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Frisk was worried, or maybe that was putting it too mildly. To wrap up the complexity of avoidance and denial that surrounded the entire situation within one simple word was probably the largest approximation of an understatement one could make.
And still, they worried.
Everyone else skirted around the subject, too wrapped up in the good of their lives, in the hopes that inevitably and ineffably, things would find their way right. Never mind the way that they all spoke three tones lower when the subject arose, never mind the way they all winced and grimaced and glanced around uncomfortably.
They tried, in their own ways. Frisk would watch Toriel bring over baked goods, make bad joes louder and with more energy, watch as Alphys would bring over different worn out tapes only to dejectedly drag the same tapes back home. Each member of their ragtag family would line up and line right back out, refusing to actually acknowledge the failure as anything more than a minor setback.
The reality truly sunk in when Grillby, all quiet words and stern stares, had actually pulled Frisk off to the side one evening in their new bar, and whisper spoke that he was concerned. And Frisk had felt it, the way that his flames flickered blue for a split moment as the real worry sunk in.
It had been years, long enough for all of them to settle into the new world in different ways. For each of them to finally begin to call the surface world home, and for Frisk to almost forget the repeats and mistakes.
Frisk knew though. Sans hadn’t forgotten at all. They could tell, sometimes he gave them strange looks like he was seeing something else. Sometimes Sans paused a little too long in his words, as if he’d said them before but with a different meaning.
Sans wasn’t letting himself relax here, he was falling apart because he couldn’t let go.
One evening, Papyrus was walking them to Toriel’s home across town after a long day of hanging out and watching movies and building pillow forts, and the sudden image of Sans’ dark ringed, strained smile earlier in the day struck them. He’d seemed so reserved, more than usual. Less willing to join in on shenanigans and jokes. It had made Frisk uncomfortable, like something was just so ever slightly off and they couldn’t quite shake the feeling.
Their walk had grown comfortably silent, and Frisk resolved to bring it up, once and for all.
“Pap…. Is Sans doing okay?”
Papyrus blinked down at them in surprise, whether at the bluntness of their question or the sudden conversation, they weren’t sure. “Why, Frisk! Of course he is. Lazy as always of course but that is my brother through and through!”
They bit their lip, building their bravery internally like a slow fire. “Well, he didn’t…. look okay to me. He looked tired and…sad. I think he might be having a bad time.” They winced as the words slipped out, a faint memory of a memory shuddering inside their skin.
Frisk had been expecting denial, shock maybe. At most, maybe an angered flat out refusal. They hadn’t been expecting the grim, dark shadowed expression that crept across Papyrus’ face. The way his eyes dimmed and his voice fell flat as he quietly suggested that he walk Frisk home.
In the dark, crisp night air, Papyrus seemed strangely tall, strangely sharp. He turned his head to stare up at the crescent moon, dazed and distant in the sky. His breath hung in lazy, icy circles.
“Frisk. You are my friend, my very important friend. And a marvelous ambassador if I do say so.” He stopped walking for a moment, crunching the light dust of snow softly. “Sans has…. Not been himself, you are most certainly correct. But if there’s one thing you need to know about my brother, it’s that he’s always done what’s best for me.”
Frisk shook their head faintly, confusion alighting their words. “But what’s best for Sans?”
Papyrus fell silent for a second. Watching his own trailing breaths dissipate into the darkness.
“My brother is one heck of a nerd, you know? Always reading big books and spending time in his shed on his wacky inventions. But for all his smarts, he’s awfully lazy. He knows what’s best for everyone…. Cannot seem to do anything for himself, though.”
The thoughts seemed to line up like Christmas lights in front of them both, and suddenly, Frisk found a lump forming in their throat, and an intense heaviness in their gut.
“What do we do?”
Papyrus said nothing, and they began their trek home once more. Thoughts swirling faster than the snowflakes coating the sky.
They’d thought, an intervention of sorts at first. And then softened the words as they’d popped to the surface. Monsters didn’t celebrate birthdays, but maybe they’d celebrate the creation of their little family, together like they were meant to.
Maybe with all the care and love of his friends and family, Sans would realize he didn’t have to hide anymore. Maybe he’d start living with the here’s and now’s rather than the what if’s. Maybe it would be enough to make him believe again; in himself and in Frisk.
Frisk was never going to reset ever again, as long as they lived. Sans deserved a shot at being happy, they all did. They just needed to have a little hope.
He remembered when it started. Everything had begun spinning a long, long time ago. Almost too long to really feel like this lifetime. There were so many fragments, it was hard to piece them all together, but Sans had- Sans knew.
What had happened before the flickers was irrelevant in most contexts, though; the lab and the experiments and the way it had all fallen apart and launched him and his brother out in the cold world, alone. It wasn’t worth focusing on, any of it. Especially since all of before seemed shimmering and vague anyways.
Sometimes when he tried to focus on the cold lab tiles and steel walls, it made him feel too small. Closed in and kept secret, an improbability the universe hadn’t quite worked out how to erase yet. It seemed to always float away, leaving him infinite and without all the same.
Though, he remembered in remarkable clarity when the skips began.
At first, it felt a bit like a breeze on the back of his neck, an itch he couldn’t scratch but he could feel it distantly. A timeline that had been swallowed up, paved over with something new, two realities existing simultaneously on the ashes of the old one. It was like watching a mirror, only to see the reflection move a half a fraction slower, decide to swerve left instead of right, blinking out of sync.
Sans remembered stepping into the snowbanks, breathing in the ice filled air for the first time, and also knowing he’d been here many times before. It was disconcerting. His life consistently plagued by echoes, not strong enough to fully imagine, but not weak enough to fade away. A consistent nagging at the back of his head, knowledge about exactly where things were and what would happen.
He could predict specific events, specific phrasings as if he’d heard it before. As if everything existed in a fluctuating state of deja vu he couldn’t snap himself out of. Sans had no idea where the information was coming from, couldn’t think of it beyond when it happened, but he’d find himself speaking along with others like a script. Or stepping out of the way of a running kid as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Strange and frightening, but harmless in all senses.
And then the loop caught up with him.
It was like there’d been a skipping point, he’d started just outside of it, backtracking through material that had been done before, but slightly differently. The scene and plot all the same but minus…something. Something he couldn’t put a name to. But then he’d caught up to the point in time where the echo had gotten stuck, and he’d found himself trapped in the same gouge.
The same couple of days repeating ad infinitum, exactly the same. At first he’d just thought he was losing his mind, or that he was the problem. Then he’d gotten scared, and angry.
Every morning the sound of Papyrus cheerfully calling to him as he left to meet Undyne, the same aroma of burning spaghetti, the same falling snowbank here and same bumped shoulders there. He’d been hysterical in some, angry in others, desperate to change things up, to make something surprising. Papyrus and him hadn’t always gotten along so well after all, he’d had the time to work it all out. Pull it strand by strand and see what changed, and then he’d stopped completely.
He’d learned everything about everyone, learned how to play along and say just the right things. It went on for years, as far as his notes calculated. He learned how to bend things to his will, to fold the coding just enough that he could skip out unnecessary details, jump to where he was inevitably going to be rather than where he was.
There’d be one timeline, one where he’d gone too far. He’d messed with things too much, pushed his brother too far and it had all shattered in an instant. Like he’d pushed the world too far outside it’s borders, breached a hole in what once was. He’d never been so grateful to wake up after that in the same snowy world he’d started in.
And then he just… slept it all away. It was hard to care about events when they were out of your control, when you were just an unwilling cog in the larger machine. Everything he did against time seemed to force him back into place anyways, what was the point in hoping for anything different.
There’d been a couple of dark weeks, he tried not the think about them. Ones where he couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t stand the feeling of his own heartbeat or the concerned stares that would inevitably forget. He’d ran all out of hope, tried to force himself to fade away but something- god, thankfully something- brought him back every time. He couldn’t image what it would have done to Papyrus if he’d… well. He was just glad none of those tries had stuck.
One day, things started shifting a little. A human, something not from the script- stumbling into Snowdin with wide eyes and a wider smile. Another stretch within himself, another echo. Suddenly there was an exit path, multiple forks in the road that shifted and tore pieces away from other inevitabilities with every step forward. And then the loops reset dragging the potentials along with them.
When he focused on it, he could feel it, the separate timelines converging and spiraling around him. They all seemed to flux around that small kids tiny feet, furl with their breaths. They were the convergence point, the end and beginning. Sans worried, and worried, until that got old too.
He’d learned, rather quickly, that there was often little point in doing much of anything. The universe would play on exactly as it would, and he knew the precise right thing to say to make it flow in minute ways that benefitted others down the stream. In other splintered dreams there’d been dust and bone and worse things, in some only darkness. He should be grateful that they remained only possibilities from his standpoints, but somewhere across space time there was a Sans that knew that pain, that felt the indescribable loss he only heard whispers of. He ached for that alternate him, all the while endlessly grateful that his Papyrus was still boisterous and loud and unburdened by death or loss. But still, the tides were unchangeable. It was all he could do to wake up from his nightmares and keep his smile plastered on. Nothing was going to change anyways. Well, apparently other than the strange human kid anyways.
He followed them, closely- the one different thing in his monochrome world of familiarity. One thing left to learn, to be introduced to. One thing left with the power to choose anything at all. It was refreshing, like a blast of cold air or water and he was hooked, his thirst not yet satiated. He felt like he was waiting just outside a door, glimpsing at a crack of light- so close to freedom- and then…
Then he’d had a whole sunset. A backdrop of orange and crimsons siphoning into his very soul. It was like believing again, like hoping and dreaming and everything he’d forgotten how to do.
At first, it had been invigorating and fulfilling, then he’d become so overwhelmed with the wide spaces beyond him, he’d locked himself away in the darkest corner of their house and completely, finally, broken down.
His choices had consequences, here. Real and tangible ones. Effects he couldn’t study and learn from and try to avoid in the next time skip. When he said the wrong thing people noticed, when he acted out of step, people saw. And worse, they remembered.
He upset people and couldn’t rehearse his lines, he didn’t have infinite time to think of the perfect words, the blocky half formed thoughts spilled through his teeth unendingly some times and then not enough in others. It was terrifying, loosing control. He’d locked himself in the quietest, darkest parts of their new house for days once, after a dog had barked at him from an alleyway.
So the Sans that they’d all known for years, the one with practiced causality and easy jokes, the one who always knew what to say and mysteriously always had cash and didn’t ever pay all in one. That Sans fell to the wayside, lost beneath tides of new and different and immense panic.
He couldn’t expect anything anymore; it was all fair game. And he had been trained to expect the worst.
He lived day to day on the precipice of disaster, learning to skate around the edges and not hold too tightly to anything. He knew what the skips looked like and when they’d likely appear and what to do about it (nothing). N ow…. Any time at all everything could go horribly. Any time at all they could be thrust down into the darkness. It was incalculable and random and he hated it, feared it so intensely it was difficult to function.
And then the lovely addition of nightmares peeked in, allowing his paranoia’s to latch onto something concrete, to something with a definitive face, and well… Sans was doing alright. He would adjust to unpredictability. Eventually, right?
Lately, he’d been spending his days sitting on a bench across town, staring at the sky and not doing too much else. He should get a job, should pick up a hobby. He was getting lazier, still. He should care more, do things. Stop making everyone worry and lie through their wide eyed hurt. And yet, if there was one constant it was that he was ineffably a coward, content to push responsibility to the wayside. Deal with things another day, right?
Today, there were a flock of birds on the grass in front of his usual spot. Something new, different. He took one look and felt a fear spark in his chest and the ensuing embarrassment for his own uncontrollable reactions swallow that back up, and he left. There’d never been birds before, and new meant bad, right? New meant a new fractured branch of a potential timeline and they’d been splintering off for so long now he no longer knew what would get them back on the good path.
What if the birds meant he’d forgotten something today? He should have weaved around the carriage the lady pushed in front of him this morning instead of clumsily bumping into it, he should have answered his phone the first time he saw Tori calling. A reset was surely waiting around the corner, dammit Sans. Why couldn’t you get this right?
He headed home, in a flurry of gut twisting panic, looking to lock himself in his room for one more day. Tomorrow he’d be alright; tomorrow simple daily activities wouldn’t take so much from him. It made him so unbelievably frustrated that he could get himself under control, but he was too frazzled right now. Too strung out from his dreams and the change in the air and the pieces of himself were sliding right through the drain faster than he could gather them. He just wanted to sleep, but he knew that wouldn’t end well.
Maybe just his dark room and some covers to hide under, or a blank ceiling to stare at for a few hours. Just so he didn’t have to think or try for a while.
He shuffled up to his doorstep, reaching into his pocket for the key, feeling drunk on his own fallout, the remnants of his earlier hyped up fear. It felt like he’d ran a marathon, but he couldn’t sleep right now, not ever. Maybe he’d watch TV blankly for a few hours until Papyrus got home and then-
He pushed the door open, reaching for the light switch just as a cacophony of cheers and voices filled the room. The surprise and fear gripped him immediately, blocking out his breaths, his thoughts. Too many faces and colours and god he hadn’t expected this, hadn’t known. He felt himself stumble backwards into the wall as his knees gave out and he slid downwards, his vision was fading white and someone was speaking, voice laced with concern but he couldn’t hear it. Not beyond the screaming whine in his head, not beyond the electric panic on his teeth.
Someone moved towards him and he couldn’t take it, he focused everything in him wildly, he couldn’t skip around anymore- appear where he wasn’t- but he could escape when he needed to. He wasn’t thinking beyond his need to get out, couldn’t think. But suddenly he was in his room with the door slammed tightly shut and the tight band pressing in on his chest wasn’t getting looser, but he could breathe.
He collapsed on the door, sliding down the surface in exhaustion and dragging himself unceremoniously in a pathetic heap on the floor. His breaths shook him wildly, and a sob erupted from somewhere in between.
Sans was so tired of being afraid, so tired. He heard the concerned voices below, hushed and cautious and the guilt and shame washed over him like ice water in his lungs.
If they were acknowledging that something was off it meant he couldn’t play it off, couldn’t dodge questions when they struck a chord. Sans wasn’t ready to face his demons, wasn’t sure who he would even be without the fear and the calculations and his constant fugue state of being. But now he couldn’t hope to escape any of it, not after he’d wrecked everything.
They’d make him talk about it now, and Papyrus would know he’d been lying and none of them could possibly understand. He felt unimaginably small, the universe too wide and cold.
He was so tired.
“Sans?” Alphys voice was muffled through the door, but the soft and gentle tone still struck him deeply. He took a shuddering breath and pulled himself upright slowly, sitting against the doorframe in a graceless mess.
“I-I…. Frisk wanted me to tell you that they’re very sorry. They planned this whole s-surprise thing for you b-but…well… They didn’t mean to upset you.”
Sans knew that, of course he knew that. He could never blame the kid, not with they’re big and loving heart. It wasn’t Frisk’s fault he was apparently incapable of keeping his shit together for five minutes.
“S’okay,” he managed, the effort of speaking made him tilt his head backwards on the door and slide his eyes closed.
“H-hey… listen Sans. Papyrus sent everyone else home, but I…. You can talk to me, you know that, right? I know I-I… I haven’t really been around much and I’m sorry for that,” She sighed. “A-are you still having those déjà vu moments you were telling me about?”
Sans winced, he hated that the hint of self depreciation was creeping back into his friend’s voice. She’d been happy lately, very happy. He’d hate to see her fall back on her old ways, especially over him. He wasn’t sure if he even could talk about what was going on, in terms that wouldn’t freak her out at least. She’d remember it, now, wouldn’t she? All those times he’d broken down and told Alphys everything just to have her forget, just to have to force himself to forget…
He smiled, a watery thin thing.
“I know, Alph. It’s just hard.”
She hmm’ed through the door. “Yeah, I know t-that for sure.”
“Sorry, Al,” he spoke lowly, feeling weighty and impossibly hollow. He didn’t want to be that guy, the one that worried people and refused to explain it, but everything was too linear now. Too point A to point B for his brain, for his thoughts that spanned a million different directions all at once, that grabbed hold of possibilities and wouldn’t let go. He’d waited so long for things to press play again, to resume a normal pacing and now he couldn’t deal with it. “Guess I really wrecked things this time.”
“Hey! None of that!” Her voice squeaked, passion causing her to loose her typical stutter and jolting him from his circular spiralling thoughts. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for, except maybe not telling us there was something up sooner. Which, uh, granted, we should have tried to talk to you about, that’s our bad though. Not yours. I just want to make sure that I’m doing everything I can for you, you’re my friend Sans and I care about you! I don’t want to see you so upset!”
He swallowed roughly, “But what if there’s nothing you can do?”
“Then we’ll just sit with you and help you through whatever it is that’s bugging you.”
Sans was warmed by the fierce affection in her voice, by the bared honesty and compassion. He ached because he’d wanted someone to tell him he was doing alright for so long, but also because he was so afraid. Afraid of what it would mean to admit to everyone, to himself, that maybe he wasn’t as okay as he tried to be. That maybe he needed something more. It frustrated him, everyone else had accepted their happy ending and he was ruining it for all of them by freaking out constantly over nothing at all.
“Sans, w-we just want to be there for you.”
He choked out a sob, scrubbing his eyes roughly with his palm. “What if I don’t know how to let you?”
There was a pause, and a shuffle. “C-can you open the door, please?” She said, voice strangely careful.
Sans struggled to his feet, too tired to really fight the gentle request. He unlocked the door and stepped back as Alphys pushed it open slowly, and pulled him into her arms.
“Look at that, you just did.” She whispered.
Sans blinked once at the bold faced truth of her words, at her warm and understanding embrace, and shook apart all at once. He hugged her back, hiding his tears into the fabric of her shirt.
“Here, take my hand,” Frisk instructed, pulling him closer towards the door. “It’s only Papyrus, Undyne, and me here right now, but there’s streamers and balloons. I picked the colours.”
He smiled, rubbing the back of his neck in a vaguely anxious movement. “Okay, sounds nice.”
Frisk stared at him evenly for a moment, “I can get rid of the balloons.”
He let out a puff of air, “Thanks kid, they ah, make me a little twitchy.” He looked away, unable to handle the deep empathy in their dark gaze. Frisk nodded once with a smile.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” They said after a beat, and Sans shifted in his shoes slightly.
Did he want to go in? He was worried, there’d be people and potential loud sudden noises. There’d be eyes on him, expectations to meet. He didn’t have any gauge on what to expect, or when, or what to say.
“Yeah, yeah I’m sure,” He shrugged his shoulders a touch to maybe steel himself, maybe remind himself where he was. Frisk took his larger hand, and in one smooth motion pushed the door open and led him inside.
The lights were half dimmed, music turned a little lower; it felt soft, somehow. A banner hung awkwardly tilted on one wall with the messily scrawled words ‘Sorry we screwed up so bad, we think you’re pretty great though’ painted in red across. Undyne, most likely.
A few balloons scattered across the floor, but even as he watched Frisk was meticulously gathering them and putting them out of sight. He let himself relax slightly and took in the expectant faces of the few occupants. No, not expectant, he mentally corrected. Caring.
Papyrus stood in the kitchen, holding plates of spaghetti and…burgers! A pleasant surprise that made him smile. Undyne was shoved uncomfortably in one tiny chair off to the side, studiously not making eye contact, but calm nonetheless.
Sans noted that each of them was smiling, not in a forced way, but in a genuinely pleased sort of lit up manner. Even Undyne looked happy to see him despite her obvious discomfort. He gave a sort of half wave at them all, just as Papyrus finished with his food and moved over to sweep him up in a large hug.
“Brother, I am so happy you are joining us! Frisk said to call this the ‘chill’ party, but it is rather warm in here. I would like your opinion on the temperature! Also, I prefer the term ‘We apologize for startling you, and shall endeavor to never do so again because you are very cool though not as cool as Papyrus but still pretty cool’ party.”
“Far too long,” Undyne grumbled from across the room. “I said we should just call it the ‘we suck at this’ party but Frisk said it was too aggressive.”
Sans felt a fuzzy kind of warmth spread through his limbs at the sight, he chuckled quietly, only to watch as everyone’s gaze fell carefully back on him. As if they were waiting for the other shoe to drop, as if he might snap. In another lifetime, maybe he would have frowned at the reaction, or left the room, or maybe freaked out all over. But Frisk’s hand slipped back into his hand before he could really think, and he was being corralled over to the fluffiest section of the couch before he could process anything, and everything somehow felt smaller. More manageable.
Even as the doorbell rang and Toriel popped over with Grillby in tow- a surprise in itself that he left his new bar at all- Sans only felt a mild prickle of nervousness rather than the sea tide that usually would have quelled within him at the sudden arrival. He’d discussed this with Frisk, with Alphys, with Papyrus- although they didn’t understand why exactly he got so jumpy, why simple things were suddenly so hard for him, they cared. Even if he freaked out at dumb things, if he couldn’t catch his breath after the tiniest noise and his heart beat just slightly too fast, they listened and they wanted to help.
“Sans… we are terribly sorry about the last party,” Toriel began, a little later on with some kind of classical music alighting the orange tinted dim light radiating from Grillby’s quiet form.
“I’m sorry,” Frisk cut in, they were squeezed together on the couch and Sans could feel the way Frisk’s shoulders hunched inwards at the confession. “It was my idea, I just wanted our family to be okay.” They sniffed a little, and looked up at him with large watery eyes. “You seemed so tired, and everyone was trying in little bits but nothing was working and I-and I…”
Sans was pretty sure his heart was breaking, or maybe repairing itself finally. He stared unblinkingly at the kid for a moment, and at Toriel and Papyrus and Undyne and Grillby, everyone had stopped and turned to him with abashed and apologetic eyes. It was hard to feel insignificant and hollow with a tiny warm hand wrapped carefully in his. It was hard to think about the tightness in his chest with the warmth in their stares and all the care each part of the room held. He didn’t know what to say, how to express his thanks for their care, for trying. He’d never asked for anyone to notice; in fact, he’d gone the entire opposite route. He’d always thought his issues were his own, something he needed to conquer by himself or else no one else would. It was jarring to realize that he’d never been alone by any stretch of the word, that maybe all this time he’d been a little selfish in thinking he was the only one capable of dealing with everything.
Just then the doorbell rang again, and a cautious yellow scaled head peeked in bearing movies as some sort of sacrificial offering. Alphys always had the best worst taste in sci-fi films, he thought to himself, relaxing further into the couch. Sans was suddenly reminded of years ago in the underground, when studies and words began to blur together after two consecutive all nighters, or when the both of them began to feel the drag of their toes and the age on their bones. They’d used to watch movies together, lots of them, in the cold basement of the old lab, curled up under pounds of blankets and the temporarily forgotten stresses of their lives. He shared a long look with Alphys as she shuffled in, hoping that his expression would translate the nostalgia and gratefulness he felt welling up within him.
With the movie in place, Alphys shuffled over to Undyne’s chair, just in time for her to scoop Alphys into a gentle one armed hug and cuddle her into the seat. Everyone began to settle in for the night, as the bright and garish colours of the screen washed over them. Sans looked around, from where he was snuggled between the arm rest and the kid, he saw a veritable sea of loved ones and friends scattered about. Papyrus splayed out on a blanket bed on the floor, quietly snickering to himself at whatever was currently on the TV, Toriel with her arm around Frisks small shoulders and a tiny smile, Grillby poised primly and stiffly on the other side. Poor guy didn’t know how to take a break, and Sans wasn’t honestly sure he could recollect the last time he’d seen him out of the bar. It was a flattering notion to think he’d leave on account of Sans himself. Grillby, sensing his gaze, gave him a subtle nod, fires crackling soothingly as if in understanding of his own thoughts.
“This movie is horrible!” Papyrus exclaimed suddenly, with his eyes glued to the set.
“U-uh… Papyrus? The movie hasn’t started yet.”
“I know! But the plot is so obvious! Undyne, what do you think?”
“It’s uh…. Yeah. It’s fine.” Undyne seemed to squirm uncomfortably. Sans quirked a brow.
“What? Undyne! There has not even been a single heroic figure so far! Nor any dashing antics. I require dashing antics to be fully entertained!”
“Yeah, well-…. Maybe it will later. I dunno.” She flickered her gaze from Sans to the screen and back, a nervous twitch to her lips.
Papyrus sat up, flailing his arms for full effect. “Look, that character hasn’t even moved yet! I daresay he’s lazier than Sans! That is quite and accomplishment!”
Sans snorted, “Gee you’re right. Lazier than me? Somebody ought to give that guy…. atrophy or something.” He winked, and right on queue Papyrus rolled his eyes and groaned as Toriel stifled a giggle. Heh, some things never changed at least.
Undyne huffed quietly, but didn’t say anything in response.
“Hey, Undyne.” Sans called casually, “What do you call a fish that-“
“If you say one more word Sans I will… uh…. Never mind.” The fire in her eyes burned out nearly as fast as it started, before her sentence could even finish herself she was looking away, curling her shoulders in. Well, that was different. It made him twitchy in a subtle sort of way, he’d been prepared for loud and excitable Undyne. Not this.
“Well gee, Undyne, if you can think of a better fish pun, please, let minnow.” He grinned, expectantly, watching as her face contorted. She was trying so hard to reign herself in it was nearly turning her face purple with the effort, honestly he was beginning to feel slightly concerned. The giggle snort from Toriel beside him only fueled the flame.
“Undyne I do have to say, your interruption there was rather… shellfish.” She spoke primly, the mischievous glint in her eye that Sans had come to know so well, present and sparkling. Undyne couldn’t hold herself in any longer, her outburst was both welcome and inevitable, really.
“UGH! Those jokes are the worst! Both of you deserve to be in the trash immediately! Like right now, I’ll throw you there myself!”
Alphys giggled, “Isn’t that wh-where we met? If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost say you were setting them up!”
“What?!” Papyrus flailed again. “Wait just one moment, if anyone is going to be set up to do something cool it shall be me! I will be set up with the Queen!”
Sans laughed a full bodied laugh at the shock written across Toriel’s expression along with the dawning horror on Undyne’s.
“Papyrus….no that’s not…. uhhh…” Alphys floundered for a moment, and a bark of laughter squeezed itself from Sans’ teeth. The loud sound apparently enough to freeze everyone for a moment in surprise, and concern. He wiped a stray tear of mirth from his socket, catching the telling flicker of distressed confusion in Grillby’s flame.
“Heh, I was wondering when you were going to let loose, Undyne. Seeing you so quiet was weirding me out.” He laughed with a wink.
Undyne blinked once at him, then a smile began to dawn across her face, eventually pulling into her typical wide grin.
“Yeah, I guess I was being too stiff and lame. Hey! Papyrus, you didn’t pause the movie, now I have no idea which princess I’m supposed to be rooting for!”
“Well, why don’t we just cheer for them both?”
“Great idea!”
Sans let out a content breath, feeling the last of the discomforting tension dissipate. He shuffled Frisk off of him gently, excusing himself for a minute to the washroom as everyone began to chat amicably on.
He padded a few steps into the shrouded shade upstairs, and sighed.
A gentle hiss off to his side alerted him to Grillby’s presence, he was grateful for the announcement.He’d been jumpy, lately. He nodded in the bartender’s direction.
“…… you seem happier….” Grillby’s soft voice floated over to him, as his old friend stepped towards him. “………………I’m glad.”
“Heh, yeah. Wasn’t sure for a while there.” He rubbed a hand across his neck.
Grillby hummed, moving to lean against the wall, Sans joined him after a moment and closed his eyes with a faint smile.
“…………. going to be okay….” It wasn’t entirely a question, but it wasn’t also entirely a statement. Typical to Grillby’s form. The bartender never pushed for answers, particularly ones that people couldn’t be entirely honest with even if they wanted to, but he wasn’t one to pass things off as if they meant nothing. They’d been friends for a long, long time now. In other lives, he’d seen Sans break down and cry, drink himself into an emotional stupor, and pass out from exhaustion. The guy had been there for nearly all of his low points, even the ones where he hadn’t made it. Grillby wouldn’t know any of those, though.
Sans thought about the words for a moment. It wouldn’t be an easy fix, nor would he ever entirely be fixable. But maybe he wasn’t actually broken to begin with. Maybe his nervousness and jumpiness were just things he’d learn to cope with, some days better than others. Nothing was going to be set in stone ever again. Nothing would be predictable or simple, but he’d lived before the skips and resets.
He thought about the support and kindness, the banner and the balloons and all the love filled gazes awaiting him just downstairs. He thought about the other timelines that had been replayed over, the outcomes and the way they’d all struggled so long to get through everything together.
He thought about the kid, how hard they’d worked for this particular outcome. Maybe he’d always anticipated that things would just stop after they’d reached the surface, maybe he’d never had any long term plans before. Maybe he had to relearn who he was all over again, as if he’d been coated by fog for so long he’d forgotten how intense colours and light could be. But maybe all of that was okay.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment, and it almost felt right.