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You never thought you would see the day where a human had a better relationship with a monster than you did. A monster. How a human had a better relationship with a monster than a monster did, you hadn't a clue. For that matter, you never thought you would see a day where anyone had a better relationship than you did.
But that day had been dawning for a while now, an everlasting sunrise that peaked over every horizon and bathed you in cruel light regardless of what time of day it was.
You stared up at the ceiling, remembering the days where you couldn't have told anyone what color it was simply because you had never stopped to look. Those days were gone. If you were home, if you were in bed, then you were either sleeping or looking up at those damned tiles. You could describe them well enough to anyone that whomever you told would be able to paint pictures, you knew those tiles that well. You knew them better than you knew the monster resting beside you.
You didn't look at him, anymore.
The tiles were small, perfect little squares. Their tan color was sullied with smoke and grime from whomever had taken up residence in your home before you had. They were ugly, their only perfection coming in size. They were even, each tile the same size and shape as the ones beside it.
The smoke stains were thickest in the corners of the room, but the tiles in the center were the filthiest. The tiles held diamond patterns, of which were connected and meshed into one large mess of diamonds. Rhombus after rhombus, elegant gold designs etched in the form of a rhombus littered each tile, no less than eight to a tile but sometimes eight and a half. The person who had put the tiles together took care to piece the ones with half beside each other to create a complete diamond.
Those tiles were ugly, but they were more beautiful than your relationship with the skeleton at your side.
Could he really be considered to be at your side? You didn't need to turn your head to know that he was laying on the other corner of this large mattress. You didn't need to turn your head to know that there was almost two arm lengths in between the two of you. He had begun to rest far, far away from you. There wasn't a chance that the two of you would touch at night, there wasn't a chance he would seek out to embrace your lithe form when the shadows grew heaviest.
You blinked slowly.
You remembered days when he had called you beautiful, when he had told you that you were his world, that you were his everything. The two of you had found one another after the barrier had broken, you coming out of your hiding beneath the lull of echoflowers, your former home. You couldn't count on two hands the years that the two of you had been together, it had been that long. You couldn't count on two hands the months that the two of you had been drifting apart, it had been too long.
He had once said that you were his favorite fire elemental monster, and aside from his brother, you were his favorite person. No one in the world could shake you from your spot, you had had the world, you had had Sans.
It had been quite some time since he last touched you purposefully. His phalanges had strayed from stroking your skin, the chartreuse flames having grown almost cold without his gentle and warm touch. Your skin had hardened, the warmth of youth fading and your flames solidifying in the form of hot coals. You doubted Sans knew that, the change had been fairly recent and he hadn't touched you, purposefully or accidentally, in months.
Your eyelids blocked those terrible tiles from view and you forced yourself to breathe. Your voice rumbled from your throat without a thought, "Sans?" You called, not needing to look at him to know that he hadn't made any move to face you.
The room was quiet, aside from the soft crackling of your flames and the gentle creak of Sans' bones. You strained to pick up on any sign that he had heard you, you knew he wasn't asleep, and you couldn't even hear the ticking of one of his clocks. Finally, his gruff voice echoed in the large room. You wondered how you had gotten so lucky. "*yeah?"
Your heart would have sunken at the tone of his voice, but you had grown used to it. Disinterested, resigned, distant. That was just who Sans was in your relationship. You refused to allow steam to fill the room as your tears leaked, your eyes remained as dry as they had just moments prior to you saying his name. You forced your chest to rise and fall, the weight of it all crushing against you. You knew that it would be days before you gathered the courage to speak to your lover again, and so you spoke now. "Do you love me?"
A pause. Hesitance. Finally, "*yes." He sounded certain, but you were not.
"Do you love me in the way that you always have?" He didn't make a sound. The mattress did not shift, nor did the bed sheets ruffle, and so you knew that he was still not looking at you. You remembered days where it seemed that he could not get enough of looking at you. You didn't press the matter, allowing yourself to fall asleep without so much as a goodnight.
-
You wandered the vast corridors of your home, your fingers dragging against a wall as you walked. The fire elemental monsters were a proud group, hoarding enough gold to pass down to all of their people with ease once the surface was revealed to monsters once again. Evidently, gold was worth far more up here than it had ever been down in the Underground, and so your people had become wealthier here than they ever were down there. You were not exempt from this wealth, despite having long since abandoned your heritage in favor of disappearing beneath the waterfall and surrounding yourself with enough flowers to encase your entire body.
Your people were too proud to know that even one of them was a pauper. You had been gifted with enough wealth to permit a grand and luxurious house that could fit no less than a hundred monsters regardless of their size or shape. You had furnished your home with enough expensive and materialistic objects to make even Mettaton envious, your people goading you to add more and more until there simply wasn't room for anything else.
You wondered what wealth was worth to you when it could not buy the love of the monster you held dearest.
Your heart did not sink at the thought, nor did you become overwhelmed with melancholy emotions as you had just months prior. You had lost your love for him long ago, carrying only the slightest hint of prior feelings for the skeleton.
The two of you had been drifting apart for quite some time, now.
Still, you wanted to try. You had been reckless before, not savoring every joyous moment with Sans as you should have been. He was a greater gift than anything or anyone, you had just been to stupid to see it then. You saw it now, though.
Memories tickled your dreams and sapped away the happiness that should have filled them, warping the images into nightmares. The dreams were never that unpleasant, but knowing that you would have to wake up soon was.
Your fingers brushed across something that moved, and you looked at it. It was a picture of the echoflowers that you had called home for so long before ascending to the surface. Your love for those flowers had never dwindled, not even when discovering that they did not thrive or even survive up on the surface like monsters did.
A phantom embrace caressed your figure as you recalled how readily Sans had been to hold you, to ensure that the two of you would visit the Underground on various occasions just so you could see those flowers again.
You had gone every year, but this was the first year that you would need to go alone. You planned on asking Sans if he would like to accompany you, but you doubted his answer would be in the affirmative. You doubted he would answer you at all. His voice had been strangely absent in the halls you called home, or perhaps you just hadn't been around to hear it. Your eyes shut tightly as you continued down the halls, towards Sans' workroom.
You heard the sizzle of liquid turning to steam and you brought up a hand to brush away your tears. Your fingers left the wall as you cupped your own face, brushing your thumb across your cheek in a way that Sans had used to do. You stopped, lowering your hand to your side.
When you arrived at the quaint little office, Sans was staring out the window closest to his desk. His expression was blank, not as forlorn as yours most certainly was. You wondered when you had become less emotional for your distant husband than you were for the lack of echoflowers. You slapped away the thought and stepped into the room, but only just a step. Your hand gripped at the doorway, steadying you. "Sans?"
He didn't even turn to look at you. "*yeah?" It was the second time in as many days that he had spoken to you, and you couldn't bring yourself to feel bad about it. You weren't even sad that he had still not uttered your name. If he had told you that he had forgotten it, you wouldn't be surprised.
"It's almost time to visit the echoflowers." His grin began to widen, but when he looked at you, it faltered slightly. It was tired, reserved, not at all genuine. You didn't hold back your sobs simply because they didn't come. His expression was one belonging to someone who was speaking to someone they hardly tolerated, a friend that they used to be close to but were no longer on friendly terms with.
He looked at you as though you were a stranger. "*right." He kicked out from his seat, the chair sliding with ease on the carpet.
"Do you want to come with me?" You wanted to spend time with him. Your visits usually lasted no less than a week, that would give you plenty of time to reacquaint yourself with your lover.
Perhaps you could even rekindle the passion that had died. "*i'll see," He offered a kind smile, still not as genuine as you would have liked, and you nodded. He moved to stand, his phalanges clutching hard at the desk to steady himself, using the wood as an anchor just as you were with the doorway.
You didn't need it anymore, though. His tone of voice had grounded you more than any weight could.
You turned away from him, not missing him calling out for you because he hadn't.
-
You stared at the couple in your living room with open and obvious envy. Sans sat on your right, enough distance between you two to seat anyone who wanted to sit on the couch, wasting time on his phone. You wasted time glaring down at the couple seated on your floor.
Papyrus had found someone to love, someone who loved him back. You burned with envy, but happiness for your brother-in-law as the human in his lap let out a soft coo. Both of them looked just as happy as you weren't.
You forced yourself to breathe, forced your flames to dampen their glow, and tore your eyes from Papyrus and his human lover before settling them on the screen in front of you. It was a Mettaton classic, requested by Papyrus and his lover. Sans had turned it on for them without even asking you.
You didn't mind, you weren't paying attention to it anyway. All you could think about was how a budding relationship between a human and a monster was better than yours could ever be. It didn't make you angry, your flames having simmered and your jealousy having been briefly halted, but it did make you sad.
You didn't spare a glance over to your husband. You knew he wasn't looking at you.
-
Your heels clicked softly against the floor of the cavern. You walked through the rows of glowing flowers with ease, old paths covered heavily by their light. You knew this place too well to forget, though. It had all become muscle memory by now.
You ran your fingers along the flowers, petting them. No one was at your side, no one was enjoying the sight of them with you. Sans had been too busy to come down with you this year. You were alone in the brightly lit cave beneath the waterfall since before you had left the Underground.
Your flowers were singing songs for you, and you repeated them dutifully.
-
The first thing you did when you arrived home from your visit Underground was plop down onto your bed. Sans joined you minutes later, and despite not having seen you for nearly a month, you extended your stay in the Underground greatly, he still did not turn to face you. You didn't look at him, but you knew.
You laid on your back and stared up at those damned tiles. They had haunted your dreams even when you were surrounded by your beloved flowers. Their diamond patterns never failed to disgust you, now.
You couldn't look at them anymore. Turning onto your right side, you stared at the wall across from you instead. You wondered how long it would be until you memorized that, too. It had taken you months to memorize every pattern of the ceiling tiles, would it take the same amount of time for you to map out every dent and speckle of the beige walls?
You were startled from your thoughts as a skeletal arm draped over your waist. You had jumped slightly, and stayed stiff, even as your husband pulled you away from his edge of the bed. When this separation between the two of you had started, you had initiated similar contact in an attempt to retain a sense of normalcy within your relationship but had long since stopped trying. The acrid taste of surprised smoke filled your mouth and you parted your lips, watching as the dark streams filtered from your mouth and into the open air.
Sans nuzzled his face into your flames and you forced yourself to become limp in his arms as he tucked the other one beneath you. You couldn't force yourself to relax at the sudden contact.
When his teeth pressed a gentle kiss on the back of your neck, you bit back another startled jump. How long had you wanted this feeling to return? How long had you wanted to again lay in his arms, just as you had so comfortably done over a year ago?
"*i missed you." His words held no faux sincerity, he was not lying. Still, the spark between the two of you had been dead for so long that not even those words could rouse hope in you.
You scooted until your body was firmly pressed against his. His leg moved to drape over your hips, pinning you to your position. You wanted to put distance in between the two of you, but at the same time, you relished in the stirring feelings clutching at your soul with every gust of air that wafted over your flames as he breathed.
You didn't make a sound to acknowledge his words, feeling odd that the tables had turned for the both of you. He was no longer the one pressing the distance that sat between you two, tonight he was trying just as hard as you had done for the first few months. You just couldn't bring yourself to try anymore. "*how was it?"
You contemplated not answering him. Just being near him sapped you of all of your energy, leaving you feeling drained and more tired than you had ever been. "It was fine," You managed, your voice straining. This was the most the two of you had talked in months. You wondered if he was just talking to you because he had seen how happy Papyrus was with his significant other nearly two months ago.
"*i'm sorry i couldn't be there," You didn't mind. It had been nice to be away from him, as much as the fact hurt you.
"There's always next year." You huffed, finally turning in his hold so that you faced him. He made a soft grunt of disapproval for being forced to move, but quickly readjusted as your arms found their way around him. You pulled him close, feeling guilty as you laid a soft kiss on his teeth. He hummed in approval and pressed his forehead to yours, staring into you with an expression you couldn't read. You knew that it held no love, though.
This bed was big enough for the two of you to have so much space separating you, and you used to hate that. Now, with him so close and yet so, so far, you wanted that distance more than anything. You used to believe wholeheartedly that the separation was going to kill you, but instead, it had just killed a part of you.
You closed your eyes to block out the sight of Sans.
You had wanted this moment for so long, and now that you finally had it, you found yourself desiring the lack of contact. It had become a comforting constant despite the loneliness it caused.
"*tired?"
The concern in his voice hurt you more than anything ever had. As if a floodgate had opened, emotions swirled around your soul and you again felt the deep sadness that you had been stifling for so many months. You had stopped asking yourself what you had done to deserve Sans' unusual coldness, you had resigned to just accepting the cold shoulder often dealt to you. People drift apart, you had told yourself. People fall out of love.
And you had.
But that didn't stop those previous emotions from tugging at your heartstrings, demanding to have attention paid to them. Sudden depression overwhelmed you, threatening to quell your flames and steal away all of your happiness. You nodded, "Yes." And said nothing more.
As if sensing your sadness, Sans hugged you tight against his rib cage. You found no solace in this little display of affection.
-
Since you had returned from visiting the echoflowers, Sans had made it a point to spend as much time as he could with you. Which wasn't much, but the fact that he was trying to put an effort into restoring your relationship brought you a slight happiness.
Still, the rift between you two was growing more and more apparent with each day. He had taken you out several days ago, and during your date, you had learned that you really did know nothing about your once-beloved skeleton anymore. The stars, as it turned out, no longer enthralled him, and instead the daytime skies had become a new fascination for him. He had also began to love the city more than the gentle countryside, now. He had divots and scratches that ran along his left humerus from a failed experiment, and he sported a distinct bruise just above his left eye socket from when Papyrus had knocked into him with enough force to rid him of consciousness for nearly a day.
He was always changing, and you always stayed the same. He didn't need you to morph into this entirely new being, and perhaps you didn't need him, either.
As ashamed as you were to admit it, that day that the two of you spent together was riddled with thoughts of leaving your husband. It was not the first time that that had happened. Even before your visit to the echoflowers, you had entertained the thought on many occasions, mostly during the time you had spent staring up at the ceiling.
Sans also tried to hug you every night. You always fell asleep to the sound of his soft snores, close enough for you to hear now, and to the feeling of his arms hugging your person close to him. The nightmares were worse now than they had ever been before.
You wondered if he had begun to become so affectionate because he knew that you wanted to leave him.
-
"*you're beautiful." You didn't even look up. You heard those words so many times, no less than ten times per day, though you hadn't heard them from your skeletal lover in over a year. You kept your eyes trained on the wall of bone in front of you. Your flames crackled in faux appreciation, and you felt as though you were mocking him.
He sighed, the breath disturbing your flames gently.
-
You paused at the doorway, peering into Sans' office. He had fallen asleep at his desk, his hands resting upon various papers and phalanges clutching at their corners gently. He looked so peaceful, but no less somber than he had looked that morning. You were growing less receptive to him, now. It was as if when those swirling emotions had overtaken your soul nearly three months prior, upon returning from your visit to your echoflowers, had drained the last of your love for him.
But you still loved Sans. You felt the emotion stirring within your flames and burning bright in your soul. It just wasn't the same kind of love that it had been. That it should have been. It was no longer the crushing type of love that left you breathless when you were in his company and heartbroken when you weren't. It wasn't the kind of love that warmed your very being when you were in his presence, the kind of love that spurred yearning and hungry need. It wasn't a love that guided you and drove you to do reckless things as you had done in the past, it wasn't a love that made you want to be as close to him as possible.
It was a soft love, one that had long since been ebbed of all passion and was instead replaced with a throbbing nostalgia. It was a love that was dictated by memories. You didn't love Sans in the present, you loved who he had once been. Who he was trying to be again. He was trying to close the distance in between the two of you, and you loved him for that, but not really. You loved that he was trying, but you did not love him.
You turned away from the workroom and continued to walk down the halls.
-
His eyes were full of loud pleading and thunderous cries, but not even the quietest whisper left his teeth. You stared up at him, waiting for him to speak. Finally, he screeched, voice hoarse and rugged with sorrow, "*i love you."
Those words brought a smile to your lips, but you didn't want to mock him further by repeating them.
You curled your body against his chest, turning your face away from him.
-
"I love you, too." You sat with your back ramrod straight, bringing precious coals to your lips and daintily nibbling on them.
It was during your isolated visit to the echoflowers that you knew those words to be a lie, but you spoke them regardless. You had gone alone to that cave, but you wouldn't allow Sans to try to fix this relationship on his own, not anymore, so when he had told you that he loved you, you responded this time.
He had been staring at you for quite some time, but you weren't looking at him. You were looking beyond him, eyes trained on the wall behind him with fierce concentration as you sought to find every dent and crack in the impeccable wall, waiting as though your eyes would force new damages to the wall.
Your tongue felt heavy in your mouth as you swallowed your food. Sans' smile was growing wider and wider with each passing second, though you knew that he knew you were lying. His eyes were full of hope and love, the true kind, and he placed his bottle of hot sauce down on the table so that he could reach for your hands. You threw the last bite of coal into your mouth and clapped your hands together to rid them of the dust. Swallowing a greedy gulp of air, you placed your hands in Sans'.
His fingers fumbled awkwardly against your flames, and he leaned forward after picking your hands up. Brushing toothy kisses to the knuckles on each hand, Sans shot you a questioning gaze. You tugged your joined hands away from his teeth and repeated the action, kissing your lips to his knuckles and feigning affection for him.
Dread built up in your chest as you again reminded yourself that you had to fake affection for your husband.
-
His arms were tucked firm around you, and you leaned away from him slightly. You wanted to scoot away from him, to put familiar distance between you two on this bed, but didn't move to do it. Instead, you were content with leaning from his touch. You knew it hurt him, but it hurt you to stay in his arms for too long.
"*_____?"
"Yeah?" You grunted, feeling restless and pulling away from your lover even more.
"*do you love me?"
You closed your eyes slowly, wanting nothing more than to even out your breathing and convince him that you had fallen asleep. It was too late for that, though. "Yes." You confirmed, but you knew you didn't sound convincing. Disgust pooled in your stomach and bile lifted and sloshed in your throat as you tried to ease away the thought that you were becoming the instigator for your marriage failing.
"*do you love me in the way you always have?"
You didn't open your eyes at hearing the familiar words. You contemplated shutting him out just as he had all those months ago, but you decided not to. You remembered how hollow you had felt when he didn't answer you. You decided to be truthful, "No."
You expected him to ask you how you loved him, it was what you would have done if he responded the same way you did. "*why do you stay with me, then?"
That surprised you. You didn't answer.
He didn't press the matter further, instead taking care to tighten his grip on you and gather you closer to him. It was as though he feared that when he let go, you would be gone. You couldn't help but wish that that was a possibility. "Because I have to."
Your fingers shifted until your middle finger rubbed against the ring on your ring finger. The enchanted metal made your hand feel as though it weighed more than this earth. It was a remnant from a love that no longer was. It was a reminder of a lost love, of which you had given up trying to find. "*you don't have to."
You had been more truthful tonight than you had been in months. Your fire crackled as you shifted away from him, or, rather, tried to. He just pulled you tighter against him. "I've thought about leaving you for a while,"
"*for how long?"
You grew rigid in his grasp as you realized he wasn't going to let go of you anytime soon. "A few months, now." You didn't hesitate to tell the truth, now. "Perhaps a year. I don't remember when the idea formed, honestly."
He was silent. You expected him to ask you why you hadn't yet, but he surprised you again. "*are you going to leave me?" His voice was thick with sorrow and it strained painfully by the last word, fading out into a dull whine. The sound tore at your soul.
"No."
"*why?"
Maybe you were being more honest with him because it gave you a chance to be more honest with yourself. Voicing your thoughts appeared to be compressing the words into a spoken truth, something undeniable and infallible, as odd as it sounded. When you spoke, your words became law, no longer riddled with imperfect doubt.
You knew what Sans wanted, though. Sans wanted you to lie and tell him that you stayed for him, you stayed because it would give you more time to fix the mess that was your marriage. You didn't even pause to spurt the truth, as heartbreaking as it was for him, "Because we are married and my people wouldn't allow a divorce." Fire elemental monsters were a proud group of people and your family wouldn't like to know that your private troubles with Sans were bleeding into view of the public. So you didn't allow your problems to do that.
Still, should Sans choose to leave you, you knew that your family would forgive you with ease. Not that you needed their forgiveness or approval, you had been doing just fine beneath your wall of echoflowers in the Underground, but you had become used to the constant flurry of praises that came when they came to visit your home. "*how do you love me?" There it was.
You remembered laughter, the ancient sound teasing your ears as its phantom sound drifted into the room. You remembered smiles and jokes and hugs that were honestly returned. You remembered sunny days and inky nights. You remembered infatuation that developed into something more as you and Sans had explored possibilities that had never seemed possible.
You remembered the love the two of you had shared.
"I don't." You felt cold, your fires dwindling as you spoke. Your mouth opened to continue, but you found that no more truth could spew from your lips. There was no explanation, there was no addition to those two words that would make the statement seem less cruel.
You felt Sans' grip on you weaken for a heartbeat before he clutched at your clothes tightly, as though trying to find some sort of affection from you that he could hold on to. You secretly wanted him to find something, your arms felt too heavy to lift them around him.
Curious, you asked, "Are you going to leave me? Now that you know that," You paused, trying to find the thoughts that had been so luminous moments ago but were absent from your mind now.
Without hesitation, Sans spoke "*no." He sounded so confident, so resolute.
"Why not?"
"*because i love you." You felt his forehead rest on your back as the tips of his phalanges dug into your hardened form. "*because i'm sorry for pushing you away. because i want us to be how we were."
You didn't ask him why he had pushed you away in the first place. You had long since stopped wondering, you had merely accepted it.
You didn't look at him as he continued to murmur his want for things to change. Instead, your focused a heated gaze on the wall in front of you, your flames dimming as you fell asleep.
-
You couldn't count the years that you and Sans had been together. After the first dozen, the two of you had drifted apart, you only goading the separation even after he had begun to try and rekindle what was lost. You couldn't count the years that you and Sans had been together because it didn't feel as though the two of you actually had been together.
You could, however, count the years that you and Sans had laid beside one another on this mattress. It was creaky and old, mold no doubt creeping about in the stuffing beneath your body. The mattress was littered with rips and tears and it smelled awful, but it was your bed, and you had laid beside Sans on it for thirty six years.
This bed was one of the various constants in your relationship. In all of your elegance, gifted to you by heritage, you could never gather the courage to get rid of this bed. The mere thought left you with a gross taste in your mouth and had you squirming, it felt as though the moment you entertained the thought of a new mattress, a new start would shake your relationship with your husband and would disturb the constant stillness that it had become. Sans had tried so hard to bring the two of you closer, but it hadn't worked. Every day, from the moment he woke up to the second his eye sockets closed, he would fixate himself on trying to patch up your broken relationship. It had been endearing, and it had been one of the many constants.
But that constant was not to be, and tonight was different. For the first time in nearly two and a half decades, Sans had positioned himself on the other side of the bed. You felt the tremors of the bed shifting as he clamored into bed, but you did not feel him come closer, and you did not feel his arms wrap around you. You didn't feel them because they didn't happen.
You didn't need to turn to know that he wasn't staring at you. You didn't need to look at him to know that his back was to yours, the two of you staring at opposite sides of the wall.
You blinked slowly, and then again. You did this until your eyes felt glassy with tears and the room began to fill with steam. If he noticed the sudden change in temperature and humidity, he didn't move to acknowledge it.
You felt guilty and selfish for mourning the sudden loss of your one-sided marriage.
-
You spread out on the bed, stretching your arms out in an attempt to close the distance between you and your husband. He was too far away, you missed the nights where his mandible would be nestled atop the crown of your skull and his hands would be firm against the small of your back. You missed him.
You had just arrived home from your visit to the echoflowers, the first visit alone in quite some time. You found that the silence was unbearable in those caves, even when your flowers were singing for you, and had returned home after three long days. The first thing you did upon coming back was search for your husband. You had returned home late in the night, though you hadn't figured he would be in bed yet. You rarely went to sleep with him in bed with you, he always waited until long after you had fallen asleep.
You supposed that he didn't think you would come home so early, him being found in the last place you looked. You climbed into bed on your side, not wanting to disturb him. When you had first walked into the bedroom, you had gazed upon his face for a long time. He looked so happy. He looked so happy without you.
He hadn't looked that happy in months.
You reached out for him, wanting to cuddle him close and tell him how much you had missed him, how much you had loved him. Your visit to the echoflowers had cemented that truth, spelling it out for you in a way that left you quaking. You loved Sans, and not in the soft and gentle way you had for decades, but in the loud and crushing way that you had for the first years of your marriage to the skeletal monster.
You had forced this distance between the two of you, and now you were trying to close it? You were selfish, and you knew that. You hadn't been willing to love him like this before, and you certainly hadn't been willing to just save him the heartache by leaving him and wiping away the hope he had likely clung to for years. Call it poetic justice that you were now feeling as bad as he likely had.
You let out a soundless whine of sorrow as you noticed Sans begin to scoot even more away from you. He must be teetering over the edge, now. Did your flames really sicken him enough to make him risk falling out of bed? In his frail age, he could fracture something by falling too hard.
You dragged your arm back over to you. If your flames were causing him to risk such a danger, you were going to take them away.
You felt hollow and filled all at once. You kept your arm partly outstretched, wanting to remain a little closer to Sans than you usually did, and trained your gaze on the ceiling tiles. Even after all the years spent staring at the wall, you could still trace the rhombus patterns with ease, and you could still make out the smoke and grime that settled over the tiles. The dirt was a little bit more pronounced than it had been two and a half decades ago, but it was still pretty much the same. The smoke hung heavy on the corners of the room, and the center tiles were decorated in more filth than the tiles towards the edges of the room.
You closed yourself and tried to rock yourself to sleep. You were careful not to move enough to wake your husband, but in your shaking, you had missed it as Sans shifted. Just before easing yourself to what would no doubt be a turbulent sleep, you felt something that felt awfully similar to a skeletal hand settle into your palm, which had become stretched as you willed your arm not to go closer to your husband than it already was.
You fell asleep with a troubled smile.