(no subject)

[meatbrained]

( five + one )

how it works:

i. post a comment with the characters you play.
ii. go around and prompt other players with a 5 + 1 prompt (e.g. "Five times Hope said sorry and one time he didn't")
iii. write a fic for the prompts people leave you!
iv. enjoy your fic? we hope?

Comments

[beautyis]

five times sans didnt listen to papyrus and one time he did

>:3

[skelebro]

i. sans please i am just trying to live

* (It's a dirty sock with a series of notes on it.)

SANS! PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SOCK!
* ok.
DON'T PUT IT BACK DOWN! MOVE IT!
* ok.
YOU MOVED IT TWO INCHES! MOVE IT TO YOUR ROOM!
* ok.
AND DON'T BRING IT BACK!
* ok.
IT'S STILL HERE!
* didn't you just say not to bring it back to my room?
FORGET IT!

ii. you're gonna rock my world.

"SANS!" says Papyrus with his typical shrill, enthusiastic gusto. "I have been thinking!"

"That's dangerous."

"I have been thinking," says Papryus, plowing over Sans's commentary with stalwart abandon, "that we should get a pet!"

"A, uh...a what?" Sans arches a supraorbital ridge at his brother from across the room, eyeing the back of his skull as he bustles about cleaning the latest assorted detritus from the living room floor. He'd expected a lotta things to come outta his brother's mouth but that? That was in the low hundreds, maybe. "A pet?"

"I think it would be nice!" Papyrus plants the broom firmly in one place like he's mounting a flag, thrusting a hand out in front of him, palm out. "Can't you see it, brother?! Can't you just picture it?"

"Where're we gonna keep it?" says Sans, snapping Papyrus out of his fantasy perhaps a bit more abruptly than he'd meant.

"Where will we - why, in the house! And we can take it for walks, and it would be, my, friend!" Papyrus starts to sweep a little more emphatically. "It would really brighten the place up!"

Sans watches him go about cleaning the house with renewed vigor.

"Is this really about wantin' a pet?" he says softly.

"Of course!" Papyrus huffs, as though betrayed by the very idea that Sans would question it. "Of course it is! What else could it possibly be about?"

Sans thinks of the friends Papyrus longs for, the attention he never gets, the patronizing, proverbial pats on the head he gets from the Canine Unit. He thinks of the people he wishes he could confide in and never does. He thinks of Undyne, who trains him tirelessly, who loves his brash exuberance that colors everything he does, and how even she doesn't know if she can allow him to ever join the Royal Guard, a job that would put him in the line of fire. He thinks of how Papyrus hinged himself on that thing, that one thing, as if it would bring everything together and solve his problems with effortless pomp and glamour.

"All right, bro," says Sans, settling back into the couch. "I'll see what I can do."

A week later, he proudly presents their brand new pet rock. Papyrus refuses to claim ownership.

But at least he feeds it every day.

iii. is anybody out there?

"I don't like it here," Papyrus had said, tugging at Sans's hand. Sans had shushed him, knelt down at eye-level to murmur quietly to the skeleton kid that it was gonna be okay, they were gonna be in and out. They were just ducking into Waterfall to pick up some supplies and then they'd be right out again, and it'd be fine. It'd all be okay.

He could be such a goddamn idiot sometimes.

Sans didn't even know he could move that fast, once it registered that Papyrus, who'd been clinging to his legbones tightly since they arrived in Waterfall, was no longer at his side. In fact, he was no longer anywhere. Sans streaked through the marshy wetland, sweeping the place frantically for any sign of his little brother, any sign at all.

How could he have just let him go like that? This was his - this was his job, he's supposed to take care of him and what kind of person just lets his little brother disappear like that?

If anything happens to Papyrus -

All he can do is pray to whatever deity might be listening that nothing happens to Papyrus.

He retraces his steps. He pops into every neighborhood, asks every monster he sees if anyone's run into a little skeleton kid, but all he gets are shrugs and blank stares. And that's when he hears it.

"SAAAAANS!"

In the blink of an eye, he's at the source of the sound, but there's not a kid to be seen. Nothing but the bioluminescent, electric blue stalks of a couple dozen Echo Flowers, swaying gently in the nonexistent breeze.

He hears it again, mere inches from his aural orifices, breathed out from the Flower closest to him.

"SAAAAANS!"

The other flowers pick it up, a rising-falling flare-and-spiral of "aaans, aaans, aaans, aaans," murmured across the flowers' upturned faces.

He triangulates the source of the cries, following them as they swell in volume and clarity, moving away when they fade into bleeding-edged obscurity. Until, finally, finally, he glimpses the familiar silhouette, crouched on the ground, arms wrapped around knees, making quiet, unhappy noises.

"Papyrus!"

The surrounding Flowers burst into a choir of "pyrus, pyrus, pyrus," but he doesn't care, it doesn't matter, he wraps his arms tightly around his brother and lets his sob into his jacket with relief and lingering terror.

"I know," he whispers softly, eyesockets screwed shut. "I know, I know. I'm sorry, bro. I'm sorry. That's the last time I don't listen to you."

It's a lie, but he still means it from the bottom of his fluttering, trapped-bird weakling of SOUL.

iv. did you think that you were alone

"I wish you would not go to Grillby's so often," says Papyrus, without any prefacing whatsoever, perched on the arm of the couch as if waiting for the precise moment Sans would awaken. For all he knows, he would be.

"What makes you think I'm goin' to Grillby's?" says Says with a yawn that manages to crack his jaw without actually opening his mouth.

"Where else would you go?" says Papyrus, impatiently.

Sans makes the command decision to let that one lie like a sleepin' dog. Like a sleepin' skeleton. There's a general sleeping theme.

"All right, bro. You got me." He puts up his hands, palms out, in a weary gesture of surrender. "I'll cut back."

Papyrus looks away, and it occurs to Sans that he maybe doesn't believe him. The bite of that realization eats at him more than he could've ever expected, and he doesn't know what to say to that.

"You know you can tell me these things," Papyrus says, trying for indignant. Trying for indignant, but just ending up sounding as worried as he probably is. "Whatever it is that's wrong. You can tell me."

Sans does his best to meet his brother's eyes, dark and worried and painfully sincere.

"Okay," says Sans quietly. "Okay. Tomorrow, all right? I'll tell ya tomorrow."

Papyrus doesn't say anything, but Sans can see from the way his frame straightens up when he stands that he believes him.

Too bad tomorrow never comes. The same day just happens like before, over and over again, and Sans makes sure to cover his tracks a little better next time.

v. this is why i hate promises.

"You know you can tell me anything," says Papyrus confidently, and it's a bad day, it's a real bad day because Sans hasn't gotten out of bed, hasn't so much as budged for the past handful of hours or so. He can't muster the energy. He can't do much of anything. It might be morning, or noon, or night, but in the end it doesn't matter, because Papyrus is sitting at his bedside and declaring that he will never leave him.

Don't make promises you can't keep, Sans almost says. But he doesn't say it. He doesn't say anything. He listens to the only good thing he ever did sit beside him and talk about his day, talk about his interests, talk about anything that comes to mind, because he knows how it has to be when Sans is like this. They don't ever talk about it. They don't really need to, and he thinks that, maybe, neither of 'em really know how. That's okay, though. It's gotta be okay.

It'll be okay.

"- but it will be all right!" says Papyrus, unconsciously mirror the spiraling grayness of Sans's thoughts. "The Great Papyrus will make sure of that!"

"Y'promise?" Sans mumbles, slitting one eyesocket open to stare at his brother, trying not to let the despair crack the words in two.

"Of course I do!!" Papyrus says, hands to hips, striking quite the heroic pose for a skeleton who's sitting on his lazybones brother's bed. All that's missing is the dramatic gust of wind.

The same wind that picks up his scarf and makes it flutter, capelike, behind him, when he faces the human. Regardless of the outcome, the shape it makes, red against white, always stands out so bright and clear, the fluidly-shifting sinusoid, the snap of fabric in the chill breeze.

Sans shuts his eyesockets again.

Don't make promises you can't keep, he almost says, but he doesn't.

It doesn't matter. One way or another, it doesn't matter.

...and one time he did.

[skelebro]

There's not much left of a monster once they've been dusted. Everything goes down with them. Clothing, any belongings they might've had on their person, everything. Papyrus had folded as easily as a house of cards, the pink leather of a glove slamming into his body and reducing it to gray, fluttering powder.

He can never be sure what parts of the snow and ice are the remnants of his brother and what parts are just...ice. Traditionally, you're supposed to spread those remains on something the monster loved. Sans can't say Papyrus loved this particular patch of ground, not any more than he loved any other part of Snowdin.

It'll have to do.

He rakes phalanges through the snow, hoping vaguely that some part of his brother's dust is in the handful he scoops up and lets filter lifelessly through the bones of his hand.

W-WELL, THAT'S NOT WHAT I EXPECTED... BUT... ST... STILL! I BELIEVE IN YOU! YOU CAN DO A LITTLE BETTER! EVEN IF YOU DON'T THINK SO! The echoes could be the dust that may or may not be in his hand (Schrodinger's dust? Nah, sounds stupid), or they could be just Sans, Sans and his stupid, self-autolyzing brain dredging up the memories that flicker past like moths. I...I PROMISE...

"Yeah," whispers Sans. "You promise, huh?"

He stands up and shakes his hand free of dust, of snow, of whatever might've been in his hands.

"Okay, bro. You win." His eyesockets are hollow as he grins down at the nondescript patch of snow where Papyrus had made his last, doomed stand, where he must've known he would die, where he chose to stand and passively accept it anyway, because anyone, anyone can be a good person, can't they? Anyone can be a good person if they just try.

Sans doesn't crunch through the snow. He doesn't do much of anything. One second he's in Snowdin, and the next he's just outside New Home, striding easily through the grayed-out hallways.

"Let's give 'em another chance, huh?"

[beautyis]

cries!!!! i asked for death and i got it!!!!

[skelebro]

SORRY BRO