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[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

[save_theworld]

five times Sans tried not to care, and the one time he really didn't.

five times sans tried not to care

[skelebro]

i. someone who sincerely loves bad jokes.

Knock knock, goes bony knuckles against the stone of the door, and, as is typical, no one answers. It ain't such a difficult prospect to fill in the who's there in the empty space that follows, and tellin' jokes to nonresponsive audiences just happens to be one of his finer talents.

So, you know, it's kind of a real shocker when someone finally answers. And that one-sided banter turns into an exchange of bad puns denser than the flurrying snow, turns into recipes exchanged and anecdotes about the coolest little brothers possible, turns into one day when that lady just ain't laughing very much at all.

The thing about this is -

The thing is.

The thing is.

She tried, at first, to give him her name. And he'd overrode her. Kept overriding her until she asked him, point-blank, and he just said calmly that wasn't how he rolled. It's more fun like this, he'd said, and he's not sure she'd one-hundred percent believed him, but at least she'd gone with it.

But who's he fooling, right? In between sentry shifts and helping Papyrus train for Royal Guardom and tinkering with readings in the back of the house and tryin' to trace the anchorpoints of where the anomaly digs its insidious little roots into the fabric of space and time and bends it to suit it - in between all that, it's easier to act like everything is just...water off a bird's back. A chicken's back? He's not rightly sure how the expression goes, but that's fine. There's a general "water off the back" theme.

So he don't know her name. He don't know anything about her except that she likes to bake, she sometimes helps patch up monsters that get banged up in the RUINs (by what, he don't ask. He don't wanna know the answer.), she knows the spiders there real well, well enough to be on first-name terms with the proverbial queen of 'em herself, and she's - lonely. She's real, real lonely.

Heh heh.

Bonely.

All right. So. Maybe he ain't as detached from all this as he thought. Maybe it's gotten to be somethin' a little bigger than, heh, a bedtime story for his bro, a fun little witty thing he tells people that makes 'em shake their head in disbelief, like he's spinnin' this story out for 'em in real time.

But damned if he's gonna let anyone in on that little secret.

ii. i hate making promises.

All right, all right, you wanna hear more about the anonymous Door Lady. Don't look at me like that, I know it's true. You wanna hear more about her. Wanna see if her story got any real sorta closer, huh? Sans, did you ever learn her name? Sans, did you ever get to see her face-to-face?

Don't ask questions you don't wanna know the answers to, buddo.

But, uh, anyway. To answer some of those hypothetical questions, but not all of them (stories are much better when you don't tie off every loose end, yeah?), one of these days this exchange rate of puns and bad jokes and quirky stories don't go so great. The lady behind the door, she ain't laughing so much. At all, really. The most Sans gets is a pity chuckle here and there, and it's a half-assed effort at best. It's gettin' to the point that it's starting to be more worrying than anything else, and he doesn't wanna be that guy and ask something inane like, uh, hey, you okay over there? Because, a) he doesn't care, b) she knows he doesn't care, c) it would throw off the whole rhythm of this acquaintanceship, which is all it is and they both know it, d) he, uh. He's comin' up with way too many reasons for this, isn't he? Damn it, this is why he hates listing, just on principle.

Turns out he don't have to ask anything at all, though. 'Cause it occurs to him half a second later that this lady is not just upset, she is crying and, yeah, now he feels like a dick. He shifts uncomfortably in the snow, and that's when he just - well, honestly, he just kinda regrets saying anything at all, but he pipes up, because he might be a jerk but he's not a complete jerk. Except, who's he kidding? He totally is. And he's utterly transparent about it.

But still.

"What's, uh," says Sans easily, as light and friendly as if he were making the same kinda conversation they always make, "what's up?"

From behind the door, there's not much but silence. And then when she finally says somethin', her voice is all thick and it's like she's been crying and goddamnit. Goddamnit.

"If a human ever comes through this door," she says, haltingly, as if the words have to claw their way out of her throat. Maybe they are. "Could you please, please promise something?"

Promise. Heh, well, if he's honest here (which he never is, it's part of his charm), that word alone would be enough to get him to blip on outta there. So long, farewell, thanks for all the jokes, and it was real nice not gettin' to know ya, lady, but promises? No. Nah. Nope. He does not do promises, and he holds this as a policy.

Maybe if he had just up and zipped his coccyx on out, he wouldn't've. But as the silence persisted and the words hung in the frozen air and it became horribly, horribly clear that this lady is just...desperately trying to hold it together and failing so miserably that even he, a rotten little skeleton with a SOUL so pitted over with apathy and frustration and selfish goddamn sentimentality, can't bear to let her stay like that a moment longer.

"I hate makin' promises," he says, quietly, and there's a hitch in the ragged rhythm of her breathing for a second and he feels like such an ass but he ducks his skull in a weak little nod, remembers she can't see him nodding, and then he adds, the words nearly inaudible but for the bite of the consonants:

"But I think, uh. I think maybe just this once, I can make an exception."

iii. to a tea

The king's kind of a sad guy underneath the smiles and soft speech. The rest of the Underground might not always know it, but Sans - heh, when you spend years cultivating that grinning, carefree persona, you kinda get to learn how to recognize it others. The way they shove that unpleasantness deep down and act like it don't hit 'em harder than an orange attack to the chest. He can see a guy smile and know when it's a false, hastily glued-on thing, mostly 'cause his smiles are exactly that sorta thing about ninety-percent of the time. Minus the "hastily" part. He more or less just kinda forgot how else one emotes.

But, you know, skeleton. At least he's got the excuse. The king doesn't, not really. Even when he's not out and about - getting rarer these days, and did he think no one would notice? - and bein' the righteous figurehead and hope for the future monsterkind, he still smiles patiently, pretending there isn't that specter of melancholia pinned behind each word. That tremor to his speech - it's hard to pick up if you don't know what you're lookin' for, but it's there, unspeakably. Especially since Sans does what he's lookin' for.

"There are no reports of additional humans?" Asgore prompts over the quiet trickle of tea from kettle to cup. Sans isn't particularly a tea guy, but he knows how to be polite, and Asgore drinking tea alone is about the saddest thing he can imagine right now. Next to, y'know, trying to console a crying lady through a stone door by swearing a promise he's still cursing himself for making.

"Nada," says Sans. He draws the cup nearer with the scrape of ceramic over wood and takes a thoughtful sip. It's a strange, flowery kind of blend, with a flavor he can't put a name to, but it tastes all right, so he figures he can live with it. "Sorry, your Maj."

"It is fine, Sans," the king says quietly and, nah, it's not really fine. He knows it's not really fine. He just doesn't think Asgore wants anyone else to know it's not really fine, so he keeps his damn mouth shut and drinks his tea.

"I apologize for making you come all the way up here." For a moment the king's expression looks - pained, almost, but it dissolves in the same instant in forms. "I realize how far away it is from Snowdin."

Sans flaps a dismissive hand in the king's direction.

"Nah, fuhgeddaboutit."

Asgore frowns, but says nothing, even if...yeah, you know, it's kinda occurring to Sans that there was literally no reason he had to haul tailbone all the way up here, was there? Could've just as easily written a note for half the effort.

But it's kinda obvious, like he said. It is kinda really, ridiculously, painfully obvious, just how goddamn lonely the king is. He's got nothing to pass the time but the human SOULs (and boy, does that sound like a heaping load of guilt on top of everything), the flowers he cares for too meticulously, the grayscale trappings of an old life that's long since disintegrated beneath the weight of his decisions.

Sans will never admit to being sentimental. He still, uh, kinda considers maybe saying something. Nothing big, just something like a - a reminder that the king ain't that alone, really?

But he is, and that's the thing. Anything else would be a pity remark, a lie, a vague platitude, a thin drape over the truth, the real marrow the matter, which is that the king's got a gaping hole in his life that nothing's really ever gonna fix.

Sans kinda knows that feeling a little too well.

He knows it well enough to know it'd be an insult to say anything.

So he doesn't.

iv. i guess that means

"Woah, you look REALLY pissed off."

And they do. Their eyes burn into his, the force of their glare unbroken by the vast hallway of distance between them, practically vibrating with the tension that has their knuckles white on the handle of their knife, their curled fist shaking at their side.

Sans laughs. His grin is as hollow as his sockets, opened wide and black and gaping.

"Did I getcha?"

Now the kid, their face ain't too expressive, just as a general rule. But when your own face is pretty solidly set in its perpetual rictus, you get real good at pickin' up little tells. The tightening of corners of a mouth, the scrunching of lines around the eyes at half-mast. The clenching and contracture of muscle. The slowness and deliberate pacing to their steps.

So, essentially, right now? All signs point to pissed.

Shouldn't be leavin' such a profound weight in his metaphorical gut, is the thing. He'd pulled his trick. He'd trapped them in a hug. He can just picture the squish of bone penetrating flesh, spearing organs, spattering red across the gold-tiled for, air ripe with the iron tang of it. He can picture it, because in all likelihood, he's lived it. Don't even need to check the values and flags to be assured of that one. Yep, he got 'em pretty good.

Except now, heh. Well. He'd well and truly played that card and won, like he'd known he would, and that little one-off trick is never gonna pull the rug out from under 'em again.

"Well," says Sans, arms spread wide in his artless, exaggerated shrug, "if you came back anyway...I guess that means we never really WERE friends, huh?"

He tries for another laugh. It emerges a knowing, resigned huff, the underline of a conclusion he'd already come to but must not have wanted to admit to himself.

He looks at the kid, shaking in their shoes with barely-repressed rage, ready to lunge at him and finish what they started. He looks at 'em, and the words leak on out before he can really put a stop to 'em.

"Don't tell that to the other Sans-es," he says, the words not breaking but coming damn close, "okay?"

The kid doesn't say a damn thing. They just wait for the next salvo of radiuses to spring at 'em from all sides. Not that he gives 'em what they're looking for, exactly. Nah. Time to change things up again.

It occurs to him only after he watches the red gleam of their wavering SOUL break and buckle and shatter beneath the searing, scintillating, disintegrating blast of an open-mawed skull that he knows exactly why he said what he did. 'Cause, uh, to be frank? (I'll be "frank" with you," says a him in another time, the lucky fucking bastard.) He knows exactly how to quantify that expression that kid was wearing, 'cause it was the same one that almost tore through his jovial, perpetual grin.

Betrayal.

Yeah, he's starting to think he knows that feeling real well. Real, real well.

AND THEN I EXCEEDED THE CHARACTER LIMIT WITH THIS NEXT ONE WHOOPS

CONT'D

[skelebro]

v. we never really were friends

He's polite. He waves to the kids, he nods his skull, he says hello, he jokes with 'em and watches TV with 'em and watches 'em play video games and makes horrible jokes about whatever ridiculous situations their pixellated avatars get themselves into. He makes light of it, it's what he does. Like he didn't kill all three of 'em a hundred times over, separately or together, don't really matter. Like he's not to blame for the way Chara flinches whenever Toriel pulls 'em into a hug, or how Frisk sometimes startles when he shows up in their periphery, a white-and-blue be-jacketed blur of grinning bones and broken promises. Or how the king and queen's son - well, he's the one Sans arguably spends time with the least. Mostly on account of the fact that he's pretty sure the kid detests him, and even if he don't really blame him for much and he is trying, really he is, more than he's maybe tried for anything, he's got enough tact to respect the kid's opinion of him and keep his distance.

Honestly, the three of 'em, he doesn't hate 'em. Not any of 'em. Hate takes time, and hate takes work, and he's got a surface world to enjoy before someone gets bored and spins the clock back again, assuming any one of 'em can.

It gets to a head, though, one day, when he's just reclining on the couch at Toriel's place when Frisk wanders along (recognizable thanks to the color scheme, which they never relinquished even if Toriel has bought them shirts of varying colors and spectrums since they moved in) and plunks on down beside him.

"Chara and Asriel think you hate them," they announce, without preamble.

Um. Okay. Wow, kid.

Sans cracks open an eyesocket and regards them blankly as he tries to marshal his thoughts.

Truth be told, he ain't exactly sure what to say to that.

"I don't hate them," he says, which comes out sounding like more of a lie than anything.

Frisk folds their arms and looks indignant and concerned and okay, c'mon kid, that just isn't fair.

"You never talk to them," they say decisively. "You just kind of stare at them, like you're trying to figure them out. Both of them. And you think you're not being obvious, but you are. We all know it."

Oh boy. Look who's been a right little detective, huh?

Sans reaches up, passes a hand over the crown of his skull and starts scratching at his cervical vertebrae.

"I don't hate them," he says again, tiredly.

"Then prove it," says Frisk, levering a firm look in his direction and goddamn they may not be biologically related to Toriel but they might as well be, because they could give that lady's strict glower a run for its money.

At this point, he thinks it would just be significantly easier to move out of the complex across the street, pack his damn bags, and set course for as far away as fucking possible. Because, honestly, spending his time trying to...connect with either of those kids on a deep and personal level when he's pretty damn sure neither of 'em want anything to do with him, well, it sounds like a whole lotta work. Maybe more work than he's ever had to do in his life.

For a long moment, he lies there. He contemplates the ceiling. The ceiling has no answers for him, as expected.

Then Sans gets up, and makes his way to the room the royal kids share. He hesitates again before raising a hand and knocking, and he'd swear to god that the echoes of knuckles against a stone door ring hollowly at him from on the other side of another time.

Goddamnit, kid.

It's at times like these that he wishes he honestly didn't care as much as he actually does.

...and the one time he really didn't.

[skelebro]

They're still milling around uselessly when he makes it to the scene, the rising drone of murmurs and whispers abruptly cutting into silence when he advances, grinning evenly, looking between every one of them with a grim, steadfast patience.

"Okay!" says Sans, clapping his bony hands together in a crisp, too-bright movement. "Who wants to go first, huh?"

Every one of 'em exchanges looks with each other, not a single one wanting to be the guy to step up to the plate. They don't wanna take responsibility? All right. That's fine.

Sans trains his stare on the first one that makes unintended eye contact, the lights in his sockets faded and flinted.

"Start from the beginning," he says cheerfully.

The bastard looks like he wants to do anything but, but Sans waits him out, unblinking, merciless, refusing to look away, until finally they start to speak, slow and halting.

"W-we, um," says the fidgety son of a bitch, twiddling their claws, "we were just a-adjusting the circuit boards, and we didn't realize th-that, um. That, that kid, you know, who likes help around here?"

"I know the kid," Sans says mildly. "And I know the doc said you weren't supposed to let 'em in anymore. Real funny how you all seemed for forget, huh?"

What little momentum his informant seems to have bought for himself stutters and dies. They look away. No one else seems eager to take their place.

All right. That's fine. He's got everything he needs to fill in the copious blanks.

"You re-calibrated the circuit boards," says Sans, piecin' together the narrative in real time. "You miscalculated. And someone just happened to be the collateral damage, huh? That someone bein' the kid who, as I'm sure you don't need remindin', shouldn't've even been here in the first place."

He smiles.

"Am I getting warm?"

"W-we didn't mean - " one of the braver assistants starts up, spluttering and defiant, abruptly locating their courage.

He doesn't need to raise his voice. He don't need to do much of anything. He keeps talking, and the room is plunged into silence. Hah, yep. They sure feel bad for what they've done now, huh?

"You didn't mean it," says Sans. "Well, why don't we tell the kid's parents, huh? Let 'em know that it's all good, sorry their kid got vaporized or demolecularized or whatever the hell it is you did to 'em, but it's <>okay because you didn't mean it."

"That's not - "

Sans laughs.

"I don't care," he says, the words heavy and sick and vibrating with somethin' he doesn't wanna put a name to. "I really don't. But I'll tell ya this: I'm not gonna be the one that tells 'em."

A few of 'em blanch. One of 'em who doesn't look physiologically capable of blanching flattens their ears.

"I don't care how you all figure it out," he says, and his smile grows wider and wider and there's an icy edge to the way he sweeps every one of 'em with his look. "Draw straws. Flip a coin."

His eyes go dark.

"Figure it out."

And then he's gone.

Not like that kid is, heh. Nah, he's just up and walkin' out the door, the old-fashioned way. All he can do now is hope - and he hates hope, really he does, "hope" is just another, happier word for "delusion" - that wherever that poor kid is now, they ain't aware of their state of being.

That would be a cruelty he can't even imagine.

[save_theworld]

Gentle reminder that this is UNBELIEVABLY RUDE