Work Text:
A lot of you cared.
Just not enough.
People don’t just stop being tired, apparently. And being on the Surface is fantastic, and all, but bad habits never die. Old dogs with new tricks and an inability to make the two compatible, and the saying that should go here, really, is once bitten, twice shy.
Other people move on. Sans rediscovers old habits. When they move into their new apartment five months after negotiations began, Sans buys a mattress for his floor and a car to fill the garage and spends five days memorizing the roof of his ceiling with the understanding that any moment could be the last time he sees it again. He leaves his sheets bundled in a ball and lets himself fling his pillow across the room-- not really across, not even more than a few feet-- every time he wakes up, because it expends what little energy he’s got left in him to be angry.
He’s not really an angry guy. Never really liked the sensation. Anger leads to resentment, and that’s one mole hill away from turning into a mountain of hate, and he’s done with mountains. He’s done.
Apparently, so’s the kid. Can’t blame them for that either. They’ve got enough going on, between being the saviour of monster kind, ambassador to the humans, returning to school and the ugly- thing that had been the media, demanding to know what happened to the kid’s family. He won’t even go there; he’s not really an angry guy.
Some days are less great for them than others.
And that’s...uh. Well, that’s why he’s here right now, he supposes. Not that it’s making much of a difference. The clock on their wall ticks; it’d be annoying if it weren’t so soothing, listening to the sound of time ticking away on a steady course. Everything is neat and well kept, a few bits of mess creeping through on the edges; a sweater peeking out of their closet door. A book on the floor, instead of the shelf right next to it.
A reflection of the mess within, heh.
Kid hasn’t even said hello to him, yet. The room is comfortably dark, just a few cracks of sunlight peeking in around the curtains. On a chair next to their bed, he watches- not much, really. Not much at all. A few tufts of hair that peek out over the top of the blanket, and a clenched fist that’s drawn the downy softness tight over their face.
He feels them, he really does. Days like this don’t come often to Frisk, but when they do, they hit hard. Three months out of the Underground, and this has been the worst of ‘em, so far. Undeniably so, considering this day’s just hit the 72-hour mark. Wasn’t as big a problem yesterday, when Tori could take care of ‘em. But Tori’s got work.
Paps’ got work. Undyne’s got work. Seems like everyone’s got work, which just leaves him. No one ever asked, or even assumed, that he might have work.
He did.
Past tense, since he never actually bothered to ask for the day off, either. Still, he’s here now. Sitting on a chair in front of a bed, and as the kid works on making themself as small as possible, as slowly as possible- he’s all they got.
He’s really all they got, right now. Isn’t that some sort of ironic twist, huh?
“...Hey, kiddo. M’thinkin this is the part where we get outta this room now, whaddya say?” They say absolutely nothing, which is fine. May as well have been a rhetorical question, for all the response Sans was willing to expect outta that. There’s nothing for it, but continuing on, letting them know before anything’s- y’know, concrete. In motion. “Gonna touch your hand, buddy. Not gonna tug at you or anything, just- lettin’ ya know.”
If they really didn’t want him to, Sans pretty much gathers they’d cringe, or somethin’. Make some kinda noise or visual indication that they weren’t real into this idea, right now, leaving him to backtrack back to point nada, give it another go in a half hour. But they don’t, and the whole transaction of bone meeting skin goes pretty smoothly, all in all. Their hand’s small enough to be dwarfed in his own; there’s no squeeze, on account of that. No hemming even that much of ‘em in, when they’re already locked tight in their own, fluffy cage. Just lets his distal phalanx run across the back of their palm, waits to see how they respond to the stimulus.
No change is uh. Is good change, he supposes.
Fuck, if he ain’t tired.
“Cool. So- first step, doin’ good here.” Just, y’know. Fifty dozen more steps to go, and they’ll have achieved something vaguely akin to a reasonably adjusted day. “I doona want to alarm you, but you think you could, uh, consider joining me in the open air, kid?”
Their hand curls, pulls the blankets in just that bit tighter. He’d call that a no, then.
“Alright. Y’know I found out somethin’ pretty cool, the other day. ‘Parently, this big ol’ ball called the Earth is just rotating round the sun. Guess they’d teach you that in school too, but uh, gotta say? The rotation of the Earth...really makes my day.” A muffled noise from inside the cocoon. Coulda just been a cough, but he likes to pretend otherwise. The kid’s always been a good audience when they wanna be. Always up for some bad laughs. “Unrelated, but still pretty cool- you know there’s about 2 million baseball fields on the Surface? Figured that must be a ballpark figure.”
And that noise, that’s most assuredly a snort. Something in him uncoils a little, words coming easier when it’s proven that words- potentially one of the only things he’s good at- just might be enough, for the time being.
So he keeps ‘em coming.
“Y’know, that reminds me. I’m at the ballpark the other day, and this one guy tells me to make a joke about time. I says to him, ‘not on my watch, bucko’. Just about drove him batty.”
“I’m thinkin’ Tori should give Asgore a piece of her mind. Ever since he’s become a gardener, he’s been a bit rough around the hedges.”
“I know the ad said the radio was jammed on high, but hey. How’s a guy s’posed to turn that down?”
Yeah, he keeps ‘em coming. And he hopes, when they finally peek up over the blanket they’ve been hiding under for days, that it’s cause he’s actually managed to make someone in this room feel better. When all he’s got is running off his mouth and phalanges running back and forth over the back of their hand in a singular, mindless motion, when it’s all he’s really capable of, despite instructions to get them to take a shower, make sure they eat, give ‘em something fun to do. You know. Good friends. Good food.
Bad laughs stay on the table, regardless of his own failings when it comes to providing the rest. And it helps, he s’poses, which is great. ‘Cause it really is all he’s got, strained and permanent smile aimed at the ghosts of curved lips he gets, from a kid who don’t even have the willpower to get up.
They’re supposed to be determined, aren’t they? S’posed to be chock full of it, but he’s the one sitting up right now. And it makes a guy wonder, whether he wants to or not, just how okay this kid really is. Just what he hasn’t asked that, heck, maybe an adult should.
Take care of them, and protect them, will you not?
Sure, lady.
They’ve all done a great job at that.
“Nice hair, kiddo.” He points- intends to do more, but Frisk looks about ready to duck right back down under the blankets again, the moment he makes a move to do so. So he doesn’t. The clock on the wall ticks, and it’s soothing to hear, he thinks. For people like them.
He wonders if, maybe, they’re just as afraid to step away from that right now as he is. Even though they gotta.
“You wanna clean up a little? I know your ma likes to help you pick out your outfits, but uh- I shirt don’t know much about fashion. You got somethin’ in that wardrobe of yours you’d like to kit up in?”
Frisk gives the wardrobe a slow, considering look, nodding slowly. It really does look like it’s taking some effort.
Skies above, kid. How long are you gonna keep doing this to yourself? His kneecaps creak in protest as he stands, and Sans considers, with building temptation, just kinda- sinking down in the bed next to ‘em. Sleeping the day away. He’s already done enough, right?
He’s inclined to think so, which is a pretty good indicator that he’s wrong.
“Right, lessee what we got, here. That’s- wow, your mom let you buy this? Eesh- guessin’ this one’s for the ambassador, huh?” He rifles through with the usual commentary- or the not so usual. Because he wouldn’t usually rifle through their clothes, because their clothes aren’t usually the things he wants to snoop through. Now and again, he pulls something out; some pants, a shirt, and holds it up to himself with exaggerated criticism. A lot of their clothes just ain’t his color, unfortunately.
Eventually, they manage to point a few things out- plain yellow shirt (“Good one, kid. I daisy it’s your color.”) and a pair of jeans that feel worn, soft. It feels like an invasion of privacy that even he’s not keen to do, but they’re a kid, and grabbing out a pair of socks and underwear (boxers today, but they have a pretty interesting mix of cuts) before shuffling to the door, ready to pop ‘em in the bathroom. Pausing, after a moment.
“Wanna come with?”
Do they want to be alone? Their expression screams of conflict, and he can’t say the resulting nod ain’t a little bit of relief; makes the decision on their own, keeps him from having to make another one. He watches with some kind of ugly mix of relief and self-reproach as they slowly push themself out of bed, movements stiff and unsure. Letting them take it at their own pace until they’re at his side, and when they shuffle out into the hall, he feels their head thump down on the side of his arm.
Makes no mention of it, the entire trip to the bathroom. Feels way too long.
They’re ten, and they shouldn’t need his help with this part. Even so, he leaves their clothes folded on the closed lid of the toilet, makes a show of not knowing where the towels are stashed, because he probably shouldn’t even though he does, and when he finally lets himself out, door clicking shut behind him, he walks straight to the wall opposite and let’s his skull thump down against the cream texture, wondering what the hell he’s doing, right now.
Is this helping, or does he just kind of half-assedly hope it is?
He’s not the guy for this job. He listens to the shower run, and run-- and. Run. And half an hour later, he’s scooping the kid out of freezing cold water as he tosses out another joke or five, or ten, helping them towel off and get into the clothes they’d picked out, because he’d pretty much forced them to. They’re ten, and they shouldn’t need his help at this part.
Doesn’t matter that they shouldn’t, ‘cause they do.
They really do, and he wishes they actually had an adult here with ‘em; not just him.
There’s this campaign he’d heard about, when he first came up to the Surface. Back when the human’s version of Undernet was such a fascination no one ever shut up about it, and he’d slouched his way into scraping together what was needed for some tiny little notebook, prepared to set up a few accounts to follow his bro. Turns out his bro didn’t need it, ‘cause fifty thousand (human) followers on tumblr later, and he’s happy as a lark, but-- there was still that campaign.
It gets better, it says-- they say, hundreds and thousands of them. It gets better, regardless of what you’ve been through, no matter your walk of life, you’re gonna make it. You can do all those things and come out better for it, there’s no dream too big or small. You can get out of bed today, or triumph over all the things they don’t understand, or just, heck, live a little. Just a little longer. ‘Nother five minutes at a time, if that was what it takes.
It gets better, the messages say. The billboards and the radio advertisements, and pats on the shoulder as people go on their way.
It gets better. So what then, thinks Sans. What happens when it doesn’t?
‘Cause sometimes you’re just kinda stuck with what the world’s tossed on you. Sometimes you can try all you want- it ain’t gonna mean anything. Sometimes, you’re a skeleton walking into a closet upstairs and coming out the kitchen door on the ground floor, setting a kid on a couch and pulling a knitted blanket from the lazy boy closest to settle in their lap, and fuck if things are getting better for them.
He hasn’t pulled another laugh out of them. They’re just kind of- lost, aren’t they? Lost. He can’t figure out what they think they’re really looking at, right now, and he isn’t sure he wants to know.
Hell if he can’t hazard a guess.
He puts the television on for lack of anything else to do. Wants to sit right next to them, knows that’s the wrong thing to do. Because he wants to. So it’s a lazy shuffle into the kitchen from there, steps so heavy he doesn’t even step. Just lets his slippers drag across carpet and tile until he’s staring blankly in the fridge, trying to remember what humans can eat without it being- prepared. Cooked.
Tori’s got him covered with a slice of pie, glad wrapped on the second shelf. Can’t imagine it tastes as good cold, but all he has to do is grab a spoon from the drawer, peel of some plastic, and. Bone-appetite.
Finally, he can sit. Leaves the pie on the arm next to them and selfishly flicks to a documentary on something he’s not actually concentrating on, because he’s not so selfless that he’s about to listen to the oft-times jarring noises and bangs that come with cartoons in general. So that’s their afternoon then, he s’poses. Sitting on the couch learning about mega buildings and what jobs humans think suck.
Most human jobs suck. Jobs in general suck. End of series, my guy; don’t need a booming voice to accentuate that.
Every time he glances over at them, the kid’s just sitting in the same position he’d left them in to start with. Knees to their chest, staring blankly at the television without seeing it. Seeing that is enough to have him adding more time between when he looks, until he’s outright not looking at all. Arm thrown up behind them, but mostly ‘cause it’s just the most comfortable position to fit them both in. No contact between them at all.
There’s no clock, so he pulls up the channel guide at the lower part of the screen, flicking it back and forth under the guise of checking for something more interesting, rather than checking the passing minutes with a keen eye, holding breaths he doesn’t need until the clock ticks over again, and the cycle continues. One minute, hold his breath, repeat. Another minute, hold his breath, repeat.
It’s utterly exhausting.
He doesn’t make a big deal when their head meets his shoulder, this time. Maybe they just want some contact, and he doesn’t want to look, so he just keeps checking the time, keeps nice and lax and pretends, like a selfish prick, that they aren’t actually there, even when they start choking on their own breath and his sleeve gets wet. Kid’s ten, so they don’t know what they’ve lost.
Sans has an idea. Because he’s really not sure how human kids are, but most times, monsters do things like- want stuff to do. Want toys, and games. Stuffed toys. And he knows that sort of stuff doesn’t interest them at all. They haven’t touched the pie, and they haven’t eaten in three days, but they don’t act like that’s much of a change, and he thinks of all the times he took them out to eat and they didn’t.
Sometimes he thinks that kid just ain’t the right term for what’s leaning on his shoulder, sobbing inconsolably for what it can’t ever actually be. And every haunted image that’s reinforced that onto them.
And he just-
Pulls up the channel guide at the lower part of the screen, flicking it back and forth under the guise of checking for something more interesting, rather than checking the passing minutes with a keen eye.
But hey.
It gets better.