeak from the smaller one. The older Sans grumbled nonsensically under his breath, on account of having been banned from cursing in front of Blue, but there was no denying the way he snuggled into Papyrus’s ribcage and rested his head contentedly against his shoulder. Papyrus could feel Blue quickly relaxing as he laid across his lap, held in Papyrus’s firm, protective grip – he was clearly falling asleep. He now had the fleecy white shirt partially wrapped around his head.

If Blue was proof of alternate universes – an alternate Sans – then that implied the existence of alternate Papyruses as well. And sitting there on the living room floor, holding both of his brothers, Papyrus was pretty sure he was the luckiest one of them.

After all, he was pretty sure no Sans could exist without a Papyrus, or a Papyrus without a Sans. And here he was, holding two of them, both of them relaxed, trusting, comfortable, happy around him… everything he would ever want to make them be. Everything he was sure any Papyrus would ever want to make any Sans be.

And one of those Sanses was so young. He was still a child – perhaps he wasn’t innocent, but in spite of the horrors he had already been through, the ones he still hadn’t told his new brothers anything about, he still lacked the brutally jaded shell of every other monster Papyrus had ever met, the one that made most of them into terrible people and pinned back the others, keeping them from being as good as they would otherwise want to be.

Papyrus would know. He wanted to be better than he was. Perhaps he would have tried, had he not had Sans to look after.

But he had no right to run off and get himself killed going against the rules of the Underground. After all, he was responsible for more than just his own life.

He had Sans.

Regardless, Blue was the closest thing to a truly innocent child Papyrus had seen in a long time. And that made him one of the most precious treasures a monster could find.

So did the fact that he was a Sans, in Papyrus’s opinion.

They were both asleep now. The two most precious things he would ever hold, and they were both lying limp in his arms, asleep across his chest, completely vulnerable and completely trusting him to protect them.

He lifted his hands to gently stroke both Sanses’ skulls. They both made sounds faintly like purring and moved to press their heads against his palms.

Papyrus grinned like an idiot, secure in the knowledge that no one was awake to see it. He’d been wanting to do that with Blue… since he had first seen the kid. But Blue had shied away every time he tried.

Progress! Next step: get Blue to tolerate it when he was awake.

He continued stroking them for a while, listening to their quiet, sleepy muttering and drinking in their unconscious smiles.

They were both adorable, no matter how much the older Sans would complain if he were told that, and if he could have his way, Papyrus would have sat there and held them forever. Unfortunately, he had physical limits, and that meant that his back and legs could only take his current position for so long.

It had been at least an hour before he finally surrendered.

After twisting his head around to check the clock – yep, seventy-five minutes – he stood up, scooping up both his Sanses in the process. They wound up both being carried likes sacks of potatoes, balanced over Papyrus’s shoulders.

He didn’t keep them that way longer than they had to be. He knew from a much more drunken version of Sans’s constant complaining that it wasn’t very comfortable.

Instead, he carried them directly up to Sans’s room, where he put Blue down at the foot of the bed so he was at least lying on something soft. Blue’s hands twitched as he tried to reach out for Papyrus, mumbling discontentedly, and as much as he didn’t want to, Papyrus ignored him for the moment.

After all, the older Sans needed some attention, too.

He put him down in his own bed for the first time in several weeks. Sans had been so generous in letting Blue take his room for so long. He really did deserve to have it back by now. Unless, of course, he wanted to be the one who moved in with Papyrus, because one of the Sanses was going to have to. There was no way he was making either of them sleep on the couch any longer term than Sans already had.

He tucked Sans in, wrapping his blanket snugly around him and chuckling quietly when Sans shifted in his sleep, still making that faint purring sound, such a peaceful look on his face.

All right. Blue’s turn. He had been planning to make the younger Sans take a bath after getting the clothing issue sorted out – he really needed it by now – but in light of how cute he was while he was asleep, he supposed that could wait until after dinner. If they got around to dinner.

Screw that. They were going to get around to dinner if Papyrus had anything to say about it. It wasn’t like the Sanses would have a hard time getting back to sleep afterward.

Papyrus picked up the younger Sans and cradled him for a moment, watching the older one sleep, then left the room, closing the door behind him.

He then went to his own room, which was, unfortunately, a mess. Hopefully Blue would neither mind nor unintentionally kill himself trying to walk through it.

Papyrus crossed the room to his bed, where he grabbed a blanket and thoroughly cocooned his youngest brother. Blue seemed to like it.

He laid Blue down on the bed and went to leave. He was stopped by the sound of faint, longing whimpering.

He looked over his shoulder. Blue was awake, eyes half open, his newly freed left hand reaching out toward him.

He hesitated. He really did need to leave and make dinner-

Oh, screw dinner. Looked like they wouldn’t be getting around to that after all.

He stalked back over to the bed, laid down, and curled around Blue, who almost immediately fell back asleep. He was cuddling the fleecy white pajama shirt like it was a plushie, Papyrus noticed.

Papyrus sighed and began stroking Blue’s skull again. Blue shivered and curled back against Papyrus’s ribs, everything about his posture oozing a sense of comfort and content.

Papyrus wasn’t remotely tired himself, but he was pretty sure Blue wasn’t going to let him leave until he was, so he used a bone attack to turn off the lights – yeah, perhaps it was overkill, and yeah, he might regret it in the morning, but right now, he didn’t care – and laid down completely, still running his fingers across Blue’s cranium.

He drifted off more quickly than he expected, but he was still awake enough to notice when a third person clambered onto the bed and curled up with his back against Papyrus’s. He did wait until Sans was asleep before he grabbed one of the extra blankets and laid it over him, though.

Chapter Text

Blue was, it turned out, as lazy as Sans.

It really should have come as no surprise. After all, he was Sans, in a way.

Still, it presented a problem. Unlike with his older counterpart, Papyrus didn’t have the heart to wake Blue up.

Which led to him awkwardly disentangling himself from the child – how on earth was the boy sleeping in that position, anyway? He looked like he’d been twisted up into a living knot; it could not be comfortable – and shaking Sans awake instead of yelling at him as usual.

Unfortunately, Sans hadn’t gotten the memo about being quiet, and had Blue been awake, there would have been some interesting additions to his vocabulary.

Slapping a hand over Sans’s mouth was normally quite easy, if not downright enjoyable. Still lying on his side in bed with two smaller skeletons practically right on top of him, it became a proper contortionist routine.

Sans’s eyes flickered around above Papyrus’s hand, confused, and then he spotted Blue, realized where he was and relaxed.

When Papyrus still didn’t let go of him, he reached up and forcibly pried Papyrus’s fingers off of his face.

“yes, boss?”

“Don’t talk like that around the kid.”

“yes, boss.”

After some more prompting from Papyrus, Sans left to get ready for the day – by which he meant grab his jacket; he hadn’t even taken his shoes off before going to bed – and Papyrus got up to make breakfast. Blue, fortunately, didn’t seem to notice.

The kid came down when Papyrus was most of the way through a batch of pancakes, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Hi, Pap.”

“Hello there, little one. Have you seen Sans anywhere?”

“I think he’s in his room.” Blue hesitated, just like he had every time Sans’s room had been mentioned since day two, before making his way over to his chair at the table and clambering up on it.

He was still so short, all that could be seen above the table was his forehead. There were supposed to be a couple of phone books on that chair, so Blue could actually see above the table, but Blue apparently found them uncomfortable and kept removing them.

Either that or he was reading them. Papyrus certainly hoped not.

Sans came meandering into the kitchen a few minutes later, obviously lost in thought, just as Papyrus finished cooking the last pancake and started putting the plates on the table. “Finally! I had no idea throwing on a jacket took so long!”

“What?” Sans looked up. “Oh. I got sidetracked.”

“Well I can certainly see that. Now sit down and eat.”

Sans dropped into his chair and grabbed one of the pancakes. “You always cake way too many of these, bro.”

“SANS!”

“Good heavens, bro, don’t flip out.”

“SANS…”

“Yeah, that one was a little half-baked.”

Papyrus wasn’t sure what sort of face he was making right now, but it must have been pretty good, because Blue was laughing so hard he fell off his chair. Sans was having hysterics, too – in his case, to the point of collapsing facefirst into his syrup-covered pancake.

The thing was, it wasn’t Sans who had made that pun. Or, well, it was, in a manner of speaking.

It was Blue who had said that.

Sans straightened up and started cleaning syrup off his face by way of wiping it off with his phalanges and licking it off of those. “not a bad pun-cake, kiddo.”

“thanks! I was worried it might fall flat.”

“no, you’re definitely getting batter.”

Blue looked up from his spot on the floor, met Papyrus’s very wide eyes, and burst out laughing again. “it was worth the effort. I pancake my eyes off that expression.”

“All right, all right, that’s enough,” Papyrus cut in. “Blue, get back in your chair and eat your breakfast. Sans, go clean yourself up.”

“I am cleaning myself up.”

“In the manner of the uncivilized barbarian, perhaps. Blue…?”

Blue snickered one last time, then swallowed down his mirth and clambered back into his chair. “honestly, pap. You’d think puns were unwaffle around here.”

“BLUE!”

“You really are flipping out.”

“Sans already used that one!”

Blue shrugged. “It’s still true.”

Papyrus sighed. “I am the law in this town. Now that you bring it up, I very well might declare your senses of humor illegal and arrest you both.”

“Forgive me for not being particularly intimidated,” Sans said.

Blue snickered. “We’ll just have to make our puns more syrup-titiously, then.”

All right, that really was enough. Instead of replying this time, Papyrus just picked up a pancake and reached across the table to shove it into Blue’s mouth, effectively shutting him up, at least for the moment.

Blue gave a muffled yelp, then fell silent and pushed the entire pancake all the way into his mouth. It was a disgusting display of zero table manners, but at least it should keep him quiet for a while.

Sans smirked. “You’re caking this really poorly, bro.”

Papyrus turned his best death glare on him. Sans just cackled like a madman and went back to cleaning off his face cat-style.

And to think that he would kill for these two.

Still, his fake irritation did fall away as he looked over his brothers, Blue in particular. The child was somehow smiling and eating at the same time.

Papyrus was proud of him, to be honest. He expected this sort of behavior from Sans, and he would have been worried if his younger brother had stopped. He’d have missed it, too, although he’d sooner die than admit that.

From Blue, though?

Papyrus wouldn’t have dared pretend to be angry around the child not so very long ago, and Blue wouldn’t have dared do anything that even began to risk making him angry. And yet here they were now, playfully antagonizing one another across the breakfast table, and Blue was completely comfortable. Confident in his place in their home.

Acting exactly as a young Sans should, in Papyrus’s opinion.

Yes, he was proud of him – although of course, as with the older Sans, Papyrus would go to his grave before he said so.

Chapter Text

Not too long after the pun-fest, Papyrus left for work, which left Blue and Sans to clean up.

Naturally, they both tried to foist most of the work off onto each other. Today, Blue had lost, so he was standing by the sink pretending one of the cups was a boat when he was supposed to be cleaning the plates, just to see how long it would take Sans to notice.

He was beginning to think Sans never would, or that perhaps Sans had and was just letting the joke run to mess with him.

“You want to get out of the house, kid?”

Blue looked up, then looked a question at Sans over his shoulder.

Sans shrugged. “I mean, I can be plenty lazy, but if I were cooped up in the house all day, every day, for more than a month, I’d be going insane. I know a couple places I could take you, if you want to go outside.”

Blue’s breath caught in his throat, and he paused to stare at his soap-covered hands with something like awe for a couple moments.

Before that first shortcut… he never had asked Sans to teach him how to do it again, had he? He’d have to get around to that… he’d spent his entire life in a cage, except for the times the scientists had pulled him out for testing purposes. That cage had barely been big enough for him to take three steps from one side to the other. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, but he was sure it had been longer than he’d spent in Sans and Papyrus’s house so far.

Relative to his prior imprisonment, the house was huge. And he was allowed to roam through it freely, even if it had taken him a while to understand that.

And here Sans was, saying that that wasn’t enough space and offering to take him on a walk.

Blue blinked; his eyes were stinging. How had he been so lucky? He could so easily have gone straight from the scientists to equally horrible people who would only take advantage of him in different ways, and instead…

Of course he jumped at the chance, and perhaps an hour later, they were walking down the street. Blue was wrapped up in an old sweater Sans didn’t use anymore. The thing was green with thin blue stripes across the chest, and it was, as everything seemed to be, too big for him. Sans had apparently been the same size when he last wore this as he was now, because the sweater’s hem reached Blue’s knees.

Not that Blue was complaining. It was also very warm, and looking around him at all the snow, the memory of lying half-buried in it at the foot of a tree, his thin hospital gown doing nothing to keep the biting cold from eating its way into his bones, stuck keenly in his mind.

His hospital gown. He hadn’t even seen that since Papyrus had cut it off of him so he could get at Blue’s injured ribs. He was pretty sure Papyrus had thrown it out. And his ribs… there had been no pain there in such a long time. He could use his left hand as if his arm had never been broken.

He had been meant to die that day. Instead, here he was, healthy and comfortable for the first time in his life.

And it would be a good life, just so long as Papyrus and Sans kept him. Which they had promised to do.

Those thoughts having filtered through his head, he then turned his attention to the street around him.

Now that it wasn’t killing him, he could see the beauty in the snow. The way it glittered in the bright light was mesmerizing now that it meant anything other than unforgiving cold.

The large wooden building around them had a cozy feel to them, like this was a very friendly, non-clinical place. And of course, the most important thing – Sans was right behind him, his left hand protectively gripping Blue’s shoulder.

There weren’t that many other people. That seemed… strange, for reasons Blue couldn’t pin down, and he wasn’t sure why, but Sans didn’t seem bothered, so he figured it was probably fine.

After a while, the two skeletons reached a particularly large building, and Sans winked at him and pulled him around behind that building. “here. Let me show you something.”

Blue followed eagerly. The things the older skeletons had to show him were usually pretty cool.

Sans stopped behind the building, looking far too pleased with himself, then gripped Blue’s shoulder a little tighter and-

The world vanished in a blur of red, and suddenly everything was cold, sweater or no sweater. It only lasted an instant, though – as soon as it had begun, it stopped, and they were standing inside a building Blue had never been in before, one full of tables and chairs. Oh, and some stools along a counter.

There were other monsters here, and none of them looked friendly. Blue edged his way around Sans, going from standing beside him to being tucked securely behind him.

The others looked their way, and Blue did not like the way they looked at him one bit.

But Sans was right there, standing between him and the danger. Stars, he really had been lucky.

Sans led him up to the counter and lifted him onto one of the stools before hopping up to sit down beside him – the stools were actually taller than either one of them was. Blue had to grin at that, despite the crawling anxiety the place gave him.

“Could I get my usual,” Sans said to the bright purple creature behind the counter, “and another one for the kid here, without the hot sauce and with extra ketchup instead of extra mustard?”

The purple creature turned to look at Blue, who met his gaze. He didn’t feel threatened by this guy, not in the same way he did by all the others in the room. This creature was powerful. He could hurt him. But he didn’t look like he wanted to.

Then he nodded and swept off.

“thanks!” Sans shouted after him.

Blue scooted close to his guardian. “Where are we?”

Sans turned to him. “This is Grillby’s. It’s a restaurant. You know, a place where you buy food.”

Blue hadn’t known that, but he saw no point in bringing it up. “so what did you buy?”

Sans’s grin intensified. “You’ll see.”

All right.

The purple creature came back with a couple of plates of something a few moments later. On each plate was some bread, some meat, and some other stuff Blue didn’t recognize all stacked together. There was also a faint smell of tomatoes, so Blue already knew he was going to like it.

The purple creature also gave Sans a bottle of something yellow and Blue a bottle of something red.

Blue had seen Sans drinking mustard before. He’d tried it himself, too, and decided that the stuff tasted much too strong and he didn’t want to try that ever again.

But what was the red stuff?

Sans was staring at it contemplatively. After a moment, he nodded approvingly. “that’s a good idea, Grillby. I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.”

“What is it?” Blue asked.

Sans’s grin grew wider. “It’s ketchup. It’s like a sweetened tomato sauce. Go ahead, drink some.”

Blue’s eyelights blazed so bright it knocked out most of his vision, which made it a little difficult to screw the cap off the ketchup bottle, but he soon managed it and put the top of the bottle in his mouth.

It was SO GOOD. It was like the first time Papyrus had fed him tomato soup – the first time he’d ever been given real food, he had since learned – except that this stuff, while just as new, tasted even better.

He didn’t realize how fast he was chugging the stuff until Sans gently pulled the bottle out of his mouth. “easy there, kid. You’re going to choke yourself.”

Blue did indeed gag as some of the ketchup was unintentionally inhaled. “I love you guys.”

Sans chuckled, then abruptly stopped to glower at someone over Blue’s shoulder. Blue didn’t look. He didn’t want to know. He’d seen enough of people looking at him with hunger in their eyes when they’d first walked in.

Sans would protect him. That was all he wanted to know about it.

“now try the hamburger,” Sans prompted.

That had to be the stack of meat, bread, and stars knew what else on the plate. “how do I eat it?”

Grillby said something Blue couldn’t understand, to which Sans replied by waving a hand dismissively. “I’ll explain later. What? Yes, I’ll do that later, too. Um. Anyway, you pick it up and – you know what, let me just show you.”

And he picked up his hamburger and took a big bite out of it.

Blue followed suit. His eyes were probably rivaling the purple creature for sheer brightness by now; the burger was good. Not as good as the ketchup, of which he still had half a bottle, and Sans knew his taste was skewed, but still, so good.

He started tearing his way through the burger in much the same way he had been tearing through the ketchup just a moment ago. He could hear Sans chuckling in the background.

He slumped happily against the counter, grinning up at Sans like an absolute idiot.

“C-could we come back tomorrow?” he asked.

Sans returned his grin. “Papyrus is gonna hate this.”

💙💙💙

He did a better job of ignoring the other monsters’ stares the next day, and the food was just as good. Once they were done eating, he and Sans sat at the counter and traded puns.

“…and it was absolutely sans-sational.”

“but it was such bad blues!”

“didn’t matter. Everyone was sans-guine about it.”

“surely someone was blue about it.”

“everyone was perfectly papy.”

Blue snickered. “pap’s going to be furious.”

“I blue that. C’mon, that wasn’t a pun.”

“Just give me a blue more seconds to think!”

“You mustard be running out of ideas.”

“Hang on, I’ll ketchup.”

Sans nodded toward Blue’s now-empty ketchup bottle. “Red-dy or not, this game will continue.”

Blue snickered. “We really are blue peas in a pod.”

“This is entirely blue much. Stop using your own name.”

“What can I say? It’s blue perfect!”

Sans rapped on the countertop. “Wood you stop already?”

“Hey, if you want puns that aren’t about the color blue, I’m afraid you’ll have to blue it yourself.”

Sans opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the sound of shouting in another corner of the bar.

“Great,” Sans muttered.

Blue scooted closer to him. “Should we leave?”

Sans shook his head. “Nah. Grillby can handle it.”

The shouting grew louder. Blue moved a little closer to his protector. Grillby started over toward the fight, which involved some six different monsters.

And then all heck broke loose.

One second, the shouting was confined to one corner of the bar, there were only a few monsters involved, and Grillby seemed to have it handled. The next, the fighting was everywhere, everyone was involved, half the bar was on fire and all sorts of bullet patterns were flying everywhere.

Blue dove beneath a nearby table, only to be scooped up a second later by Sans as the table was hit by a flame attack and exploded. The world went blue again, and then they were standing outside, and then the fight was spilling out into the street, and Blue didn’t know what was happening but a moment later he was alone.

He looked around, searching desperately for Sans, but he couldn’t see him anywhere. Magic was flying – he couldn’t handle this – he wasn’t-

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder, and Blue jumped, crying out. It turned out to be completely justified, because that wolf-looking thing wasn’t Sans.

Blue screamed, then swung his left hand upward, calling up a slew of bone attacks.

It… didn’t work so well.

Oh, they hit. They just didn’t do enough damage to make the wolf monster let go.

The wolf monster snarled and shook his head, then raised a hand, summoning his own attack. Blue jerked and tugged, struggling to get away, but the creature had an iron grip on his right wrist, and he wasn’t getting anywhere. He was completely helpless and he didn’t know where Sans was and he was going to die.

“SANS! SANS!!!!”

He didn’t come.

Someone else did, though. This one was a rabbit monster, and she knocked the attack away from him but she didn’t make the situation any better.

“What’ve you got there?” she asked the wolf monster, eyeing Blue, and it was that same hungry look again. She was looking at him like he was ketchup and she was starving and it had his pulsing soul in his throat. He tried to scramble backwards and ran into someone else – he looked to the side – no – the other side – he was surrounded.

He hadn’t been able to damage the wolf monster and he wouldn’t be able to damage these, he knew it.

So he did the only thing he really could.

He curled up in a defensive little ball on the ground, his face down in the snow, shivering and silently begging for Sans to turn up.

“…it’s a little skeleton…”

“…anything to do with Papyrus?…”

“…free EXP…”

“…mine…”

“…saw him first!…”

“…could be anyone’s…”

“…saw his attack, there’s no reason…”

“…Papyrus…”

“…what Papyrus doesn’t know…”

“…stop him, he’s getting away!”

Blue’s escape attempt was cut short by a boot to the face, and he was shoved back into the circle of arguing monsters, all of whom were giving him that same hungry look, most of whom had their magic summoned and looked about to attack him.

Why? Why would they want to kill him?

Blue curled up again. Sans, please… The terror was colder than the snow could ever be. He hadn’t thought he would be this scared ever again, not since Sans and Papyrus had taken him in…

The arguing stopped, and one monster in particular stepped forward.

His executioner.

Blue threw up a wall of bones around himself and put his arms over his head, a futile attempt to protect himself. He only had the one hit point. It didn’t matter what this monster did to him; it would kill him.

And then another monster plunged into the center of the circle, stopping just short of the wall of bones.

“woah, woah, woah. What are you all doing?”

Blue sobbed with relief, slowly pulling himself out of his defensive curl so he could look up at Sans.

He dismissed his attacks.

“What’s it to you?” the executioner snarled. “It’s just some kid.”

Sans didn’t move, nor did he give the slightest indication that he was doing anything more exciting than ordering lunch, even though there was no way he could take on all half-dozen of Blue’s attackers by himself. “that kid belongs to boss. He’d kill me if I let him get hurt.”

And suddenly Sans’s voice changed. Became deeper, more demonic… eldritch. “And he’ll kill you if you lay a finger on him, are we clear?”

The other monsters backed away. There was a general murmur of assent, and then they were gone, leaving just Sans and Blue.

Blue burst into tears as Sans came over to him and scooped him up. “you okay, kid?”

Blue nodded, burying his face in Sans’s shirt.

Sans sighed. “look… kid… I’m real sorry that happened. I…” He sighed. “I guess it had to happen eventually, but… look, how about we go get some more food, and then we can take a shortcut home.”

Blue nodded. Ketchup and home sounded good.

He went limp and closed his eyes as Sans carried him back into the bar, which was now very warm and smelled of smoke. He didn’t look, but he could hear – and feel – Sans having an argument, which didn’t go his way, with Grillby. It ended with the older skeleton promising to tell Papyrus… something. Then Sans had to let go of him in part to grab something, and then the world went cold, and then Blue knew they were home.

Sans put him on the couch, handed him the bottle of ketchup, and went off to get him a blanket. By the time he got back with it – and wrapped it snugly around Blue’s still-shaking ribs – Blue had emptied the ketchup bottle and felt a little more alive.

Sans sat down beside him. “that was scary, huh.”

Blue nodded. “D-do you have any more ketchup?”

Sans handed him another bottle. “papyrus and I will always do everything we can to protect you, blue. Life’s blue short as it is – we won’t let yours get any shorter.”

Blue cracked a faint grin.

Sans stayed there with him, alternating between reassuring him and trying to make him laugh, for the rest of the afternoon. Over time, Blue relaxed, then finally worked up the nerve to ask Sans what had even happened.

Sans sighed. “y’know what EXP and LV are, kid?”

Blue shook his head.

“well, they’re acronyms. You know what acronyms are?”

Blue nodded.

“EXP stands for ‘execution points.’ they measure how much pain you’ve caused others. And LV stands for ‘level of violence.’ measures how good you are at hurting others. Kill someone, and you gain both EXP and LV. Makes you better at surviving fights, better at winning, better at killing others. And in this world… it’s kill or be killed, kid. It’s dangerous out there. So most people… well, they see a chance for easy EXP or LV, they take it. And a sweet, helpless little kid like you… that’s all a lot of people are gonna see ya as.”

That explained the hunger. Blue shivered and crawled forward to curl against Sans.

“really, neither one of us would be alive without Papyrus,” Sans said. “he’s powerful. Far more powerful than either of us. Other monsters leave us alone because they know he’d be furious if we were hurt. So… you get attacked again, mention him. Say you’re under his protection. We’ll have to get him to claim you publicly, too. We’ll do everything we can to keep this from happening again, I promise.”

Blue nodded and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, both he and Sans were asleep on the couch.

Chapter Text

Papyrus came home to find both of his Sanses asleep on the couch. The younger one had clearly dropped a bottle of ketchup when he passed out, because its contents were now all over the floor.

He sighed and mopped it up, then went into the kitchen to throw together some lasagna for dinner. Then he went to wake up the Sanses.

As soon as he touched Blue, the child’s eyes flew wide open and he tensed, his bones rattling in warning before he saw who had awakened him and settled down.

Sans cracked an eyelid and watched as Blue pulled away from him and tackle-hugged Papyrus.

Papyrus hugged him back, concerned. The way Blue clung to him was far more frantic and desperate than usual.

“What happened?”

Sans sighed. “I took him out to Grillby’s. Fight broke out. Got out of control. We got separated, and he got cornered by a bunch of bottom-feeder EXP hunters. I got to him just in time.”

Papyrus’s soul almost froze. Suddenly he was gripping Blue with every bit as much desperation as Blue was clinging to him.

“I’ll keep that from ever happening again,” he promised. “Don’t worry, Blue. I’ll protect you.”

Blue nodded into his chest. Papyrus sighed and gently ran his hand across the child’s skull. “Sans, can you describe the monsters who attacked him?”

Sans nodded. Great. Papyrus was going to gain some LV tonight, or perhaps tomorrow, depending on how shaken Blue was, and Blue was going to gain a reputation.

Maybe he should put a collar on Blue, too. He considered it for a moment, then dismissed the thought. It had made sense for Sans because Sans had been trying to fend for himself before. Blue had no such history that needed explaining away. He was a young child; there was no earthly reason Papyrus would have to explain himself in claiming him.

“Don’t worry, Blue,” Papyrus repeated. “I’ll keep you safe. Remember, I promised I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you.”

Blue sniffed, then nodded again. “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

“And you trust me, right?”

Another nod. “Yeah.”

“Then don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it. You’ll be all right.”

Blue nodded again. It wasn’t the most reassuring answer, but Papyrus supposed it was the best he was going to get. “Anyway. It’s time for dinner. Who wants lasagna?”

Lasagna involved tomatoes, so he wasn’t too surprised when Blue perked right up.

Despite the darker thoughts churning at the back of his mind, Papyrus couldn’t help his smile.

💙💙💙

Dinner passed by quietly, save for Sans’s attempts to get through to Blue with jokes. Papyrus tried to play his part and gripe about them, but he was pretty sure Blue could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

Afterward, there were two conversations they needed to have.

After he finished his lasagna, Blue just sat, looking uncomfortable, and waited for one of his brothers to make the next move. He was playing into Papyrus’s script perfectly, even if he didn’t know it.

Once they were all done, Papyrus put his utensils down and turned to his youngest brother. “Blue. There’s something we need to talk about. No, don’t look at me like that – it’s not a big deal. It’s just that Sans should probably get his room back soon.”

“Oh.” Blue began fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I… can I move a blanket to the couch?”

Again with the painfully low expectations. Normally, it was… not cute, but his humility did make him very lovable.

Today, it was just heartbreaking. Blue really thought that now, after one of the worst days he’d had in this world, his caretakers were going to top it all off by kicking him out of the room he’d been using and exiling him to the couch for no reason at all.

“Actually, Blue, I was thinking you could move into my room.”

Blue’s little eyelights brightened, then dimmed again. “I don’t want you to have to move onto the couch, though.”

“I meant we could share.”

Blue’s jaw dropped right off.

“no reason I couldn’t share with him,” Sans pointed out, picking the bone up off the kid’s lap and sticking it back on his face. Blue continued to gape.

“I know, but I want him close by.” There was a very specific anxiety that ate Papyrus alive most nights – the nagging need to go and check and make sure Blue was still in Sans’s room, still breathing, not having any nightmares, et cetera. If Blue were in the same room as him – and, as he’d have to be for at least a few days, the same bed – that would become a lot easier.

Blue was nodding eagerly now. “Yeah. Yes. I wanna do that.”

Papyrus grinned at how genuinely happy the kid looked. The day would have a happy end, even if it had almost gone horribly wrong a few hours ago. “Great. That’s settled. Sans, go clean your room.”

Sans set off, still muttering nonsense under his breath.

Blue followed him with his eyes. “Is… he actually saying anything?”

Papyrus shook his head. “He’s not allowed to swear while you’re in the house.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, while he’s cleaning his room, I think we should go clean you.”

“Huh?”

“You could really use a bath, kid. Have you ever had one before?”

Blue hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. But… probably not the way you mean it.”

Ah. Yes. Papyrus knew exactly what he was talking about. During his own time in this worlds’ version of the labs Blue had been born in, “bathing” for Papyrus had usually meant getting quickly hosed off, then left dripping freezing cold water for however long it took him and his hospital gown to dry out. If more elbow grease was needed, he might be roughly scrubbed down with a rag soaked in peroxide. Or steel wool; it depended on what had been on hand.

For Papyrus, it had been uncomfortable and inconvenient. For Sans, with his one hit point, it had been downright dangerous.

“No,” he said. “Whatever you have in mind, it definitely isn’t what I have planned.”

Blue perked up at that, and Papyrus knew he’d been right.

“C’mon,” he said, standing up and starting off toward the bathroom, confident that the younger monster would follow him. He didn’t need to look back to know he’d been right; the clicking of tiny skeletal feet on the floor behind him was all he needed. Sans had found Blue a pair of fluffy pink slippers, which were both adorable and embarrassing, and Blue apparently wore them anytime he left the house, but he never wore them in the house.

Once they reached the bathroom, Papyrus started filling up the bathtub. Blue perched atop the toilet and watched curiously.

Once the water level was probably up to the kid’s waist – it was a big tub, and Blue was tiny – he turned it off and checked the temperature. Warm to the edge of tolerable.

“Does that feel like something you’d want to be immersed in?”

Blue had already pulled his clothes off, and he answered the question by proving that he was indeed a healthy babybones and jumping off the toilet and across the room to land directly in the water, thereby splashing most of it across the floor.

Once in the water, he calmed down a fair bit and sat down, then lay back against the wall of the tub so that everything was submerged except for his skull.

Papyrus would probably have been furious had that dopey, half-asleep grin not been so cute.

“Kid, you do realize how long it’s going to take to clean this up?”

“Not blue long, I hope.”

Papyrus gave him a flat, unimpressed stare, and Blue giggled and sunk all the way beneath the water.

That was the moment Papyrus knew he was going to be all right.

Once Blue came back up – perhaps five minutes later, skeletons didn’t need to breathe, but not being able to was uncomfortable – Papyrus grabbed a rag and beckoned him over to the edge of the tub.

Blue came reluctantly, but he did come. Papyrus wasn’t sure if that was the memories talking, or if Blue was still shaken from the events earlier that day. Either way, hopefully he could distract him from it.

He got the rag wet and soapy and watched, amused, as Blue’s eyes focused like two little lasers on the bubbles that began forming in the water. Then he grabbed one of Blue’s arms and began scrubbing.

Blue tensed immediately – so it was the memories. Well, there was no way those were his most traumatic ones. It shouldn’t be too hard to cover them over with new ones.

He kept it gentle – of course. He could imagine scenarios in which he wouldn’t be gentle with Blue, but this wasn’t one of them. He tried to make it feel less like he was actually scrubbing him, and more like he was doing the same thing he did when he stroked Blue’s skull – just along his arm instead.

After a minute or two, Blue relaxed, and it became apparent that his bones had not, in fact, been white this whole time. They had been beige, or perhaps a moderate shade of pale banana, and it was both very satisfying and horrifically disgusting to watch the astonishingly thick layer of filth and grime come off of him as Papyrus began putting a little more force behind his strokes.

The washcloth was stained already, and Blue didn’t have a single completely clean bone in his body yet. Stars.

That meant he was going to be sitting in that water for a while. Figuring he should give him something to do other than just sit there, Papyrus squirted some soap directly into the water and churned it up with his hand a little, forming a large white swath of foam.

Blue stared at it with wide, awestruck eyes and lazily poked at a few of the bubbles. Then he went right back to lying completely motionless against the side of the tub, still and trusting in Papyrus’s hands.

Of course. He was a Sans. Of course he was perfectly happy doing absolutely nothing while someone else cleaned him off. Papyrus would probably have to watch out for him falling asleep in the tub.

The older Sans had probably done exactly that before, come to think of it. No, wait – he had. Yep. That had definitely happened. Papyrus had repressed the memory because it had been an unbelievably embarrassing day.

But there had been that one day when he’d gone out to find some dinner ingredients he’d forgotten on the way home and come home to find Sans absolutely nowhere. He had panicked far more than the situation had turned out to warrant and then discovered that Sans was asleep in the bathtub. The younger skeleton had also been invisible, owing to the sheer amount of bubble bath above him.

Papyrus had been… rather displeased.

He chuckled quietly to himself as he cleaned the rag off over and over again, then went back at the bones of Blue’s arm over and over again. After perhaps twenty minutes of gentle scrubbing, which Blue clearly enjoyed, his right arm – but not his right hand or shoulder – was completely clean, probably for the first time in his life, and it was a different color from the rest of him. Blue’s bones had looked ivory-white to Papyrus before he’d gotten in the tub, but now, in contrast, he was looking closer to the color of excessively watery mac and cheese.

Papyrus took a deep breath, put the rag aside – it was irredeemably filthy – grabbed a new one, and started scrubbing the child’s hand and ribs.

A couple of hours later, Blue was unconscious, clean, a completely different color than he had been, and sitting in neck-deep filthy brownish-yellow murk. Papyrus wasn’t sure how he’d missed how dirty the kid was before.

Either way, it was time to get Blue out of the water. The stuff was gross and it had gotten cold.

So Papyrus went and grabbed the currently most well-used shower towel they had and laid it out on the floor, then pulled Blue out of the water – miraculously, the little skeleton had remained propped upright against the tub wall while Papyrus was gone – and laid him down on the towel. It’d be going in the wash after this.

Then he drained the tub and scrubbed it out. Where had all this filth even come from?

Next order of business: rinse Blue off. Couldn’t have that dirty dishwater clinging to his bones.

Good heavens, the kid was exactly the same color as the snow outside, and every bit as shiny. He almost looked like a different skeleton.

Final order of business: grab a clean towel and wrap the kid in it, then find the fleecy white pajamas he’d given Blue yesterday and dress him in them. That part was awkward, since Blue was completely limp and refusing to wake up.

Papyrus wasn’t sure Blue was actually asleep. It was entirely possible he was just enjoying Papyrus’s affection in the laziest, most Sans-like way skeletally possible.

Still, once Blue was dressed – and shifting against the cloth in a way that told Papyrus he was most definitely not asleep and trying to find a way to rub the cloth against his freshly sensitive bones without letting Papyrus know he was awake – Papyrus carried him into his room and curled around him the same way he had the night before, although he turned the lights off first, this time.

Blue snuggled against him, making a sound that was most definitely purring. It looked like this was going to be a regular thing, from now on.

Papyrus couldn’t have been happier about it.

Chapter Text

Considering how the day had gone, Papyrus wasn’t surprised when he was awakened at 1 AM by Blue’s high, frantic screams.

Blue’s voice was stretched to its limits, pushed to its loudest volume, its highest pitch. There was no pause for breath between the screams. The sounds were harsh and horrible and relentless, the sound of someone who knew the worst thing he could imagine was about to happen to him and there was nothing he could do about it and no one was going to save him.

Papyrus had once had a large, rusty metal stake rammed through his ribcage. It had broken two of the bones and grazed his soul. Listening to Blue’s raw terror felt remarkably similar.

So he wasn’t really thinking when he reached out and grabbed the little skeleton.

Blue jerked away as hard as he could – not nearly hard enough to break Papyrus’s grip, but hard enough to be alarming. The screaming did not abate, but Blue did keep flopping around, struggling to get away.

And now Papyrus had to grab him, to keep him from falling off the edge of the bed, and Blue went berserk, kicking and thrashing and doing everything he could do get Papyrus off of him.

Everything he could.

Bones, both blue and white, shot up through the floor, angling over Blue and toward Papyrus. Papyrus didn’t bother trying to dodge. Blue had the same sad attack as Sans – presumably a trait of Sanses in general – and it wasn’t much worse than a slew of papercuts.

Similarly, the blasters weren’t a problem. The blue magic, however…

Blue wasn’t strong enough to deal much damage, no. But he was strong enough to hurl Papyrus across the room.

Papyrus heard two impacts: one his own body slamming into a cork board on the wall, the other Blue’s tiny body hitting the floor on the other side of the bed.

There was silence for a moment as Papyrus picked himself up. Then Blue’s frantic screams were replaced by far quieter broken wails.

Papyrus walked over to him. “Blue? Blue?”

The younger skeleton gave a hopeless cry and held his arms up to shield his face. Wherever his mind was, it wasn’t Papyrus’s room in the present day.

Papyrus knelt beside him. “Oh, Blue…”

And all he could really do was sit there and talk quietly to the child until he calmed down enough to remember where he was. The helplessness was heartbreaking.

But finally, finally his patience was rewarded when Blue’s crying dropped off and he rolled onto his side, big, confused eyelights blinking up at his older brother. His little hands were grasping desperately at the chest of his soft white pajama top.

He made a small, confused noise of distress that sounded more like a pleading moan than anything else, and that was all the prompting Papyrus needed to scoop him into a hug.

Blue clung to him this time, making slightly different sounds of distress. The first one had sounded like a wounded child begging for help. These ones sounded like a creature in pain who needed to express it, but who also knew he was in good hands. He would be protected.

“It’s okay,” Papyrus murmured. “It’s okay. You’re here. I’ve got you. It’s all right.”

Blue swallowed hard, then pushed the top of his head up against Papyrus’s chin and let go of his ribs to tangle his hands up in his own fleecy white shirtfront instead. Papyrus began gently stroking his skull as well as he could without moving the kid’s head out of alignment with his chin, since Blue pushed back when he tried to move him.

Papyrus stood for a moment so he could relocate both of them to the much more comfortable bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He asked every time, and Blue always said no – more accurately, he shook his head – and then Papyrus didn’t ask again. If Blue didn’t want to talk, Papyrus saw no real reason why he should. It helped that Papyrus wasn’t that curious – he already had a pretty good idea what Blue might be dreaming about.

Tonight, though, Blue nodded eagerly, not seeming to notice when the top of his head knocked against Papyrus’s chin. One of his hands stayed on the soft fabric of his pajamas, and the other one let go and flailed outward to desperately grasp one of Papyrus’s ribs.

In moments like this, Papyrus was reminded just how small the child was.

Such a fragile, precious little thing.

“I – I – I – we were here and then – then – I was running and – and you weren’t there – and – Sans – he was one of the p-p-people chasing me – I, I w-wanted him to catch me, I don’t know why – a-and he almost made it – I, he touched me – I could f-feel his hand – on my back – he tried – I wanted him to grab me, but I couldn’t stop running – it was cold – then it was too hot – and then – there were dogs, and, and, and then they caught me… and I woke up… and I…” He looked up, seeming to notice for the first time that the place was full of bone attacks. His bone attacks. “I-I’m sorry.”

“Not a problem, little one. You didn’t mean to, and you don’t do much damage.” Though they did have a solid reason not to put Sans and Blue in the same room, he realized. “Do you… feel any better now?” He was pretty sure he was going about this the wrong way. He didn’t have a whole lot of experience with this sort of thing. Sans didn’t have nightmares often, and on the rare occasion he did, he didn’t react like this.

Blue shook his head. “N-No. I-I’m scared, Papyrus.”

“You have every right to be.”

Blue hiccuped. “The dream… I…” He swallowed. “I-I haven’t been here very long. I haven’t, haven’t been alive for very long. I-” Another choking, gasping swallow. “I ran be-because I knew there w-was something better… b-because I d-didn’t want to die having felt nothing but pain – a-and – I – you found me.” His grip on Papyrus’s rib tightened. “I – I – y-you wouldn’t l-l-let anything t-take me away, would you?”

Papyrus stopped stroking him, the better to wrap a hand around the back of his head and pull him in as close as he could. The heat from his soul was probably sunburning Blue’s face. “Of course not, little one. You belong to me and Sans now. We’ll keep you safe.”

“G-good,” Blue whispered. “I – Papyrus, I’ m s-so sc-sc-scared I’ll lose this…”

And suddenly the dream didn’t seem like the surreal ramblings of a child. Suddenly it made perfect sense.

The dogs and the running, of course – the lab, the horrible life Blue had escaped from. And of course the nightmare had ended with him being captured. It was a nightmare, after all.

But now Sans’s part made sense.

Blue was making perfect sense. He had so much now that he never had before – of course he would be afraid of losing it all. Especially since he almost had, just earlier that day.

Sans had saved him – just barely. What if Sans had been just a few seconds too late?

Blue was plenty old enough to think about that, and it was the sort of thought that would eat through a person’s psyche, reduce them to a crying wreck even when they knew they were safe and loved and that horrible thing hadn’t happened and had no chance of happening in the future. It could have happened. Blue could have been dust on the wind, another incomplete life cut short and left unfulfilled forever, nothing more than a haunting collection of chances that could never be taken. Stars, now that Blue had mentioned it, Papyrus was probably going to have nightmares about it. They could have lost Blue, there was no two ways about it.

If Sans had so much as tripped at the wrong time, Papyrus wouldn’t be holding Blue right now.

Blue squeaked in pain, and that was when Papyrus realized how tightly he was holding him.

He loosened his grip. “Sorry – sorry.”

Blue mewled softly, shifting to get more comfortable. “I – you’ve given me so much, I-” He trailed off with a wet, choking sob.

“You’re not a subject or an experiment anymore,” Papyrus said quietly. “You’re a child. A child with a whole life ahead of him.”

Blue nodded – and even if the context was sad, the fact that he agreed with Papyrus’s statement about his personhood was encouraging. “Y-yes. B-because of you two. S-Sans explained – I, I’d be dead without you two – I-” He swallowed. “I – you t-took care of me – g-gave me a chance – I don’t wanna lose it – I’m… please… I’ve never had anything worth keeping before… I’ve never had anything good, or a chance to be anything but, but s-something for them to hurt… please, I don’t wanna lose this…”

Papyrus just barely held himself back from telling Blue that, if he kept talking like that, he was going to find himself locked in this room until Papyrus was confident he could defend himself.

“Don’t worry,” he said instead, keeping the heartbreak out of his voice. Yes, he’d already known Blue’s life had been relentlessly horrible before the brothers had taken him in, but hearing Blue himself put it in such terms… “You won’t. What happened today, that was a freak accident. And I can keep it from ever happening again.”

“H-How?”

He was cradling Blue again, just as if he’d been a baby. Blue didn’t seem to mind. “I’m one of the most powerful monsters in the Underground, Blue. And you are mine. People don’t mess with what belongs to me. The only reason those other monsters dared go near you is that they didn’t know you were mine. Once they do… and believe me, I’m going to make sure they do… no one’s going to threaten you again, Blue, I promise.”

“P-promise?”

“Yes. Promise. Trust me. This is how we keep Sans alive, too. He’s not very strong.” That was putting it a bit mildly, but Papyrus didn’t want Blue knowing about Sans’s one hit point. Blue didn’t need another source of anxiety inside his own home, and Sans was perfectly capable of dodging if it came down to it.

It was one of those decisions Papyrus really, really hoped he didn’t live to regret.

Blue smiled. It was small, and it was fragile, and it was covered in snot and tears, but it was so, so beautiful. “Th-thank you.”

“Of course. You’re worth a lot to me, Blue. I’d do a lot more than make a handful of threats to keep you safe.” He was going to do a lot more than make a handful of threats. Six or so monsters had already threatened Blue’s life and they were going to pay for it.

As Papyrus had said. He was very protective of those who belonged to him. It didn’t matter that the other monsters hadn’t known. They had still threatened Papyrus’s brother and he wasn’t going to allow any such precedent to stand.

Besides. They had been willing, if not eager, to prey on a child. They deserved whatever he ended up doing to them.

Blue didn’t say anything else, and his eyes were closed, so Papyrus assumed that the conversation was over and moved to lay them both back down. But apparently Blue wasn’t quite out yet, because as Papyrus was tucking the blankets backed around his youngest brother, he heard a faint murmur from the child.

“…I’ve never been worth anything before…”

And then Blue really did seem to be asleep.

Papyrus blinked back the stinging tears, laid down proper and grabbed Blue, holding the small, precious creature as tight as he dared. He was, he promised himself, going to make up for the parts of Blue’s life where he’d been treated like worthless property. He was going to make sure Blue had a life well worth living.

That was the long-term goal, though. Right now, for tonight, the goal was to get back to sleep and avoid waking Blue up by having any nightmares of his own.

Chapter Text

Blue stood in the living room, facing the door, trying to mimic the stiff, “tall” posture Sans got when he didn’t want to do something but had to anyway.

Sans was usually joking. Right now, Blue was dead serious.

He was so focused on holding the pose that he didn’t notice Papyrus coming up behind him until his feet left the ground.

He yelped in surprise as he was cradled against Papyrus’s chest, then caught up with where he was and curled against him. “D-Do we really have t-to do this?”

Papyrus’s hand ran over his skull, and he shoved his head against his palm, anxious. “Yes, we do. This is… for you, at least, this is a necessary part of surviving in this world.”

Blue gave a moan of dissent, but Papyrus was the one who knew the place. Blue couldn’t really argue with him.

“You’ll be okay,” Papyrus promised.

“I’m sorry.”

Papyrus and Blue both turned towards Sans, who was standing at the foot of the stairs, looking dejected.

Papyrus sighed. “Sans, it wasn’t your fault. You were overwhelmed.”

“yeah, so he nearly died because I couldn’t handle myself.”

“You couldn’t have been expected to have any idea that was going to happen.”

“and I’m a pretty useless guardian if I can’t protect him from anything I can’t predict, aren’t I?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I nearly lost him for us, boss. I could hear him screaming last night. That was because of what happened yesterday, wasn’t it?”

Blue closed his eyes and tried to think about anything other than the argument going on right next to him. He was terrified enough as it was; he didn’t want to think about what had happened yesterday. He really didn’t want to hear that it had scared Sans, too.

“Yes. It was. And perhaps we shouldn’t be having this conversation right in front of the child.”

“…yes. You’re right. I can’t do anything right lately, can I?”

Blue heard a heavy sigh, then the sound of Sans’s sneakers shuffling toward them. Papyrus’s grip shifted, and Blue found himself lying more upright against the older skeleton’s shoulder. He opened his eyes to see why – Sans was standing next to his brother now, a little ways behind him, and Papyrus had a remarkably firm grip on his shoulder.

They started toward the door.

Blue whimpered and tensed, and he didn’t miss the way Sans’s face briefly fell before being forced back into a broad, fake smile.

He tried to focus on that. He didn’t want to think about where Papyrus was taking him, and logically, he didn’t need to. Papyrus would protect him. There was precedent for that belief. Papyrus had carried him through Snowdin before, and nothing had happened to either of them then. Sans was also far weaker than Papyrus, and Papyrus had kept Sans safe for years and years. So long as Papyrus was with him, Blue didn’t need to be so worried about what was out there in the snow.

And he really didn’t like seeing Sans sad. The other two skeletons had been nothing but nice to him. Sans had saved his life the day before. He owed them… although that wasn’t all there was to it.

He just hated the misery he could still make out, hidden in Sans’s eyelights. The brothers were always telling him that they loved him, that they wanted to help him… well, he loved them, too. He’d been grateful for them before, but this was the first time he had felt this… love.

He’d never had a chance before. This was the first time he’d ever been in any position to help anybody.

He almost managed to keep himself distracted through Papyrus stepping out into the snow and Sans closing the door behind them.

“All right,” Papyrus said. “Do you want me to put you down?”

Blue shook his head frantically, gripping Papyrus’s shoulder for all he was worth.

“I didn’t think so. Come on. We need to walk Sans to his sentry station.”

Blue glanced Sans’s way. The older skeleton was still wearing a stone-faced smile.

They set off down the street, Blue scared out of his skull and Sans thoroughly miserable. Blue was pretty sure Papyrus wasn’t happy, either.

They passed by a couple groups of people, all of whom turned to gape at them. Blue pulled away nervously, and Papyrus turned so his upper body was shielding him and glowered at the other monsters, who looked away pretty quickly. It did make Blue feel a little better.

Better enough that, after a little while, he was paying more attention to Sans’s concerns than his own.

He looked up, focusing on the other skeleton. Sans looked, if anything, worse than he had when Blue had last looked.

“Sans?” he said.

Sans looked up, his smile stretching much too far to be real. “yeah, kid?”

“Thank you.”

Sans blinked. “Huh?”

“For saving my life. Yesterday.”

Sans grimaced. “kid, you shouldn’t have been in that situation to begin with.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I could’ve…” Sans sighed. “I couldn’t have done anything.”

Blue smiled real wide. “See? Not your fault!”

“The kid has a point,” Papyrus said.

“I should’ve been able to do something.”

“Sans, for pity’s sake. We’ve had this conversation before.”

Sans sighed and looked away, and neither Blue nor Papyrus could get him to say anything further.

Eventually, they reached Sans’s sentry station, where he sat down and pulled his hood down over his face, and left him there. Papyrus didn’t even have the heart to yell at him to take the hood off so he could see.

And they walked back into Snowdin proper.

💙💙💙

“I found him in the woods. I’ve never seen another skeleton beside myself and Sans, so I decided to keep him. He looks just like Sans, doesn’t he?”

“Back off, he’s mine.”

“Why are you staring at my brother?”

“I certainly hope you’re not getting any ideas about my brother. Consider whether my wrath is worth briefly gaining a few EXP.”

“…yeah, he’s a lot like Sans.”

“It’s like I have another Sans now.”

“Maybe I could start collecting them. Anyone know where I could find any other skeletons?”

“See, Blue? That’s exactly the reaction we want. Word’s getting around. Please try to look a little calmer. The point is to scare everyone else.”

💙💙💙

It was amazing how quickly seeing how frightened everyone else was of Papyrus eased Blue’s nerves, and by the time Papyrus had carried or led him through almost every street in Snowdin and was going to report to his captain, Blue was considering taking a nap.

He must have stopped considering it at some point, because eventually, he blinked his way awake to the sound of a really loud conversation going on right over his head.

“Come on, Undyne. I know you think he’s adorable.”

A slightly more feminine voice growled wordlessly before replying. “For stars’ sake, Papyrus! Why did you bring him here WHILE WE WERE ON THE JOB?!?”

“I knew I’d get this reaction!”

“I’ll get you for this, Papyrus, I swear I will!”

Blue stirred, then “sat” up as best as he could while still being cradled in Papyrus’s arms. “Mm?”

“See? How can you not love that?”

“Papyrus, you know I – GAH!”

Blue’s eyes went wide as he spotted the woman Papyrus was talking to. She looked like a fish.

She also looked insanely dangerous.

Papyrus chuckled and began stroking Blue’s skull. The younger skeleton’s eyelids drooped to half-mast, his tensed limbs relaxing again. “Don’t worry, Blue. This is Undyne. She’s a friend. She’s a loud, aggressive jerk, but she wouldn’t hurt a child.”

“Maybe not, but bear in mind that YOU’RE an entirely different matter, Papyrus! Especially if you’re going to keep bringing small adorable creatures in to WORK when we’re both supposed to be acting TOUGH!”

“What do you mean acting?”

“DON’T TRY TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT!!!”

Papyrus chuckled and shook his head. “Get used to it, Blue. This is the first five minutes of the rest of your day.”

“A-All right.”

“I promise, you don’t need to be scared of her.”

Blue nodded.

Undyne shook her head. “I swear, Papyrus, if anyone else hears you saying that…”

“Everyone else should be scared of you. I don’t see the problem.”

Undyne gave another aggravated growl and turned her back on the two skeletons.

“C’mon, don’t try to tell me you don’t think he’s the cutest thing ever and you want to pet him, too.”

For a moment, Blue was worried that Undyne might actually try and attack Papyrus. He’d certainly never seen someone whirl around that fast – he was a little surprised her head didn’t fall off – and he’d really never seen a pair of eyes bug out that much.

Yikes.

Then, snarling the same sort of incoherence Sans usually did when he was upset, she stormed over to Papyrus and reached for Blue.

Blue held perfectly still. It was okay, it was okay, he’d be okay. Papyrus wasn’t reacting, Papyrus wasn’t doing anything to stop her, so she wasn’t going to hurt him.

Papyrus removed his hand from Blue’s skull just as Undyne laid hers right above his acoustic meatus and stroked gently along the side of his head.

Oooh.

She was cold. Cold, and sort of… slick? Her hand didn’t feel slimy, but it was… really smooth in a way that made it feel wet even though it wasn’t. It was a weird feeling, but it was kinda nice once he calmed down and his soul stopped pulsing quite so hard.

He snuggled back into Papyrus’s arms and closed his eyes, content.

Undyne sighed. “All right, fine, you’re right. He’s cute. But for cryin’ out loud, I can’t be seen like this!”

She didn’t stop petting him, though. Papyrus just laughed. Blue didn’t say anything; he was well on his way to falling asleep again.

💙💙💙

Sans turned his head so he was looking to the left as he sat at his sentry station, his head down on the wood in front of him.

He would normally have been asleep right now. He wanted to be asleep right now.

But he couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was the altercation yesterday – the one where Blue had almost died. The one where he’d turned up just in time to see Blue lying in the snow, another monster holding a flame attack right above his head.

It was okay. Nothing had happened.

But it could have. It could have. And it would have been Sans’s fault. Blue’s dust could so easily have been on his hands. If he hadn’t heard Blue screaming his name, if he hadn’t been able to push past those other monsters, if he’d been moving just a little bit slower…

He could still see the desperate, hopeless terror on Blue’s helpless little face as Sans had broken into the circle around him. In reality, Blue had been saved. But he could so easily have just died there, alone and scared and screaming for someone who would never come.

Sans groaned and “rolled” again, facing to the right now. He couldn’t find a comfortable position.

He hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, either, so he was exhausted now. Normally, he’d have dealt with such a night by going to Papyrus and seeking out comfort from his older brother. But now, with Blue sleeping in Papyrus’s room… Sans couldn’t have faced him. And he hadn’t wanted to disturb him.

He “rolled” again.

The guilt was horrible. It was eating away at him. He wanted someone to help him, but he knew he didn’t deserve it.

“SANS!”

Sans jumped, nearly knocked his chair over backward, and finally looked up. Papyrus was standing in front of him, Blue at his side and holding his hand, and it was nightfall. It looked like Sans had managed to fall asleep.

He scrambled to his feet. “Sorry, boss!”

Papyrus sighed and motioned for him to follow. Silently kicking himself for one more thing now, Sans got up and fell into step behind him as they started for home, keeping his eyes locked on the back of Blue’s head. He wasn’t sure why he bothered. Papyrus was right there. They were both safe.

Once they were home, Sans made a beeline for the stairs, half-asleep and intending to collapse on his bed and pass out at the soonest possible moment. He ran directly into Papyrus’s forearm, and then his sense of orientation did a couple of backflips as Papyrus casually tossed him onto the couch.

“All right,” Papyrus said, sitting down in a nearby chair as Blue crawled into Sans’s lap and curled up like a cat, effectively preventing him from leaving. “Did you sleep at all last night, Sans?”

Sans gaped at him for a moment, then gaped down at Blue, then looked back at Papyrus. “Are… you two collaborating?”

“We’re both worried about you, yes. So, did you?”

“Uh…” No real reason to lie. “No.”

Papyrus sighed. “Sans, you’re being ridiculous. There’s no way you could have done better for Blue yesterday. You got him out alive; you should focus on that.”

“’m fine,” Blue piped up.

“but it could have been so different,” Sans said. “and I can’t forget that. What if I hadn’t gotten there in time? What if they hadn’t believed me? I can’t help thinking I should’ve been able to keep him with me. I should’ve been able to keep him from being in danger in the first place. He could have died, Papyrus, he could have died.”

“What if you hadn’t gotten there in time?” Blue echoed quietly.

Sans nodded. “see, boss? Even Blue-”

“What if that dog had gotten my skull instead of my ribs?”

“huh?”

Blue propped his head up on his hand. “the dog. O-one of the ones that chased me – when – when I escaped from the l-lab. It, that’s how I broke my r-rib. Wh-what if it had gotten my sk-skull instead? Wh-what if I hadn’t b-been able to do that sh-shortcut, and the s-s-scientists had caught me? What i-if an-anyone else had f-found me before Papyrus did? I…” He sat up fully there, so he could collapse against Sans and burst into tears.

Sans patted him awkwardly on the back, not sure what to do. After a moment, Blue pulled away and began talking again.

“I – I could have died a-a lot of times. I – S-sans, it d-doesn’t m-m-matter. It c-coulda been those monsters, but it could al-also have b-been the dogs, a-and i-it c-could have been the cold… but i-it didn’t happen, Sans, d-don’t you see, th-that’s all that m-matters. I’m here now. I lived. A-and I don’t want me or y-you or P-Papyrus to be upset about what c-could have happened, when we could all just be happy right now.”

And he collapsed forward again, this time hugging Sans.

“He’s right, Sans,” Papyrus said quietly. “These things happen.”

And this time, for some reason, Sans felt forgiven.

He put his arms around Blue and held the child close. He was warm and heavy and his presence was making Sans sleepy. It didn’t help that Blue seemed to be drifting off, too, his head nestled into the crook between Sans’s head and his shoulder.

“I’m tired,” Sans mumbled.

“You don’t say.”

“’m tired too,” Blue murmured.

“Considering the time-”

“can I sleep in your bed?” Sans asked.

Papyrus sighed. It was the sigh of fake aggravation, fortunately. “Sometimes I wonder why we bothered moving into a house with multiple bedrooms.”

“is that a no?”

Sans’s eyes were closed, but he could feel Papyrus rolling his eyes, just like he could feel Blue snickering against his chest. “No. It is not. Come on, the both of… oh, never mind.”

The next thing Sans felt was a pair of strong arms grabbing both him and Blue and lifting them over Papyrus’s shoulder. Papyrus grumbled to himself through the entire walk to his room, but once he got there, he spent several minutes arranging Sans and Blue into the most comfortable positions he could manage before climbing into bed himself, right between the two of them.

It ended up being just like the last time they had all slept together in one bed: Sans was lying back to back with Papyrus, curled against his brother’s spine, and Blue was presumably curled against Papyrus’s chest. Like a couple of overgrown cats, Sans figured.

He snickered to himself quietly. He’d have to come up with some puns about that to annoy Papyrus with in the morning.

But in the meantime, all he wanted to do was sleep.

💙💙💙

Everyone was happy again.

Blue opened his eyes and stared off into the darkness of Papyrus’s bedroom. His brothers were asleep; he was almost there. It was late, and he was warm and comfortable and he felt safe and he wasn’t worried about Sans. Maybe tomorrow, he’d go to Grillby’s with him again. Stars knew he enjoyed the freedom.

And maybe tomorrow, he’d ask Sans to finally show him how to actually do shortcuts. Or help Papyrus harass Undyne. Or try and build one of those snowmen Sans kept talking about. Or read a book. Or just sleep on the couch, secure and warm in his new home.

There were so many possibilities laid out before him now. Where once he had been nothing more than an experiment, living in a cage and helpless to do anything more than wait for someone else to do something to him, he was now… Blue. Someone’s brother, someone’s child. There was so much more that he could do now, and he meant to try it all.

He had been given a chance at a life. And he was going to take it for all it was worth.

In the morning, that was. For now, Blue simply allowed his eyes to close and drifted off to sleep.

Chapter Text

The child was asleep – at long last. Papyrus didn’t want to put him down, but this job needed to get done. He couldn’t allow anyone to set a precedent of the Great and Terrible Papyrus allowing them to get away with harassing one of his brothers. Especially not right after spreading the word that Blue belonged to him.

That would just undermine all of their safety.

So, even though he fully expected Blue to have another nightmare, and he worried about what might happen if he wasn’t home to deal with it, he made himself put the child aside, wrap him up in a blanket, and walk out of the room.

Sans was sitting at the kitchen table, completely ignoring Papyrus’s rules about how much coffee he was supposed to drink and when. Papyrus stared at him for a moment, then decided not to comment.

“going out?” Sans asked.

Papyrus nodded. “THERE IS STILL SOME BUSINESS I NEED TO TAKE CARE OF.”

Sans nodded, staring into the coffee cup like it was the world’s most interesting study in black comedy. “yeah. You were going to eventually…”

“IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME ANYMORE, SANS. NOT MUCH.”

Sans shook his head, still looking into the coffee cup. Was he trying to read the coffee grounds? “that’s almost worse, bro.”

“I’M GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT, NO MATTER HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT. IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT TEAR ME UP INSIDE.”

“yeah, you’re right. I just wish you didn’t have to lose your innocence.”

“I WISH NONE OF US DID. BUT WE HAVE TO LIVE IN THE WORLD THAT EXISTS, BROTHER, NOT THE ONE WE WISH EXISTED.”

Sans nodded. Papyrus hoped he was just tired, and that this didn’t mean he was spiraling again.

“’s just… it’s funny, isn’t it?” his younger brother said. “it… it used to be you that thought this was all so unfair. That thought there was another way.”

“I STILL THINK THAT. I JUST DON’T THINK WE’RE GOING TO FIND IT ANYTIME SOON, AND WE NEED TO SURVIVE IN THE MEANTIME.” He debated telling Sans that he had gritted his teeth and sacrificed his idealism on the altar of keeping his brother safe. He wouldn’t have done that if he had been the only skeleton Gaster had made.

How darkly ironic that Gaster himself had been the first victim of Papyrus’s big brother instincts. Neither of them had known he was capable of that sort of violence until the first time he’d seen the doctor hurt Sans.

He decided against mentioning it. The way he was feeling right now, Sans would probably understand it as Papyrus saying Sans was responsible for the loss of his moral purity, or something like that.

Instead, he swept out the door. If Sans was still awake when he got back, he’d have to cheer him up then.

In the meantime…

One of the benefits of being the Royal Guard lieutenant responsible for Snowdin, and friends with Alphys to boot: Papyrus knew where everyone lived, what they did for a living, and where he might find them after dark.

Two wolf monsters, three rabbits. Sans and Blue had been able to describe them in detail. Then there was the sixth monster – the one who had actually won the little struggle over the child. The one who had been about to kill him when Sans showed up.

Funnily enough, Blue couldn’t describe that one. Sans had gotten a good look at the guy’s face, but he couldn’t describe him very well either. After all, ice elementals tended not to be very distinctive.

Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard for Papyrus to figure out the perpetrator’s name.

The creatures weren’t uncommon in Snowdin, but they tended not to live in the town proper and they tended to be relatively weak. If this one had dared challenge five other monsters, and they had all backed down, then it was unusually powerful.

That narrowed it down to three candidates. Shiver could be eliminated; she was tiny. Flurry had a running feud with Grillby and wouldn’t have been caught dead near his place.

That left Swirl.

It was almost a pleasant conclusion. Swirl was a huge narcissist whom Papyrus was sure to find in a crowd, and Papyrus definitely wanted to kill him in front of witnesses.

But he would be the toughest enemy Papyrus faced tonight, and unlike the others, he wouldn’t run if word reached him before Papyrus did. He could wait.

He’d probably be offended by that. All the better.

No, he’d deal with one of the wolves first. The one who had grabbed Blue at the beginning of it all, the first one to make an attempt on his life. Blue had remembered his face well.

His name was Ketter, and Papyrus could probably find him in an inn near Grillby’s bar. He’d been staying there for months, refusing to pay for his time there, and he was close to blows with the woman who owned the place – or rather, with her sons.

Excellent. There wasn’t such a thing as a person in Snowdin Papyrus would suffer for killing, but if he could actively benefit from it, all the better.

He made his way to the inn and stormed in. There were several monsters in the lobby – the underground came to life at night, whatever anyone thought. Dangerous people were drawn to dangerous things, and those who had something to hide loved the shadows. The two tended to walk hand in hand.

None of the people here were dangerous enough to want to tangle with the Great and Terrible Papyrus, and they all scattered as he stalked through them, then up and around until he found the room he was looking for.

He rammed through the door, sending wood shards flying all about, then shouted Ketter’s name as the large gray wolf monster rolled out of bed and looked around, very confused.

He recoiled when he saw Papyrus.

Papyrus sent a flurry of small bone attacks flying over his head, silently taking surrender off the table. He was there to fight.

Terror flashed on the wolf monster’s face, but he knew what sort of mess he was in, and he probably knew why too. He summoned up his own attacks.

Papyrus didn’t even bother to dodge. His defense was high enough that he wasn’t taking more than one damage per hit.

He drew out the fight for a little while, making sure there was a ruckus, making sure to draw the attention of everyone else in the vicinity. It was cruel, yes, but Ketter had held Blue, made him stand shivering in the snow and watch his own death creep closer. Papyrus didn’t feel too bad about doing the same thing to him.

Only once he had a small crowd did he begin talking.

He lunged forward, grabbing the wolf monster and shoving him into the nightstand, forcing him into a very uncomfortable position against it. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS ABOUT?”

“That stupid kid,” the wolf spat. “I didn’t know he was yours, Papyrus. You can’t pretend this is fair-”

“HE IS A CHILD. MY CHILD. AND YOU TRIED TO KILL HIM. FAIR DOES NOT COME INTO IT. I DON’T TOLERATE PEOPLE TOUCHING WHAT IS MINE WITHOUT MY SAY-SO, LET ALONE WHAT YOU DID.”

And with that, confident that everyone had gotten the point, he summoned up over a dozen blaster and emptied all the energy every one of them carried right into the wolf’s face.

Dust showered to the ground. Papyrus turned around and stormed off, taking a moment to pause in the crowd and growl, “HOW STUPID WOULD YOU HAVE TO BE TO NOT REALIZE A SKELETON CHILD WOULD OBVIOUSLY BELONG TO ME?”

One down, five to go. The next person to try to kill Blue had been a female rabbit monster with brown fur, hadn’t it?

Edela. She was a thief and a degenerate who lived on the streets. She’d probably been responsible for the disappearance of many another child before.

It made Papyrus sick, thinking about how little justice their was in her getting away with it until she tried to take one who just happened to be important to someone powerful, but at least she was going to get what she deserved now.

She wasn’t a serious contender like Ketter was. She was a weakling who preyed on children because they were the only people she could subdue. She wasn’t the only person trying to sleep in the cramped alleyway Papyrus found her in, and the group around her gave him all the audience he needed to curse her out for her rampant child murder before ramming bones through her eyes and chest and stomach.

That one attack was all it took to blanket the alleyway in dust. More importantly, some of her filth got on Papyrus’s clothes. He was going to have to clean that before he held Blue again.

The next several rabbit monsters were similarly easy. The other wolf didn’t give him much trouble, either.

And then it was time to go after Swirl.

He’d probably be hanging around Grillby’s place. Like Flurry, he and Grillby hated each other. Unlike Flurry, he reacted by hanging around the fire elemental as much as possible.

He was a narcissistic moron who had always been destined to annoy the wrong person one day. Papyrus supposed it made sense. He just hoped Grillby hadn’t killed him already.

He arrived at the bar to find that he’d been dead on the money about that. There was a fight already in progress: a very angry purple fire elemental was doing his absolute best to kill a large, spiky ice elemental.

Papyrus stood there and watched for a moment. It seemed to be even.

At least, it was until Papyrus grabbed Swirl’s SOUL and slammed him facedown into the ground. Grillby didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on, but that didn’t stop him from ramming as much fire as he could into Swirl’s back while he was down.

Swirl staggered to his feet, then slashed across Grillby’s chest with a swarm of icicles. Grillby staggered backward, then straight-up punched Swirl in the face.

There was a satisfying CRUNCH, and Swirl’s nose crumbled.

He tried to retaliate by running Grillby through, but the fire elemental dodged, then went for his face again. Right in the right eye, this time with a fireball, and the socket melted and ran down his misshapen cheek. It was perfect.

And Swirl was at perhaps 10 HP, so this was where Papyrus properly joined. His first official attack took out his right eye, and his second one forced Swirl to his knees.

Grillby raised a hand.

Papyrus raised his, too, forestalling him. “NO. HE’S MINE.”

“Why?” Grillby snarled.

“BECAUSE HE WENT AFTER BLUE. MY NEW BROTHER. DIDN’T EVEN GIVE IT TIME FOR THE GLITTER TO WEAR OFF BEFORE HE TRIED TO TAKE HIM AWAY FROM ME.”

“I don’t exactly hate your brothers, either!”

Papyrus stared at Grillby for a moment, then shook his head. “THEY ARE MINE.”

Grillby subsided. “All right.”

And Papyrus stepped forward and shattered Swirl like a window with the smallest bone attack he could manage. Swirl was at 1 HP; it was easy to manage a humiliating death.

Papyrus looked around at Grillby’s other customers, who had been watching the whole thing in grim, silent fascination. “THE SKELETON CHILD IS MINE. TOUCH HIM, AND I WILL KILL YOU.”

And then he stormed off, walking out into an area of snow and ice and trees and, most importantly, zero people.

He needed some time to think. He needed to cool down. He couldn’t go home feeling as angry and sadistic as he did now.

Sans’s worries had had some merit. Once, he’d regretted every kill he made before, during and after the fact. This time… he’d been reluctant to start, but he’d completely lost himself as soon as he’d come near his first target. He’d enjoyed it. Now that it was over, he wanted more.

And that was horribly wrong.

At least the natural consequences carried a good punishment. He couldn’t go near either of his Sanses while he was feeling like this. He couldn’t personally pose a risk to them. He would rather die.

And so he stood alone in the snow, waiting for his rage to burn itself out.

💙💙💙

Papyrus returned to find that at least he didn’t have to worry about Sans.

Blue was awake now, and the two younger skeletons were playing chess at the kitchen table and trading horrible jokes. They stopped laughing as soon as he entered the room, although it was the sort of barely-suppressed silence that said, “I’m just waiting until you do something even funnier than what we were just talking about, and then I’m gonna start cackling again.”

Their smiles both died as they got a good look at Papyrus’s face. Sans sighed. “hard night, boss?”

“VERY.”

He knelt and held out his arms to them. They both came.

Papyrus folded his arms around them, trying to pay attention to the rise and fall of their chests against his own, trying to get a sense of how small and fragile Blue’s skull was by stroking it with his fingertips. Trying to remind himself why he had just done what he had.

He would always protect Sans and Blue. Always. And if he couldn’t do that, he would at least avenge them.

His brothers were everything to him. He would keep his Sanses safe, no matter what it did to his SOUL.