(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

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.