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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Undertale: No Dalliance AU

Night had fallen over the city of Ebott, softly lit windows overlooking shadowed streets and chirping insects. The birds settled in for the night, mothers keeping watch over sleeping chicks, and high above, the moon looked down over all, the deep blue sky around its gently glowing face studded with ancient and faraway stars. The wind was a bare but soothing breeze, the summer air cooler now as the sun's warmth fled the earth, and in the upstairs window of one of the many houses that lined the quiet and peaceful streets, a 'Sold' sign still stuck in the even, green lawn before it, shadows danced in the pale light of a bedside lamp.

The house, alike to the other softly pastel homes along that particular road, seemed to be caught up in a whirlwind of activity left abandoned, for the moment: half unpacked boxes were strewn about the rooms, furniture covered in moving sheets standing in almost the right positions, where they had been left by movers and friends, and empty boxes of pizza lay stacked on a small dining table, evidence of a hasty dinner. A television had been plugged into a temporary home atop a dresser in the living room, its muted screen playing a show that seemed to be about a robot falling in love with a microwave, and about halfway up the stairs, a pair of high heels lay abandoned, likely the pair to the gauzy white dress draped over the banister on the second floor's landing.

A trail of similarly tossed clothes lead down the hallway and to a slightly ajar door, the pieces to a now rumpled tuxedo, a pair of stockings, a bow tie, and a frilly garter among them, and beyond the door, in a just as box and covered furniture strewn master bedroom, the princess of monsters and her new husband lay entwined in a blissful lover's union, atop an unmade mattress they had clearly been attempting to build into a bed, if the scattered and half put-together pieces of the frame were any indication.

This meeting of the newly wedded couple was far different than any they had indulged in before this night, however... not because they were now bonded through marriage, through an ancient magic that had named them worthy of truly being together forever, but because they were now prepared for the most holy and intimate ritual a monster and their mate could partake in.

As the pair's bodies meshed into one, beginning the dance they had done together many times before, glittering flashes of light broke between their dancing forms, soft white and dulcet crimson playing across bone and flesh just as it decorated the walls and the floor. Both of their cries of pleasure multiplied and heightened, the creaks of the mattress springs and the meeting of wet skin to bone filling the room, and Frisk, one hand rising to touch her parted lips passionately as her eyes gazed upon the light show before her, clung to her skeletal husband's shoulder with the other, grinding her hips into his lap and shuddering in surprised but blissful ecstasy.

“S-Sans... Sans, I-I... it feels so good-” she whimpered through her cries, trembling as one of her monster mate's hands smoothed up her side to heft and squeeze a breast bared by her halfway undone bra, and Sans, gaze just as unerringly glued to the spectacle unfolding between them as Frisk's was, grunted in agreement, breathless with the overwhelming sensation of being the closest he would ever be with the one he loved most.

After that night, they would never be parted again. The knowledge of it sang in his bones, sank deep in his marrow and formed hearts in his sockets, breathless with a joy that could not be extinguished.

“fuck... frisk, fuck ... it's what i always imagined... what i knew we would be...” he groaned quietly, hoarsely, as he guided her hips with his free hand, leading them both in their dance while between their chests, locked together in their own ephemeral, ethereal promenade, their souls, starkest white and brightest scarlet, twirled together in tandem, meshing and slipping against each other with slick and needful ardor, desperate to be as one. A steady drip of their magic, made fluid by their manifested beings, dripped between their undulating bodies, dappling Frisk's abdomen and Sans' bared ribcage with liquid lust, and the sheer pleasure of their very souls pressing together, creating a friction unlike anything either had ever felt, resonating from their heads to the tips of their toes, had them both reeling.

And yet, even as both were brought to unbelievable and repeated ecstasy, time and again in what felt like a never-ending cycle, sure to stain the bare mattress with evidence of their passions, neither seemed capable of stopping, nor of tearing their eyes away from the spinning, magnetically drawn powers between them. It was a fantastical and beautiful sight to behold, rare magic in the making, and neither could imagine missing a moment of it.

At last, their souls seemed to find the hold they had been searching for in their dancing, stilling as they began to swirl together into a single being, and though it was what she knew she wanted, what she had prepared for and dreamed of for years, Frisk hesitated when she felt the surge of another's power, her husband's magic, start to take true and everlasting hold inside of her, a stabbing twinge of instinctual fear pulling her away from the bond.

What was wrong with her? She'd known this would happen, Sans had warned her she might feel a little afraid at the overwhelming sensations... she'd assured him she could handle it. What must he think?

He was there to steady her the moment the thoughts even began, though, his hands taking her face between them to lift her gaze away from the souls pressing together into one before her and up to meet his, his soft, loving, heartbreakingly adoring face soothing her to the depths of her tumultuous mind. He smiled in the way only he could, his thumbs smoothing the lines of worry from beneath her eyes... his soul sending, through hers, the comforting rays of kind understanding he had always exuded.

“don't pull away babe, don't be afraid. it's just me. it'll be okay... i promise,” he whispered, as though uttering a sound even a little louder would be sacrilege, and Frisk believed him utterly, in that moment, the truth of it without a shadow of a doubt. His promises were ironclad, things he held to until the bitterest of ends (she knew that all too well), and from their blossoming connection, the deepest and most unflinching two beings could have, she knew he meant it. She could trust him. She had, from the very first moment, and he'd never let her down.

She wasn't about to start doubting him now.

And so her automatic flinching subsided, her taut muscles unclenching and her cheek tilting into his palm. Her eyelids glided shut, just as his did, and she leaned into him completely, letting his magic and his soul and the entirety of his being consume her, just as hers consumed him.

She saw it all, through his eyes. Every moment that had been and gone throughout his long and hardship riddled life. She felt every pang of loneliness and fear, every neverending day drained of emotion and bedridden with sadness... a brief and toxic flare of unspeakable anger, overshadowed with blood and tears and dust and the reddest of eyes. And then it was gone, washed away beneath the rays of the sun, a new and bright hope that swelled with a love she knew all too well, and then she was there, sat in his lap and shuddering with the overwhelming duress of her emotions, tears of grief and fear and pain and joy washing down her face in droves.

She knew him, now, from beginning to end... all his secrets, all his concerns and agony and happiness.

Just as he knew her.

She could hear herself sobbing, could feel her chest aching with breathless wonder, could see, through the haze of tears, the souls now shimmering in bright and shared grandeur between them both, whole and complete and dazzling beyond belief as they parted to return to them... could feel her soulmate's thumbs attempting to stem the tide spilling from her eyes, hear his voice, so soothing and cajoling, even in its complete and utter happiness.

Could feel him, deep inside in an all new way, reaching out to warm her from the inside out, her chest blooming with his deep and everlasting love.

“don't cry, frisk... you did so beautifully, don't cry...” he murmured as he closed the distance between them, the better to press his bony lips to her full, parted pair, and she had to stifle a giggle when she felt his own tears drip onto her bared breasts, her eyes rising to his tear streaked face when he had pulled back from their kiss, to press their foreheads together affectionately.

“Y-you're crying t-too...” she managed to choke out, raising her hand to stroke his cheekbone, and Sans’ face creased in a flash of pained remorse, for a short moment, his sockets pitying and filled with reflected agony... but then it was gone, replaced with deep and heartfelt smile, covered with a sniffle and the feeling of his arms enfolding her, drawing her into his solid and warm embrace.

She'd never felt as safe as she did, when in his arms...

“those times are gone now. we're together for good. i'll never let you be alone again... and you won't let me either. i know it,” he assured her, rocking back and forth with her there, right where they belonged, and she couldn't have agreed more, losing herself to the comfort of being enfolded in his arms, his hand smoothing up and down her spine and his chin resting on her shoulder. She nuzzled against the side of his skull, tracing her fingertips along the fine chain of his locket, and smiled when he nuzzled back, letting out a truly contented sigh.

“I love you so much...”

“i love you too.”

' forever ', a small, serene voice whispered from within her soul, and she knew it to be true.

Chapter Text

Killer

Once upon a time, there was a mountain.

This mountain was a lonely one, standing apart from the distant range of similar peaks in the distance, casting its shadow over the city of men that lay at its foot. It was surrounded by dense forest, deep lake waters, and a slowly melting glacier, its rounded, ancient top dusted with snow and its base lined with an aged but well maintained barbed wire fence. The fence had signs posted along its perimeter that declared it private property, but in truth, the mountain, the forest, and all its secrets belonged to no one.

The signs were there because of what lay beneath the rocks and the roots. The fence and its barbs tried to hold back adventurous souls from climbing the lonely mountain, in the hope that no one else would go missing, because among its dark and aged trees, within the many caves and deep shafts that dotted the cliffs and wending paths, many people had disappeared and never been found. The mountain was considered dangerous, perhaps even cursed, and likely riddled with hungry mine shafts determined to swallow up the unwitting.

The mountain had never been mined. There was no curse on those ancient grounds. No... there was instead a history, long forgotten, buried deep within the dormant volcano itself. There was a people, ash and dust, imprisoned there and left to rot. There was an old and consuming shadow, still wandering the halls and paths below, that hungered for release.

All else had perished. Scattered to the winds, so much power given to the hands of one who dared not ever return to, or even look upon, the mountain ever again. He had abandoned his world entirely, for a time, caught up in the games and caprices of warring gods and petty, fickle creators, and hadn't thought of the magickless world even once as he had explored the multiverse and seen sights beyond compare.

He returned now, though, half a world away from that forsaken and hollow mountain, stepping into being as the air about him snapped and crackled with his dark master's power, lent him for the sake of spreading Nightmare's shadow across all worlds. He shrugged twice, settling a stained and aged blue jacket back evenly onto his broad shoulders, and crooked his head side to side as he shook the remaining dregs of the Void from himself, cracking the visible vertebrae his neck was composed of.

His empty sockets swept the horizon with practiced caution, long years of running and being attacked, both with provocation and without, teaching him well; the grasses of the flat and nearly featureless plain he had appeared in bent beneath the touch of a gentle breeze, barren and uninterrupted for miles but for a single, small log cabin. The sun was starting to set, throwing shadows from the scattered and widely spread trees across the fields and coloring the sky with a bursting of reds and pinks and golds, reflecting off the heavily curtained windows of the cabin he now approached, the gravel of the front path quiet beneath his careful heel.

A thin finger of smoke rose from the chimney stack atop the roof, carrying to him the scents of cooking meat and baking bread, and from beyond the curtained windows, there came the sound of music, accompanied by unpracticed but pleasant singing. A smirk split the bone of his face, the corrupted magic streaking from his sockets and his mouth glinting in the setting sun, the target floating before his hollow chest gleaming as wickedly as his twisted smile.

She'd never hear him coming.

The door, well oiled and unlocked (tsk tsk...), opened and shut behind him without a sound, sparse but comfortable furniture lined the rooms he snuck through on the way to the kitchen, its light illuminating the doorframe. The music and singing grew louder, the clanking of dishes and the rush of water giving away the occupant's position, and as he bent around the doorframe, sockets locked on her turned back, a long, gleamingly sharp knife slid from within his sleeve, falling with practiced ease into his skeletal palm.

His steps were silent across the tile floor as he slipped into the room with the grace of a shadow, his posture that of a stalking predator as he drew near enough to smell the soap in her freshly washed hair (lavender... his favorite), the knife shone steady and deadly in his hand... before he pounced, his free arm winding around her waist from behind and his hand, knife glinting in the overhead light, slamming down against the kitchen counter hard enough to embed the blade a few inches into the wood.

The woman in his grasp let out a shriek, thrashing wildly against his hold, but he pressed her against the edge of the counter with his hips against her rear, pinning her with his greater weight and size, and turned his skull to press his bony lips to her ear through her shoulder-length, chestnut brown hair-

“didn't i tell you to keep that door locked~”

Her squirming and shouting ceased immediately, her form losing all the rigidity that surprise and fear had lent it. She turned in his grasp, bright brown eyes framed by long, dark lashes finding his sockets, before a smile lit up her pretty face, framed by poofy locks of hair and flecked with a few suds from her washing. Her expression shifted into affected anger a moment later, though, and one of her hands roe to slap his shoulder gently (as though even her hardest attempt could harm him now... he'd gained far too much LV at this point to flinch from even knife wounds), her brows lowering over those beautiful, luminous eyes and her full lips pulling into a frown.

“Sans!! Jesus, you scared me!” Frisk chastised even as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against the front of his without fear and her lips to his bony pair without flinching, and just that gesture, just the sound of his long abandoned name and the trust he could feel emanating from her, stole every last dreg of his breath from him, as it did every time he returned to her.

He'd almost forgotten his name, truth be told, by the time he'd come back to his world in search of fate. The years had been hard and long, and his corruption ran deep in his twisted shade of a soul, stealing more and more memories of before from him as time trickled on. He hadn't needed that name, anyway, so he hadn't cared for its fleeting memory... no one else had called him Sans since the last life he'd taken in the Underground.

He'd been Killer for so long that when he had finally found her, had stolen her from her miserable life in the city and brought her here, to keep her safe and hidden from the grasp of his master, that he hadn't known how to introduce himself. She, unlike many of the other worlds he'd been to, had never fallen into his Underground. He had never met her, befriended her... been betrayed by her, or betrayed her in turn, as many of his companions had.

It had felt like the fresh start that it truly was, a second chance at a life he'd long disparaged. He'd given up the love that he'd seen many others by his name give chase to, focused only on ascending to the highest level of power any monster had ever achieved... but then, Nightmare had told him, and his companions, of his past. What had caused his fall from grace, the reason for the never ending war with his brother, the real motivation behind his trail of conquests, and what he intended to rebuild from the ashes of those he had ruined.

He was gathering Frisks, all who were bonded, or could be bonded, with Sans coded monsters, and using the power of their souls to reclaim his own lost love, a celestial being that had, long ago, divided her stardust infused heart among all the universes, to bless other’s lives and experience true love untainted by her lovers’ warring.

Nightmare's mission was to find and retrieve as many of their souls as he could, to take back the pieces of his beloved's heart and rebuild it. He knew his brother intended the same, both struck with a jealous and possessive love of the same perfect being, and so was utterly ruthless in his quest to find her first, taking the bits of stardust back the only way he knew how.

None had yet survived the process.

His long dead soul had flinched back, at the knowledge of what Nightmare was doing, that he so callously destroyed both universes and others' soul bonds to benefit himself. He had been sickened, even, by the understanding that his own fated mate, left behind without thought before that moment in his ruined world, would suffer that same fate, unless he did something. Could he live with that, with the knowledge that his own inaction had robbed him of a love he wasn't even sure he wanted?

He found the answer to be one he had not anticipated: no. No, he could not.

And so he had acted. He had taken his Frisk, and brought her to a place far from where anyone would think to look for her. He had blatantly lied to his master, telling him that he had killed his Frisk himself, in his Underground. He had even enlisted the help of his compatriots, who he had been more than a little surprised to hear had had much the same reaction that he had, and had all taken measures to secure their own Frisks, to keep them away from Nightmare's cruel and gluttonous consumption.

They kept each other's secrets, now... secrets that would undoubtedly end in their deaths, should the god of night and negativity discover what they had done and meant to keep from him.

It was a difficult and complicated thing, of course, for beings such as they to attempt romance in their condition. They were to a one corrupted, polluted by their lust for power and death and blood, driven half insane by tainted magic and changed forever by the deeds of their hands and the sins on their backs. Learning to feel, to change their ways and accept love, not LV, into their souls had a steep learning curve, and he knew perfectly well that he had failed more times than he'd succeeded.

And yet there she stood, an impossible and fragile mortal being, looking up the few inches that separated their heights with a gently chastising pout on her face, her soul emanating utter adoration and trust and the love he'd never known he'd craved before he’d received it without qualm. Before his chest, the floating target shaped itself into a heart of its own volition, warmth both alien and welcome touched his cold and weary bones, and his arms wound more gently around her waist, bending to bump his forehead against hers meaningfully.

“heh heh... i couldn't tell,” he murmured, smirking in the way that he knew would get her heart racing- and there it was, thumping against his ribcage like a drum. He let out a quiet, rumbling growl in response, backing her up against the edge of the counter and bending his head to nuzzle at the crook of her neck and shoulder, against the scarred indentation of his teeth that he could smell even through the material of her dress.

His... all his.

Something he had never thought he would say.

He felt, more than saw, her blush in response to his heavy-handedness, to the rumble of his growl, and within his chest, he felt his soul, before her influence long dead and silent, give the slightest twitch. It wasn’t completely pleasant… some days, he thought it would have been better for it to remain cold and hollow, keeping up the charade of his manic glee and glorying in the kill, in the misery of others to minimize his own.

Those thoughts were always short-lived. He would be lost in the morose, macabre vacillations of his mind, on the edge of madness and the Void, and then she would touch his hand, send him a smile, and say the name that he had nearly forgotten, he would feel her love suffusing the air around him, and everything but her would fade. Having her was the closest to normal (or the monster he’d been before the demon’s possession, at least) that he’d been in his memory, and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Frisk, giggling quietly at the feeling of his breath on her neck, pulled away only when he’d had his apparent fill of her scent, the feel of her pressed against him (to feel, after so long living in the cold and the dark… there was nothing like it. A sweet overabundance, such that sometimes, he could do nothing but marvel at simple emotions like joy and amusement, untainted by murder and dust-), to look closely at his face, one hand tracing along his jawline carefully, lovingly, her brows low with concern.

He couldn’t keep himself from leaning his cheekbone into her palm, all but purring from the fullness of her pure love, the care and worry she felt for him, most undeserving of all. If the others could see him now… he’d never live it down. 

He suspected, though, that they were all indulging much the same as he was.

“You were gone for a long time this time. I was worried about you,” she murmured, in their closeness, and a pang of guilt shot through him, dire and turbulent and cutting deep, so much deeper than he was sure most would feel. It attested to his long departure from feeling anything at all, he could only suppose… stars, it hurt to let her down, though.

“i’m sorry. work’s been keeping me busy… boss has really been riding my tailbone, heh,” he excused as best he could with a grimace; it was absolutely true, though she had no idea just how much so… he had been forced to come up with an abundance of excuses for why he was failing so many missions, to attempt to hide the fact that his companions were taking the Frisks for themselves, rather than delivering them to their master, and Nightmare was starting to lose his patience.

He was going to have to start bringing them to him again soon. He already knew it was going to hurt, knowing he was causing the deaths of fair creatures with his mate’s face, simply to save his own hide.

Thankfully, he was still selfish enough to excuse it as necessary. He’d do anything to keep his own Frisk safe and well... anything.

That fierce protectiveness was what had pressed him to bring her here, so far from civilization, her life before, anyone else at all. It had been, in part, what he had told her… his lie to Nightmare could only be preserved if no one had her face in their mind for the godlike being to find in their dreams. But the lengths that he’d gone to… they had all been selfish ones, just as selfish as his decision to sacrifice others to keep her safe. He’d brought her to the very edge of the world, killed everyone she’d known before without hesitation, and had kept her here, the center of his dark world.

Jealous possessiveness was an odd emotion, and he didn’t really like the influence it had over him. He’d done everything he could to remove it, so quickly that his work had almost been messy. But it was a necessity, in his mind, as spontaneous as it had been.

He was no longer surprised by that, though. He had always been impulsive, ever since the building of his corruption... it was the way that his soul had been twisted, separating him even further from the monster he'd used to be. He had been described as flighty, careless, reckless, and unthinking many times, and had taken a lot of damage through the years because of it... his impulsiveness seemed to apply to her as well.

It was just so impossible to resist her, to see her and feel her and do his best to love her. She was truly perfect, made for him in every way, and he could only be thankful that she was so patient with him, disappearing for days at a time and coming home to her with only the barest of explanations. He knew she was suspicious… anyone would be, considering just how long he would be gone, the new cracks in his bones, his manic energy, almost always ending with her beneath him in their bed, only moments after he’d stumbled through the door, jabbing knives into all the furniture and inflicting his poor sense of humor on her-

She never complained, though. She was such a bright and giving soul, selfless and wholesome in a way he never could be. And yet… being with her… she made him want to try.

She looked up at him with such calm and patient understanding, even though he let her down… though he wasn’t nearly the partner to her that she deserved. He was a wretch, a selfish and grasping shade of who she had been destined to be with, before his fall… and yet she had accepted him, somehow and impossibly. And yet, her smile grew across her face to wipe away her concern, her cheek dropping to press against his chest, to sway with him in time with the beat of their fated souls.

“I’m just glad you’re here. It’s never the same, with you gone,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut and her love sinking again into his bones to fill his with a warmth and a light so pervasive it edged on pain. His soul twitched again, brought to life by the wonderful, impossible, heavenly creature in his arms, and in his sockets, creased with a truly heartfelt smile, a crimson light flickered for a moment, unbeknownst to him.

All he could do was hold her back, and sway along with her, and attempt to understand his incredible luck, aching and not caring in the least.

He’d never understood the other Sans’ obsession with their Frisks. It had seemed baseless, a waste to spend so much time and energy and thought on a mortal being that would cut their lifespans short by many hundreds of years… he’d never understood how they could love a human so completely.

He understood now.

It was worth it, without question. All the pressure from Nightmare, the guilt starting to eat at him the more and more that his soul came back to life, the failures to be a good mate to her, the anxiety of keeping this huge and life-altering secret… his shorter lifespan, the reawakening of his soul, the slow, trickling loss of his LV as her love replaced it. It was worth it all, every second. And as he lifted her chin and turned his head to meet her lips with his, he knew he'd do it all over again in the blink of an eye, despite it all. 

He knew that without a shadow of a doubt.

Chapter Text

Fellswap

Some days it was good to be a basically invisible, nearly ephemeral being. It came in handy when snatching things out of unsuspecting monsters' pockets, drawing on people's faces while they slept, and sticking gum in obnoxious do-gooders' hair.

Chara still hadn't forgiven her for that one... heheh.

But some days, Frisk was convinced that it was the hardest thing in the universe. Those days were ones like these, when her absent-minded floating around the chimney tops in Snowdin Village (not any one in particular... the skeleton brothers' just happened to have a great view over the forest) was interrupted by a louder than usual slam of the front door, so hard the windows shook in their frames and several drifts of snow slid from the roof and to the ground below.

Couldn't have been Papyrus... she'd seen the lanky layabout slouching off towards Waterfall with Chara hours ago. They'd be sure to be gone til the night cycle, at the very least... Chara loved to watch the crystals in the dark, and her skeletal bone-friend loved to distract her from them as best as possible.

Tsk.

So it was Sans... and he was in a mood .

Not that that was an unusual event. Sans always seemed to be in a mood, ranging from gloating giddiness to tempestuous rage, and liked to inflict his varying tempers on everyone in his vicinity. On top of that, his personality was overwhelming and electrifying, despite his stature, so it was nearly impossible to even pretend to ignore him, he was just too magnetic for that.

You could say that she, in particular, need not play party to the older skeleton monster's vacillating moods... he should, among all others besides Chara, not even know she existed. And yet she tossed away a scrap of paper she had been reading, an advertisement of some sort for a fortune-telling monster bearing an evil grin and three eyes, drifted through the roof of the large, two-story house, through a dusty and disused attic chock full of lovingly packed boxes of photographs and baby monster toys (he had been a very doting older brother, while raising Papyrus... she'd looked over nearly every one of the pictures in her boredom), and through the ceiling of the room where she was certain Sans had stormed off to anyway, because despite all logic, despite her shock and trepidation over the fact... Sans could see her. He always had been able to, from the moment he spotted her hanging around behind Chara's shoulder, that first day on the snowy roads in the forest.

She didn't understand it... she'd been dead, and long forgotten, surely, by just about every monster in the Underground. The taste of that fact was a bitter one, one that had, at first, brought to life a vengeful hatred... but Chara's kind heart, and Sans' ability to see and speak with her (whether he wanted to or not; she'd hung around him almost incessantly since she'd discovered his ability, despite his explicit and violent demands that she be gone), had stilled her vengeance, and awoken something she hadn't felt in ages gone.

Curiosity.

This was what brought her to the captain of the Royal Guard's bedroom late in the evening, peeking through the plaster and paint cautiously to ensure he wasn't... busy (neither spoke of the time she had found him occupied, for lack of a better term... though she thought of it, on occasion), and found the skeleton monster, oddly still wearing his armor, collapsed face first on his extravagant and lusciously made-up bed. All the blacks and reds blended in so well that she nearly didn't spot him lying there, and wouldn't have but for the long and weary groan he let out, muffled by the pillow he seemed to be hugging.

The mischievous grin that had grown across her face, in anticipation of annoying the prickly monster further, vanished as she watched him hug the pillow to himself tighter, the plates of his armor catching the light of the one lamp he had bothered to turn on.

This wasn't like him at all. Something was wrong.

Slowly, so slowly that she almost felt silly for doing it (it's not as though her movements made any sound... she just had the strangest inclination not to disturb him ), Frisk glided down from the ceiling to the floor, to dither uselessly at his bedside. The crack slowly but surely marching its way over the top of his skull seemed to grin at her, from this angle, mocking her inability to help anyone now, and for a moment, a long, silent moment that carried and echoed and stung, she considered just leaving again. He'd never appreciated her presence, not really... she liked to hang around just to get a rise out of him, honestly, and he was always willing to give her that.

But now... there was no desire to pester him now, and in the lack of her usual occupation, she was uncertain of what to do. She could offer him little comfort... that sort of thing was outside her wheelhouse. Should she go to Waterfall, and tell Chara that her best friend was in need of her company (more than the mutt, at least...)? Maybe she could-

“If you are here to mock me, princess, I would like for you to get on with it and leave me. I am not in the mood for much more distress than I've already dealt with today.”

Frisk jolted, any remaining fragments of a soul she still had nearly leaping from her ghostly chest. Sans hadn't moved from his position, face still buried in his pillow and legs curled nearly up against his chest, but had somehow known she was there.

Another curiosity...

“I'm... I'm not gonna do that today,” she managed to whisper, once her shock had settled, and sat on the edge of the bed, as near to him as she felt she could without upsetting him further. For a monster his age, and an unmated one at that, Sans was rigorously insistent on propriety, and had nearly shouted himself hoarse the first time she'd welcomed herself into his bedroom, despite the fact that she was all but literally a ghost. He'd given up that fight awhile ago, after she'd made it clear she didn't intend to listen to him on that account, but she did allow him the space he insisted two unmated people required between them.

Not that her touching him would do anything. No one had ever felt it when she'd tried to make contact with them before... she had the ability to touch and manipulate inanimate objects, but had never been able to exert her will enough to affect anything living.

Maybe if she touched their souls... but that was another thing entirely. Off-limits. Taboo, and akin to possession, more than likely.

She was getting lost in her thoughts again. Damnit.

When she withdrew from her own, slightly see-through head, it was to face the monster she had sat beside head on, his cracked and narrowed sockets, lit with fiery pinpricks of scarlet magic, watching her with clear and disdainful mistrust. It was always such a rush, to know he could see her... Chara could feel her presence and hear her, but Sans was the only one that had ever actually looked at her, after she'd woken up as a spirit.

“You'll forgive my skepticism, considering your proclivity to bother me at every possible moment,” he scoffed, laying his skull on the pillow again but keeping his face turned towards her, and Frisk could only shrug. She had no way to refute that, in all honesty... it was true.

Why did it leave her aching, in the strangest and most impossible way?

“Fair enough. You just... don't seem okay. Are you? ...okay?” she replied, tapping ethereal fingers against a nonexistent knee, and Sans flicked the flecks of light in his sockets over her face, his mistrust lingering for another, tense moment before, alarmingly, he seemed to buckle, the tension in his body falling away. His sockets turned away, to consider his intricately decorated duvet, and his arms clenched more tightly around his pillow, until she could almost hear the cotton within complaining.

“...You are possibly the only person I can tell this to, with full confidence that it will not leave the room,” he murmured, his jaw, lined with sharpened fangs, gritting as he chewed over whatever was going on inside his skull, and Frisk leaned closer, now more than rapt.

Sans sighed, not even glancing up to look at her, and squeezed his sockets shut, as though his words hurt for him to even be able to consider seeing them realized.

“The queen has been facing criticism for giving Chara refuge rather than killing them... and she has decided to blame me for it. All I have heard for the past two weeks have been calls for my head, or at the very least my resignation. I have no intent to back down, and I can more than defend myself, but...” he paused, his words falling away and his expression hardening.

“But I doubt myself. Did I truly have a good reason to spare them? Was I blinded by foolish sentiment? And my brother... would it have been kinder for Chara to die before he knew they were soulmates? Losing her now would kill him, but then... perhaps it would not have. I do not know. And it irks.”

He turned his face away again, pressing it deep within the comforting embrace of his pillow.

“I am weary of it all, princess. More tired than I ever have been,” he murmured, Frisk could only stare at the back of his skull, at a complete loss. She knew her mother could be petty, but this was just disgraceful. Mercy was a new sentiment for most monsters, certainly, but Toriel couldn't really be so cowardly as to throw the only person that stood up for a helpless human amongst literal monsters under the bus.

Well. Maybe she could. She'd been cowardly in much more pressing circumstances too...

Frisk teetered there, for a moment, on the brink of simply leaving him to his difficulty (who was she to give advice? She'd utterly failed where he had succeeded, she had no right or ability-)... before letting out a ghostly sigh of her own. She reached out a hand, from a long dead but still present instinct, to touch the back of his skull comfortingly, knowing full well that he wouldn't feel it but wanting to do something all the same.

“As... as someone that went that road... made decisions that cost monsters their freedom, and someone dear to me their life... I can tell you that you made the best possible choice. Chara deserves to live, and monsters can find another way, rather than through hate. I didn't see it then. But you did. Don't doubt yourself over that, not when you've done more good than anyone,” she muttered quietly, rubbing her thumb over the back of his skull, and then let out a chuckle, shaking her head as she pulled her hand back to her own custody.

“And as gross as it is to see them together... Chara and Papyrus deserve the love they have. I don't think you really believe it would have been better for him to never have felt that way. Not with how much you care about him,” she finished, smiling despite herself, and fell silent when Sans, his armor clanking against itself solidly (that stuff must weight a ton... crap, how strong was he?), sat up and turned to look at her, almost through her, so hard that she felt she shouldn't have said anything at all.

She thought she saw his hand start to rise to touch the back of his skull, for an ironically breathless moment, hope singing through her so quickly and suddenly that it made her ghostly head spin (what...? Why did she want him to be able to feel her so badly?), but he merely adjusted the seating of his armor on his shoulders before folding his arms across his chest and raising his cracked brow.

“Surprisingly insightful, for you. I must say I am impressed,” he snarked, the barest hint of a smile pulling at his fanged mouth, and Frisk rolled her eyes, pushing off the bed and into the air with a crude snort.

“I've got more where that came from too, if you'd ever do more than cuss at me. Don't you know how to talk to a lady?” she sniped, sticking her tongue out at him, and Sans barked out a laugh, smirking fully up at her now.

“Let me know when a lady is present, and I will treat with her appropriately,” he replied cattily, and Frisk, with a huff and a blown raspberry, glided her way up through the ceiling without another word, though, for some reason, their banter had left a warm and permeating glow within her, spreading from her invisible fingertips to her ghostly toes.

She'd seen another side of Sans today... one that had surprised her. Maybe she should try to talk to him more, rather than just pestering him constantly. She could ease back on it...

Heh. Only a little, though.

Sitting cross-legged on the edge of his bed, suddenly alone and feeling a little more empty for it, Sans looked, for a moment, at the spot that the ephemeral vision of both loveliness and irritation had sat in only a moment before, and raised a gloved hand to rub at the back of his skull.

As she had spoken to him, words of wisdom that had touched his soul more than he cared to admit, he had felt... something, though he wasn't sure what, glide across the back of his skull. More than a breeze, and less than a caress... could she have touched him?

She was an odd enough being, for a ghost... maybe she was able to. Or maybe she was something else entirely...

He brought his hand back around, rubbing his fingers together and looking at them intently, as though expecting something, some sort of proof, that it had really happened. Of course, nothing was there... but the sudden and aching sensation of disappointment was such that he had to hold his hand to his chest for a moment, thrown by how much such a short and simple meeting had affected him.

Perhaps it was nothing.

...or perhaps it was everything.

Chapter Text

Nightmare

Nightmare closed his visible socket, pinching his nasal ridge between two blackened phalanges and sighing in agitation. Below, at the foot of his grand and imposing throne (Dust loved to snicker at this summary, quite often adding 'ostentatious' and 'dramatic' to the list), Killer and Horror dithered about as they tended to do, the smaller doing some asinine trick with three of his knives and the larger staring into blank space, two massive fingers slotted into his slack eye socket, awaiting whatever verdict he chose to give in response to their mission summary.

If it could even be so generously called that.

The god of night and negativity sneered at the very thought, his free hand scraping corruption riddled fingertips across the molded steel and cracked stone of his throne's armrest. His tentacles, writhing at his back in echoed upset, were just as enraged as he was in lieu of his underlings' apparent and utter shortcomings, practically begging to choke the life from one of these idiots to satiate their master's bloodlust. An example to the others, of what constant failure would earn them... nothing that couldn't be replaced.

Perhaps he'd been too kind, of late... perhaps they had forgotten who he was, how many worlds he had brought to darkness and how many souls he had driven to a madness even they could only conceive of in their wildest imaginings.

Perhaps it was time to remind them.

It was a tempting thought, but a quickly dismissed one, despite the anger roiling just below the surface of his calming facade. For one thing, against all odds, he had grown rather fond of his strange little following, his motley crew of ne'er-do-wells and miscreants. They had taken to the work with a will, despite the... unpleasantness of their conscriptions (the only one of their number he hadn't had to coerce had been Killer, but he would have done anything to get out of his hellhole of an Underground, after what fate had befallen him), and over the years that they had been combing through the universes and slowly but surely stealing back the light that had been stolen from him, he truly had come to think of them as family.

For another thing... he still needed them. They could be replaced, of course... none of them were unique, each had a hundred timelines just like theirs, with only the subtlest of differences. It was such a bother, though, the trudge of breaking their wills and turning their minds. It was an unfortunate facet of contracting the more twisted souls to his designs... he couldn't simply lie to them like his sainted brother did, and have his sycophants accept his word as truth. No, his clan of cutthroats and cannibals were more suspicious than that, knew better than to blindly trust.

Axe's conversion was more than proof of that.

A snarl threatened to overtake his charcoal tinted bones once again, trembling in the shadows covering his face, but he restrained it resolutely. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't get riled over Axe again. The hardest part was done now... so long as he kept a close watch on him, there would be no further difficulties, and he would meld into their ranks flawlessly soon enough, yet another of his ever so loyal yet insufferably incompetent followers.

His socket snapped open, his electric blue eyelight glaring down at the slightly nervous looking faces of his contracted killers. Just looking at them had him seething all over again...

“what is it that is so hard about following my instructions? i feel that i have been perfectly clear, and yet here you are. failing in the one thing i have asked you to ensure. again ,” he hissed quietly, his rage gone from his cold and flat tone but more than apparent in the twisting and coiling of his writhing tentacles, in the gathering shadows around the foot of his throne, in the darkening of the ever present, perpetually eclipsed, blood red moon bearing down on them all through the large, dusty, stained glass windows at his back. Their own shadows wavered against the floor, small and ragged in the light of the guttering, half-burned down candles set about the room, and seemed almost to shrink away from the encroaching darkness he exuded, fearful of being lost to it.

As well they should be.

“i mean... we didn't fail exactly, boss. the timeline is falling into chaos, like you wanted. you can practically taste the despair on the air there, they-” Killer began to excuse, tensely fiddling the blade of one of his knives between his fingers, but Nightmare cut him off with a snort and a waved hand, the magic in his only visible socket flicking and sparking in his unspoken fury.

“the fall of their universe was inevitable, and secondhand to the quarry you sought. you were to bring me their frisk, alive , and not only did you fail in that... you killed her yourselves, wasting power more precious than any one of your lives. explain to me how you managed that on accident ,” he invited with barely contained vitriol dripping from his every word, the loss of yet another priceless soul cutting at the twisted and corrupted core at the center of his being with blades sharper than any of his underlings possessed, and Killer stopped short in his excuses, a rare and tense frown overcoming his usual maniacal grin.

Even rarer was the bead of dusky blue sweat that ran down his cranium to stain his jacket's hood, joining the clotted magic that dripped perpetually from his mouth and sockets. The hulking skeleton at his side was much more taciturn, his grotesque smile frozen to his face and his broad shoulders constantly tightened with suspicious tension, but the enormous, horrendous iris that lit his good socket was constricted, the edges unfocused and, occasionally, rippling into jagged spikes.

They reeked of fear, and the stench of it got him high in an instant, taking the edge from his anger and, at the same moment, warning him that something was amiss. Either his intimidations were working better than usual (these idiots never knew well enough to fear him, not until it became necessary to amend that notion, and they forgot again far too quickly), or something he didn't know about was going on.

Or perhaps he was being too suspicious. He knew Axe was planning something, some sort of insurrection that would end only in failure and humiliation for the rabid, half-insane monster, but to suspect it of his more trusted accomplices strained credulity. He wouldn't put it past the fortune teller, the duplicitous wretch was always up to his tricks, and Error had always had his own agenda, but Killer, Horror, or Dust? Unlikely.

He'd dismiss the thought for now... but he'd remain cautious. It had kept him alive thus far, and prevented betrayals like his brother's from happening again and costing him more than he could bear to lose. He was still attempting to mend that wrong, even after all these years... that was the entire point of his and his companions' ventures into other worlds.

One that they had now failed him in four consecutive times.

“...we tried to keep her away from the fight, but she wouldn't stay put... elbowed dust in the socket and jumped in front of the king, took a hit that would floor a boss monster. impressive as hell, but she didn't survive it. we tried, nightmare... but you know how brave frisks can be,” Horror muttered haltingly, jerking habitually at his socket so hard that the bone started to audibly protest, and Nightmare turned his face away with a grimace, the pain of the loss now accompanied by an all too knowing understanding, both bitter and sweet at once.

They all knew how stalwart a Frisk's soul was... she was a force to be reckoned with in every universe, even ones where she lingered only as an apparition. It was part of what made her so special, that sheer determination, her ceaseless love, the kindness that exuded from her to infect and turn all those around her to betterment.

Nightmare flinched visibly, his shadowed face creasing with a deep and telling agony. One hand rose to clench at the front of his irreparably stained shirt, his ribs aching in an all too familiar way. He should really be used to the sting, by now... the punishing, never-ending pain of his own broken heart, concealed at best but never gone, had been following him for the hundreds of years since the loss of his light, his love... the only star in his sky. It returned to him every time he thought of her, saw her face reflected in those that had come after... even in her mortal forms, pale imitations of her former glory, it struck him to his very core, to the marrow of his diseased bones.

He missed her more than he had ever missed anything, even a form less twisted than the one he possessed now.

Accident or not, though, despite the character of his beloved that both irked and awed him and his underlings' inability to keep a being such as her contained, they had still failed him, and with the full knowledge of what it was costing him, the power he needed to restore his star to life slipping through his fingers all over again. The disappointment, impatience, and anger burned in him with a fierce and consuming passion, an old hatred for what, and whom, had taken her from him in the first place clawing at the inside of his malformed skull and sinking its claws into his heart of hearts, the core wood of the magnificent world tree he had been birthed from.

That fury materialized itself into twisted shadows and screaming, corruption rife shades, writhing manifestations of souls he had consumed, broken open in his own hands, devoured and destroyed without care for their extinguished life in the face of his quest. Their cries were those of agony and loss, screeches that grated against the very mind, and both Horror and Killer shrank back in horrified caution as they emerged from the darkness filling the throne room and shambled towards them, drawn to the power of their shadowy souls.

Nightmare gazed down on them all without pity, his single eyelight burning like both a beacon in the darkness and a warning of dire consequence. He was done with their incompetence, with the casual indifference they treated his mission with. It was the most important thing to him in the multiverse, far more important to him than their pathetic existences, and his chilling snarl bore witness to this, the tortured forms of his many victims howling wordless warnings of what further failure would cost.

“be that as it may, you have robbed me of more than i am willing to lose for the last time. i have only so much patience, and you have reached it's threshold. you know exactly what you are taking from me, the rarity of her priceless soul, and should you fail me again, lose even one more soul, you will pay that price with your own. your former adjustments at my hand will be dreams in comparison to the fullness of my fury... you will know the suffering i have known, drawn out to the very last measure of excruciating pain, and you will beg for death before your inevitable end.”

The scent of their fear was like the ambrosia of the gods, fierce and bloodthirsty monsters brought to their knees as his power, the full force of his negativity and the darkness of the space between the stars, bore down on their sin riddled souls. They felt the many agonies of their victims, the terror and horror they had wrought with their own hands, and crumbled at the foot of his throne beneath the duress, helpless to his hold on them.

He allowed the karmic torture to continue for a few moments, a mere taste of what they would suffer in the event of another failure, before he lifted the tremendous weight of their own wrongs from their backs and returned their souls to the LV hardened carapaces they were, the whirling mist of shadows and the dreadful mire of pained wraiths retreating back into the Void and the light of the eclipsed moon filling the room once again. It bared to him the sight of his servants curled in on themselves on the floor, wracked with bone-shattering sobs, and his smile at the sight was reflexive, a smirk of assured victory.

They would not fail him again. Of this, he was certain.

“am i understood?” he questioned leisurely, swirling one finger around the end of a calmer, aimlessly drifting tentacle, and through their helpless cries of sorrow and pain, they murmured their broken assent, staining the intricate red carpet that lined the center of the throne room with their tears.

“yes, master...”

“it won't *hic* happen again...”

A twinge of guilt assaulted him, the fondness he had come to feel for them making him weak for a moment, but it was gone with a shake of his head and a single whiff of the agony choked air, their rare and consuming misery a heady drug that made him lightheaded and nearly giddy. He rose from his throne, the intricate and twisted mass rising from the black granite floor to scrape at the ceiling of the vast room, and descended the steps to walk past them without a backwards glance.

“very good. once you've picked yourselves back up, you should rest... oh, and retrieve dust from wherever he had gotten off to. i have a similar conversation to have with him,” he instructed dismissively, waving a careless hand over his shoulder, before, with a crackle of electric blue lightning and the horrendous sound of the Void itself ripping apart, he disappeared into a wisp of black smoke, nearly indistinguishable against the darkness of the rest of the room.

He had business elsewhere... and company far more pleasant than theirs to attend to.

In their places crumbled on the ground, attempting to overcome the punishment Nightmare had laid on them, both Horror and Killer groaned and panted for breath, each trying to quiet the seemingly never-ending tears pouring down their faces. It was something they had both suffered before, reminders from their dark master of their place in the pecking order, but experience made the feeling no easier to bear, and it was with great difficulty that they slowly managed to calm their wounded cries, clutching sore bones and aching skulls with shaking hands.

Horror recovered first, hefting his bulk from the ground with a grunt and trembling arms; he had far less guilt in his soul than Killer, who was still twitching and weeping where he lay, but even with both their sins combined, they didn't hold a candle to Dust. His meeting with Nightmare was bound to be extremely unpleasant.

Grimacing and shaking his throbbing, cracked skull, Horror extended a hand to help Killer to his feet, thereafter tilting his skull to roll his grotesque red eyelight around the grand throne room cautiously.

“...bout as bad as i thought that would go. but he bought it,” he murmured, adjusting the seating of his jacket on his massive shoulders, and Killer let out a sarcastic chuckle, hands on his knees and wiping at his perpetually stained face with his shoulders to attempt to clear his shameful tears away.

“'s a good thing this one was the last one we needed. wish dust could have picked one from a world we hadn't been assigned to... selfish bastard,” he gritted out, coughing haggardly and squeezing his sockets shut in his lingering pain, but Horror could do no more than shrug, sliding his hands into his shorts' pockets.

“...you know we don't have much of a choice in that. we're drawn to them despite ourselves... despite just about everything,” he chuckled morosely, humorless and lost in his own thoughts (likely considering his own Frisk), and Killer, finally straightening up with groan and several cracks from his spine, snorted and smirked blithely.

“he'll be paying for it soon enough. we should go warn him though... he should have her hidden by now,” he suggested, jerking his skull in the vague direction of the door, and though it took him a moment, gathering his thoughts and slowly pulling himself from his own considerations, Horror nodded, the huge, red iris in his working socket turning to send a considering look at the throne they stood at the foot of.

“...he'd better've. nightmare isn't one to wait... and the last thing we need is him finding out what we're doing,” he grunted, and with a snap, less overwhelming but still potent magic crackling in the still, dark air, both skeletal monsters turned on their heels and disappeared, stepping through the Void to find their compatriot and warn him of what was to come.

Deep within the bowels of the castle the pair had just hurriedly left, in halls that were impossible for anyone but the master of the dark palace to access, Nightmare materialized again, stepping from the dark shadow that a pillar cast. His expression was calmer, than when he left his idiotic underlings... it was almost soft, even, as soft as a being so suffused with darkness could be, and an air of excitement lingered around him, his tentacles seemingly incapable of resisting leading him to his anticipated destination. They extended to pull him hurriedly along the hall, opening doors and guiding his steps, but he didn't seem to mind.

The quicker he returned to her side, the better.

Two more doors, through the intimate privacy of his own chambers, and across the short distance it took to draw to his neatly made bedside later, and finally his tentacles seemed to calm, settling into almost awed consideration as the lord of the deepest night and the darkest hearts gazed down, with crooked smile and desperate adoration, on the sight that awaited him there.

A corrupted hand, gentle and loving, reached out to trace the shape of a delicate cheekbone, full lips drawn into an almost permanent pout, the delicate fall of hair he could still remember running his phalanges through. His gaze traced closed eyelids, a graceful neck he longed to press his mouth to again, the still and fractured form of the woman he loved most, across all the wide multiverse.

His morning and evening star, his one and only... the first and truest Frisk, composed of starlight and kindness and the blessings of the heavens, slumbering and awaiting the completion of his devoted quest.

His touch was a truly meaningless one, to anyone but himself... she was ethereal, in her incomplete form, the pattern stitched into his bed's cover visible through her translucent body, her presence nothing more than a shade of her true self, but the mere gathering power that would restore her to how she should be was a boon to his broken heart, a weight that he had carried ever since she had disappeared so long ago lifted for a bare but necessary moment.

A flicker of absolute hatred crossed Nightmare's face, the reason she had fractured herself in the first place suffusing his mind and reawakening his loathing for the one that had caused it. What he and Frisk had been together, before his fall and her fracturing, had been perfect... why the stars had decided she should belong to both he and Dream, a bride to both the day and the night, he could not fathom. Sharing her had been difficult, but he had done it anyway... she had loved his brother just as much as she had loved him, and he wouldn't take that from her for anything.

Dream had not been of the same inclination. Jealous, pious, and selfish, he had demanded more than his fair share of her time, guilting her into believing he was hurt to be deprived of her. Already self-righteous in his superiority, the love of the universes for his positivity and the golden rain of his sun, he had moved to make her his and his alone, and with this, Nightmare had put his foot down, tearing the heart from the tree of their birth and consuming its fruits to gain its power.

His form had been ruined by his deed, corrupted and darkened forever, but he had finally been stronger than Dream, and had brought to him the fight that he had so clearly desired, tearing apart his kingdom of light and wresting his control of their perfect mate from him by force.

Nightmare could suffer being looked down on for his role, cast in a lesser light in the eyes of mortal beings...

But to have his bride stolen from him, he would not abide.

Frisk had not been able to stand their war. She had hated to see the beings she loved so divided over her, her precious and stardust infused heart breaking in her chest, and in her wisdom, so far above him and Dream and all others, she had cast herself down, to bless souls so much like her own with her kindness and her love, to experience bonds and marriages without the pain Dream had caused her.

That very stardust, the pieces of his beloved in their souls, was what drew every Sans coded monster to their own Frisks. What drove their obsession with the heavens, and what brought about the depth of their affections.

It was not theirs to have. They lived on borrowed time, loving what was not theirs to love, and with the last words she had spoken to them before she had shattered like glass eternally in his mind (“When you learn to love as selflessly as I, I will return to you...”), he had, at last, formulated his plan. He loved her more than anything, more than any other being had surely loved another... that had to be what she meant. So he would take back the stardust of her heart, ripping it from the souls of those so undeserving of her light, and piece her back together.

It was taking far too long. The miserable wretches that were her mates in other worlds defended her so viciously that it would have been admirable, had they not stood in his way. It was a gift, to have the help of ones who did not mind striking them down, who had cold and distant souls, incapable of wanting their own bonds any longer... wresting their Frisks from them, those that still survived, at least, was a simple thing.

He could be patient a little longer, though... so long as he didn't lose any more. In one of their many despised meetings, Dream had divulged that he was doing much the same as he, gathering the pieces of their love to rebuild her heart, and Nightmare would not abide him besting him.

Petty? Perhaps... but he had done worse than desire to have his beloved returned to him.

Nightmare's gentle smile returned to him, and his gaze to the present, as he looked down on the still ephemeral form of his star, seating himself at her side and tracing his fingertips over the back of a disjointed hand, wishing that he could feel her again with a fierce and desperate longing. His tentacles roved her form much the same way, drifting through the mist-like shape of her, and in her slumber, she stirred slightly, a blessed and rare smile lifting her lips.

“Night...” she whispered, her beautiful voice calling to him from across both time and space, and he could have wept at the sound, his ribs aching, for once, not with pain, but with absolute and consuming love, an obsessive thing that had changed him more than even his greatest sin.

“soon, beloved. we'll be together again soon,” he whispered back, pretending to run the back of two phalanges down her cheek, and in his longing imagination, she nuzzled against his touch, her long, thick lashes fluttering against her star flecked cheeks.

Chapter Text

Dancetale

The heavy bass beat booming from the many speakers surrounding the dance floor was oppressive, shaking the blacked out windows of the club, drumming in the ears of the bumping and grinding crowd, and vibrating the air intensely enough to nearly be visible. The sheer volume of the music was staggering, nearly deafening and impossible to speak over (the bartender had resorted to taking orders in writing, a heavy scowl on his flaming face), but none of the dancers seemed to mind, man and monster caught up in the rhythm and the flashing lights and the solid heat of their partners.

Those sitting at the tables, sipping drinks and attempting to chat, had it no easier, having to shout over the music to be heard at all; there was just about nowhere in the building you could find a reprieve from the permeating tempo and carrying notes, not even the basement below.

It wasn't for lack of trying, of course... several couples had retired to dark corners, dingy closets and rickety balconies, in an attempt to achieve closer intimacy and escape the ear shattering music all at once. One such couple had managed to stumble upon an apparent answer to the constant noise, though, a small but heavily tiled restroom on the second floor; the ceramic lowered the volume to little more than a vibrating rumble, low enough for voices and breath to be traded and shared...

Though, admittedly, there wasn't much talking going on.

The couple, a pretty human woman with shoulder length brown hair and a stunning purple dress and a skeleton monster wearing a ball cap, low, baggy sweatpants, and a faded blue hoodie, were locked together in passionate embrace, the only sounds exchanged between them soft pants, quiet moans, when hands wandered and stroked just the right places, and the slick of tongues winding together and wet lips meeting unforgiving bone.

The skeleton, surfacing from the deep and intense kiss, slipped his tongue back between his teeth with a breathless smirk, one of his hands tracing the thigh his partner had wrapped around his waist and the other cupping her blushing cheek. He knocked his forehead against hers softly, appreciatively, and she smiled back at him just as breathlessly, raising her hands to sign at him.

* When you said you wanted to go somewhere more private, I thought you meant you wanted to go home .*

She didn't appear upset, only jesting, returning her hands to their previous place (wrapped around the back of his neck) to kiss him again, and he snickered against her lips, indulging in another few moments losing himself in her before pulling away to sign back, murmuring his words at the same time.

"didn't have the concentration, frisky. you know it drives me wild when you dance like that. at least it's quieter in here. i know you can't hear it, but the music is insane tonight."

Frisk, her shoulders shaking in a quiet, raspy laugh, made a single motion, tapping on her chest with the palm of her hand, before signing again.

* Don't have to hear it, Sans, I can feel it. Same as I can feel your music .*

A blush, and her hand moving to the center of his chest, directly over his soul, signified her meaning, a fond and familiar and loving smile lifting her lips and shining in her eyes, and Sans, his cheekbones coloring a dusty blue and his grin melting away into a crooked and lovelorn smile, felt that soul throb beneath her hand, touched as always by the depth of the meaning in her simple words.

Frisk had been born deaf, had never known the sound of the sea or the calling of birds, the sound of his voice or anyone else's. But she had a gift, a rare and wondrous gift, that she hadn't discovered until it had been awakened by the magic inside the mountain... she could feel a soul's song with her own, could hear the music that lived inside the monsters of his world. It was such a rarity that, despite his people's need for freedom, none had even entertained the thought of taking it from her, too enchanted that a human could really and truly understand their music as deeply as they did themselves, could dance with in perfect time with the beat of their souls.

It was especially true for him. He had nearly lost his music, to a consuming and soul deadening depression, below the mountain. Had lost his passion for the dance that moved and made his people, and had been slowly wasting away without it. She had rekindled it in him simply by listening and understanding, by reminding him of the beauty of his own measure, and he had fallen for her so hard that, when it came to light that their souls were fated to be together, it hadn't even mattered.

He was already head over lovestruck heels.

He considered himself in her debt, for that and many more things, though she scoffed at the thought that he owed her a thing. He owed her the best of himself, the best he could do and give her for the rest of their days together. Once, it would have seemed a monumental task, to live so entirely for someone else... looking into her eyes, feeling her soul beating for him just as surely as he knew she could feel his beating for her, he knew it would be the easiest thing he'd ever done.

"i love you. you know?" he signed and whispered reverently, running his phalanges into her hair and blinking away a mist of tears, and she nodded, smiling serely like the angel she was, and signed no more, pulling him closer by the neckline of his hoodie to reunite their mouths and bodies, to begin an entirely different sort of dance.

He really should have taken her home, should have taken her to their bed and worshipped her how she deserved, rather than nailing her in a dirty bathroom... but he hadn't been lying. When she danced with him the way she had been downstairs, moving not with the music the DJ was playing but with his , the beat that played from his very soul, he could never manage a solid teleport. His mind would be full of her and only her, an obsession and a craving for his one and only.

He'd make it up to her. Once he was thinking clearly again, he'd take her home and keep her up all night, giving her everything she deserved from him. She'd given him so much, his life and his soul back from the abyss that had nearly consumed him... she deserved it.

But that would be later.

Now, with his pants pooled around his ankles and his hands supporting both of his bride's thighs, Sans made their bodies one and gloried in the catch and stutter of her breath in her chest, in the feeling of her body accepting and clinging to him, in her desperate kisses and the rabbit quick beat of her heart and the still steady, melodious music of her soul calling out to his.

He had no mind for romance, for anything but the slick glide of his tongue against hers and the slap of his pelvis to the cradle of her thighs... he was desperate in his need for her, and she in her need for him, every motion that their position allowed her to make arching into and accepting and meeting him for all she was worth. It was a messy, rutting affair, their cries echoing around the small bathroom loudly enough that, if the music wasn't so deafening, they surely would have been overheard, but the want to draw it out and make it last was absent in them both.

Still, despite their urgency, he couldn't in good conscience leave her wanting... he concentrated every ounce of magic not currently forming the length filling his wife's core on her clit, to rub and circle and vibrate against her and bring her to her own end, and managed to reach her climax twice before he found his own, spilling into her with short, juttering twitches of his hips, panting breaths and stroking hands and weary eyes.

He pressed her against the wall a little harder, as he recovered, to ensure he wouldn't drop her while his strength returned to him, but Frisk showed no sign of discomfort, only humming to him the song he knew she could hear emanating from him... their song, the melody their souls sang after they'd made love, and it was all he could do not to weep, burying his face in her shoulder and clutching her to his chest.

Love was not a strong enough word for how he felt for her. He'd find the right one, one day, and it would be as perfect as she was.

Chapter Text

G!Sans: Biker G AU

The mountain air was crisp and bitingly chill, even in the height of the summer's afternoon; the distant and golden sun lay directly overhead, beating down on thick and bristling evergreen boughs and unforgiving, rocky cliffs, singing streams and rejoicing birds wheeling above in the cloudless azure sky, yet none of its heat seemed to persist long enough to warm. A gentle breeze carried with it the scents of pine and cedar and dampened stone, asphalt from the road winding its way through the hills and peaks and cigarette smoke from a rest stop along its meandering length, and any light from the distant and cool sun that found its way to the ground was filtered and spotty, tinted green through broad leaves and sleek needles.

There was a quiet buzzing, persistent but not bothersome, coming from the single still operational vending machine outside the rest stop; the others had been vandalized long ago, and left to rot behind their graffitied bars, empty and staring out into the dense forest. A few other sounds wended their way through the brisk air beside the roadside: the rumble of a train along ancient but well maintained tracks, the sound of the wind rustling and whistling through the trees, the call of a deer in the distance, hidden by the thick trunks and shrubbery of the woods... and a gentle, breathy moan, carried across the road from a rocky overlook, opposite the run down little rest stop.

A couple had stopped there, apparently to take a break from their drive and to look through the set of pay-to-look binoculars secured to a pole and overlooking the deep and verdant valley far below. A pair of motorcycles leaned on their kickstands close to the binoculars, gleaming with chrome and care and power, but the owners of the bikes had retreated from their former occupation, settled on the wide and weathered seat of a historically marked bench, one sitting astride the lap of the other unabashedly.

Perhaps the mountain air had gotten to their heads, perhaps the gorgeous vista had moved their souls to romance... perhaps they were so much in love that they didn't care for the fact that they were in front of god and the rest of the world, not far enough from the side of the road to disguise their activities to unfortunate passersby. Whatever the reason for their interlude, it was clear it was a passionate one, black, well worn leather shifting against bone, skin, and stone alike; the twisting of their tongues, golden magic mixing with slick saliva, did nothing to quiet the sounds of their ardor, pants and hissing breaths and groans of ecstasy carried on the breeze to the ever watchful wood all around them.

Small blessings, that this stretch of road was often unoccupied... none were witness to the skeletal hands, clad in fingerless gloves, that wound around their partner's backside, to guide and squeeze their already circling and grinding hips, teasing the high cut of the skirt they wore, and with a breaking of suction, slick tongues returning to their own custody, the figure straddling the other pulled back to shoot their partner a playfully stern look, dragging black painted fingernails along a defined, handsome, but cracked jawline, the smirk on that face one that only made them all the more lustful.

“You really gonna flash my ass out here? Little inconspicuous for a rest stop,” Frisk tutted breathlessly, hardly giving the monster she was riding with near wild abandon a chance to respond before bending to kiss him deeply again, and when she allowed him a moment, his tongue slicking along her arched throat and her nails biting into the broad shoulders of his riding jacket, G snickered huskily, massaging the handfuls of full, soft ass he held in his palms. He bucked his hips at the same moment, driving his length deep inside his gyrating partner's core, and her gasp of surprised pleasure only stretched his lazy grin wider, his teeth parting to nip at her shoulder playfully, bared by the shirt pulled below her magnificent breasts.

“You're the one that couldn't wait to get to the hotel. Methinks the lady doth protest too much... you wanna get caught~” he purred to her in his divine and at the same time sinful tenor, his bony lips trailing down her chest to pay due diligence to the all too tempting breasts bouncing in his face, and Frisk attempted a snort, rolling her eyes at his teasing, but completely forgot the retort that she had been formulating at the attention he was lavishing on her tightened nipples. She was helpless to the need to grind her hips against him even harder, even faster, the clanking of his hastily undone belt buckle and the wet friction of him sinking into her sodden entrance and the trace of his tongue over her skin and the pulse of their souls in decadent tandem only reminding her of what had brought them here in the first place.

He wasn't entirely wrong... she had certainly been the one to start the intimate encounter, pulling him against her by the lapels of his leather jacket and making it all too obvious what she had on her mind. It was also true that a fair amount of their romantic interludes were semi-public; there was a certain thrill to it, the possibility of being discovered, that she knew he enjoyed just as much as she did.

The truth of it, though, was him entirely. He had rolled into her life in the most unexpected and inexplicable way, in the exact right place at the exact right time, and she had been consumed by him ever since. G, an odd monster with even odder inclinations, had proven to be, while not a gentleman (she was fairly certain gentlemen didn't fuck on the first date, but she hadn't been complaining...), exactly what she needed, cool and collected while still full of the spirit of adventure. He was a breath of fresh air in a world of high expectations and pitiful rewards, pushing her to do what she wanted, rather than what was required of her by societal norms, and she had fallen in step with that life with willful pleasure.

This trip was one of those wants, to drive the lengths of Route 66 with him, to finally see all the things she'd always wanted to, and standing with him on the overlook, the wind swirling through her hair and carrying the scent of him to her, cigarette smoke and magic and motor oil and him , with his arm around her waist and the serenity of nature and his calming presence surrounding her... she had realized something earth shattering, both terrifying and liberating at once.

She loved him.

She had thought she was in love many, many times before. All those feelings, those ill-fated relationships, had all crashed and burned about as hard as it was possible to, the last leaving her in a dark parking lot with a baseball bat and the taste of old beer on her breath and a monster she had drunkenly thought was death itself come to take her soul, helping her wreak righteous vengeance on a cheating son of a bitch and making her laugh and sharing his cigarettes with her. He'd been there ever since, filling the gap in her chest for so long and so thoroughly that she truly hadn't realized it until only a moment before, looking up at him gazing off into the distance, feeling his cool and calm sinking into her skin, knowing he could be anywhere else in the world, but had chosen to be here with her... her soul had throbbed in her chest, so hard she'd been nearly driven to tears, the sudden and overwhelming feeling of just how lost she would be if he wasn't there taking over her mind in an instant.

How she hadn't seen it before, how terrifyingly, deeply in love she was with him, she had no idea... they had never really put a name to what they were, had never made any lasting declarations of intentions, to whatever end. They'd slept together regularly, and she was fairly certain it was an exclusive thing on his end (it definitely was on hers-), but... the thought of falling in love with him had never even occurred to her. The realization that she was already in too deep to escape unscathed scared the shit out of her, almost as big of a fearful rush as riding his dick on the side of the road, and the only recourse to save herself from a full on, panic stricken breakdown had been to lose herself in him, clinging to him and feeling, for the first time and yet for the millionth as well, the utter fulfillment of being with him.

She was a goddamn fool, and she hoped to every star in the sky that this wasn't going to end the same as all the others.

She didn't think she'd survive it, this time.

She'd stopped moving, in his lap, and hadn't quite realized it yet, too lost to her thoughts and her soul numbing fear, but G had more than noticed, and was becoming increasingly more alarmed, when he pulled back to see what was wrong and spotted the glittering tears clinging to her thick lashes. His cracked face creased into concern and alarm immediately, shifting to separate their intimate connection swiftly, to right her clothes and cover her body, and then taking her face between his hands, the magical iris in his left socket flicking over her visage quickly and urgently.

“Frisk? Sweetness, what's wrong? Shit, did my belt cut you? I knew I should've lost the stupid buckle forever ago, it just gets in the way-” he cursed, his hands moving to smooth over her thighs, as though searching for an injury he could heal, and Frisk, hiccuping and humiliated by her own ridiculous emotions, pulled away from him, curling her legs against her chest and burying her face against her knees.

He was a free spirit. She knew that more than anyone... there was no way he could accept, much less return, her feelings. She was so stupid... she'd done this to herself, she was going to ruin their trip, and what they had, and she didn't know how she was going to get over it all this time, he was such a big part of her world now, what she was she going to do -

“...I'm not hurt. I'm just... sorry. And so glad you're here with me...” she whispered, terrified to lift her head to face him, scared that he would somehow see her idiotic emotions written across her forehead (it wouldn't be the first time that he'd been incredibly introspective... he was almost frustratingly good at guessing stuff like that, just from facial expressions), and G's hands, left hanging in the air after she had pulled away, raised to smooth over her hair, more soothing than she deserved.

“Honey, what's going on? I didn't do something wrong, did I? I was just kidding earlier, I wouldn't do anything you don't want me to...” he pressed, scooting closer to her and gently trying to lift her face from the barricade of her slightly trembling knees, and Frisk only resisted another moment before giving into the soft pressure of his fingers under her chin, raising reddened, makeup smeared eyes to meet his sockets. Her lower lip trembled, the unfairness of it all crashing over her as he looked back at her beseechingly, worriedly, placing the blame for her state squarely on his own shoulders.

She couldn't take it. He was going to reject her, she could see no other way this would turn out... but she couldn't let him think he'd done something wrong.

“It wasn't you. It was... it's me. Cuz I'm stupid, and I'm an idiot, andIloveyouandIonlyjustnowrealizeditpleasedon'tleave-” she whimpered, fresh tears slipping down her cheeks to stain them mascara black, and G could only blink in response to her rushed, raw admission, his brows beetled over his sockets...

Before he burst out laughing, one hand rising to hold his forehead and the other pulling her closer to him, to lay her head against his ribcage.

“'S about time. Been waiting for that one for about a year and a half.”

Frisk's sobs froze solid in her chest, her stinging eyes wide and her heart almost unsettlingly loud, beating a tattoo in her ears. She leaned back slowly, uncomprehending and not daring to put credence in what she thought he could mean, to stare at his mirth filled expression, blinking slowly.

“What... what does that mean?” she questioned warily, surely missing some sort of cue in this impossible conversation, and G's snickers finally settled, his hands framing her cheeks and his forehead dropping against hers, a tender and meaningful motion that made her heart throb and twist in her chest, filling her, for the first time in regards to the question of him and her, with hope.

“Your soul's been practically screaming it at me for about that long. Not hard for a monster to figure out, really... not one that used to be a Judge, at least. ...I wanted you to figure it out for yourself, before I did anything about it. I didn't want you to think I was trying to pull some sort of magic mumbo jumbo over on you,” he explained, his sockets creased with contrite assurance and his bony lips soft against hers, peppering her with sweet, apologetic kisses as his thumbs swept her cheeks to clear away her tears. She sniffled, in his embrace, sinking into him and clinging to his soft, cable knit sweater, afraid of staining it with her running makeup but also, at the same moment, not caring in the least.

“I just... didn't think you'd want this. ...me,” she whispered, nuzzling against the thick vertebrae that composed his neck, and he nuzzled back against her, his arms winding around her back to hold her in his lanky embrace. A smirk, fond and tired and utterly besotted, split his face, his sockets drifting closed as he felt, even now, her soul calling to him, so long at odds and in turmoil but now, for the first time, at one with the ridiculous woman he'd fallen for on a dark and rainy night, completely by chance.

“Ha... Sweetness, I'm pretty sure I've loved you since the moment I watched you slit that asshole's tires and laugh while doing it.”

“So what do you think, Vegas wedding?”

“No way, you're putting out for a big wedding for putting me through all that.”

“Putting you through that? I had to put up with sixteen months of your soul begging to be claimed and mated, without you in the know at all. You're lucky my heat is next year... you have no idea what that kind of temptation does to a monster.”

“Guess you'll have to show me~”

“Oh, I intend to.”

Chapter Text

Outertale

“Is this really necessary? I could just close my eyes-”

“c'mon starlight... it's better this way. trust me?”

Frisk pouted her full lips out huffily, shifting her jaw to the side, folding her arms across her chest (much harder to do while wearing Sans' jacket. Stars, this thing was so poofy, like it had been made with the clouds themselves... she loved it so much, and stole it as often as possible), and narrowing her eyes at the skeletal monster seated beside her, who was proffering a length of satiny, deep blue fabric to her, the perfect length to tie around her eyes. This wasn't what she'd been anticipating when he'd told her he had something to show her... she'd already let him drag her out to the midnight gardens, let him pull her down into the stardew dotted grasses and indulged his desire to make out until the triple moons had fully emerged from their daily orbit, shining overhead in silvery splendor and bathing the moonflowers in their heavenly light.

She had to admit that it was beautiful. Almost everything in this place was, though... there was certainly something to be said for living in the vacuum of space itself, amongst the shards of a shattered planet, jetpack hopping between drifting chunks of ivory buildings and golden palaces, filled with verdant gardens and smiling, monstrous faces and the light of the cold fusion sun, all miraculously preserved by the magic of the world's inhabitants and the power of their beloved constellations. She had been certain that being sent into the very depths of the frontier lands, beyond dead and dried out planets and the touch of even the nearest sun, had been a death sentence, sure there was as little on this side of the universe as everyone in the colonies had always thought...

And then she had stumbled, literally facefirst, upon the miraculous and impossible solar system she had been residing in ever since, a gentle, bright blue, and magical star gathering to itself the abandoned, frozen, and forgotten realms around it. They turned and spun around the source of warmth in the cold reaches of far space, returned to life by its aura and its magicks, and were peopled by the most wondrous sorts of creatures she had ever met. Monsters, they called themselves, but were far from the human definition of them... they had welcomed her, when she had misjudged the gravitational pull of the inconceivable sun and crash landed on the shattered remains of a once great kingdom, welcomed her and took her in as family without restraint, treated her better than she ever had been in the colonies.

The manner of her birth, lowly and inconsequential and unwanted even by her parents, didn't matter to them. They judged by the content of a person's character, by their deeds and the works of their hands, and accepted her readily, teaching her the ways of the stars and how to channel the magic that the azure sun was slowly but surely awakening within her heart of hearts, a warm and pulsating soul that she hadn't even known she possessed until she had come to this place.

Everything about her life here, while she worked to repair her ship and put off, longer and longer, her report of what she had found in the far reaches, was blissful. The friends she had made, the warmth and companionship she was given without question, just how good she felt, every day, actually wanting to get out of bed and face the day, were incredible. The thought of leaving them, and completing a mission she knew would end in the colonies attempting to seize this solar system, was unimaginable to her... and in the end, when her ship was ready to take off once again, to take her back to a place she had never truly belonged, she had let it leave without her, erasing the coordinates back to where she had disappeared and sending it off into the cold grasp of the galaxy empty.

She couldn't betray them, it wasn't in her to see them driven from their home and stripped of their simple joy, all for the gaining of power for those above her. She would rather stay here, among those that truly cared for her, for the rest of her days.

And it was with this intention that she had settled into her life in their little section of the stars, set up a mechanic shop and moved off of Toriel's couch and into her own home (hers... she'd never had more than a crowded bunk in the bowels of the settlement ship, just a number among the millions cast adrift and in search of a new world to destroy with their greed-)... fallen in love with the star obsessed nerd gazing at her beseechingly with his huge golden eyelights, the sparkling of stardust freckles spread across his cheekbones catching and reflecting the light that surrounded them and suffused everything it touched with its power, the moonflowers blooming and releasing their almost aphrodisiatic pollen into the air.

Meteorflies buzzed to life with the flowers' opening, streaking through the night and leaving trails of speckled stardust in their wake... the stars and the moons above and around them bathed her in their glory, sang a song more ancient than life itself to the soul stirring in her chest, and when he smiled, little wrinkles creasing around his sockets, her stubbornness gave way almost immediately, a heavy sigh leaving her as she reached out to take the blindfold from his extended palms.

“Oh alright. You can cut it out with the puppy dog eyes now, you dork,” she chuckled good naturedly, sinking back into the cozy warmth of his blue and yellow streaked coat as her hands rose to tie the soft material around her eyes, and Sans, his grin melting at the sound of her laughter and the sight of her smile, reached out to help her. He pulled her shining, exquisitely long brown hair out of the way with one hand and stroked the length of her throat with the other, thumb dragging over her gentle pulse, through the sheen of stardust that glittered on her skin, delighting in the slight shiver that shook her form. He couldn't seem to take his sockets off of her tonight...

He didn't plan to for the rest of his life, if the night went as well as he hoped it was going to.

“how's that. can you see anything?” he questioned when her hands fell away from the blindfold, her fingers sliding along the bones of his lower arm that the rolled up sleeves of his sweater bared, and when she shook her head, pantomiming ironically by waving a hand in front of her face, he leaned in to kiss her once more (he could never get enough of her... she tasted exactly how it felt to bathe in the light of the stars), lingering long enough for her arms to attempt to wind around his neck before pulling back, scooting around her, and settling her in the cradle of his thighs, her back pressed to his ribcage and his chin resting on her shoulder.

Frisk snuggled back into him for a moment, giggling when he nuzzled her throat and more than a little intrigued by what he had planned. If he wanted to play kinky, he could have just tied her to his bed again…

“So… what’s the point of this?” she pressed when he made no move to enlighten her, seemingly content with lavishing kisses up and down the length of her neck, and she felt him smirk against her skin almost too well, his exhalation sending gooseflesh up her arms and a pleasant shiver along her spine.

“it’s easier to feel with senses other than your eyes. now... i want you to hold out your hands, like you're trying to cup water in your palms,” he instructed in a dulcet croon, his own hands moving to slide along her arms to lift them into position, and Frisk did as she was bidden with no small amount of bemusement, feeling like this was the leadup to some grand prank. She wouldn't put it past him... he had been really excited that evening when he'd come to collect her, nearly hopping on the spot and spouting things she didn't understand about the effects of a triple supermoon. 

If he was about to put something gross in her hands, she was going to...

Going... to...

“What is that ?” she queried breathlessly, her cupped fingers twitching with surprise as... something she couldn't even begin to explain filled her palms, swirling like thick mist and overflowing the confines of her hands only to float away, outside the blackness of her obscured vision. It tingled against her skin, sparking its way into her blood and filling her bones until she felt electrified and peaceful all at once, something akin to a drug high slipping over her mind even as she felt ready to take on the universe itself. The feeling left her gasping, reeling and dizzy but clear and centered at the same time, having to lean into Sans' solid rib cage to keep from being overcome entirely.

Her bony lover cupped his larger hands underneath hers, enclosing her in his embrace and watching her face with calm assurance, socket lids heavy with the same feeling she was being assaulted by.

“that's magic, starshine. star magic, pure and unfiltered. what we're all made of... what we've worshipped for ages. monsters can always feel it, even on the darkest day furthest away from any sun or star... but it's the strongest on nights like these. i hoped you'd be able to feel it, even just a little bit,” he whispered reverently, turning his head to press his bony lips to her ear through the covering of her hair and the blindfold, glorying in the feeling of her body trembling against him, in the mate of his soul sharing the holiest night among his kind with him.

They both marveled for an unknowable time, her over the feeling of the ageless universe itself passing through her, telling her the story of time and space until tears rolled in droves down her cheeks, until her body shook and she could do no more than cling to him, and he over the feeling her in his arms, her soul blossoming much like the rare and beautiful flowers that surrounded them. She almost seemed to glow, encompassed by the ancient and powerful magic that had breathed life into the universes, into him and her and everything they both knew and didn't...

She was everything, in that moment, a goddess lost to time and caught up in the stars, and he couldn't have kept from pulling her blindfold away to bare her luminous eyes to him again, couldn't have stopped himself from kissing her again, and again, if he'd truly had the mind or will to try, drinking her in and cradling her to him and weeping along with her, in sheer gratitude to the very stars that had led her to his world and to him.

He hardly recalled what life had been like before her. It had been empty, he was certain, filled with meaningless minutia and trivial concerns... she had torn across his sky like a comet, a literally flaming ball of unspeakable beauty and power (he'd been witness to her ship crashing, that fateful day, had pulled her from the wreckage and breathed life back into the cold body of what had to be a fallen star, far more beautiful than anything he'd ever seen-), and he had dreaded the day she had to leave more than anyone, never once speaking his inexorable wish for her to stay but praying, each and every night, that she would somehow know this was where she truly belonged.

And by some miracle, she had stayed. She had stayed and made a home among his people, shone more and more brightly with every day that passed... returned his feelings when he had finally found the courage to lay them bare before her. He could have never imagined thinking there was something more worthy of his time and adoration than the stars so beloved of his people, before her... he could no longer consider them without seeing her among them, their light reflected in her teasing, loving, intelligent eyes.

He knew he couldn't live without her, and had thought to make that plain to her tonight, more plain than his repeated proclamations of his love throughout their days, at least (he was sure he embarrassed her, at times, but he couldn't help it)... but her serenity, her pure joy in the universe that had been his first love before she had crashed her way into his life, was more than enough for tonight.

The heavy weight of his gift in his shorts' pocket could wait.

For now, all he needed was her... and with the fullness of the stars' light echoing through her open heart and rejoicing soul, he knew she felt the same.

Chapter Text

Mad Doctor Sans: Plague Doctor

There were many, in his long existence, that had called him a madman.

Small minds, all of them... exempt from the burden of higher intelligence and the weight of academic curiosities. He did what he had to do, in the name of science and progress, and apologized to no one for his at times unconventional methodology. There were many, among monsterkind, that retched at the very thought of touching the dead... he had made it his job to study cadavers, to learn everything he could of their mechanics and workings, to better help cure those of his world. He had left behind the royal academy in the name of such research, to combat the plague that was raging through the human world, and spent much of his time, in the time before being shunned and ostracized, alone with the dead.

Often, they were better company than the living, he liked to joke. No one had ever laughed.

All of his study was for naught, however. The cure was beyond his means, beyond the knowledge of his time; the answer was just out of his reach, tantalizingly close and yet so far, and in his darkest hour, in his and every human’s time of need… he turned to one who could give to him the knowledge he needed to best the plague, a curative well within his capabilities to create and use to cure mankind their ailment.

What was a soul, in exchange for such knowledge? He had no need of it. The three-eyed demon could have it, and be glad of it.

Among his kind, his studies and his needful sacrifice named him an unstable heretic, though. After a long and humiliating trial, he was cast out of the kingdom, and threatened with pain of death if he dared return. Seeking to heal humans of the Black Death, feeling pity for other creatures and giving up his soul in the name of saving them, earned him only grievance and abandonment, banished and disparaged far and wide for little more than empathy. His own brother had disowned him, turning him aside and hardly able to look at him, and had left him no choice but to settle in the lands of mortal men, outside one of the lesser of their diseased cities, to continue his errand.

Humans were no kinder. This was a little more understandable... he bore the face of the reaper they feared above all else, bare bones and grinning teeth and empty eyes, predicting their demise and laying bare before them their own inevitable futures. Their fear of his face had long ago driven him to don the apparel of the so called Plague Doctors of their kind, the dark robes and thick gloves and cleansing masque (he had never required them before; monsters were immune to the Great Mortality), but it had done little good, once rumors of his real appearance had spread. They still spoke untruths of his ceaseless errand, his study and doctoring of the plague slowly but surely killing off their entire race... defiler, they spat, fearing his intimate knowledge of their systems and workings when he only meant to help them. Demon, they cried, hiding behind their damned church pulpits and spitting at his shoes.

Murderer, they accused, when his greatest efforts to cure a patient failed, despite all he had done and given to attempt to save them.

They had not cast him out, though. They whispered behind their hands, closed tight their doors when he passed by on the street, made the holy sign of the stars before their foreheads when they glimpsed his abode, but they not only allowed him to continue his craft, they came to him of their own free will, begging help when their loved ones fell ill, or injured their weak and fragile forms, or succumbed to the deathly clutches of the plague. They came crawling despite their misgivings, despite the words they spoke and thought he did not hear, and he, in the mercy their precious stars certainly did not give them, gave to them the benefit of his cure.

He could easily have been petty. Despite the things they said of him (he had heard them all: that he had risen from the grave as a shambling corpse to poison the rest of their people, consumed the hearts of young women to achieve the wisdom of the fairer sex, devoured the thoughts of great physicians to learn their craft and knowledge), he had feeling too, and though little of what they said bothered him, he sometimes allowed his mind to wander to the gratification it could give, to close the door in their faces and leave them to their well earned fate, when they came begging for his medicines and curatives.

It was an amusing thought, that was for certain... but it went against his mission to do such a thing. It would do him no good to leave a pestilence riddled human to spread the Death to their neighbors, simply from a want to seek vengeance for unkind words.

That, and his hovering, tutting, mother-henning (and lovely beyond compare, but that detail was a trivial one-) assistant would never let him hear the end of it.

She was a nuisance just as much as she was a boon, his Frisk. An oddity and a wonder, perhaps, to those who had not known her so long... she earned much the same scrutiny and appall that he did, for her close association with him, though there was a great deal of forgiveness given her, for her much more lovely appearance and less short temperament. 

She had been in his service since she was a girl of perhaps thirteen, orphaned and left to rot on the frigid, filthy streets. He had discovered her in his stables, one morning, attempting to eat the horses' oats to stave off her starvation, and he had taken her in, unable to understand how her own kind could leave a child to die.

She had earned her way from that first day, though he hadn't asked it of her. He was a scrupulous housekeeper already, strictly hygienic and averse to filth of any manner, but she had taken up all the chores around the rather large manor he had acquired with the gold he had not left for his brother, when he had been cast out (the former owner, landowner and cruel governor, had been dragged through town behind a donkey and hung in a disused well not a fortnight before, so it had been well furnished already), and had set to rights the somewhat dilapidated grounds as well, planting a very handy herb garden to provide many of the raw ingredients his medicines required.

It was outside his wheelhouse, child rearing... he knew he had been distant, in those early years, beyond seeing to it that she was well dressed and schooled to his liking. She had not seemed to mind, which, with her help around the house, had allowed him a great deal more time for his never ending studies, and his work advanced by leaps and bounds in that time, the years speeding by almost without his noticing. The plague had settled then, for a time, only whispers of the dire sickness arising from the largest of cities far from his own home, and it was only when he found himself without patients that he emerged from his work and paid mind to his charge.

It was beyond his understanding, how much she had grown in the five years that she had been in his care. She was taller than him, when she had only come up to perhaps his collarbone what seemed like a few days before, a blossoming woman unmistakably changed from the thin, gaunt child she had been. She had spoken to him with intelligence and surety, preparing the meals he liked most and setting out his clothes in just the way he preferred, after the laundering... she had listened intently, when he spoke, asking excellent questions when he paused and not speaking over him, as many humans liked to do.

The realization that she had stayed, and happily cared for his belongings and abode, and learned so much of him despite his inattention and distance, had surprised him for the first time in what felt like a century of knowing the way that humans behaved. He had known almost nothing of her, beyond how her schooling had progressed and her remarkably good head for budgeting (something he had always struggled with), and with his greater free time, he had bent himself to learning of her too, offering her a much larger room than the one she had occupied during her stay (and much more fitting of a lady), speaking with her much more often, and, an oddity for him, extending the opportunity to teach her some of his knowledge.

She took to the work with a will, showing a quickness and a propensity for the art of healing that many of her kind simply did not possess; she had astounded him frequently, her skill with medicines advanced beyond her years and her bedside manner, with very little pride lost in the admission, greater than his by leaps and bounds. He had quickly entertained, and offered her, a position at his side as his assistant, a paid position that she had accepted eagerly, and for perhaps another few months, his work had, again, progressed quickly, having two pairs of hands and another quick mind to assist him bringing about not just new, before impossible procedures, but advanced curatives for illnesses other than his specialty.

And then, he had heard her name in town, during one of the rare shopping trips he insisted on doing himself. He had been, in an infrequent bout of nostalgia, intending to buy the girl a birthday gift, and had been on the way to fetch the dress from the shop (a rather frilly and cumbersome thing that he did not understand the purpose of, beyond aesthetics, but it matched the color of her cheeks when he gave her a compliment and he was rather attached to the thought of seeing it on her), when he overheard the conversation of a group of gossiping fishwives.

He had thought they were speaking ill of him, as was the usual affair, and had meant to walk on, when the conversation had taken a turn that made him stop directly in a filthy puddle, the rancid water soaking through his boots in a moment... but he had been frozen, unable to move as their cruel and insidious words sank into his mind. 

They had spoken of impropriety, dark and salacious rumors of how Frisk truly served him... they had dragged her good name through mud filthier than what he stood in, naming her a harlot and scrawling the good of her intent in scarlet letters. For a beautiful woman of marriageable age to live alone with a man, a monster , even... it was beyond unthinkable, to minds such as theirs.

Surely she must be his tamed and kept human whore.

He was not a violent creature. Combat and conflicts and ire were things for lesser beings to entertain, and he had never bothered to soil his hands or waste his time with actions so far beneath him. In that moment, though, a rage he had never felt in his many years had burned in him hotter than a chemical fire, searing his bones and cracking the glass in his masque's goggles and evaporating the puddle he had stood in only a moment before. 

He had been given great magical power, by his sire, though he was loath to use it for anything beyond fetching things from across the room... he could crush these weak minded, vitriol spewing wretches with a single clenching of his hand, and not lose a moment of sleep over it. He could run the cobbled streets with their blood, fill the ash and smoke filled air with their screams, make them regret every word they had spoken in their cruel and harsh judgment of one who was so undeserving.

They could say whatever they wished of him. He did not, and never would care. They would not speak ill of her and live, though. He would see to it personally.

It had taken everything in his power to walk away, to hide himself in the dress shop and occupy his enraged mind with imagining Frisk's joy to be gifted each of the pretty and useless scraps of fabric on display. He had not trusted himself to walk the streets again until nearly nightfall, clutching the box that contained her new dress (dresses... he hadn't stopped himself buying her two more, he hadn't had the control at the moment-) in his arms to keep his hands busy, and had, shamefully, hidden himself away in his chambers that night, leaving her to discover his gifts on her own and to mull over what he had learned that day, both of himself and of the delicate situation he found himself in.

He had come to a decision, that night, that he had not liked in the least, and hadn't the courage to face the reason for... he had decided to send her away, to live in a home of her own, and arranged for her to work for the apothecary, rather than in his charge. He so infrequently considered the trivial nonsense of propriety that society required, his work was of far more import to him than being polite or making small talk with the local farmhands. He had not even considered what her kind would think of her staying with him, incorrectly assuming that they would know she was only there as his assistant, and after being forced to see through the eyes of those who would judge her, had seen that it truly wasn't proper.

Frisk had not been receptive in the least, though.

He had never seen her so angry, then to hear his reasoning for wanting to make her leave his service. She had long heard and borne the gossip and had not cared, she had told him, crystalline tears leaking down her flushed cheeks and falling to the very same dress he had made for her, the pink just as fetching as he had imagined against her skin. She cared as little about what they had to say about her as he cared for what they said about him; her only concern was staying with him, helping him in his quest to abolish the Pestilence, and ensuring that he ate and slept and didn't collapse from exhaustion.

She loved him, and would not leave him until he rejected her of his own accord, she had wept, clinging to the locket that had been her only possession upon his finding her, and had kissed him so quickly that he nearly missed it, she had fled so hurriedly from his presence.

It was, to be frank, the only time in his life that his mind went blank. He could do no more than stare after her, then, the sticky residue of her lipstick clinging to his teeth, her perfume filling his head and the feeling of her hand on his cheek bone lingering and dulling his senses inexplicably. He had not been able to think, could not breathe, and could not move, not even when he heard her room's door slam far above his head. He had only been able to sit in the chair he had settled into, and look to the place at the table she had occupied only a moment before, and attempt to understand what had just transpired.

Love was one chemical reaction that he had not understood, and still struggled with to this day. He had partaken in the occasional fling, every once in awhile, while in the monster kingdom... he had not bothered to attempt to find a partner, after being forced to leave, far too occupied with his work to do anything more than relieve the tension himself and clear his mind of his momentary lusts. He had never been attached to anyone, certainly never fallen in love... and he hadn't been certain he would be able to return Frisk's feelings, with his lack of a soul to truly feel.

What he felt for her... well, he truly had no name for it, then. After taking her on as an assistant, his behavior had changed, despite his attempts to rein it in. He would become harsh and petty with men that flirted with or touched her, while they worked; once, he had “accidentally” dumped an entire basin full of leeches onto the lap of the saloon owner, and only smirked at his cries of panic. Against her will, he paid her exorbitantly well, enough to ensure she had everything she wanted and more... he observed her more that could be considered sociable, though he refrained as soon as he noticed his lapse. He found himself thinking of her in times when he should have been focusing, and could not truthfully say she had never crossed his mind in moments of... self intimacy.

Could he love her too, and he simply had no way to feel it?

It had seemed possible, in a very sudden and rose tinted light, and he had gone to her room to attempt to soothe her with as much heart as he possessed on his sleeves. Their conversation, filled with tears and gentle, exploratory touches and the occasional bout of laughter, had lasted long into the night, long enough that when he had finally left her side, the moon had fallen perfectly through her lacy curtains to frame her lovely face, and he had hardly been able to leave for the beauty of the scene, a sight he could compare to none other.

And so it had gone. She had stayed, for he was incapable of turning her away, and she had loved him until he knew the name of his own feelings, and was able to return hers, at least as well as a being such as he could. There was no hope for a marriage between them, in either her kingdom or his, but that mattered little to either of them. They knew each other, inside and out, and their wedding vows were spoken in kisses pressed to bare flesh, in tokens lovingly given and a bed shared for the very first time.

Things changed very little, as the years went on, beyond their more formally recognized relationship and the resurgence of the Great Calamity. She still worked at his side, taking better care of him than he deserved, and he still became far too ensconced in his work. He stumbled, in being a good partner to her, but she was always willing and ready to forgive when he came to the awareness of his failings, and had incredible patience with his foibles and flaws.

And then, the pitiless stars that she worshiped just as fervently as the rest of her kind saw fit to curse her... she fell prey to the Black Death, consumed with the illness that had taken an indescribable amount of lives. He had never panicked so, as he did at her sickbed, bending every one of his talents and the furthers of his knowledge and every single hour of the day to seeing to her recovery and survival. Even with the knowledge the demon had granted him, the cure was not always successful… he was certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that without her there, he would perish as well, that he would not live beyond her final breath, and worked harder than he ever had to save her life, for both of their sakes.

Two months of strain and worry and tears, damp clothes and weary bones and more pain than he ever wished for her to experience again, and she was brought back from the edge of mortality. She was weak for another, too weak to assist him, despite her insistence that she needed to help him and those in the city, and when she was finally able to rise from her sickbed and return to theirs, she admitted to having feared she would never be able to ask for the thing she had been considering since the night they had consummated their informal marriage, something she wanted more than anything in the world.

She wanted a child of her own. His child, if they could manage it, by some miracle, and in his gratefulness to have her in his arms again, he agreed, and bent all his will and talents to researching this new focal point.

He no longer possessed a soul, devolved into heat as his kind did to create their children… he wasn’t certain that he was capable, without it. But with his considerable knowledge, magic, and a great deal of effort and study, he believed they could manage it.

And it was to this end, deep in the night hours and beneath the light of a cheshire moon a few weeks later, that his hips pistoned haplessly against her backside, his phalanges dug into her hips and his mouth pressing kisses along the back of her neck. His bride, lovely beneath the moon and so precious to him that his empty chest ached with what he knew now to be love, breathed out gasping, haggard moans beneath him, clinging to his pillow and curling her toes into the sheets, ragged pleas of his name escaping her parted lips as he mated her with near reckless abandon. It was the third time that night, the insides of her legs dripping with chartreuse tinged, magical seed and their sheets spattered with even more, and Sans, his socket lids lowered with both concentration and intimate ardor, only intended to add more to it, his thrusts already jerky and instinctively deep.

One of his hands sloped down the curve of his bride's spine lingeringly, following the trail of sweat dripping down her moon bathed skin, and the other dipped between her legs to rub her clit in quick, precise circles, expertly trained in exactly what it took to bring her to her orgasms. He had her cumming for him within moments, wailing with pleasure and keening his name and clenching around him exquisitely, and with her body greedily attempting to drink him in again, he filled her once more, his pelvis pressed to her rear and his length pulsing in time with the beat of her precious soul.

He lingered there, over her, long enough to finish completely, panting and kissing along her shoulders and massaging her abdomen, as though to encourage her to take his magic in deep, before lifting himself off of her, pulling himself from inside her with a lewd slurp (she moaned weakly, and he couldn't help but smile at the sound and the look of her), and scooting off the bed, walking to his desk beneath the window to retrieve a bound notebook full of notes.

Frisk, recovering enough to open her eyes to search for him, let out a sigh of both need and exasperation as she fell limply to her side, her legs weak and trembling from the intensity of their lovemaking but her blood still heated with the need for more. They had both drunk a concoction of herbs and potent magic meant to increase their libidos and encourage fertility, and it was definitely having at least one intended effect.

Stars, she needed him...

“Sans... Sans please, do you have to-” she began to protest, reaching for her husband again and arching against the sheets as attractively as she could manage, and Sans glanced over the top of his notebook at her, his sockets dragging down her body appreciatively. His still erect cock twitched, the need still raging rampant in him as well, but he turned back to his notes resolutely, scribbling down several lines of observations in quick but neat hand.

“recording the data of our experiment is essential. nothing of this sort has ever been attempted before, and life is a delicate thing, magical or not. if we want a child, i must,” he insisted, pausing for a moment to consider something before continuing to write, and Frisk, moaning quietly at the heat flaring between her thighs, slid her hand down the length of her body to slip her fingers inside herself, pumping them in and out of her slightly sore but still hungering core. She felt so full of him...

And somehow still needed more.

“Please... I still need you...” she whined, the slick of her motions becoming audible as she pleasured herself for his viewing pleasure, and this, along with the sight of his seed leaking out of her and onto the already dampened sheets, was enough to pull him away from his notes, setting aside the notebook so he could return to her.

He slid onto the bed, and back between her legs, almost seamlessly, one hand supporting his weight as he bent to kiss her thoroughly, his tongue twisting and dancing with hers and his other hand slipping between her legs, taking her wrist and directing her plunging fingers in their motion until she moaned into his mouth. He pulled back then and only then, dragging her hand up to lay beside her head, her hair strewn over the pillow and her skin flushed with lust, and stroked his knuckles over her cheek, meeting her hazy gaze with his own.

“hmm. you'll have me too, my love... but the data is just as important as the results. science is only truly different than play when it is recorded...” he remonstrated gently, tracing the shape of her parted lips with his forefinger, then smirked with a trace of wickedness glinting in his sockets, his hips lowering to slip his length back inside her warmth, savoring the keen of pleasure she let out as he joined with her again.

“and when that data can be repeated~”

Chapter Text

Horrortale

Frisk knew he was there long before she saw him. It was an instinct buried deep in her chest, an almost magnetic pull whenever he was near... he was behind her, not close enough to touch but enough for her to feel his quiet anger, the weight of his staring, scarlet iris on her back.

He was furious, just as she knew he'd be.

She shivered, against the stiff and pine scented wind, the chill cutting all the way to the bone... she stopped in her tracks, closing her eyes and bowing her head. She'd hoped she would get further, in her hurried escape... she'd waited until she knew he had left for one of his missions for his dark master to run, to attempt to slip away into the night and spare him more inevitable pain.

It seemed as though she was always hurting him, always unintentionally but deeply nevertheless... her long absence from the mountain had directly caused his many injuries, had twisted his form and his mind and his soul into something he had never been meant to be.

It had been outside her will, to disappear so thoroughly... fate had willed that, the moment that she had appeared outside the mountain after her battle with Flowey (she had no idea how she had ended up outside the barrier... another boon from the kind souls, perhaps?), she had been struck by a truck on the highway nearby, injuring her so badly that she had been comatose for nearly a month.

When she had awakened, she had plead with the doctors to let her go, desperate to fix the mess she had left and unable to reset outside the mountain, but her descriptions of monsters buried beneath a mountain had done little more than earned her a place in the asylum outside the city, sedated and bound there for the next ten years. She had truly lost hope of ever being freed, lost in a sea of drugs and wonderment of if the monsters and her journey through the Underground really wasn't just a dream after all... when Sans had come for her.

He was far from the Sans she remembered. He was huge , easily three times the size he had been when she had last seen him, his thick bones yellowed and cracked from many hard years and a great amount of damage. His clothes were a wreckage, though they remained of the same design as she recalled, torn and faded and splattered with untreated splotches of something dark and red, and his bearing itself was no longer the friendly, easygoing, and  jesting monster he had been before. His broad shoulders were hunched forwards, his stance wide and instinctively defensive, and his teeth, sharper than they ever had been before, were often bared in warning, his single massive, scarlet eyelight pulsing and glowing in his shattered skull.

She would have screamed, the moment she saw him, if he hadn't put a massive hand over her mouth to keep her from doing just that.

He had stolen her from her confinement cell in the dead of night, leaving behind nothing but broken restraints and an empty bed, and had taken her to a house nestled deep in the mountainous woods, impossible to reach without the use of magic or a really, really good map, and, without explanation, had shackled her to a new bed within. He had nursed her back to normal health there, feeding her insistently until she regained healthy weight and helping her regain the ability to walk normally... though she could not understand why, at the time.

He had been... hostile, for lack of a better term. All he did was glare at her, morning, noon, and night, when he wasn't... wherever he went off to. He very infrequently talked to her, and when he did it was usually in sharp, clipped commands, in a voice so deep it reverberated in her chest. She had felt just as trapped there with him, during her recovery, as she had in her cell, and had spent a great deal of time wondering why he had saved her at all, if he intended to simply keep her prisoner in a different place.

When she had fully recovered, though, he removed the shackle around her ankle that had kept her in place, sat down before her on the floor, and had told her everything . Everything, from the time that she had disappeared to the time that he had decided to rescue her. How the Underground had descended into starvation, madness, and chaos... the things he had been required to do, to keep from starving. How he had been so greatly injured, the journey of his now adoptive daughter Aliza... his deep hatred of her, and the blame he had laid on her before knowing what had happened to her, especially and wickedly cruel considering their soul resonance.

That part had taken a LONG time for him to explain, both because of his exasperation with her confusion and his apparent problems with memory, after his skull injury. The most she had understood, at the time, had been that their souls wanted to be together, all Sanses and Frisks had the connection, and that the connection with someone he hated so much hurt his soul nearly constantly.

He told her of his recruitment by Nightmare, a mad god consumed with a quest to find and harvest each and every Frisk's soul in the multiverse, to serve himself. He had taken Aliza and Papyrus from him, to force him to work for him, and he had, with no small amount of deeply buried fury... but he had always promised himself that, given the opportunity, he would attempt to find her, to at the very least take his revenge for leaving them all to die.

Discovering that she had been imprisoned the entire time had been a system shock for him. He had always believed she had simply moved on, forgetting them all and leaving them to rot... he had felt so betrayed, for so long, that he hadn't known what to do with all his anger. It lingered still, even though he knew what had transpired... and in his unfair hatred, he had left her there, for another two years. He had looked so guilty, at this admission, his semi-permanent grin curving into a much smaller one, for the first time since she had been reacquainted with him. He had rejected her attempt to comfort him, though, bemused and, by his own admission, still possessed with a deep mistrust of her.

Knowing Nightmare's plan, though, and with the help of others much like him, he had finally found a way to rescue her and hide her, to at the very least keep her alive out of recompense, for the way he had behaved. He wanted no part of the bond other they had, had made it very clear that his only intent was to ensure she recovered and was allowed to live a relatively normal life, and had left it at that, allowing her the run of the house, besides the locked bedroom he had taken for himself, and, though he returned often to ensure she was eating and to restock the food, that was the end of the conversation for them.

She had been fine with that, too. The last thing she wanted was a relationship with someone that held such a huge grudge against her, regardless of how she may or may not be incredibly drawn to him.

…at least, that was how it had started.

That had been before the time she had stumbled over one of his legs in her dark bedroom, his huge form hidden by the deep of the night... he had been sleeping beside her bed, rather than in his own room, one of his arms extended to nearly reach her hand, and though she had considered waking him, she had instead laid back down, and gently slid her hand into his.

It had been before him teaching her how to cook, all the brushed hands and lingering glances and the heat of the small but comfortable kitchen. It had been before the nightmares that sent her running to him for comfort, before she started to miss him when he was gone for longer than usual...

It had been before the first heat season he had experienced in fifteen years.

By his own admission, he suspected that it would return, once he no longer hated his own soulmate quite so much... he had planned to stay far, far away, had told her he would be gone for at least two weeks and to make sure to feed herself with more than just chips and cookies. Her offer of helping him, if it was going to be so painful for him, was rejected so quickly and harshly that she had actually been offended, told him to go fuck himself if he was so insistent on it, and refused to talk to him again until he had left in anticipation of his heat.

He hadn't stayed away, though. He had lasted perhaps three days before he had come back, sweating heavily and delirious with lust and exuding a scent so attractive that her knees nearly collapsed from a single whiff. There had been no talk, no apologies or repeated offers. He had scooped her up into his arms, turned on his heel, and landed with her beneath him in his locked room, the cute pajama pants he had gotten her torn to shreds and all he could fit of his frankly ridiculously large cock buried inside her.

Things had been different, after those sleepless weeks of lust and pleasure. He had insisted he still intended never to act on the bond, that it had just been instinct and wouldn't happen again... she wasn't sure he knew the meaning of 'never again', honestly. He seemed to constantly be following her around, after that, always managing to be in the same room as she was regardless of what she was doing (she was fairly certain he hovered outside the bathroom, even, though she had no proof), crowding up against her on the couch and badgering her into sleeping in his bed, rather than hers, more nights than not. He was an incredibly tactile monster, loved it when she wore textured or thick, fluffy clothes, and very often bundled her up in various throw blankets, the moment she sat down long enough to coddle her. 

She'd have been more annoyed if it weren't so comfortable.

Sex was much more rare than the very frequent displays of PDA he seemed to prefer. He ate her out more than anything else, though she would offer to reciprocate once he'd had his fill... he seemed almost afraid of losing control like he had during his heat, citing the bruises and cuts and bites she had suffered with a look of deep shame on his face.

She had tried to reassure him that she definitely hadn't minded, but he wouldn't hear it, usually returning to his stubborn insistence that he didn't want to bond with her and should avoid breeding with her as much as possible, and though she shrugged it off, at first... it had started to hurt more and more, each time he had repeated himself.

Things had started to become strained. She... she had tried to keep herself from falling, knew he must have his reasons for refusing to let them connect more... and still she had hurt herself by falling in love with him. She hadn't been able to stop herself, not with the way he would stroke his fingers through her hair while he braided it, not with the way he said her name... not with the way he would look at her, his crimson iris fluttering nearly as quickly as her heart.

It was that that made what came next especially hard to bear.

As time had gone on, Sans had started coming back home in deep agony, capable of nothing but gathering her close and retiring to bed for hours at a time. Nothing but keeping her there, tight against his chest, seemed to soothe him, what she was certain were tears wetting her hair while she had allowed him to use her as a comfort item, and the more that it happened, the more worried she grew, until she insisted on knowing what was going on.

His response had shaken her all the way to her soul, a well of extreme and potent guilt opening up in her stomach to swallow all else.

Nightmare had begun to grow impatient with he and his compatriots' efforts in gathering, or at least pretending to gather, Frisk souls for his cause. He had started to regularly torture them all, pressing innumerable sins and guilt and pressure on their already damaged souls, to ensure they would comply with what was required of them, and the only thing that could soothe the terrible and lingering pain was her, her soul breathing calm and cool and quiet back into him.

She could hardly believe he would take on so much suffering just to keep her alive, just to make sure she had a good life in exchange for his leaving her to rot in her prison. She couldn't bear it, her heart aching with her guilty and denied love, and it was this that had driven her out into the deep of the woods that night, an attempt to remove herself from his care and, perhaps, ease his suffering and burden.

She couldn't stand the thought of him being hurt so badly because of her.

Eyes already filled with tears, hands clasped to her chest and lower lip held between her teeth, Frisk turned to face the monster she knew was waiting behind her, head still bowed and body still trembling. She couldn't look up to face him. She could only stare at the toes of the ratty pink slippers he insisted on keeping, and let her tears overflow onto her cheeks, and try not to fall to pieces before him.

“Sans, I-”

She got no further. He filled the space her voice had taken with his own, a deadly whisper that seemed to echo and carry her culpability back to her in waves of harsh judgment and hurt.

“i trusted you. i trusted that you would never do this to me again. that i didn't have to worry about coming back and finding you gone.”

His voice was as sharp as an axe, accusing as a judge sure of their conviction, and she felt his disappointment and his anger bear down on her with all the stinging truth of a slap across the face, flinching and only lowering her head further. Her tears fell directly into the soil between her feet now, indistinguishable in the dark.

“I-I... I didn't know what else to do... Sans, he's... he's hurting you because of me... I can't stand it, I can't hurt you anymore, please...”

Her begging didn't move him. It seemed to only make him angrier, in fact, a surge of potent magic crackling like the air after a lightning strike. He took a step towards her, his gait so long that just one step brought him even with her, and insistently lifted her chin, raising her watery and reddened eyes up to meet his gaze.

He had never looked more like a storybook monster than he did in that moment, his teeth bared in a snarl and his iris sending sparks shooting out into the tense air.

“so you decided that disappearing would be the best thing to do? that destroying everything that we've built would spare me? I’ve got news for you... nightmare's gonna torture me whether you're here or not. none of the others are gonna let their frisks go, and we're more than willing to suffer for it, as long as it takes for him to finish his little arts and crafts project.”

He bent closer to her face, his clawed fingertips starting to pinch at her skin a little more than was comfortable. She whimpered, clutching his wrist and flinching back in instinctive fear, but whatever it was that he had intended to say, to snarl in her face, dissipated with her cowering. His expression froze, and then slowly melted away into a deep regret, his hand slipping around the back of her head to run his phalanges into her hair.

He bent closer again, but this time to lay his forehead against hers for a quiet moment, the woods completely silent around them as the woodland creatures hid themselves away in the presence of an apex predator. His illuminated socket slid closed, his thumb rubbing gentle, smooth circles against her skull... they were alone in the darkness, the tension slowly giving way to peace.

“what i'm doing, everything i'm doing, is worth what nightmare puts me through. more than. i thought... before all this... that repaying my debt was enough. that getting you healthy again would be the end of it, and then i'd bring you back to the city and let you live your life. ...it wasn't. the less i hated you, the more i wanted what the rest of them have... the less i could resist staying, keeping you for longer and longer... feeling happy for once. i wanted more, and you gave it to me so readily. what monster could resist that...”

He let out a sigh, warm and familiar against her lips, and retreated enough to meet her eye with his single iris. She let out a quiet sob, her hands moving to clench in the front of his sweater and her lower lip trembling.

“But... you said you don't want to bond with me. You tell me that all the time... it hurts so much. If it's what you want, why... why do you always push me away?”

His skull dropped in shame, then, his gaze turning away and to the side. He looked more than chagrined... he looked almost angry, furious with a circumstance she had yet to know.

“if i bonded with you now, if i let you into my soul and let you start changing the monster i've become into someone more able to be with you for life... nightmare would know. he'd sense the change, he'd be able to find you, and i can't... i can't lose you again. i think losing you again would be the end of me. the others are strong enough to hide it from him, but i'm... not. all i can do is ask you to wait, and hope you'll understand.”

...Oh.

Frisk, a relieved and apologetic smile taking over her expression, rose to her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck, slow and careful so as not to alarm him but needing, so badly, to hold him and be close to him.

“You told me everything else... why not that? I would have understood... I do understand.”

He sagged against her, though he wrapped his arms around her the same as she embraced him, burying his face against her neck and breathing the scent of her in, his thick bones shuddering with bliss. He nuzzled against her throat, nosing her neckline out of the way to press his smile directly to her skin, and swayed her in his arms gently.

“didn't want you to think i was weak. a monster's supposed to protect their mate... and i've failed in that twice now. i didn't want to you to doubt me, before we've even really gotten a chance to be something together.”

Frisk nuzzled against the side of his massive skull as best she could, and didn't struggle when he scooped her into his arms, merely hugging him closer and wiping her eyes onto her sleeve. She pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to his cheekbone, and gloried in the feeling of him rumbling at her affectionately in response. She whispered words of comfort there, against the shattered bone of his skull, as he carried her back to where she belonged now, and knew them to be true.

“Don't be mean to my mate, please... he's done more than enough to protect me, thank you.”

She felt his smile stretch across his face as the bone creased and shifted against her lips, felt the rumble of a familiar and long dormant laugh shake his rib cage, and smiled to herself serenely.

Chapter Text

Myth Monsters: Cobalt

The night had fallen hours ago to encompass the thick and ancient forest, the moon hung overhead as heavy and full as a ripe fruit ready for plucking, the stars a field of wondrous beauty about them and the few wispy clouds a dulcet silver against the backdrop of deepest blue. Crickets hummed a song unknown to any but themselves, filling the air with chirps and whirring wings, and a burbling brook ran between smooth round river stones, dripping into a deep and crystalline pool. 

A campfire crackled in a well made hearth, sending dancing shadows among the trees and bushes lining a well kept and open clearing, and within the trunk of an enormous, hollowed out tree, a brand new father curled around his mate and the eggs she had spent the past few hours delivering, each cleaned and polished and settled carefully in a deep, intricate nest composed of many layers of the softest things he had been capable of finding.

Cobalt wrapped his sapphire scaled tail more securely around his newly expanded family both carefully and protectively, his body settled between the entrance of his longtime home and his slumbering bride. He was just as tired as she was, had been awake for at least three days preparing for her to bring their children into the world, but he couldn't seem to close his sockets, now that it was done. He would look, with wonder, on the eggs he had never thought he would have a chance to have, each containing the still growing but soon to be hatched baby lamias, and then on the still sweat streaked but peaceful face of his wife, curled around her lovingly delivered eggs and pressed tight to his chest, snuggled into the soft material of his sweater.

He had no idea how he had been so lucky, truth be told. He had spent much of his life alone, after his family had all perished in a tragic rockfall that had nearly killed him as well, leaving him with fractured and terribly tender ribs that he was so ashamed of, he had consigned himself to wearing thick sweaters to hide them away. He had traveled far from the land of his birth, through desert wastes and barren plains and mountainous highlands, before settling himself in this very forest, making a home for himself and resigning himself to a life of solitude. He doubted very much that any female lamia would accept a mate as damaged and weak as he... he didn't think he would even survive the larger creatures' mating rituals, the fight for dominance so popular among his kind.

He wanted a mate desperately, so much that his sensitive bones ached with his wanting... but he didn't relish dying to attempt to achieve it.

And so he had waited, and languished, and dreamed, carving out a home inside the tree he now dwelt inside and collecting things of comfort, blankets and pillows and winter coats, sweaters and scarves and downy coverlets, to weave into a nest beyond compare, so comfortable that, while curled up within it with his books, he almost forgot that he was alone.

Almost.

And then, the storm had come. The winter had been mild, before the night the sky had opened up and unleashed its fury; he had been woken from his hibernation by the unbearable cold, so pervasive that it permeated even his nest, well insulated against the biting chill. If he had tried to stay, he would have perished... his only hope had been to attempt to make it to the town some miles away, and pray for the charity of humanity. He was likely to die, in the attempt...

But he would have died if he stayed, as well.

He had not made it. The cold had never been kind to his people, cold blooded in the extreme and powerless without the warmth of the sun... his movements had become sluggish before he'd gone more than a single mile, his vision hazy in the thick curtain of snow and his bones chilled to their marrow. He lost himself in the fury of the storm, looking into the face of death with surety as he had curled up against the warmest thing he had been able to scent out... and then the barrier he had settled against had fallen away, dropping him into a space suffused with warmth and light and the scent of hot food.

A vision of beauty had stood over him, both alarm and pity in her luminous eyes, and he had begged, with all that was left of his strength, for her to allow him to stay, to wait out the storm. He would die otherwise, he had insisted, but she had already made her decision, closing the door he had fallen through and leading the way to the fire roaring in the hearth, making up a makeshift nest of the blankets from her bed and giving him more than his fair share of her dinner. He had not been able to comprehend her kindness, then, his experience with humans none too pleasant... but he was far too ravenous and weary to complain, and had eaten enough to satisfy and fallen asleep nearly immediately, watching the woman pretending to read a book until his eyelids drooped and he drifted away.

The storm had cleared by the early morning hours, and though he longed to stay and thank her, looking over her soft form curled up with a single, small blanket in the middle of her bed (he had brought her blankets back to her, tucking them around her gently and with great care), he knew he had to leave. Her calm may not have survived the night, may end with his death or her blood on his hands, through a panicked attack, and he would rather avoid hurting the fair creature that had saved his life.

He would repay her when spring came.

And so he had. He had left her a fair sum of gold on her cabin's doorstep, when he had woken from his long slumber and had managed to track her cabin down again (he had somehow managed to wander in the complete opposite direction from the nearby town; without her charity, he would certainly have died), and had considered the debt repaid... and yet had returned, the very next day, laying behind a flat and very warm rock just within sight of the cabin. He told himself that he was just ensuring that she found her payment, but it was a lie and he knew it...

He wanted to see her again, just a glimpse. He had seen nothing so lovely as her in ages gone, and the craving to just see her face once more was an insatiable one.

She remained busy that day, though, never once opening her door to retrieve the bag of gold pieces he had left for her, so he had come back the next day, and the next, to “make sure she got it”. It was on the third day that he finally saw her again, practically glowing in a burnt orange sundress as she hopped into her Jeep and drove off down the narrow dirt road... and stepping over the bag purposefully she had gone, throwing it a glance as she did and turning away all the same.

She was refusing it? Why? Did she not want a monster's gold, as so many other humans claimed? Or was she simply unwilling to take payment for something she had seen as natural?

Could she truly be so kind?

He did not know, though a hope and a warmth bloomed in him at the thought (her esteem grew exponentially in his mind, at the imagining, fantasies and daydreams beginning to take form), and he had slithered to her door to slot the gold through the mail slot once she had driven away, almost giddy to return and see what she would do next.

She bought him a ham. A whole, prepackaged, enormous ham. He nearly died of laughter, but accepted she would not take his money without a fight, and took the offering, relishing eating it and thinking of what he would do next with delight.

And so their game had begun. He would leave her small gifts, pretty things (not nearly as pretty as her) and herbs, flowers and fresh berries, and she would leave him some in return, foodstuff made by hand and spicy drinks that left him reminded of fields of apples and once, a rainbow patterned umbrella that he laughingly used during every rainstorm. When he became bolder, he began to slowly show himself, sunning himself on the rock and listening to her puttering around her cabin and hoping she would emerge to see him, and she, in turn, began planting a garden near the rock, almost as though to linger near him.

And there, they would talk for hours, the space they kept between them shrinking more and more as the days went by. He told her of his life, his home in the woods nearby and his book collection, and she told him of herself, her occupation (she was a writer by trade, but had blushed when he asked to read some of her work with excitement) and her dreams and the things she loved most. The attraction to her multiplied with every day they spent in each other's company, as the spring turned to brilliant summer and summer to stunning fall...

It was only when she came to his den in the woods bearing him a gift, a thick, warm, hand knitted sweater, that he knew for certain that she felt the same. She told him as much, stumbling over her words and admiring the look of her labor of love against his bones (he was flushed as well, his soul throbbing with intense emotions he couldn't put name to), and invited him to stay the winter in her home.

The meaning behind her words was clear, shining in her eyes and in her hopeful smile, and he had accepted without question.

They had been together since that day. He had made a second home of her cabin, more than welcomed by his shy but ever so lovely mate; he kept his den in good condition, of course, returning to it on warm nights so he could lay with her beneath the stars, and tell her stories of the places he'd been and seen, and make love to her with the breath of night heavy against her skin.

When his heat had come, she had insisted she wanted to bear his children, wondrous words he had never really dreamed of hearing, and when the swell of mating magic had finally left him weeks later, she bore the clear evidence of their success, her abdomen swollen with the eggs he had filled her with. The care he took of her was unequaled, his gratefulness and his love echoing in his every word and deed, and she returned them in kind, more radiant as every day passed, bringing them nearer and nearer to the day that they would be parents.

It had brought them here, to his den in the woods, reposing in the quiet light of the nearby fire, and it was all he could do not to weep with absolute joy, for all the things he had been gifted, the future he had never thought possible for him in an age of the stars.

When Frisk was rested enough from her exertion, he would bring them all back to the cabin. He should have let her give birth there, but his instincts had insisted that she be one with nature when she brought his children forth. He could resist them as little as he could resist her...

Happily, with his tears glittering along the edges of his sockets and his arms framing his exhausted bride's shoulders, he pressed a careful and gentle kiss to her lips, nuzzling her shoulder and, at last, letting his sockets drift shut. He felt her shift in his arms wearily, turning so her chest pressed against his and her head rested beneath his chin, and he smiled wistfully, petting the fall of her hair and curling his tail around the cluster of warm eggs just a little more tightly.

Chapter Text

Reapertale

At the very edge of the multiverse, deep below the mountain of the gods, there dwells a kingdom far older and more vast than any other in existence. Its boundaries are home to countless souls, both the blessed and the damned, the corridor between one life and the next. Within its hallowed halls, the soul of every being that had ever lived had been weighed, judged and held accountable for their sins in life, either consigned to a fitting punishment or sent on to their next life.

This burden, most holy and of utmost importance, was too great for only one person to bear- it fell on the shoulders of two brothers, the gods of Death and Redemption. They worked ceaselessly, in their shadowy kingdom beneath the earth, ensuring the balance of the many universes was never upset and that all worlds reached their just conclusion, that the timeline was never thrown astray from its intended path.

Their job had become much more difficult, of late. All across the grand multiverse, universes had begun to fall into darkness, robbed of their endings and cast adrift in the time stream. Lives ended too early, souls taken and destroyed without conscience, entire worlds destroyed on a whim... the delicate balance of all worlds disrupted.

Nothing the gods below did seemed to be able to cease the seemingly endless flow of blood, the disruptions of the natural order slowly but surely tearing the multiverse to shreds... their efforts to subdue the ones responsible had been in vain, their realms purposefully concealed from the reach of the gods of the Underworld. All they could do was attempt to ford the ripples the selfish usurpers created in the time stream, and hope that the chance to finally put a stop to their cosmic destruction would come.

Thus, the frantic scrambling of a uniformed shade, bearing the sigil of the dark kingdom beneath the earth, came as little but much dreaded surprise, the shadowy creature coming to a panting halt at the foot of the low dais where the pair of gods sat conversing. So great was the being's upset and near panic that Papyrus, the taller of the deities, descended to pat its back, concern etched into the bare bone of his skull. The other, Sans, retained his seat, though not through lack of pity: he was named the God of Death for a reason. The smallest touch of his hand robbed mortal beings of their lives, reducing even creatures like the shade slowly recovering its breath to dust and extracting their souls in turn.

The last thing they needed was to kill the messenger.

Once the shade had recovered from its frantic approach, it stood fully, facing both the gods with urgent concern in its many red eyes.

“My lordss... another universse hass gone dark. Their sstory hass ended without conclussion, and their world iss casst adrift in the Void.”

The creature spoke with a slight hiss, its voice reminiscent of the wind rustling through tall plains grasses. Both of the gods let out sighs in response, almost as one; Sans, still sat upon his throne, dropped his forehead into one palm, his other hand clenching into a fist on the arm of his modest and humble throne, while Papyrus folded one arm across his chest, covering his mouth with the opposite hand and furrowing his bony brows.

“That is the third within a fortnight... they are gaining speed.”

Sans, fingers digging into his skull in silent agitation, said nothing to this, though the edge of his mouth that the raised hood of his midnight black robe bared showed he now bore a terrible grimace. Both the messenger and Papyrus watched him for a moment in silence, hopeful of a response, before, fidgeting nervously, the shade cleared its throat, starting to ooze slightly in its upset.

“There iss more. One of the ssouls hass gone misssing from the ssoul sstream-”

He got no further than that, as Sans, apparently too agitated to remain seated any longer, stood fully from his throne and stalked to a window carved into the wall beside his throne, waving a hand through the air dismissively as he went.

“we'll see to it. leave us.”

The shade needed no further instruction, though Papyrus patted its back in farewell and reassurance as it turned to flee its lords' presence, and all too soon, the audience chamber was empty but for them, the heavy doors shutting in the messenger's wake. Hands braced on the sill of the window and gaze set blankly upon the fields of Asphodel in the shadowy distance, Sans said no more, his jaw clenched tightly and his sockets empty of the flecks of light that usually lit them, and Papyrus, heaving a great sigh and wiping shade slime from his palms onto a handkerchief, crossed the room to join him, leaning against the sill beside him and gazing out as well.

They stood in silence together for a moment, the cool and serenity of their kingdom carrying to them through the open window (mortals feared death above all else, thought the end that awaited them would be wreathed in flames and eternal pain; their grand kingdom was nothing of the sort, instead a place of calm and rest for souls while they awaited reincarnation), before Papyrus spoke again, straightening the flowing, scarlet scarf draped around his robe's neck.

“Nightmare stepping out of line yet again, I presume.”

Sans' sockets narrowed, at this summation, an aura of menace radiating from him, his shoulders tight and his teeth grinding together. He did nothing but lower his gaze to the withered gardens surrounding their palace, however, the rare blooms wilted and awaiting the return of their heavenly mistress.

He needed her so much right now...

“no. nightmare destroys the souls he takes. the soul's essence would have returned to the stream, to be reborn again. this is dream's doing.”

The knowledge that the dark, half insane god of night and negativity had failed to secure another soul gave him no comfort. The path that Dream had taken was no better, though he believed himself more holy and righteous for his supposed mercy... taking the souls from those that bore a piece of his bride's soul was a fate much worse than death. His victims would go on living, true, but they were hollow, husks of their former selves, emotionless and cold and incapable of forming a bond for the rest of their empty lives.

Just considering having his own godly bride return to him bereft of everything that she once had been, no longer bonded to him and robbed of her kind and radiant soul... the stone windowsill cracked beneath his grip, a rumble shaking the entirety of the Underworld. The dark aura of threat and consequence about him only grew, unearthly shrieks filling the air around him. It would have gone on, too, had Papyrus not extended a hand to his shoulder, pulling him from the dark and bloodthirsty machinations of his own mind effortlessly.

It was a boon, to have his brother to keep his temperament even, to be a check to his sometimes stilted judgments. Sans sent him a sideways glance, and a half hearted but apologetic smile, the lights in his sockets flickering back into existence, and Papyrus nodded in acknowledgment, patting his back before looking again to the middle distance, a furrow sinking between his brows and a frown pulling at his positive smile.

“They must know how wrong this is. Just how much chaos and upset they are causing. She did not want this for them.”

Sans snorted at his words, shaking his head and rolling his eyelights. Star, the former deity of the stars, constellations, and charity itself, hadn't wanted a lot of things for her lovers. She hadn't wanted their war, the jealousy that had caused the eternal rift between night and day, the hatred that had eventually consumed the world tree and contorted Midnight into the nightmare that he was now. She had thought that removing herself from between them would heal their differences, that, given time, they could learn to love each other again, and when they had, she would return to them.

Her absence had only made things worse. No Frisk in the multiverse was safe from their covetous quest to retrieve the pieces of their love that she had placed into their souls... many had perished already, and many more would suffer the same fate unless something was done.

Even his was in danger, and the knowledge that she could so easily be taken from him, especially during the months that she returned to the surface to bring spring to the world, had stolen both sleep and concentration from him for months, since the day she had left his arms. Her promise to be careful, to never stray far from her mother the Life goddess, was not enough to soothe him.

He had to protect her... it wasn't feasible to him to chance losing her.

“they're concerned with themselves, papyrus, you know that. their war could darken every world besides their own and they wouldn't care, as long as they achieved their goal.”

They both knew he was right, and silence reigned between them again, dire and heavy with hopeless, helpless vexation. It went beyond their power to find them and attempt to end the godly brothers' war... they had already tried, and none of the other gods cared enough to step into their path. It was frustrating beyond comprehension, enough to drive a saint to curse his own god's name, and though Papyrus wished there were something he could do for his preoccupied, desperately worried brother, he knew there was only one person that could lighten the dark cloud that hung heavy over his head now.

With this in mind, the God of Redemption elbowed his brother gently, and nodded his head towards the surface world indicatively when he had gained his attention.

“I will go and see what can be done, brother. ...you should go above, see your wife. You are beside yourself.”

His urging was met with a resigned but knowing nod, the grim set to Death's mouth ascertaining that he had made some sort of decision that was much the same as his suggestion, and with his acknowledgment, Papyrus willed his scythe into being and allowed it to pull him to where he was needed most, a world cast into darkness and chaos and uncertainty.

Sans remained at the window another moment, after his brother had disappeared, staring blankly into the middle distance. His mind whirled and spun, protective needfulness and desperation and blind fury mixing into a dark and poisonous concoction that threatened to infect all around him. He had a plan, an intention to track at least one of the warring brothers' cohorts down and discern their next target so he could be there to stop them, finally confront them... but he had to find a way to keep Frisk safe, before he could help anyone else.

It wasn't a want, a whim or a fleeting consideration. It was a need , of such intensity that his hands trembled and his bones ached with the fullness of his angry possessiveness. His expression sank again into ceaseless fury and merciless ire, a darkness deeper than even Nightmare possessed blooming around him to sink the entire room, and several others beyond it, into shadow. The entire Underworld grew several shades darker, and the roots of the mountain above all their heads trembled.

If these whelps, mere seedlings cast aside from their mother tree, thought to challenge him, they had another thing coming. He was the eldest of the gods, born before the dark upon the waters and the space between the stars even had a name... he had been birthed from the primordial darkness itself, brought to bear to preside over the births and deaths of the very first stars, before the universes had begun to split and magic began to form and rain from the heavenly bodies. He was the beginning and the end, the hand that carried away the breaths of mortals and immortals alike, in their time, and the petty squabbling of children would not take from him his beloved, as they had lost and wasted their own.

He would drag them kicking and screaming to places in the universe so dark, corners of the Void itself beyond comprehension, that they would never be found within if they dared even entertain the thought of taking his wife's soul.

He would see to their punishment himself, and laugh as they suffered until the great purpose of the multiverse had played itself out and they all faded into the gray.

Sans' smile was one of bloodthirsty cruelty, as the darkness around him faded to welcome back the light as desperately as a creature taking its first breath after near drowning, surety and fearsome resolve in the narrow of his sockets. His final decision broke the agreement that Life had laid down and he had reluctantly agreed to, but he still outstretched his hand to the silver bowl on the stone table that sat between his and Papyrus' thrones, a deep red orb summoned to his palm. He turned on the spot, then, one moment in the center of his palace beneath the earth and the next standing at the edge of a field of wildflowers, their scent thick and heady as the western wind carried it to him. In the shade of a tree near the edge of the field, wearing a shoulder-less dress of lavender silk and busily threading violets into the braids lining her long hair, rested his bride, a beacon of beauty even among the wonder of her creations.

He was at her side in an instant, his hands framing her cheeks and his mouth pressing to her stunned, parted lips the very next, and she only hesitated a moment before enfolding him in her embrace, familiarity softening her instinctive alarm into acceptance. They remained so for an unknown time, what could have been minutes or hours spent drinking each other in, before Sans pulled away reluctantly, his hands tracing along her neck and shoulders, so unbelievably soft and warm that, even after a hundred years of blissful marriage, he could still hardly believe she existed.

She gazed back at him with a smile that spoke the same thoughts as his own, her golden eyes misted with joyous tears and her hands lowering his hood to bare his visage to her in its entirety, and though he wished he could spend more time indulging in her, taking in just how gorgeous she was and relishing in the undeniable fact that she was his , he had no time. Life would come searching for her daughter all too soon, and he wanted to be done with his duplicitous business before that.

With this in mind, he halted the amorous thoughts wheeling in his hazy mind, filled with nothing but her and everything she was to him, lowering one hand to take hers and digging the other into one of his robe's pockets, to retrieve the orb he had placed there.

“frisk... stars, i've missed you so much. more than you'll ever know. and i know i shouldn't be here, it goes against everything we agreed to, to keep the peace... but things have gotten worse, out there. much worse.”

Understanding immediately swept over her expression, the hand not ensconced in his rising to trace along one of his cheekbones, her full and petal pink lips lowered in concern. He wished he could kiss the worry from her, she should never have to worry for him...

“Oh Sans... I'm so sorry. I know how much it weighs on you. Is there truly nothing to be done? Some appeal that could be made to them?”

So unbelievably kind. The only appeal he wanted to make to them was cleaving the selfish and greedy heartwood from their chests and putting an end to their warring for good.

“not ‘til i can find them. they’re going to keep creating chaos across the multiverse until then, unless something happens to stop them... that's why i'm here.”

She raised her eyebrows, dropping her hand to her lap and adopting a much more curious look.

“You have a plan?”

Sans nodded, smoothing a thumb over the back of her hand and meeting her gaze resolutely.

“i do... but that's not what i meant. i can't sleep, can't function at all, thinking that something could happen to you while outside my protection, without my presence to ensure you don't fall to the same fate as so many others. i can't bear the thought of losing you. so... i came with a proposition. one that would let you stay with me all year, to give me peace of mind so i can try to stop the bloodshed.”

She looked intrigued, but also hesitant, casting a look over her shoulder. He could practically hear her thoughts, consumed with worry for what her mother would think of him trying to break the accord they had struck to keep the peace.

“I don't know what mother will think-”

Just as he'd thought. He knew it was bad manners, and he would beg forgiveness later, but he interrupted her with a shake of his head and kiss pressed to her lips, indulging in his desire for just a moment before going on.

“i couldn’t care less what your mother thinks. this proposition is for you .”

At last, with her hand turned over in his, he placed in her palm the red orb he had brought with him from his kingdom beneath the earth, it's thick skin glinting in the dappling of sunlight filtering through the leaves of the tree overhead.

It was a pomegranate, whole and heavy and bearing a world of meaning within it.

She clearly recalled its significance, her eyes flicking back up to meet his gaze and her lips popping open in surprise.

“A pomegranate... Sans, my mother would rip your skull off if we did it this way. It's such an insult to her and your agreement... surely you must have another option.”

He had figured she would say that, but had wanted to lead with it anyway, to soften her up to what he was going to propose next. They had discussed it before, but just hadn't ever seemed to get around to it... there hadn't been any urgency, then. It felt mildly sacrilegious, to bring it up as a recourse and an excuse to keep her with him all the year long... but he was beyond desperate, at this point.

As such, as soon as she had set the pomegranate aside (fairly far away in the grass, too, as though worried it might split itself open and the seeds would fly into her mouth of their own volition), he took her hand again, and allowed his expression to assume a more suggestive form, leaning closer to her and smirking slightly as his hand stroked along the length of her thigh, bared beneath his palm by the cut of her dress.

“if you aren't interested in that sort of seed... the other will do as well.”

Her cheeks had colored a dulcet pink at the dip in the tone of his voice and his closeness both, the feeling of his hand traveling along her soft skin, almost preoccupied enough with his seduction that she missed the meaning of his words entirely. When she had deciphered them, though, the pink of her blush became a dark red, her eyes widening and her mouth moving wordlessly, her ability to speak appearing to have left her entirely.

He couldn't help but laugh at her expression, his sultry demeanor breaking in good humor, and she humphed at his chuckles, gently slapping his shoulder.

“That's not funny, Sans, I thought you were serious!”

When his snickers had calmed enough to allow him to speak again, he grinned at his lovely bride crookedly, his sockets hooded as he reached out to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

“i'm more than serious. having a child would require that you stay with me full term, without the accusation of treachery and without breaking any contracts. we would have to be quick, before your mother comes looking for you, and it... irks, to suggest it under these means. i know we always talked about doing this on our own terms. but i honestly can’t think of a better way to keep you safe, and i... i have to be able to protect you. it runs in me deeper than anything else.”

His sincerity was more than evident, echoing in his pleading sockets and his hopeful smile, in the drag of his knuckles along her jaw, and Frisk's shock subsided quickly in response, leaning into his touch and turning her eyes to the ground as she thought it over. Her mother's insistence that she remain Above seemed so paltry in comparison to her husband's desperate need to protect her... her role was truly and honestly played out, anyway. Summer was in full swing. Surely Life could manage on her own...

And she would be lying if she said she hadn't been thinking of children quite a lot recently.

“It is regrettable that it has to be rushed... but I agree with you. Mother will have to concede custody of me, if I were with child, and for a length of time afterwards as well, to allow time for the child to grow. It seems... almost too simple. And certainly agreeable to me. Is it what you really want, though?”

She was shy, in her wonderment, gazing up at him through her eyelashes, and Sans, with a lovesick grin spreading across his skeletal face, raised her chin with a curled finger to allow him to kiss her again, lingering and slow and soft as she was. When he pulled back, he remained close, ticking his nasal ridge against the end of her nose to make her laugh.

“i've wished to see you bear my children for a century and more, beloved.”

Her blush returned to her, but she no longer held back in reticence; she leaned into him to seal her lips to his mouth, her arms circling his neck to hold him close, shifting herself into his lap so he could bear her weight in his arms. Taking the hint, Sans lifted her with ease, and they only paused a moment in their amorous embrace for Frisk to take a breath, stroking her fingertips along her husband's jaw and trying not to squirm too much in her excitement.

“Do you really think we can manage to create a child before mother finds out where I've gone?”

His grin carried with it notes of both confidence and pride, his sockets glinting wickedly and sending a pleasant and titillated shiver all through her body.

“sweetheart... you've been gone for five months. i think we could manage it in an hour~”

And with a turn of this heel and a swish of his robe, they were gone. All that remained behind to show they had been there at all was a small pile of violet blooms and a single, ominous pomegranate.

Chapter Text

Ink

“What's it like? Living without a soul?”

The slick of his tongue along her skin was like a brushstroke across paper, the rainbow hue of the magical saliva left in its wake glittering against the silver-gray of her sweat dappled flesh. The path her hands took across his back, up his neck, and across the back of his skull was as red hot as a brand, sinking into his hollow bones to warm all that had been cold since the day of his creation.

She said his name, a whispering echo that was so close and yet so far, looked on him with dark but eternally seeing eyes, and he kissed her wanting lips, his breath heavy with the taste of the liquid lust he had consumed before shouldering his way into her plane. He needed her and the comfort she brought him more than anything in the multiverse, more than the high of bringing another universe to life, more than the rush of succeeding in thwarting Error in his plans to destroy everything he had worked to build.

Ink could still hear those small but earth-shattering words, resounding in his skull and aching in the place where a soul should, and did, exist in others that bore his name and visage. Not meant to harm as they had, but cutting and fatal all the same, they had cleaved through his chest with all the power of the last blow many Sanses ever saw. They stabbed daggers through him even as he kissed his way down Core's abdomen, as he grasped greedily at her curves with ink-stained hands, and she allowed it with gasps and panting breaths, twisting in the sheets of the bed he had practically thrown her onto.

Why had they hurt so much... why did he care? It was true, in its very essence, the bald but innocent accusation that had spun his world on its head... he didn't have a soul, never had, and never would. And yet he persisted, carried on with his work and his quest to preserve the creations of the varied and ingenious minds all across the many worlds. They were the reason he existed at all, what use was there to weep over his incomplete state?

There were others that existed without souls. The doctor he acquired his inks from, distilled and concentrated to allow him to feel emotions when he needed to... the fortune teller that spent all his time tricking mortals out of theirs... all the other Frisks he had helped Dream acquire and strip of the very essence of their being.

He'd been doing the self-righteous god's work for years, now. It had never bothered him before, stealing Frisks from their timelines, bringing them to Dream, and then returning them when their souls had been harvested. It was better than what Nightmare did to them, he had always quantified to himself... at least they were alive. They could still be with their loved ones... could still attempt to live their lives.

But even as he repeated it to himself as a mantra, as he excused the things he allowed in the name of keeping his own Frisk away from Dream's crusade, he knew it was a lie. He knew just how empty it was to exist without the guiding power of a soul, to pretend you felt more than you did, to go on with no reason besides the stubborn tenacity to not simply lie down and wither away. In his darkest hours, left alone and pondering, he knew he wouldn't wish this existence on anyone.

And still, he turned his gaze away while a monster he called friend and companion did just that. He stood by, ignored his own hand in it all, just to keep the greedy deity's gaze from falling on what he had sworn to himself he would keep safe.

He was a hypocrite of the highest order, and it had only been with his latest betrayal that it had truly hit him.

Ink had tried to distract himself, even as those pitiful and jarring words rang in his head like the report of a deadly weapon, attempted to paint something, anything meaningful to keep from thinking of her blank and hollow expression, as he had laid her in the bed he had stolen her from not long enough ago for even a whole day to have passed. The way she had looked at him, with an emptiness that had struck him deeper than he could comprehend... the tear that had tracked down her cheek, glistening in the moonlight through her window.

“What's it like? Living without a soul?”

His ribs ached with unspeakable regret, even as he buried his face between his Frisk's thighs, as he bent his every thought and will and strength to bringing her pleasure. She moaned for him willingly, eagerly, her nails dragging over the back of his skull and her legs wrapping around his skull as much as he let them... and still, it was not enough. Not even the scent of Error on her, usually enough to drive a stinging pang of jealousy through his empty chest, was enough to empty his head of the flat, emotionless question that had been asked of him.

He was only doing his job. He was doing far better than Nightmare, he was managing to keep the universes from collapsing in on themselves... what difference did one soul make, in the grand scheme?

He knew better even as he thought it, even as Core bucked against the length of his tongue, as she whimpered his name and her walls clenched desperately around him and her back arched off the bed entirely. He should have been enraptured at the sight of her, brought to panting, sweating ecstasy by the work of his hands and his mouth... all he could think of was that empty-eyed stare, the question resounding in his head and berating him for his foul deeds.

He had never regretted them before... but he also hadn't ever told the infinitely lovely being letting him crawl over her, wrapping her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck. He'd never told her the things he had done to keep her out of the grasp of Dream... how she had been the first he had looked to strip of her power, the essence of her being, secluded deep within the Void and containing a vast amount of the precious stardust he sought. Ink had practically begged for her to be spared, had sworn his service willingly if Dream would turn his eye elsewhere, and had told himself he didn't care, so long as she was safe and never knew.

He felt nothing but guilt as she let him, unworthy and despicable, invade her body and rut against her in his vain and distracted attempt to clear his mind. He was using her, he knew it even as he committed the grievous wrong, and still couldn't stop, the lust draught he had consumed commanding he do the impossible and attempt to bond and breed with a mate he could never truly have. His sins clawed at his back, dripping with prismatic beads of sweat and arched to grind his pelvis into the cradle of her thighs, his head aching and heavy with the reality of it all.

He was doing to others what he had so desperately and selfishly kept from happening to himself, and a conscience that he hadn't even known he had was catching up to him at last. No matter how he tried to drown it out, no matter how he tried to fill the void within with her sweet embrace, with the love she gave to him so freely (in this moment, he didn't even care that it was shared with Error, the bastard was the last person he wanted to think about right now-), it remained stuck deep inside his mind, a consuming rot that would not be moved.

And it would remain there, so long as he continued to do as he had sworn he would. It would be there each and every time he came to her in her hidden kingdom beyond the stars, each time she welcomed him in and accepted his bold-faced lies. It would be there when he fucked her, like he didn't deserve to, when she begged him to cum inside her and he, still so selfish and still so pathetic, did as he was bidden and colored her from the inside out with his seed.

It was there when he laid with her after, clinging to her back as she drifted to sleep with her fingers twined with his ink-stained phalanges, as the darkness crowded in and laid bare all he had done and did not deserve.

“What's it like? Living without a soul?”

What was he going to do?

“...it’s not living at all. it’s pretending to be alive when really, you’re already dead.”

Chapter Text

Mobfell

Frisk had never hated anyone more than she hated Sans the skeleton.

She'd honestly never met anyone more bullheaded, crude, or officious in her life. He always smelled obnoxiously of whiskey and cigar smoke, strutted around like he owned the entire world, and she swore if he wasn't able to teleport, he'd never be able to fit his insufferably fat head through the frame of a door. He was rude almost to a fault, pushy and aggressive as all hell, and as tasteless in humor as he was in color scheme.

If he didn't pull off the reds and blacks he insisted on wearing so well, especially when in his tailored suits, she'd have grounds to mock him for it. Not that that stopped her, though.

He was intolerable enough just existing, saying nothing of just how much chaos he wreaked as a hitman for the monster mob... she had been more than done with him and his boisterous persona the first time she had had the misfortune to meet him. Sadly, almost as though the universe were spitting directly into her face, he had seen the need to continue their acquaintance, to a ridiculous extent. Soul mate shit, he had insisted, followed by promptly asking if she wanted to fuck (which she had, shamefully; possibly the only good thing about him was the fat dick he was packing), and he'd been hanging around ever since, coming and going through her life uninvited, insisting that he was just as fed up with her as she was with him and yet still forcing his existence on her.

He had an unbelievably annoying penchant for showing up when she least wanted to see him, particularly in the middle of her work. She was an investigative journalist, with a main focus on exposing the rotten underbelly of the city for all to see. That was how she had met him in the first place, in fact, and he had made his disapproval for her “nosing around” known far more than once. Something about getting herself killed through sheer stupidity... she'd stopped listening as soon as he'd opened his mouth, honestly. She usually tuned him out as soon as he started throwing his prodigious weight around, just to spite him.

It annoyed the hell out of him on top of it, and that was a plus in almost any circumstance.

It did end up with her being forced to endure his presence easily three times as much as she'd prefer, though (she'd much prefer to never see his smirking face again), directly affecting her ability to do her work and distracting her from her mission... though she usually had no complaints when he'd dragged her away from what he considered too dangerous for his mate and taken out his anger on her in the way he loved to best.

He hadn't even bothered teleporting them back to her apartment (or his ridiculously lavish manor; she was honestly starting to miss the hot tub), this time, merely dragging her into a dirty alley and snarling his grievances at her in that divinely dark, growling tone and through his rough drawl, nearly spitting in his fury over her sticking her neck out to attempt to get information he didn't think she needed to have in the first place. She'd snapped back at him temperamentally, deriding his overbearing nature and poking a finger into his broad ribcage as she gave him her own scathing review of his behavior, and as it nearly always went, every single time they fought, he'd spat his cigar into the gutter, bent himself low enough to glare directly into her eyes, and shut her up by crushing his sharp-toothed smirk to her lips.

It was as messy and rough and carnal as all their other meetings, his grasping hands and their sharpened claws tearing at her dress (damnit, she really liked this one too... he'd better replace it, or she was actually gonna rip his skull off this time) as he attempted to choke her with the thick, slithering tongue thrusting into her mouth, his more than obvious erection straining at the pinstriped material of his fine suit and his huge bulk pinning her to the brick wall, just out of sight of the bustling street. She bit his tongue in response, pulling aggressively at his tie to loosen it and, with any luck, choke him out, and he grunted at the dull pain, slurping his tongue back into his mouth and opening his narrowed, glaring sockets to glower back into her challenging eyes.

“really askin' for it t'night, dollface,” he growled threateningly, the hand not currently occupied with shifting her skirts out of the way and pulling her panties down the lengths of her thighs scraping their claws against the bricks beside her head, and she sneered back at him, panting for breath and, in repayment for tearing her dress, jerking at the collar of his button up to rip it open, the button flying off into the darkness of the alleyway unheeded.

“The only thing I remember asking for was you leaving me the hell alone,” she spat back, scraping her nails down the thick bones of his neck and bared collarbone, and he snarled at her savagely, though dark amusement danced in his sockets even as he bared his fangs and his magic flared. Before she could even blink he had grasped her shoulder and turned her face first against the wall, one hand curling into her hair and the other expertly pressing against her lower back to bend her over in front of him. He ground the thick curve of his cock against her, pressing her face into the wall and smirking down at her from his height, pulling at the rein he had made of her hair and flipping her skirt up and out of the way with his other hand.

“fat chance, with ya always gettin' up ta your neck in trouble. soon as ya stop actin' like a brat, i'll stop havin' ta save your pretty ass,” he asserted, his fiery red gaze flickering with pleasure and throwing odd, dancing shadows across the alley walls, and Frisk, unintimidated but more than a little excited (it had been forever since he'd taken her like this, it was going to be a hell of a challenge to stay quiet), bumped her ass back into his shallow thrusts, turning her head as much as he would let her to send him a mocking smirk.

“You could always fuck off and leave me alone. Less trouble for you,” she snarked, biting her lower lip at the feeling of his magical length twitching against her through his suit pants, and though it shouldn't have surprised her, the sharp smack he delivered to her ass still brought a quickly stifled yelp to her lips, her cheeks reddening and her core clenching with her desire. He only smirked at her in response to the outcry, massaging the blushing hand mark he had left on her for a moment before undoing his belt one handed.

“rather fuck ya instead,” he purred, his deep voice rumbling all the way through her body to melt her from the inside out (he was too sexy for being so annoying... it really shouldn't be allowed), and with the snap of a button and the parting of a zipper, he was doing just that, sliding deep inside her already soaking wet core and rutting her against the wall with wild abandon. His thrusts were deep, hard, and intentionally rough, only her familiar acquaintance with the size of him and the way he liked to fuck saving her from pain; even that didn't save her from the sting of his palm regularly swiping across both of her ass cheeks, a reprimand and a reminder of his still lingering anger.

It was such a shame she was into that.

Even with the speed and intensity of his motions, she knew he was in no rush to be done... when he just wanted a quickie, he'd always, always have her on her back. Something about her face when she orgasmed for him was what drove him over the edge, he'd told her during one of the few and far between soft moments they'd shared, and during their regular interludes, she'd noticed it was all too true. She didn't mind that he wanted it to last, this time, though she was certainly going to be sore tomorrow... she had some anger to work out too.

He used and abused her body for what seemed like a solid twenty minutes, pounding her senseless and bringing her to multiple climaxes and, occasionally, picking her right up off the ground to give her weakening legs a chance to rest, pressing her against the wall and grinding himself within her so deeply that she was certain, if she'd had the mind to try, she'd have been able to feel him forcing a bulge in her abdomen. He must have been extra furious with her, to go for so long in public, but all debatably good things must end... he had propped her up with his arms beneath her spread legs, her heaving chest to his, to finish himself off, his tongue once again twisting with hers in a panting, sloppy dance.

She felt it as soon as he was reaching his end, the way his even thrusts would stutter and start- without even realizing it, she moved to give him the extra stimulation he needed to plunge over the edge, tightening herself around him and scraping her nails along the back of his skull and moaning around his tongue. It worked like a charm, too, his entire body tensing before he plunged deep and let out a choked cry of ecstasy, and she felt the warmth of his magic filling her like an addict with their drug of choice, her toes curling and her arms wrapping instinctively around his neck.

He was such a headache to deal with... but god damn did he fuck good.

They spent a few moments like that, locked in the most deep and intimate way they were capable of; without even realizing it, she had begun to stroke the back of his skull while he bred her (the thought sent shivers through her whole body, clenching her core around him exquisitely and forcing a quiet moan from him, where his teeth were pressed against her throat), and only came to the awareness of it when he pulled away, sliding out of her body and setting her on shaky feet.

They cleaned up as best they could in silence, the sounds of the city all about them surging back into being now that they were no longer lost in each other. Frisk did everything she could to pretend she hadn't felt... something, while he'd leaned against her and pressed the softest of kisses to her throat, and by some blessing of the stars, if Sans noticed her distraction, he didn't show it, focused almost too intently on doing his pants back up. He was all smirks and mocking, once she'd shimmied her panties back up and tried to rearrange her hair to look like she hadn't just been ravaged in an alleyway, so she had to assume he hadn't noticed, and when they parted ways, him leaving first and her walking swiftly in the opposite direction, the kiss he gave her was accompanied with another slap to her surely bruised ass.

It was almost enough to forget the soft feeling that had permeated her, in his embrace. Almost enough to still the thumping of her heart when she looked over her shoulder, to watch him turn the corner at the opposite end of the block, and saw him doing the exact same thing before disappearing. Almost enough to drown out the pang of uncertainty that immediately followed, suffusing her blood with dire realization.

Almost enough to swiftly dismiss the notion that she might not hate him nearly as much as she thought she did.

Chapter Text

Myth Monsters: Asper

“Please...”

Her whimpering cry made him want to weep too, the dim red luminescence of his eye light flickering and guttering like the head of a flame in a breeze. His hands stroked along the fall of her hair softly, where she lay in his arms, curled up against his chest and shivering; she was so small, so very small, so soft and fragile and precious. Like a little glass bird, beautiful and serene but so easily broken.

He wouldn't let her be broken. Not like he had been.

He purred reassurances and praise to her as he slid between stalagmites and crags of dark rock, beneath stunning veins of blue jasper and glittering quartz; his poor vision, so hazy and blurred in the light, was of no consequence, here beneath the earth. Here, he knew the paths and caverns like the back of his hand, better than anyone... certainly better than her, his dearest love.

She got lost so often, trying to find him while he dove into the deep, cold waters of the lake beneath the mountain, fetching blind fish from their depths for her to eat. It would have made him laugh, were it not so dangerous for her, with her beautiful but ineffective eyes, so dependent on more light than the bio-luminescent fungi could offer. There were cliffs she could slip off, twist her ankle or break her leg or worse... she could fall into a deep pool and not be able to climb out. Rockfalls, enemies, hypothermia... all dangers that she could succumb to.

He wouldn't let her be taken from him. He would protect her.

“Please... I need to go home... let me go...”

He chuffed out an understanding sigh, nuzzling against the top of her head and carefully, oh so carefully, squeezing her in his arms, a warm embrace to dismiss her shivers until he could return her to their nest. She wanted to go back so badly... he loved knowing she liked all the hard work he had done, in building a place for them to live together. Soft blankets and sleeping bags from the packs that travelers had... left behind, woven together ever so carefully for his mate, his one and only.

Perhaps, one day, even a home for their children.

His ribs ached in a way that sent a shudder of bliss through him, the thought of her belly round with eggs, her arms full of hatchlings cheeping to her lovingly and her face so bright with fulfillment... his pride could hardly be contained. He had longed for someone to share such dreams with for so long... as long as his shattered mind and spotty memory would allow him. He had tried to find a mate among his kind, other monsters that he hoped to impress-

No. It didn't matter. He had her now, as she had him, and it was as it was meant to be.

A familiar, natural archway loomed ahead in the pressing dark of the abandoned mine he called home and sanctuary, and the spider-like extension at the tip of his tail swished across the rock floor with excitement. The most beautiful cavern among all the ones here beneath the earth lay ahead; he had always liked it, even before making it a home for his beloved. It was the brightest of them, enough to almost mirror the surface she came from, and filled with all the treasures he had brought her, the walls running thick with veins of gold and precious stones.

Clear, cool water dripped from the domed ceiling and into a pool deep enough for him and her to bathe in together, a fire pit that she needed to cook her food simmered in its ashes near the center of the cave, and not far from the circle of sitting stones around it rested their nest, practically beckoning them to come and rest. He slithered his way into it with joy spread across his cracked, scaled face, carefully settling his spiked tail into soft coils so he could set her in their center, warm and protected and surrounded by him.

She curled herself into a ball, once she had left his arms, her arms wrapped around her knees and her face buried in her thick and luscious hair. Small, resigned sobs wracked her body for a time (residual, he affirmed to himself, stroking her back and shushing her dutifully, to remind her that he was there), tears that tore at the soul in his chest dripping down her hidden face to fall like rain around her, but in time, they quieted, hiccups and sniffles overtaking her weary weeping.

It was always like this, when she got lost... in the beginning, after he had first taken her in and began the process of courting her, she had even had fits of alarming fear to accompany her lows, kicking and screaming when he carried her away from the exits of the abandoned mines and back to their den. She had just needed to acclimate to life underground, had to understand that everything here in his kingdom beneath the earth was good and right... those fits had subsided in time. She had come to understand.

He did so wish she would stop wandering on her own, though. It was a worrisome habit... one he hoped he wouldn't have to stop by restraining her until she learned better. He didn't like the thought of it, worried that she might injure herself in her confusion as to why he was keeping her confined, but if it came to it, he would. It was for her own good.

He couldn't let her, the only thing in his life worth living for, come to harm. He loved her far too much to allow that.

“Asper... Please... I can't stay any longer...”

Another shiver ran through his body, pleasant and fulfilling. He loved it so much when she said his name... no one else had said it in so very long, and coming from her lips, it sounded far nicer than he had ever thought it was. She made his name into a song, as lovely as she was, and he couldn't help but curl around her just a little tighter, holding her to him and running his claws through her hair and lifting her face back up to meet his, stroking her cheeks with one thumb, then the other, to clear them of her tears.

He dreamed of the day when she was finally, truly acclimated to their life here with him. When she would smile, like she had while talking to him when she had first arrived. He had fallen irrevocably in love with that smile, and he craved it more than almost anything.

Soon, she would understand.

“you never... ever have to leave. you can stay... forever.”

And when she did, they would never be apart again.

Chapter Text

Underlust

When Frisk had been told her friend's bachelorette party was going to be largely conducted at a strip club, she had been, while mildly averse, willing to go along with the idea. She'd even broken a twenty into ones to play along and not ruin the group's good time, while silently making plans to mostly cling to the bar and sip Shirley Temples until it was time to go back to the hotel, all while wearing the ugliest, baggiest hoodie she owned and a ballcap with her fluffy hair tucked into it as much as could be managed.

Finding herself in front of Divinity, Sans' house of ill repute, was another thing entirely.

She'd made as much of a fuss about it as she considered proper, digging in her heels and whining about a fictitious headache, but to no avail. They had told her, in not so many words, to suck it up, and she had been steered into the dark, smoky club that the last monster she wanted to see both owned and worked in much against her will, her arms pinioned between two of her so called friends' to still her attempts to hail a cab and escape.

“Just put on your dumb disguise and be quiet. No one's gonna recognize you and tarnish your sterling reputation in that.”

Traitors.

She'd be a little more angry if she weren't completely aware that they had no idea why she really, really didn't want to go inside this particular establishment... but she hadn't told anyone about her and Sans' little interludes, or his claims that they were soulmates and, from the moment that he'd seen her, was able to be with no one but her.

She hadn't been able to face him, after... after he'd kissed her, tongue and all, and after she'd allowed herself to indulge in heated imaginings of what it could be like if he weren't a complete and total liar a few times (was well over twenty times still considered a few? She liked to think so-). She'd avoided going to public places, hadn't answered her phone in weeks... it was getting, frankly, a little ridiculous. It seemed as though fate had other intentions for her, though, dragging her inside her would-be paramour's lair literally by the arm.

Maybe he wouldn't be here tonight. Maybe he was off lying his way into some other girl's pants.

...that thought had hurt a little more than she thought it would.

It was a Friday evening, well after quitting time for more clandestine businesses, and the monster brothel was really starting to get into the swing of things. The bar was surrounded by already slightly drunk women simpering over the leering fire monster behind it, the multitude of stages (and a few strategically placed cages) set about the main floor were populated by sultry, alluring monsters in various states of undress, and through the swooning crowd of human females clearly caught up in the lustful spirit of the place strutted only partially dressed waiters, bringing drinks and appetizers to those either awaiting their turn in the back rooms or were simply there to browse.

The air itself was heavy with a lustful perfume, sinking into the skin and singing in the veins to make every breath, every beat of your heart delectable and lascivious. Bodies sparkling with glitter moved in time with the beat of the music ('Pour Some Sugar On Me'? Really, Sans?), the oo's and aa's and cheers of excitement around the stages encouraged joining in with them...everything in this place, lit with sultry neon and shimmering reflective glass and sleek, cool metallics screamed sexuality.

A pretty natural thing for monsters, but it was something that she was so unfamiliar with that it felt like being on a different planet. Unpracticed and innocent as she was, being here felt like being a sheep among wolves.

She was sweating up a nervous storm already, and had barely made it in the front door.

Her friends abandoned her once they'd lead her onto the main floor, making a beeline either for the bar or the crowds around the stages (a gorgeous, nearly naked ice elemental was on the center stage, the overhead lights reflecting in fractals from his icy skin and catching a great deal of attention; she gave him a single appreciative but guilty glance), and Frisk, now left to her own devices, pulled her hood and her ball cap more fully over her face, attempting to sneak off to one of the seating areas unnoticed. She was moderately successful, only bumping into one person (a tall, hooded monster bearing three eyes and an unsettling smirk on his rune inscribed face; surprised to see another skeleton monster, she had turned to look at him twice, but he'd disappeared) on her way to hide herself.

She hadn't seen Sans yet, which was a pretty good indication that he wasn't here... he had such a magnetic persona, it was difficult not to notice him, he garnered so much attention. Even she had to admit that much... that, and how indescribably handsome he was. It almost wasn't fair... and only made her so much more convinced that he was playing some sort of sick and twisted game with her. What did a monster like him want with a frumpy, shy school teacher that couldn't even catch the eye of her own kind?

A pang of long neglected desire shot through her heart, her teeth biting at her lower lip habitually. Her eyes ached with telltale and still unshed tears that she held back fiercely, her throat tight and her hands trembling without her permission. It hurt, knowing for absolute certain that he didn't truly want her. She... as much as she had tried not to... she liked him. It felt like a lot more than like, honestly, but that concept was a four letter word to her at the moment, if just having a crush on the attractive, gregarious, libidinous skeleton monster was doing this much to her.

Ridiculous... so ridiculous.

And then, almost as though her thoughts had summoned him, there he was, the neon casting the slope of his skull, the breadth of his shoulders, and the fluidity of his hands into a softness that spoke of rumpled bedsheets and stolen kisses. His smile, the weight of his gaze, made every woman around the stage he strutted down nearly collapse (if she had been standing, she may very well have as well, her cheeks a deep and dizzying maroon just from the wink he sent the crowd), and the sway of his hips, clad in his usual tight pants, was enough to make anyone in his vicinity drool.

Oh lord... he wasn't going to strip, was he? She might very well combust, she needed to go -

On the stage, Sans extended a hand to swing temptingly around one of the stripper poles, turning a full circle with a cunning and sultry smirk on his face. His hands stroked a path along his body the moment he let the pole go, his phalanges clicking against his belt buckle as they slid down his spine and over his pelvis... before, with a snap of his fingers, he pulled a microphone from thin air.

Oh... oh lord. He was just announcing something. Thank god...

“dearest and lovely ladies, allow me to welcome you in for an evening of sin and indulgence, here with us at divinity. All of your dreams can come true in a single night... for the right price, naturally~ so lay back, enjoy the show, and allow your monstrous desires to consume you~”

He looked out over the crowd as he spoke, bending to accept the dollar bills that had been thrown at him and slipping them through his belt tantalizingly. He walked along the edge of the stage, each sway of his hips filling her head with static and her blood with a now familiar heat... and almost as though that very heat had called out his name, his gaze fell on her, just another face in the crowd leering up at him deliriously. He paused for a moment that couldn't have been more than a beat long, his lustful smile falling and his lavender eyelights constricting, before he continued, turning away and encouraging his patrons to visit the bar and to tip generously.

Frisk, her heart beating a tattoo against the inside of her chest, sat incredibly still, her gaze lowered and her hands clutching the edges of her hood, as though it offered her some sort of protection. Had she been imagining it? Maybe even wishfully thinking that he was able to spot her in a crowd? It had to be. There was no way-

“i have to admit... this is the last place i expected to see you.”

...shit.

She really didn't want to turn to face the other chair set at her table, just out of view behind the cover of her hood, but there really was no point in trying to hide now. He must have teleported straight there from the stage... Squeezing her eyes shut behind the thick frames of her glasses and attempting to still the far too quick beating of her heart, Frisk let out a quavering breath and turned.

God, why was he so handsome... sitting in the shadows at the very edge of the main floor, chin propped on one half-gloved hand and sockets hooded, he looked just as good as he had under the lights on the stage. ...besides the distinct lack of his usual teasing smile. He was, quite ostentatiously, in fact, scowling at her, a furrow she had never seen before between his lowered browbones and one finger tapping against the line of his jaw.

He didn't look happy to see her. In fact, he looked downright pissed .

“I-I... I'm here with Tamara, and my other friends. She's having her... her bachelorette party here... I didn't know we were coming to this club. I thought it would be... um. Another one. Chippendale's, maybe... I don't know. I was hoping... uh... you wouldn't be here,” she excused haltingly, talking far too much as a lump she didn't know the origin or meaning of formed in her throat (why was she so nervous about this? Why was he angry? What even was tonight?), but this didn't seem to appease him. His frown only sank deeper, his jaw clenching and a dangerous, steely look overcoming his scowl, forming it into a full on glare. The hand laid on his jittering leg clenched into a fist, and a quiet, rumbling sound that almost sounded like a growl came from his chest.

He looked outright furious, now, and more than a little intimidating.

“well isn't that nice. here i was, thinking you had no interest in, how did you put it... 'my kind of work'. and yet here you are, letting other males entice and seduce you. and even better ... you meant to keep it from me,” he muttered in a dark, dire whisper, leaning further over the table towards her; she leaned away from him nervously, her eyes wide and her breath short, as he dragged his gaze over her judgingly, dangerous and almost possessive.

Sometimes, with the way he carried himself and the way he behaved, she forgot he was a monster, beholden to ancient instincts and so entirely other from the little she knew of human men. It was more than clear now, as far too sharp fangs bared themselves in a low, warning snarl directed at an approaching waiter (the bird monster immediately turned tail and fled), as he turned back to her and scooted his chair closer, to bend his head close to her throat and draw in her scent.

It wasn't the first time he had done that, but this was much different than the others. There was no romance in the tightness of his shoulders, in the way he caged her against the wall at her side. There was only possessive ire, and an unspeakable want that she truly did not understand glinting in his sockets, returned to meet her eye again.

“you reek of shameful desire, darling . so enchanted by half naked monsters, to sit here and act innocent while craving so deeply. which one of them do you want, hmm? which of them were you imagining fucking you. i know perfectly well it's not me,” he hissed at her, plain and potent jealousy seeping from him in an aura of menace and reproach, and Frisk could only sit there and tremble, confusion and a note of primal fear singing in her blood.

“I... I don't... Sans, I wasn't... none of them, I was just-” she stuttered nervously, the source of his possessive passion spinning her mind in circles (what was happening? Why was he acting like this when he was just trying to get her in bed?), and her stumbling seemed to only confirm his suspicions, his eye lights extinguishing themselves in his sockets and one of his hands darting out to take her wrist in hand.

She expected pain, flinching back and whimpering, but none came; his grasp was firm, but nowhere near enough to cause her harm, pulling her closer to him and staring at her with those empty, terrifying sockets in alarming fury.

“we need to talk .”

The moment he stopped speaking, the room descended into utter and complete darkness, a cold the like of which she had never felt before stabbing icy shards of discomfort and wrongness all through her body. She choked on the lack of air, eyes wide and free hand pushing at the shackle his phalanges had formed around her wrist, but the very next moment, light and warmth and reality formed around her again, forcing breath into her lungs in a gasp that made her throat sore. She was released from his grasp the next moment, and when her head had stopped spinning and her stomach had settled (geezums, that was unpleasant...), she carefully and cautiously looked around herself, now in a much different place than the table she had attempted to hide behind a moment ago.

She now stood in a dark but lavishly furnished bedroom, sheer, gauzy curtains and dark woods and deep, sensual carpets making the space feel like a sensual dream. The centerpiece of the room was a massive four-poster bed, made up with intricately embroidered sheets, and seated on the edge of the bed, skull in his hands and face hidden in shadow, sat Sans.

He was completely silent and still, the only indication that he wasn't a statue (if she knew anyone that would have a statue of themselves, it was him-) being the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. The silence continued far beyond awkwardness, an unspoken query the size of an elephant standing in the space between them, before, with a sigh, he sat up and leaned his forearms on his knees. He directed a look full of shame and apology to her, the flecks of light in his relit sockets dim and colorless.

“i'm sorry. for the way i was treating you, for dragging you through a jump without notice... stars, i'm sorry. ...for everything,” he murmured, lowering his gaze back to the toes of his boots, and Frisk could only blink at him, cast adrift for the second time in just as many minutes.

“It's... I mean, it's not okay, god I thought I was dying in... wherever you took me before here, but... um. No harm done,” she reassured him blankly, folding her arms across her midriff and shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Today really wasn't going how she'd thought it would... and he was acting so oddly. He'd never apologized for the things he did to her or made her feel before... and he'd certainly never acted the way he had in the club.

What was his deal?

Sans seemed of the same mind as she was, slowly shaking his skull side to side and rubbing the palm of one hand backwards, over the back of his skull. The intense and heavy silence was suddenly extremely vivid, drawing her attention to the fact that the pervasive music from his club wasn't even in hearing distance. Where had they gone? ...was this his home?

“that's the thing, frisk. there's been a lot of harm done. you just don't know how much,” he sighed, the feathered aqua ruff lining on his sleek vest moving along with the release of breath, and, without looking at her again, he patted the space next to him on the bed. “you don't owe me anything, especially after the way i just treated you. but if you'll stay and listen... i think it's time i told you.”

This wasn't the Sans that she was used to dealing with. His charm and charisma and overt sexuality was nowhere to be found, in the slumped and shamed monster offering her an explanation for his deeds. To his other persona, she would have laughed off the offer haughtily, rightly assuming he was only trying to trick her into bed.

Seeing him now, with all the changes he had gone through and the humble penitence in his tone... she found herself crossing the room to sit beside him almost without realizing it. She nearly reached out a hand to touch the one laying across his knee, the urge to comfort and nurture a natural one to her, but she held back, folding her hands nervously in her lap and giving him an encouraging look.

She was willing to hear him out. She didn't have any idea where doing so would lead... but this moment felt big, carrying the gravity of something more than she could presently understand, and she felt, sitting here next to Sans the skeleton, was exactly the place she needed to be.

He still didn't look up at her, though his position on the mattress shifted when she sat beside him; he only let out a half-hearted chuckle, the hand rubbing the back of his skull dragging along his exposed vertebrae to hook between a collar bone and a scapula. His smile was a perfunctory one, automatic and practiced and, in this moment, more than a little sad, and it tore at her heart to see it, the urge to reach out to him again raging through her.

“i don't know how much you were taught in school about us... but monsters are made of magic. magic isn't some invisible and infinite source... it's celestial energy, coalesced into the little glass containers we call souls, and intrinsically bound to emotions. my people... we feel things a hundred and ten percent. we don't do things by halves, we can't- being so closely connected to our magic makes it impossible. the way that monsters like me survive is to release and share that magic with each other, and back in the underground, after the war, most of the things we felt were anger and fear. those are a toxic combination, and they started to change us into real, honest to the stars monsters, feral and cruel. we had to do something... so the king proclaimed that we should turn our focus instead to love. most often the physical kind. and it saved us.”

Frisk's eyebrows furrowed, confused and a little thrown. She had no idea what this had to do with the two of them, but she was more than a little intrigued by the explanation. She had no chance to ask, though, as Sans charged on almost without breath.

“surviving that way kept us all alive, kept us from being changed into hellbent demons... it just changed us in a different way instead. soul bonds and marriages were no longer singular affairs. it was share and share alike, and though the bonds still existed, they weren't the same as they used to be. we shared our love with each other without consequence, indulging without having to consider feelings other than lust and contentment... and up here, it was a lot of the same. humans were more than willing to mate with monsters, and the fact that your kind is so inclined towards carnal desire only fed the fire.”

He paused, a heavy and unspoken emotion tightening his shoulders and jaw, before his turned his head to look at her. He looked tired. So incredibly tired, and more sad than she'd ever seen him before. Without his gregarious persona, he seemed so much smaller, and without her permission, tears rose to mist her eyes, brimming on her eyelashes and blurring his face.

She wasn't capable of holding back any longer. She reached out almost desperately to take his hand in hers, her fingers trembling as they attempted to thread themselves between his. He only hesitated a moment, one that she feared would be him withdrawing from her, before helping her slot her fingers into their rightful places, their palms fitting together as though they had always meant to be there. Through the shimmering tears, she saw some of the weary sadness melt away into a crooked and unbelievably handsome smile, and her heart fluttered in her chest. He looked just as affected, the break in his explanation going on a little too long before he snapped back into awareness.

“...yeah. uh. where was i... the surface, right. like i said, humans fit in with our way of life almost seamlessly... we're even able to breed, yet another plus. and i was more than content with that. i was born and raised in the center of all that indulgence; been a part of it since i reached maturity. every night, it was parties and drinking and so much sex my pelvis would be bruised come morning. i never questioned any of it. ...until the day i met you, and formed the first monogamous bond one of our people has had in a thousand years.”

He let out an ironic and self-depreciating snort of laughter, then, looking down at their twined hands and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.

“in the early days, i was... a complete asshole, to put things bluntly. i was furious with everything, with the stars and with you and with my goddamn soul, because in a monogamous bond, you can't mate with anyone but your partner. i couldn't get it up for anyone or anything but thoughts of you, became outright repulsed by being touched the ways i used to love. my long and indulgent nights were gone, my partners of no interest anymore... i was left alone here, with only my thoughts for company, and came to a very uncomfortable realization. i had no idea who i was, without all of the bells and whistles... without being balls deep in a complete stranger or getting pounded in a dark alleyway or drunk off my bony ass in the middle of an orgy.”

He shook his head, smirking and rubbing at the bridge of his nasal cavity.

“in my genius, i thought, somehow, that banging you would fix it all. that if i fucked you out of my system, everything would go back to how it was before. and then, something that had never ever happened to me threw me off guard, the second i finally got to talk to you, try to persuade you to coming home with me... you didn't want me. you were disgusted by me, in fact. stars, that hit me harder than a donkey punch, heh... or the book you threw at me.”

She remembered that day almost too well. She'd been walking home from the public library when he'd made his way up to her like he owned the entire world, telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she was his soulmate and he wanted to get more... acquainted with her. Lord, the fury she had let out on him, along with whapping him straight in the eye socket with a world atlas.

“I'm sorry about that. I never told you, but I really did regret it,” she whispered, rubbing her tears away from her eyes with the stretched out sleeve of her hoodie, and Sans scoffed, shrugging and reaching out to wipe the tears that she missed away with a sweep of his thumb.

“sugar, i wouldn't have begrudged you if you'd kicked me straight in the dick. i would have deserved it, cuz you were right about me. you knew better than to trust me. and the more that you resisted me, the more time i spent feeling a bond the way it had been meant to be felt... it changed me. i didn't care that you didn't want me, then. it was just an obstacle in the way of getting back to who i was before. as time went on though... it started to sting. pride that i had never questioned before practically shriveled up and died, every time you turned me away. and still, i couldn't blame you. how could you possibly trust me, after the way things started out?”

The drag of his thumb slid along her cheekbone, caressing her skin until he cupped her jaw in his palm. He looked... happier than she'd seen him in awhile, honestly. His eye lights flicked over her face, drinking her in and smiling softly before going on.

“i didn't miss the parties and the sex and the overindulgence anymore, after all that. all i could think about was you and your dumb hat collection, and the sweater with the pom-poms on it, and the way you laughed at my very best attempts to woo you. how incredibly soft and kind you are, when you're not being assaulted by jerkoff skeletons, the way your hair catches the light, the little dimple in your chin when you smile. i wanted more. i didn't just want your body, i wanted you , and stars help me, the day i kissed you i thought i'd died and gone straight to rest among the stars. you felt better than anything, and i do mean anything, i've ever felt in my life. bar none.”

Her face had never been redder than it was in that moment. She wanted to hide her face completely in her hoodie, absolutely certain that she was going to combust, but he didn't let her, holding her abashed gaze with absolute certainty blazing in his sockets.

“i knew i'd crossed a line by doing it. i kind of expected that you'd avoid me afterwards, and tried not to push too much. i know you needed time, and i wanted to give it to you. ...seeing your face in the crowd tonight was a shock i wasn't ready for. i felt something i've never, ever felt in my life seeing you there, in a place where women came for only one thing. i was jealous. horribly, possessively, furiously jealous, and i knew i had no right to be, even as i cornered you and acted like a complete ass to you, all over again.”

Slowly, every so slowly and tenderly, he scooted closer to her, holding her gaze the entire time. He slid his hand from her jaw to the length of her throat, seeming to glory in the feel of her skin against his bones, but when she shivered in excited stimulation, he stopped, dropping his hand away and to the bed beside her.

“...so now you know. everything, from the start to now, and i am... so fucking sorry. for how i've treated you, for how i must have made you feel... i'm never going to be worthy of you. i know that as much as you do. i just wanted you to know, and to apologize for my hideous behaviour. i'm not asking you for anything, and if its what you want, i never will. i'll take you back to the club, and you'll never see my face again.”

Frisk could only stare at him in shock. He was, well and truly, laying himself bare before her, with all of his faults and his shortcomings and the wrongs he had done, and showing her a side of himself that she truly hadn't known existed before today. He was owning up to everything, and was leaving the choice in her hands, whether she wanted to be done with him or if she wanted to give him a second chance.

Before tonight, before listening to him and coming to understand who he was behind the facade he kept up so much better, she'd have been glad to be rid of him.

But with his apologies lifting the grudges she had borne off of her shoulders, with her better knowledge of what he really wanted and how sincere his more recent proposals had been... she found herself reaching out to take his hand again, sending him a watery half-smile.

“...can we just start over? Without all that stuff between us? You, the unfairly handsome and charming monster, finding a new way to look at life...”

He sniffled, his lower lip line trembling even as he smiled, his body leaning towards her as he settled his forehead against hers, a motion she wasn't familiar with but that felt like the world in one.

“and you, the ridiculous human trying to hide all her astonishing beauty with a ball cap and a hoodie, giving the sick and perverted monster another chance.”

She nodded, letting out a quiet but happy sob, before leaning into him fully, sinking into his embrace and wrapping her arms around his neck. He reciprocated, sliding his arms around her back and nuzzling his head against the side of hers, and for an unknowable time, that was how they sat, almost physically able to feel the hurt and the pain mending as they embraced one another.

It really was a second chance, for them both, and Frisk, too lost in the possibilities of what was to come to care about the feathered ruff of his coat tickling her nose, knew she wouldn't trade this for all the money in the world.

Chapter Text

Underfell

Sans was in the middle of the best sex dream he'd ever had when the pounding inside his skull jerked him out of a dead sleep like a slap in the face.

It had been a long damn time since he'd had a hangover this bad. He'd overindulged a bit, admittedly, the night before... he'd more than drunk the rest of the bar under the table, and then some. But as far as he was concerned, the celebration was well earned. His centuries of vain hope and what might call delusional fantasies were in the past... his worries about incompatibility and the disappointment his beautiful bride would feel at their failure were left behind.

He was gonna be a dad. A fuckin' father . Him. He could still hardly believe it.

His happiness was beyond measure, without adequate compare to anything he'd ever felt before... his headache was nothing to his sheer and utter joy. He couldn't wait 'til Frisk started showing... 'til he had his baby in his arms, tiny and sweet and perfect.

He could cry just thinking about it...

Sans, with a wide yawn, a large palm pressed to his aching temple, and a sloppy, tired smile, made to turn onto his side, already feeling for the form of his mate, in her usual place beside him, to pull her into his embrace and attempt to fall asleep again. Her side of the mattress was very obviously empty, though... and he couldn't turn over.

Something was sitting on top of him.

His sockets snapped open instantly, alarm and instinctive anger overtaking his simple and sleepy joy- only to very belatedly realize that the dream he had been having, consisting largely of marking and ravaging and breeding his Frisk all over again, hadn't all been the fantastical machinations of his admittedly perverse imagination. Frisk was perched on top of him, naked as the day was young and looking down at him with the absolute sexiest expression on her face, her hands dragging down his bare ribs and her breasts, already fuller from the progress of her new magical pregnancy, bouncing temptingly.

A bead of sweat dripped down the lines of her belly, following the shape of her curves to fall against his iliac crest... and her folds parted magnificently around the thick length of his cock.

She was riding him, with all but wild abandon, and stars, if the realization didn't turn him on even more than his dream had, his cheekbones coloring and his irises constricting at the sight of her.

He'd woken her up before with intimacy, far more than once, his hands worshiping her bountiful curves and his teeth nipping at her shoulder and his length thrusting between her thighs, teasing at her entrance. How was he supposed to resist her, when she wore practically nothing to bed and was stacked as hell? It was an impossibility, as far as he was concerned, and he was lucky to have been blessed with a bride who absolutely adored his lascivious and adventurous desires. She took control on occasion, as well, something he hadn't known he was into until he was tied to the bed and teased almost to dust...

But she had never done something like this, an absolute goddess in the dim light of dawn creeping through the blinds, and he was living for it.

“frisk- fuck, baby doll, ya feel so fuckin' good ... ya really know how ta wake a guy up,” he groaned, his hands rising to stroke along her thick thighs, his sockets trained on the sight of her body taking him deep (shit... fuck, she sounded so damn wet... how long had she been riding him?), and Frisk, the deep brown pools of her luminous eyes gazing down on him through her thick, dark lashes with need and desire that made his cock twitch and pulse inside her, smiled down at him serenely, reaching out a hand to drag her fingers along his jawline. He turned his skull to kiss her palm, nuzzling into her touch, and she let out a muted chuckle.

“I'm sure you'll forgive me anyway, but this was the only way I was gonna get anything out of you; you sleep like a rock when you drink. Plus, while I doubt you remember it, you left me high and dry last night... and stars, I just couldn't wait any longer,” she purred to him far too seductively for him to resist giving her a little bit of help, planting his feet in the mattress, grasping her waist, and thrusting up into her until she was letting out desperate, wailing cries of bliss with every stroke, her hands anchored between his thick ribs.

She was right... he didn't remember anything more than getting home and kicking his shoes off at the door. He must have really gotten her going, to be this needy for him... or it was her pregnancy kicking in again, demanding the magic of her mate to supplement the newborn soul growing inside her. His smirk was rabid and lustful at the thought, only growing wider and more hungry with each wet slap of her thighs meeting his pelvis; he hadn't been sure when that part was gonna kick in for her, but he was more than ready to assist her. He barely even remembered he had a raging hangover now... his mind was focused entirely on pleasing and fulfilling the mother of his child.

Oh, and did he please her~

She managed riding him to orgasm two times (three, she admitted with a panting, open mouthed smirk, and stars help him, he'd gotten hard all over again) before her legs needed rest, and talked him into three more, in various positions, before she was satisfied, curled up against his side and sleepily running her fingers over his sweat streaked ribs. His hand stroked along the small of her back, chest rumbling with sated and calming purrs as he finished off a cigarette, before he stubbed out the butt in the ashtray on his bedside table and turned to press a kiss to her lips.

“lookin' forward ta seven months a that?” he snickered, once she'd let him pull away (her arms had wound around his neck immediately, her full and still ridiculously alluring body pressing against him and making his completely sated magic stir in interest), dragging a curled knuckle along her jaw, and Frisk, nudging her cheek against his touch and letting her eyelids flutter shut, let out a happy sigh.

“If you keep giving it to me that good every time, we might have a whole brood of little skeletons before I'm done with you,” she murmured wearily, already drifting off to sleep in his embrace, and Sans, with the happiest, most crooked grin he had ever worn in his life spreading across his face, let his sockets close as well, basking in the glow of everything he had never thought he would have or deserve.

A whole brood, huh...

He could get used to that idea.

Chapter Text

Error

Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Error sat alone within the Anti-Void, staring out into the blank emptiness that his realm consisted of. A clock was ticking, somewhere... he didn't care enough to attempt to find it. He likely would in another hour or so, when the repetitious sound began to get to him, but for the moment, he had no real desire to move from his seat, beneath the swinging forms of the multitude of dolls that represented each and every universe he had conquered. Their button eyes were just as empty as the stifled air around them, the breath of the space between one life and the next swaying them back and forth soundlessly... he could feel them judging him, for his inaction just as heavily as his foul deeds.

Maybe he should just start making them without eyes. See them try to judge him then.

Little bastards.

There was a flicker, within the swirling mass of light and dark around him, accompanied by whisper soft steps as graceful as the being that made them. Another pair of eyes found his form, seated on what served as the ground with one leg propped up and his arms folded around it... those gentle steps drew nearer, and all around him, the Anti-Void began to brighten, acknowledging the presence of an ethereal and angelic being.

He didn't turn to face her, even when she knelt to sit beside him (ever and always, not close enough to trigger his haphephobia... she knew him so well), her skirts whispering against her bare legs as they settled into stillness... he only scowled harder into the middle distance, the persistent ticking of the invisible clock starting to finally annoy him. A barrage of errors and glitches stormed across his body and his sight, his hands twitching uncomfortably even as he clenched them harder into fists; the static became so loud, for a moment, that it covered up her voice when she spoke his name, robbing him of the sweet and tender softness of hearing it on her lips.

He hated the surges of his pixlexia, constantly interrupting him when he least wanted them to, almost purposefully. He hated them so much and so deeply that sometimes he sent himself into fits, a seemingly never ending cycle of frustration and short tempered tantrums and random blackouts that he couldn't for the life of him stop. He hated them to the point of loathing, more than he hated the glitches poisoning the multiverse, more than he hated the bear hugs Fresh loved to inflict on him that sent him into a full blown shutdown, more than he hated the ticking of that goddamn clock ...

But not nearly as much as he hated her coming back to him smelling like Ink .

His nasal ridge wrinkled at the scent, his arms tightening around his knee and his sockets narrowing, now locked into a venomous glare, directed at nothing. He let out a low and territorial growl, the sheer strength of the scent confirming the nudging suspicions battering at the inside of his skull... she had come directly from the freakshow's bed, still reeking of his fabricated magic.

Was that how he wanted it, then? Were they competing on that level too? He could more than comply with that... unlike the inkblot, he was still capable of breeding (at least, he thought he was... he still technically had a soul, as glitched out and corrupted as it was). What would he think of him returning her bearing his young, hmm? Where would his power of creation be then.

Heh. He'd have to remember that one for the next time he saw the soulless bastard.

...she was sitting in front of him now. When had she moved? He must have gotten lost in his thoughts again... and stars, was it to his detriment. She was radiant against the backdrop of the progressively brighter and brighter Anti-Void, her hair just fluffy enough to make him want to run his phalanges through it (he always got strands caught between his bones, but it never stopped him), her smile so full and soft that it made his soul ache in his chest, the dark shadows of her consuming but wholly unjudging gaze consuming and uplifting him at once.

He never felt better than when she was with him... seeing her there, so beautiful and understanding and so everything , was almost enough to make him forget the possessive ire that had been blooming inside him, suffusing his bones with venom and filling his mind with thoughts of sin and betrayal.

Almost. But not enough.

“ wh4t .”

He almost flinched at the hard, cutting tone of his own voice, as temperamental as he felt but so much harsher than she deserved... his anger wasn't directed at her, after all. It was all for Ink, the smirking goody-two-shoes that had muscled in on his romance with the cosmic being he had fallen head over glitching heels for.

The fact that Ink and Core had been lovers before he had even met her was a meaningless detail.

It wasn't being melodramatic to say that she had, well and truly, saved him, though. His existence before her had been... chaotic, to say the least. Ever since his fall, since the betrayal of his former life, the hopelessness of drifting helplessly through the darkness and awaiting his end, and the glitch that had pulled him into the Anti-Void and made him what he was, he had lived with only his mission in mind, his quest to end all timelines that showed even a trace of coding errors, a hateful vendetta that had cost more beings their lives than he cared to count. Even Ink's efforts to sabotage and stop him had been of no consequence to him... all he had cared about was putting the universe to rights, as one who knew just how wrong it could go.

And then, he had found her, openly defying him by rescuing stranded and doomed souls from broken timelines, to bring them to the safety of her own plane, hidden securely where he would never be able to find it. He had been infuriated, naturally, had sworn to hunt her down and delete her little safe haven right before the empty pits she called eyes... but the more that she thwarted him, the more he came to know of her, the less he wanted to end her existence.

She was so much like him, in so many ways. Betrayed to a bitter end, shattered across spacetime and cast into the Void, only to form into a higher being, capable of seeing the greater purpose and the grand design of the multiverse. She had decided upon a grand mission as he had, bearing the weight of all worlds on her shoulders, and despite himself, despite the things he had sworn to himself and the cursed stars... he had fallen in love with her. Against all odds, against the will that had removed him from any sort of bond with the Frisk of his world, he had felt the connection form, and for once, fate outside what he made for himself wasn't unwanted.

The road beyond that love had been a dangerous one, though. In the time of his destructive mania, he had taken Nightmare's offer of partnership, oddly vindicated at the thought of allowing humans with the same souls that had betrayed him be destroyed. Once he had fallen for Core, though, he simply couldn't justify it, unable to look at her without seeing the terrified faces of the Frisk she had been before her fall... unable to hear her speak soft words of reciprocated love without hearing the horrified pleas for mercy they had begged of him. There was no way to leave the mad god's service before he had achieved his ends, and refusing to capture Frisks simply wasn't a conceivable option.

He had personally seen what doing so had cost Rune. It wasn't a price he was willing to pay.

So, along with a surprising amount of Nightmare's other cohorts (every single one were keeping a Frisk in secret, unable to bear the thought of a universe without them), they had all decided to start... “losing” them. Pretending they died in increasingly dramatic ways while either helping them escape to a realm outside of Nightmare's reach, or allowing Core herself to safety them away within the Omega Timeline. It had been working so far... but Nightmare's patience was beginning to become very short. They had all felt the pain of his displeasure, and it was only going to grow worse.

It was an ever present worry to him, weighing on his mind every moment as he considered that, to keep the corrupted god from outright removing his skull, he would have to start bringing him Frisks again. Core wouldn't like that, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to live through her disappointment. Even suffering the pain of a knife through the chest couldn't compare with that...

But not being present to hide her existence from Nightmare was even worse.

The meandering train of his thoughts brought him back to the present, to the saddened pout of Core's lips and the droop of her shoulders, and though he scrambled for a moment to remember what they had been talking about, he recalled his barked out question soon enough, regret and self-loathing overtaking him and sending him backtracking.

“i-i-i d1d'nt m3an th4t. w0rk's be3n ro-ro-rough, and... 1nk's sce3nt 4lways s3ts me 0f-f-ff,” he explained softly pulling at the folds of his scarf to hide his glitching stutters (he was only really ever self-conscious about them around her...), and though a look of understanding overtook her sorrow, her frown still remained, marring her lovely face in a way that made him want to kiss it away.

The thought of touching anyone right now made his bones itch, though, and in that moment, he hated his aversion to touch more than anything else. Some days were better than others, and today was not a good one. 

Damnit...

“I understand... but Error, you promised me you would try harder with Ink... you two aren't so different, in the ways that really matter... and I love you both so much...” she whispered, her hands folded primly in her lap and her voice surrounding him in gentle echoes, caressing him without the physical contact that he couldn't stand most days and settling his turbulent soul at ease in a moment. He let out a blissful sigh, his scowl melting away and his sockets fluttering... before he turned his face away and to the side, jealousy resurfacing to sting and resolutely, stubbornly shift aside her plea.

He had promised that, in the aftershocks of one of the rare times he was able to touch her enough to take her to bed... their mating had been frenetic, much rougher than he had meant it to be and stars in the cosmos, it had been so damn good he'd nearly fried his own circuits with overstimulation. She'd been so soft and beautiful, covered in shallow bites and slowly bruising hickies and the staticky thickness of his magic, watching him from beneath lowered lids and speaking to him of dreams and fantasies, things they could have and be when the universe turned and things were better. Her greatest wish was that her two lovers could get along, could share her love as equally as she gave it to them, and lost in the throes of his passion, he had agreed to it.

Outside the rose colored lenses of their lovemaking, he hadn't seen a conceivable way to manage it. He despised Ink just as much as he knew Ink despised him, and asking them to share her in harmony was like asking fire and water to coexist without destroying each other.

...that was a good metaphor. He needed to remember that one.

“1nfinit3 kn0wl3dge 4nd y-y-you st1ll do-do-don't und3rst4nd h0w monst3rs w0rk. w3 wer-wer-wer3n't m4de t0 shar3, 4nd 1'll n3ver back d0wn from th1s fight. it's h1m o-o-or m3,” he responded stubbornly, cracking his jaw and clenching his multicolored phalanges into the material of his shorts as he turned his gaze back to meet hers resolutely... he wasn't prepared for the hardness in her expression, though, nor the darkening of the air around her.

He'd never seen her this angry, not even when he'd destroyed one of the worlds she had been attempting to evacuate and laughed in her face while doing it.

“ No ... I will not pick just one of you... you are both far too special to me, and I love you both equally ... being without either of you would break my heart, and I will not allow what happened to Dream and Nightmare to happen to us...” she fumed, her voice, usually so quiet and serene, now rolling about him like thunder, sending chills down his spine to numb the tips of his fingers and toes. He spluttered and glitched erratically, cowed and taken aback by the comparison (she... she wasn't exactly wrong... but the parallel was one he hadn't considered before), but Core was clearly done with their conversation for the moment, standing and turning away from him furiously.

“I love you, Error, but your pride will be your undoing... the same as Ink's carelessness will be his... until the both of you have sorted things out, I don't want to see you... I've told him the same already...” she stormed at him, his skull starting to ring with the fullness of her upset (stars, he'd fucked up so bad... he hadn't even tried, when he'd said he'd do anything for her...), and made to slip out of the Anti-Void without another word... but paused just before she wicked out of existence, turning her all-seeing eyes to him.

He looked back pleadingly, misery and penitence spilling over from him in droves.

“Please... for all our sakes... put aside your petty grievances and speak to each other... you might find you have more in common than you thought... than you both once thought of me...” she murmured, her voice again a soothing and calming breeze all around him, and then she was gone, carried away to the ends of the multiverse and beyond, outside the realm of his understanding. He was left alone, with the taste of his own bitter words hanging heavy on his tongue and his regrets on his patched sleeves, in the stillness and emptiness of his in-between existence. It was so much colder, without her there...

At least the ticking had stopped.

He sat there, in his misery and self pity, for longer than he could be proud of, missing her more and more as each second trickled by. The ultimatum was one he had dreaded receiving one day, but was one that, he could see, was much needed. The comparison she had made to Nightmare and Dream's ruined romance was one he couldn't refute with any honesty, and the fear of them ending up the same was such that he was, honest to the stars, considering getting up and making his way to Ink's realm-

Only to find himself, upon finally forcing himself to his feet, facing the inkstain himself.

The tension in the air was more than palpable- it strained like the stretched out strings of a piano, hanging heavy in the air about them both. There was a long and dreadful silence, the shapes in Ink's sockets wheeling by a mile a minute and the errors glitching across Error's form growing in volume and strength... until, sick of it all and aching with loss and misery, Error's tensed shoulders drooped, his skull turning away wearily.

He wasn't even capable of a sneer. He just wanted her back.

“h3re t-t-to gl0at?” he muttered bitterly, folding his arms across his chest and letting out a shaky breath, and Ink, jutting his jaw to the side and fiddling idly with one of the lids of his ink vials, let out a soft and, somehow, just as bitter chuckle, shaking his head in the negative.

“not much to gloat about. core's had it up to here with me,” he replied with affected mirth, lifting a hand over his head to indicate just how done with his shit Core really was, then dropped his hand to his side again, slotting it into one pocket to have something to do with it. “...looks like she already talked to you, too.”

Error snorted, sending the other monster a sarcastic glare.

“h-h-h0w'd you f1gure that 0ne out, g3nius,” he snarked through a sneer, his short temper already ignited against his long time rival, and though Ink's cheekbones colored, his sockets narrowing and his mouth opening with a reactive retort, he immediately closed it again, shaking his skull and kicking one half bared foot at the churning matter of the Anti-Void beneath his foot. The motion sent a rainbow of color away from his toes in an arch, half blinding both of them for a short moment.

“don't think she's half as mad at you, about this whole mess. she, uh, didn't know about my partnership with dream... i finally told her what i've been doing. heh... first time i've ever heard her curse. it was terrifying,” he sighed, his flat expression lightening with a self-depreciating smirk, and Error raised his brow bones, genuinely surprised. He hadn't known Ink had been keeping it from her... how had he managed that?

A spark of pride ignited within him, for a moment, spotting an obvious leg up over Ink in Core's eyes... but after a moment considering it, he dismissed it. That was exactly the thing she'd been telling him he needed to stop...

“s0 wh4t're y-y-you gonn4 d0 about 1t? i d-d-d0ubt dr3am's g0nna let y0u out 0f y-y-your 3nd 0f the d3al,” he queried, genuinely curious, and Ink remained quiet for a moment, shifting back and forth from his heels to his toes in heavy, carrying silence, before looking back up to Error.

“i'm going to the gods’ mountain, and i'm gonna turn myself over to reaper.”

Error would have sworn his soul completely stopped functioning, in that moment, his sockets wide and yet unseeing. Reaper, the god of death that presided over all the multiverse, had been furiously attempting to find a way to stop both Dream and Nightmare for good, and he himself had been forced to flee a few worlds to keep the enraged god from capturing him and squeezing information out of him. To actually go to him... Ink was pretty much committing suicide.

If Reaper didn't kill him for all he'd done, Dream would for betraying him.

“aren't you afraid he's gonna... you know-” Error prompted, drawing a line across his neck with his thumb, and Ink snorted out a laugh, even as he shrugged his shoulders.

“don't really think that matters, in the grand scheme of things. core was right, calling me a coward... i've only been delaying the inevitable. dream's not gonna let her live, holding so much of star's heart in her soul... no matter how much of his dirty work i do for him, he's gonna end up turning on me in the end, and stars know i'm not gonna let him get to her while i'm still alive. if i'm gonna die, might as well do it on my own terms,” he replied wearily, sending his long time enemy a half-hearted smile, and Error, taken aback by his perspective, could do little more than marvel at it, and guiltily consider the consequences of his own situation.

Nightmare's ignorance of Core's existence had a time limit. The corrupted god wasn't going to be forgiving of him keeping so much of his Star's heart from him... he'd be as good as dead any way he sliced it.

...maybe it was time to start taking measures into his own hands.

“y0u mi-i-ight b3 r1ght, much 4s it pa1ns m3 t0 a-a-adm1t it,” he murmured, turning to face Ink fully, and let out a bracing sigh. This was gonna suck . “th1nk he-e-e w0uld b3 m0re merc1ful if w3 b0th we-we-went? g0od w1ll a-a-and 4ll that.”

It was Ink's turn to raise a brow then, though with the offer, a look much more confident lit his downcast face.

“can't hurt, right? and hey, didn't you two used to be friends or something? that should help.”

Error scoffed, cringing at the thought of how much hell Reaper was going to put him through in return for the hell he'd left him to deal with, and braced himself for the jump it would take to reach the gods’ universe, at the very center of them all.

“ha... th4t w-w-was a l0ng t1me ag0... b3fore a-a-all th3 un1verse destr0ying.”

“oof. you're a braver monster than i am.”

“y-y-ye4h, i kn0w.”

Chapter Text

Underswap

Golden sunlight, streaming from above through the wisps of crisp, white clouds and the wings of migrating birds, fell to warm and brighten the earth into wondrous splendor, filtering through and illuminating deeply hued autumn leaves. A cool breeze, spiced with wood fire smoke, cinnamon, and coffee, played about among the leaves that had already fallen from their boughs, sweeping them along the walkways and many stone steps of Ebott University. The noontime crush of humans and monsters was in full sway, seeking out places of solitude to eat their lunches, standing about in closely knit circles to smoke their cigarettes, and populating the white, plastic tables surrounding the pop up food stalls that lined the paths.

The chatter and hubbub carried far from the commons where most of the students and teachers were congregated, creeping through cracked windows as far away as the student dormitories, and behind one such window, the hastily pulled shades incapable of completely blocking out the noise of a lively college campus, a human girl was attempting to ignore the noise in favor of the much more interesting ones coming from her computer screen.

The girl, a pretty thing with thick, chocolate brown locks falling about her blushing cheeks, a pair of heavily lashed, fluttering brown eyes, and full, panting lips, was very clearly occupied, her lovely striped sweater-dress bunched up over her bared breasts and her parted legs. Her skin was flushed and sweat streaked, despite the lingering chill of autumn, her legs propped up awkwardly on the arms of her desk chair and her hands, trembling with lust and strain, stroked through her blushing folds and along the length of a neon blue sex toy, perfectly displayed for her computer's screen.

“Sans... Sans... Sans-” she breathed, throwing her head back as she rubbed two fingers around her reddened clit, thrusting the toy she had bought herself in effigy of her lover in and out of her core in desperate facsimile of the touch she truly desired, and on the computer before her, just as flushed and deeply entranced by the scene before him as she was performing it, Sans the skeleton pushed his pants further down his legs, reaching out to adjust his webcam with one hand while the other stroked the length of his thick, straining cock.

“Frisk... stars, you're so beautiful like this... you're so perfect... I love you so much-” he gasped raggedly as he collapsed back into his own desk chair, robbed of the ability to do anything more than watch his beloved put on the absolute sexiest display he'd ever seen in his life. She'd told him she'd bought him a gift, when she'd asked him to take a moment away from his busy schedule to have, at the very least, a Skype lunch together, and had wanted to show it to him very badly... this was the last thing he'd expected to see, though he certainly wasn't complaining.

His beautiful lover did so enjoy putting on a show for him... specifically to have him feed her the praise she craved so much. He didn't mind supplying that. She was worthy of praise, the most stunning creature he'd seen in all his travels, while in Dream's employ. Even other Frisks in other worlds couldn't compare to her... there was just something special about her.

He had to admit a lot of that had to do with the fact that she was his , confirmed by the scarred bite mark that he had gotten carried away and left on the inside of her thigh. He still apologized every time he saw it, kissed along its length when he bent his attentions to bringing her pleasure with his tongue, but there was still a note of pride in it being there, marking her his mate for life.

Stars, he missed her so much.

His praise seemed to be doing it's job, as had been intended... Frisk legs were now trembling feverishly, her head thrown back and her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she pleasured herself for him in earnest; her moans were incoherent, the sound of her new toy sinking deep inside her with each thrust filling the air with lewd, wet slaps, and Sans, recognizing the signs that she was close to her climax, leaned forward in his chair eagerly, stroking his length with wild abandon to attempt to finish at the same time as her.

“Cum for me Frisk, please, I need it... I need to see you feeling so good, thinking of me and moaning my name and showing me just how much you miss me... stars, you're so gorgeous... cum for me, sweetheart,” he panted, streaks of blue tinted sweat streaking his skull while he jerked himself off, his hips twitching up into his grasp in telling, instinctive thrusts (what he wouldn't give to be the one inside her, feeling her tightening up around him, begging for him to breed her the way she loved to do to make him cum so hard he saw stars-), and with his encouragement, Frisk's entire body tightened, her grasp on the toy slipping while she rubbed her clit greedily, wailing with pleasure as her toes curled and her legs twitched spasmodically.

Her released grip on the large, thick toy (almost as big as he was, mweh heh...) allowed her clenching walls to push it out and onto the floor, baring her stretched and dripping entrance to him, and just seeing her like that, remembering all the times he had pulled out of her and left her the exact same way, brought him to the edge of his orgasm in a heated rush, only saved from making a ridiculous mess by scrambling for the wad of tissues he'd grabbed the moment he saw what she had planned. His cries of her name joined her gasps of his, their mutual orgasm leaving them both a sweating, panting mess, and for perhaps an entire minute afterwards, all they could do was whimper and attempt to recover, murmuring whispers of love to each other until they were able to clean up.

Once they had, Sans doing up his pants and throwing the mess of blue stained tissues away and Frisk, still a bit shaky, simply pulling her dress down and hugging her knees, they smiled at each other sheepishly but intimately, the sated gaze of two beings at loving rest.

“So... yeah. That's how much I miss you,” Frisk admitted shyly, hiding her shy smile behind her knees, and Sans, his palms itching with the need to hold her, to kiss her and remind her that he would always come back to her, let out a tired but understanding sigh.

“I'm sorry it's been so long. Dream insists that we have to work twice as hard now, to stop Nightmare from destroying more worlds. It's hard work, but I think it's worth it. I should be able to come back and visit you soon,” he promised, aching with his sheer adoration, but Frisk, at the mention of Dream's name, turned her gaze away, her brows furrowing behind the curling lengths of her bangs.

“...Sans, I don't trust him. I know you do, and you usually have a really good sense about people... but I don't believe the things he's told you. Something's wrong ,” she confided, thoughtful and concerned worry lowering her tone into a whisper, and Sans, a frown replacing his former smile, paused in the automatic defense he had been about to present her with. She was right, he usually was able to judge people well... but her gut instincts were very infrequently wrong. To be honest... some of the things that they'd been doing lately hadn't seemed quite right.

Why were they taking the Frisks from their homes in secret, if it was to bestow on them holy protections? Why did they just... disappear, after he and Ink had made sure they were settled into their rooms in the castle? Ink had grown quieter and quieter, when he was around at all (which he hadn’t been for almost a week now). On top of everything, Dream himself had changed, too... he seemed distracted, often murmuring to himself and secluding himself to his quarters for long hours, and his obsession with making it to worlds his brother hadn't touched yet had increased tenfold.

He'd been trying to ignore the feeling that he was missing something, but with his beloved's voicing of her own concerns, he couldn't, with good conscience, turn them aside any longer.

“I've had my own questions about his behavior, lately... I'll speak to him, I promise. If I'm not satisfied with his responses, I'll come back immediately. Okay?” he reasoned, raising his brows and sending her a comforting smile, and although she didn't look fully convinced, Frisk nodded slowly, returning his smile in earnest.

Yes... he needed to have that talk with Dream, and soon. He couldn't allow his mate to worry about him this much unanswered.

He only hoped he would know if he was being lied to.

Chapter Text

Myth Monsters: Nautilus

The shape of the full and ivory moon gleamed as it fell upon gentle ocean waters, rippling and rolling and playing among the waves. Waterbound fae arose from their kelp forests and deep caverns to greet it, gathering on the ocean's shores and surface to renew the power of their magicks and make love within the light's embrace, and the stars seemed almost to dance in their places in the heavens, at one with nature and the ancient romance between the waters and the moon.

Far from the shore where the fair folk celebrated beneath the moon, amongst the many jagged rocks that marked the Mariner's Rest (many a seaman had lost their ships to the great reef that lay beneath the waves, rumors of a curse upon the waters and a beast of enormous size passed between superstitious mortals), there lay upon a flat and weathered stone a fair and marvelous sight, gazing rapturously up at the moon as it rose higher over the waters. Skin bared to the light and glistening with ocean spray, the beautiful women reposing there sang along with the mystical tune that only those of magical heritage knew, the waist-length tresses of her hair wound through with seaweed and golden clips and sea stars.

She swayed in time with the waves, watching the ocean spirits leap high into the air to display wondrous acrobatics and laughing along with the dolphins that came to greet her, so much braver in the waters while they were lit so clearly. Indeed, the moon shone through the waves and down into the depths of the splendorous reef, baring to the naked eye the forms of sunken ships, shoals of glittering fish, and the mighty castles the corals had built across hundreds of generations.

It was a wonder to behold, but few could claim to have ventured there and lived, for while there was no curse on the remains of many a lost treasure, secreted away deep within the many twists and turns of the reef, there did indeed dwell a creature there, one who cared little for his territory to be invaded by greedy humans, lesser predators, or even anything much larger than his lovely bride, laid out across her sunning rock to take in the glory of the moon.

The beast, a gargantuan kraken hailing from the deep places of the ocean and known only as Nautilus, asked to have patience with his mate's enchantment and enraptured perusal of the wide and mystical skies, stirred within the deep now, worry and possessive instinct clamoring for his attention. He knew that few would dare drift into his territory with the design of taking her away from him... he had spent a hundred years ensuring that grasping mortals and crafty faekind knew to steer clear of his reef. But the concern would not be silent, the knowledge of just how beautiful and enchanting his Frisk was pulling him away from their den and out into the depths, his tentacles propelling him through the water and between the broken, rotted hulls of ships with ease and power.

Impatient even as he rose to fetch her, his bony chest rumbled with a deep and thrumming call, vibrating the waters around him and carrying out across the entire reef. It was a call that Frisk knew by heart, one that her monstrous husband used only when he had had enough of her curiosity and was calling her home, and though she lingered another moment, sighing and raising a hand to cup the shape of the moon in her palm, she obediently answered her mate's call, rolling off of the rock and splashing into the waters below.

As she sank, she pulled down with her the blanket she had been laying on, now revealed to be a thick and vibrant skin, and as it enfolded her, she transformed into a pristine, glimmering snow leopard seal, the sheen of her coat throwing radiant reflections all around her. She swam through the water with glee and playful energy, charging through shoals of fish and performing imitations of the flips she had watched the dolphins do earlier, and though she had returned to his side with speed and grace, her monstrous lover still could not bear to be parted from her a moment longer, reaching long, thick tentacles from the shadow of a towering reef to pluck her away from her play and into his arms again.

She let out a squeal as his tentacles wrapped around her in a jealous embrace, but quieted when she felt his skeletal hands stroke over her still exposed face, the form of his cracked skull, massive rib cage, and the multitude of his still free tentacles becoming clearer as he pulled her into the darkness. Her liquid brown eyes blinked up at him innocently, purring to him as she nuzzled her head against his hand, and though he attempted to be stern with the little selkie in his grasp, he knew he never could be, not with her.

“you were gone too long,” he rumbled to her even so, holding her to him in an embrace that spoke all too well of both his love and his insecurities (he feared, every day, that the rare beauty that he had fallen in love with would leave him behind, would return to her people and leave him all alone again-), and even caught up in the high of the moon and the surging magic within her, Frisk still sobered, laying her head against the tentacle wrapped around her sorrowfully.

“I know. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,” she burbled to him, humming and snuggling up with him in an attempt to ease his worries, and though the feeling persisted, Nautilus still sent her a crooked smile that made her melt in his grasp like butter, running a curled knuckle over her soft little head.

He didn't speak again, not until he had brought her back to their den. The swim was a quick one, the distance he was comfortable with her going away from their home a fairly short one, but he didn't release her the entire time, keeping her enfolded in the grasp of his tentacles. She didn't mind, giggling quietly at his clinginess and pressing tiny kisses here and there as they went, and soon enough, he was slipping back within the hollowed out and inactive volcanic vent they had made into their den, bringing her quickly to the shelf of rock near the top where a natural air pocket was formed.

Upon the shelf were various amenities and treasures that couldn't be kept among the many overflowing chests of gold and gems and rare trinkets that were Nautilus' trove, soft blankets and pots of flowers and pretty dresses stolen from the shoreline market and beautiful bits and baubles Frisk loved to keep. There was a bed there as well, but it was rarely, if ever used; she much preferred to sleep in his arms, tucked into a nook just below the water's surface.

Set now upon the shelf and released from her husband's grasp, Frisk shed her seal skin and crawled to the edge of the shelf to wrap her arms around his neck, bared to her as he rested his forearms on the edge as well. One of his hands stroked along her back, large enough to encompass her waist entirely if he closed his phalanges, and for a time, there was quiet, only the sound of her breath and the deep, purring rumble of his contentment and the splash of distant waves permeating their repose.

When Frisk finally leaned back, looking up to his face and running her hand along his cracked jaw, she let out a quiet sigh, her eyes, just as deep brown as those of her seal form, sad and searching.

“What will it take, for you to believe that I won't leave you? You know that I won't allow myself to be taken...” she murmured, hoping to finally put to rest her monstrous mate's deep insecurities, and Nautilus, his single crimson eyelight flickering in its socket and throwing luminescence against the cavern walls from the hole at the back of his skull, hesitated only a moment before replying, pressing a gentle fingertip to her bare abdomen in emphasis.

“babies,” he said simply, serious and nervous all at once, and though Frisk raised her brows in surprise, she smiled brightly only a moment later, letting out a peal of laughter that warmed his bones from the inside out.

“Is that all? Naut... we could have sorted this out a long time ago,” she giggled, caressing his jaw and looking up at him from beneath her lashes serenely, and the massive kraken flushed in his surprise, unable to put together the words to reply. He had truly thought she would be wary of bearing his young, to form a bond as strong as that of family. He had been hesitant to bring it up, though he had desired it for more than twelve cycles of the moon... how ridiculous his diffidence seemed now.

“when?” was the only thing he could even think to say, instincts clamoring within his shattered skull and keeping him from tact, and Frisk, her nose crinkling adorably, leaned forward to press her plump lips to his larger bony ones, leaving behind her seal skin as she slipped into the water with him.

“Now.”

Chapter Text

Wondertale

This thrice cursed forest made no sense, and without a single doubt, she knew just who to blame for it.

Sheltered from a sudden cloudburst of buttercup scented rain beneath the boughs of an umbrella tree (composed of real umbrellas in various designs, but which made the most terrible honking noise when she attempted to take one), Frisk folded her arms across her chest, her once prim and proper purple dress stained and shredded beyond repair. Nettles stuck to her stockings, stinking mud to her once neat and shiny black shoes, and she was certain that her hair, formerly tied back with a neatly tied ribbon, was a disaster, blown about by a pervasive wind that seemed to have no idea which direction it wanted to blow.

She huffed, tempted to stomp her foot in her agitation, and turned a judging and glaring eye up towards the branches of the forest she had been lost in for what seemed a year. She had seen the sun and moon pass over her head several times, though the watch that Asriel had given her promised her that only a few hours had gone by, and though she knew he was waiting for her to call for him, likely as not playing tricks on her to attempt to force her hand, she had, until this moment, resisted the urge to say his name.

He would be much too satisfied with himself, and she avoided allowing that like the plague.

“Sans, I know you are responsible for this. Come out this moment and tell me what you want, have done with it,” she snapped, furrowing her brows and tapping a toe against the ground impatiently, and the silent rain continued for only a moment longer before it cleared away into a perfumed mist, floating in golden motes about the twisted roots of the trees and the uneven bricks of the meandering path. The viola crickets struck up an orchestra in their hidden perches, filling the misty air with fine music, and from behind her came the knowing chuckle she had been expecting to hear, the ghost of a caress along the fall of her hair making her jump as she faced down the culprit behind her long journey.

The queen was going to be absolutely furious with her...

And then there he was, in all his grinning and mischievous glory, his ears perked and his sockets sparkling with amusement and his tail whipping back and forth behind him playfully. The ribbon he had stolen from her hair upon their last meeting was tied around his wrist, bright red against the dusky blues that formed the rest of his ensemble (and his magic as well), and his grin only grew wider and more self satisfied when she glowered at him and slapped his hand away from her hair.

“when fair lady calls, i must answer~ though surely you haven't had such a terrible time as you claim here... you clearly loved the woods enough to wear them,” he snickered, his gaze tracing down her ruined ensemble with more than just amusement burning in his magical gaze (she flushed bright pink at his inspection, brushing at her skirts as though it could save them from their ruin), and Frisk, more than done with his jests and jibes, extended a hand to poke his sternum quite rudely, though she snatched it back a moment later when he took it in his and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

“You know very well that all of this happened because of your tomfoolery. I have an important engagement at the castle, and am very late because of your wicked tricks. Now tell me what you want, and let me pass by peaceably,” she said hotly, scowling as fiercely as she could despite her persistent blush and her leaping heart (he always did this, flustered and frustrated her so... she wished he would stop toying with her, she didn't like the way her heart ached when he teased her and touched her so boldly and... and kissed her...), and Sans, holding a fingerless gloved hand to his chest in mock injury, let out a false gasp of hurt.

“is it so wrong to desire to have your eminence grace my humble forest again? you've ignored my other invitations...” he pouted mournfully, pretending to blot at his sockets with a handkerchief he pulled out of thin air, and Frisk, blinking and taken aback, could only stare at him in stunned silence, attempting to recall when he had sent for her.

Not that she would have accepted either way. She was just curious.

“I'm afraid I don't recall ever receiving one. I'm not so ill mannered that I would not have written back, I assure you,” she stated matter-of-factly, trying her best to quash the niggling feeling that she wouldn't have turned an invitation away at all, and, much to her surprise, Sans didn't look overly surprised, rolling the lights in his sockets and sighing with affected aggravation.

“i suspected as much. the queen is quite jealous in her affections... she doesn't like to share,” he mused, his fluffy ears lowered in an obvious sign of his frustration, before, with a turn of his hand, the handkerchief he held transformed into a rather fancy looking envelope, her name written across the front in perfect hand. She reached out to take it perfunctorily when he held it out to her, though there was no small amount of curiosity attached as well (what could he possibly want to discuss that they couldn't engage in here?), but when she attempted to take it from him, he tightened his grasp, letting her pull him closer with the motion.

He leaned into her, before she could react to his sudden closeness, bending the few inches that separated their heights to look her directly in the eye. His smile was a clever one, not strange for him but enough to rekindle her blush anew; something in his expression made her heart flutter in her chest, her breaths short and her knees tremble, something she couldn't put a name to it (couldn't, or wouldn't?).

“i can understand that... i'm much the same way,” he purred, his sockets hooding and his smile quirking to make him almost unfairly handsome, and before she could even react, he turned on his heel and was gone, reappearing leaning against the trunk of a tree she was fairly certain was made entirely of glass. He wore a smug look, now, inspecting the claws on his fingers clinically.

“and now for the matter of passage through my domain. as well you know, nothing in the wonderland comes free... but i care little for coin. perhaps i could interest you in a riddle instead,” he offered, a knowing smirk flashing across his face as his gaze flicked up to hold hers once again, and Frisk, only now regaining her breath from the shock of his former statement (what on earth had he meant by that? Certainly not... no. No, that was ridiculous), shook her head to attempt to regain some clarity.

“A-a riddle? Yes, I suppose so... I assume you have terms attached to this arrangement, of course?” she stammered, hiding her blush and lack of breath by pretending to fuss with her hair, and if Sans noticed, he didn't show it, merely nodding his head in a courteous, very out of place bow.

“naturally~ should you guess my riddle's answer, i will take you to the boundaries of the forest, and return to you what i took from you at our previous meeting. should you fail to answer... i will still take you to the edge of the forest, as a gentleman would. but the price for my service...” he paused for very dramatic effect, sending her a wink even as she rolled her eyes at the assertion that he was in any way a gentleman. “is another kiss.”

Frisk raised her brows mutely at this, stunned by his forwardness. Well. At the very least he was being forthcoming this time, rather than just sneaking a kiss from her the moment an opportunity presented itself... and though she puzzled, for a moment, over what he meant by “returning what he'd stolen” (did he mean the ribbon? She had others, though that had been her favorite...), she honestly couldn't deny that her heart skipped a beat at the thought of him kissing her again.

Much as she'd complained about him taking it without her permission, she'd spent more than a few nights dreaming fondly of that kiss.

“Very well. Tell me your riddle,” she agreed, fiddling the pretty envelope between her hands nervously, and Sans smirked in such a way that sent a wave of heat through her blood before folding his arms across his chest and crossing one ankle over the other, the absolute picture of ease.

His tail gave him away though, flicking back and forth in the air with obvious excitement.

“only one color, but not only one size,

stuck at the bottom, yet easily flies.

there in sun, but not in rain,

doing no harm, and feeling no pain.”

Oh dear, she hadn't heard this one before. Despite the attractiveness of losing, she did honestly want to try to solve it, and turned away from his cheshire grin to pace along the path, humming to herself in thought. Color... in the sun, but not the rain... a reflection? No, something stuck at the bottom... She paused, in her pacing, looking hard down at the muddied toes of her shoes, and struck upon an answer with excitement, turning back to face the watchful monster at her back with a grin just as wide as his.

“My shadow! Easy enough~” she crowed, hands propped on her hips with pride (while, at the same moment, carefully avoiding bending the lovely invitation), and Sans chuckled at her enthusiasm, giving her a slow clap from his place against the tree.

“very good. i had no idea you were a talent with riddles... perhaps you could indulge me again, when you visit me next~” he congratulated her, pushing himself away from the glass tree trunk with one foot and slouching his way over to stand next to her, and Frisk flushed with pride, giving him a resolute nod while, within, feeling her heart sink just a little bit.

Be content with you win , she chided herself, you can't have your cake and eat it too .

“Perhaps. And now, for your end of the deal? I desperately need a bath,” she chuckled weakly, and he grinned so connivingly, then that she felt her sinking heart leap back up into her chest of its own accord.

“of course... my end of the deal. taking you to the edge of the forest...” he replied, reaching out and taking her by the elbow mysteriously, and then, a glint of mischief alighting in his sockets, he drew her against him, his other hand winding around her waist. He bent in a very obvious manner, his bony lips only a whisper from her parted pair, and breathed the rest of his statement there before crushing his mouth to hers, swallowing her gasp and sending her head spinning.

“and returning what i stole from you~”

She had honestly no idea how long he held her there, stealing her breath and holding her closely... it was certainly longer than the first kiss had been, and intensely deeper as well. She had not thought allowing another person's tongue into her mouth could be so tantalizing, nor considered how searing another's touch to her body could feel while locked in passionate embrace. Her arms had wrapped themselves around his neck all on their own, the pink gloss of her lipstick smeared across his mouth... she must look as thoroughly ravaged, if not more so.

Quite a sight she would be, turning up to the castle in such a state. Toriel was going to be beside herself.

All thoughts of the queen's displeasure were far from Frisk's mind at the moment though, as, at last, Sans pulled away from her lips, his tongue returning to his own mouth and his hand, risen from holding her elbow, traced along her blushing cheek. She had never seen his expression so soft, untouched by cleverness or guile... she was melting in his arms without qualm, sure she would fall from the sheer weakness of her knees, should he let her go.

Gentleman indeed...

“your first kiss, stolen from you so rashly... returned with interest,” he murmured, nudging his nasal ridge against her nose and teasing another kiss... and then she was standing alone, in the center of the homely stone bridge that led the way into the Cheshire Wood. Sans was sat on the railing just a little distance away, purring audibly as he watched her gathering her bearings (had he... had he teleported them here?); he looked every bit the cat that had gotten the cream, his tail curled at the end in satisfaction and his grin broad and contented, and though Frisk swelled hotly at the trickery in his deal, knowing full well she should be furious with him...

She could still feel his touch, her lips still tingled from his kisses, and her blood still ran hot in her veins, reminding her of the feeling of him embracing her.

“Y-you... incorrigible... devilish... oh!” she exhaled breathlessly, her glare half-hearted and her ire completely false, and she knew, just from his smile, that he was well aware, tilting his skull to nod at the invitation, still sitting in her hands, with a twinkling of understanding in his hooded sockets.

“if i have left milady unsatisfied with our deal, she is more than welcome to come to my home and castigate me for my behavior. she would be very well received... though i should say, i would be tempted to a repeat offense,” he snarked suggestively, crooking a brow and smirking slyly, before, with a twitch of his tail and a warm chuckle, he was gone, leaving her standing alone on the bridge with only the wind through her mess of a hairdo and the calling of swooping grandfather clock cuckoos for company.

In frustration, with both herself and her hair, she attempted to finger comb the locks back, scolding herself for allowing such a thing as the deep kiss she had very much enjoyed (and for considering taking him up on his offer), only to come to a belated realization.

He had stolen her hair ribbon again.

“ Sans!!”

Chapter Text

Dust

Frisk was woken from a dead sleep, at approximately 2:37 in the morning, to what felt like a large, bony cat curling up against her side, laying halfway on top of her and nuzzling against her throat.

Except she didn't have a cat. She had no one, in the secluded little house surrounded by unforgiving desert... no one besides the monster that had brought her there, anyway.

She was still trying to get used to the fact that Sans was still alive. Or, at least a version of him was... she had trouble trying to understand how it was possible, even with the explanation that the stoic, cold monster that had taken her from her old home and brought her to this new one, for the express reason of not wanting her to disappear just like her fiancee had.

She'd been so very, very happy to see him, after the years it had been since the... the accident. He'd been like a breath of fresh air filling her lungs after an eternity of holding her breath... she could still remember him standing there in the shadows of the alleyway she'd been walking by, arms full of groceries. The way he'd smiled, so familiar and yet so foreign... the cool, deep voice calling her to him the way it always had before.

She'd already abandoned her groceries on the sidewalk and placed her hand in his when she finally saw the look of loathing in his mismatched sockets, felt the aura of menace and murder he exuded. He was not her Sans, returned to her from beyond the grave, but the impostor hadn't given her a chance to even open her mouth to scream, to attempt to pull away from his then vice-like grip. He had pulled her through the fabric of spacetime without a second wasted, and had brought her here to, by his own claim, protect her.

She had no idea why he wanted to. He'd told her himself that he despised her existence... there was no love lost between them, in any manner, shape, or form. He even, in an attempt to frighten her (it had worked, too), had told her why, with manic glee shimmering in the blues and reds of his magical eyelights... he told her all of his sins, the exact number of lives he had taken (he had kept extremely accurate count, the act of cold blooded murder perfected to an art in his hands), and just how many resets he had battled his own Frisk through before he had shattered her determination with his own hands.

' Then why try to keep me alive? Why go through the trouble?' she had asked him once, truly not understanding what would drive a monster like him to seeking out someone he hated so utterly, only to practically kidnap them and keep them safe, and he had scoffed at her before disappearing altogether.

' i'll lose out on my chance at a bond on my own terms, no one else's.'

So basically, he was saving her death for a rainy day. How comforting.

She was stuck here, though, whether she wanted to be or not... despite the lack of bars on the windows and locks on the doors, the house was very much a prison. There would be no surviving the days it would take to cross the desert on foot, not even with all the water she could carry, and she had no real desire to end up one of the very stereotypical piles of bones she used to see in cartoons. So, she stayed, and did her best to ignore the skulking, ever watchful form of her lost love, and did her best to make use of her time constructively.

In the end, though, it always came back to him. Her sketches were of his endless stare, his rare but bloodchilling grins, the way he slouched, as though he carried the weight of a world's sins on his back. And the more she found herself watching him back, the more she came to learn about him.

This Sans... was an odd one, even given his murderous tendencies. He was quiet, snide, and brooding in the extreme, suspicious to a fault and all but emotionless, on a normal day. He often spoke to himself at length, as though another person were hanging just over his shoulder, and would come and go as he pleased, usually appearing just after sunset and disappearing again before dawn. He was so much different than the monster she had known (and, she supposed, the monster he had used to be as well) that it strained credulity to even call them by the same name... and that was even without his mood swings.

His emotions, when he showed them at all, were chaotic and extreme. At times, he would sink into deep lethargy, speaking in a flat monotone if he spoke at all and wrapping himself in many layers of blankets to shut out any noise; he would sleep for days with very few breaks, when he was like that, and refused all offers of food. He had bursts of manic energy as well, for which he had coined the term 'dust lust' (he liked to tell her all the gruesome details of his adventures, in those times, sadistically pleased by her disgust), during which he would become twitchy, ravenous with hunger, and often much more... touchy feeley.

This was, perhaps, the oddest of his predilections. In the beginning, even being in the same room as her had caused his hollow chest to rumble with terrifying growls, his sockets narrowed into a suspicious and unblinking glare and his very sharp looking teeth all but bared in a snarl... any attempt by her to get any closer (not that she'd really wanted to, but sometimes he came back with injuries, completely ignored and untreated, and she'd worried, in her soft kindness, about leaving them be) had been met with derision, and harsh demands to get the hell away from him. He had kept a stony and grudging watch over her every moment that he could, ignoring most of her attempts to speak with him to try to break up the awkward silences, and she was convinced, despite his insistence that he slept on the couch, that he had snuck in to watch her sleep during the night as well, to ensure she wasn't going to try anything.

And always, every morning before he left her to her own devices, he would look at her with a smirk and and casually threaten her with some variation of, “don't get too comfortable; i'll probably kill you tomorrow.”

Haha... such a sense of humor.

That had changed, though, as the weeks had become months, as searing summer had changed to a brisk autumn, complete with winds that rattled the windows and sent tumbleweeds spinning past the house in droves. The growling and snarling had stopped, the venomous glares had eased into just as uncomfortable searching looks, almost as though he were judging her, and the chilly distance he kept between them had shrunk alarmingly quickly, insomuch that one day he had been leaned in his usual place in the corner of the living room, and the very next he was perched directly beside her on the couch, inspecting the book she was reading with all the curiosity of a bird judging if it could eat something off the ground.

A few days later, and he started to talk to her more openly, or at the very least attempted to... most of the things he said had an air of sarcasm and cool disregard attached to them, and very often she lapsed into silence just to keep from snapping at him in anger. One of his favorite pastimes was badgering her, in fact... teasing her and being purposefully annoying just to get a rise out of her. She truly wished he wouldn't... he reminded her far too much of her Sans, when he pulled off a successful prank and rubbed it in her face.

All she could do to avoid the heartache was prank him right back, to attempt to think up clever ruses to serve him his comeuppance, in the flavor of his own medicine.

She had failed thus far... but she would get him one day.

And then, there had been his first melancholic low, after his hateful distance had ceased. His usual and expected jibes had been ostentatiously missing, when he had stumbled in long after midnight... truth be told, she had begun to worry about him, that he may have been struck down in the dangerous work he did for the dark god he served, and had made up a makeshift bed in front of the fireplace to wait up for him. He hadn't even looked at her, as he had dragged himself to the couch she was attempting to rise from to greet him, and had collapsed not just onto the pile of blankets she had wrapped around her legs, but onto her lap as well, his hooded skull settling onto her thighs and his hands hooking into her sweater immovably.

He had refused to answer any questions she asked, merely curling up further and burying his face against her abdomen, and after a few minutes, she had given it up and done her best to rearrange the blankets to cover him. And there they had remained until late afternoon the next day (he had, thankfully, allowed her up to use the restroom and get some food when she needed to before immediately curling back around her when she sat again), napping intermittently and trying not to wiggle too much as she half watched a game show on cable. The only thing he had reacted to, before standing abruptly, sending her a deep and intense look, and disappearing entirely had been, around noon, her hand gently and hesitantly brushing over his hooded head.

His entire body had tensed, a reactive and feral growl rumbling through his body that made her draw her hand back in fright. He had turned his head enough to bare one of his sockets, the magical iris a whirling flame of blue and red, glaring up at her warningly.

' don't fucking touch me, ' he had snarled, ironically clenching his arms around her waist tighter, and had immediately turned back to using her as a body pillow without another word.

And that was how it had gone, from then until that night, as he clung to her in the dark, trembling and hugging himself close to her desperately. He would do whatever he damn well pleased, braiding her hair and smudging jam on her face and laying across her legs when she was attempting to ignore him, but anytime she even reached towards him, he would pull away and snap at her to keep her hands to herself. She had to assume he had some sort of phobia (she had heard of aversion to touch, she thought at least), and had just shrugged it off as best as she could... even when his moods shifted into his more manic phase, when his dust lust filled his wandering hands and scorching gazes with a different sort of desire.

She'd turned him away, the first few times. She knew she didn't owe him anything, and he'd promised, in more or less certain terms, that it would be her decision to make. He'd kept that promise too, though the offer to let him ride out his flighty emotions in the most physical of ways was a standing one... until she had, in a fit of fancy and intrigue and, admittedly, more than a little pining for her lost lover, taken him up on the need she saw burning in him so desperately.

There was no better term for the way he'd taken her than animalistic. He'd let loose on her completely, fucking her over every surface in sight until his lust had burned out, and even then, as he'd owned and commanded her body in ways her Sans never had, he hadn't allowed her to touch him, going so far as holding her hands over her head by the wrists while ravaging her. And just as every other time, he would only look at her afterwards, as though he were seeing straight through her, and disappear without a trace.

So, him cuddling up behind her on the bed wasn't all that odd, though his lateness was... she only hummed as she peeked at the alarm clock, in the place between sleeping and waking, and left him to settle in the way he needed. If he wanted sex, he would certainly let her know, and if he needed rest, he would do so without her intervention.

She would have left it at that, too, would have drifted back into sleep unbothered, had she not felt, through her heightened awareness of him (when had that happened...), his chest shudder with a penetrating, bone rattling sob, muffled by the pillow he had buried his face in.

She sat up immediately, flicking on the bedside lamp and turning to face the skeleton balled up beside her; he looked no different from his usual low state, though he seemed to be shivering intermittently, but she had definitely heard him let out an anguished, if quiet, cry, and the hand not pulling plaintively at her nightshirt, trying to return her to his embrace, was clenched in the front of his sweater, phalanges digging in as though attempting to ease some unimaginable pain.

“Sans, what in the world... are you okay?” she asked quietly, her hands twining their fingers together to keep from reaching out to touch him instinctively, and, true to form, he only curled up further into a ball on the blankets, attempting to ignore her and wallow in his misery unimpeded.

She wasn't having it this time. Something was different... something was wrong .

“Sans, please ... something isn't right, let me help you,” she pleaded, reaching out to pull at the pillow he held urgently, and, much to her surprise, he let her take it from him, slowly revealing his face, where it wasn't covered by his mussed hood. He had obviously been crying, his tightly closed sockets and pain creased face streaked with tears and dust, and even as she watched, her heart clenching in her chest with reflected pain, he sniffled quietly, wincing and trembling as he attempted to withhold another sob.

Oh... oh no... she had seen him like this before; when Nightmare, the deity he served, became dissatisfied with his work, he would punish him terribly, in a deep and intrinsic way that he had described as karmic torture, forcing corrupted souls like his to bear the weight of all their sins at once. He had always dismissed it before, able to function with minimal problems, but this... this was much worse.

“Oh no... what can I do? Do you need a doctor? I can... um... I can't call a doctor, but-” she began to fret, trying to stand to do something to help him, but his fist clenched in her shirt tighter, pulling her back into her seat beside him effortlessly. He panted in silence for a moment, beads of sweat dripping off his skull and more tears squeezing around his closed lids, before he spoke, his voice cracking with the effort it took to speak.

“did i... ghhh... ever tell you about... about my frisk?”

She imagined he didn't mean the time he had told her, in fairly vivid detail, the many different ways he'd killed her. He didn't seem in all that murdery of a mood at the moment, and the reminder likely wouldn't help.

Had... had his punishment made him think of her?

“Um... not a lot,” she supplied in lieu of that train of thought, shifting so she was sitting a little more comfortably, and once she had settled her back against the headboard, Sans scooted his head up into her lap, settling in his favored position with his face nestled right up against her stomach. He was silent for so long that she thought he had decided not to explain his query when, with a rough and painful sounding cough, he went on, bony fingertips rubbing the material of her shirt between them thoughtfully.

“she was my fiancee. like your sans was for you. it's why... fuck ... why i picked you to save. cuz you knew what it was... was like. losing that,” he murmured quietly, wincing in pain frequently as he spoke, and though she opened her mouth to speak, her heart aching in reciprocated understanding, he charged on without stopping, as though determined to see this through.

“bout... nnn... so hard to remember back then... three weeks before our wedding, i think... she was possessed. turned into... into a puppet. started killing everyone. i tried... stars fuck me... i tried so hard to stop her. harder than i sh... should have. between resets and her not even... being her anymore... i started killing people too. to get enough power to stop her, rip the demon out, and... and get her to reset to before it all. instead i... i forgot who i was. started to love it, all the murder... forgot that i was doing it for a different kind of love. sick, perverted, twisted... just as... as possessed as her.”

He was weeping openly again, clutching her tightly and nearly to the edge of pain; she didn't speak to interrupt though, only rocking back and forth to attempt to soothe him (and choking back tears of her own), and eventually, he was able to go on, though his voice strained from the stress of his admissions.

“i don't know who it was i killed, when her soul finally shattered. if the demon was still inside her... or if it was just her, terrified of what her mate had become. by that time... i didn't care,” he whispered, his voice softer and smaller than she'd ever heard it, and despite herself, Frisk couldn't help the tears now streaking her own cheeks, though she did attempt to try when they started dripping onto his face.

He only let out a mirthless chuckle at the sight, and reached up to brush at her tears with trembling phalanges, his smile tired and sad.

“when the dust lust settled... all i could see was her body, knew what i'd done and that she wasn't coming back. the thought that she had been innocent, in the end, was more than enough to dust me, and would have if i'd let it. instead, i hated her. her, her memory, and every being that had her face. you too, even though i was selfish enough to take you and keep you here. kept me driven, kept me alive.”

He sighed heavily, his hand falling away from her cheek and back to trace along the pattern of a flower on her shirt idly.

“...'s why i never let you touch me. your touch would remind me... of who she had been. what we had... whose fault it was that it was gone. it would remind me that i'm a hair from snapping at any given moment... and if i think too much of before... maybe i would do the same to you,” he admitted, closing his sockets and letting his head fall to rest against her stomach completely, the hand wrapped around her back stroking along her spine softly.

“i can't... i can't do that twice in a lifetime.”

Frisk sniffled, taken aback by all he had told her and revealed about himself; she could barely comprehend just how much he had been through, the suffering he put himself through and all he had lost. She did know one thing for certain, though, and the certainty of it carried in the motion of her hand, carefully lowering to wipe her thumb along one of his tear tracks. He froze, his exposed eyelight flicking up to her face, but she only smiled down at him, completely at peace with what it meant.

' I trust you ', it said, and she meant it with every fiber of her being.

Chapter Text

Swapfell

“Captain! Captain !!”

The shrill, reedy outcry pierced and shattered what had been proving to be a rather enjoyable morning, even for one so busy as the Captain of the Royal guard. By some miracle, his underlings had managed not to screw everything up over the weekend, and Sans had been left with very little to do beyond some trivial paperwork. He had drunk a little too much coffee for lack of better occupation, and had, upon passing the halfway open doors of the royal library in an attempt to walk off the energy, decided to take a little bit of leisure time to himself.

It was the first he had had in recent memory, considering all the hubbub that had consumed the castle of late... the organizing and arranging and reorganizing and rearranging had seemed never ending. If he didn't love Papyrus so much, he'd have utterly refused to put up with the ridiculous trappings that came with a royal wedding.

Absolute nonsense, in his opinion, but he'd never been much of a romantic, so perhaps he was biased.

But being the professional and good older brother that he was, he had put up with it, worked himself to the bone (stars above, Papyrus was starting to rub off on him...) to ensure that the wedding that evening would press on without a fault... as far as he was concerned, he was due a break. His peaceful repose being interrupted by what was sure to be trivial minutiae that anyone could handle soured his good mood in an instant, and when the eagle monster skidded around the corner of one of the many towering bookshelves, at last spotting Sans' place of rest at one of the many low tables, he found his superior's expression narrowed into an impatient glower, the book he had been reading set aside to direct his full and displeased attention to him.

“Is there a reason you are assaulting me and everyone in the nearby vicinity with your screeching? Your lack of decorum is not appreciated,” he snapped temperamentally, shifting to sink more deeply into the very comfortable cushion he had settled on with the stubborn resolve not to be moved, and the bird monster, his feathers paling and his beak clacking together several times in nervous anxiety, looked as though he wished he wanted to be just about anywhere but where he was at the moment.

“Ah... um... yes sir. Apologies. It's just that... well. Their Eminence Chara is in distress... the princess has been missing since this morning, and cannot be found anywhere. She is needed to oversee the arrangements in the grand hall, and Chara refuses to dress without her,” he explained shakily, shifting from foot to foot in his agitation, and Sans sent the guard a cool, impatient stare, one gloved phalange beginning to tap against the tabletop.

“And you assume I would know where she is because...?” he lead with dire encouragement in his tone, the violet magic in his sockets snapping and crackling with barely concealed admonition, and the eagle looked as though he would shrivel up on the spot to even consider saying his next words, cursing the bet he had lost that had landed him with this duty in the first place.

“Well... there is talk among the people, you see... a-a-about you and the... the princess... and we thought-” he began, his voice trailing off into a nearly unintelligible whisper the longer he spoke, and Sans, with a crack of his jaw and a clenched fist, cut him off from speaking any further with an irate growl of warning.

“I care little for the gossiping and drivel of the common folk that seek to demean her ladyship's honor. I have not seen her for some time, nor should I have occasion to, and you can clearly see she is not sitting here with me. Perhaps you should spend your time better than believing in the idle fancies of fishwives, and extend your search to the gardens. Her grace has a fondness for the buttercups, as I'm sure you know,” he spat derisively, jerking his skull towards the far off door concealed behind the bookshelves, and the bird monster needed no other indication that he should depart with great speed than that, and did so without a moment's hesitation.

The clack of his claws against the polished wood floor faded away quickly, followed by the almost too loud slam of the library doors, but Sans remained glaring at the edge of the bookcase he had disappeared behind for another moment, skull tilted for any sign that he had lingered, before relaxing back into his seat. A smirk overtook his former grimace, his cheekbones dusted a light lavender, and with an errant hand, he reached to flip up the edge of the table's cover, revealing the subject of the former conversation lounging beneath it.

She had hidden down there in an attempt to escape her duties in the beginning, the very same occupation he had found her in when he'd entered the library (he'd suspected she was there, upon seeing the library door hanging open... it was one of her favorite places to secret herself away, apart from the noise and encumbering duties of her title), but now had busied herself with attempting to swallow the length of his cock, her dulcet brown eyes dancing with mischief and lust.

“You are a menace, your majesty... was it truly necessary to attempt to disarm me in front of company?” he murmured fondly, extending his hand to run his clawed phalanges through the waterfall of her hair while she pleasured him, and though she neglected to give him a response for some time, seeming to be utterly dedicated to driving him mad (she was a talent at it, she had a right to her confidence), she withdrew from her enraptured and very wet oral presentation to smile up at him impishly, stroking her hand along his twitching length slowly as she did.

“Just wanted to loosen you up a bit~ you're too stiff,” she joked with a twinkling in her devious eye, rubbing her thumb against a spot on the underside of his cock that made it throb and flex eagerly, and Sans treated the smirking, self satisfied monarch to a grin of his own, barely holding in a moan at the feeling of her touching him just right . It was a sinful indulgence, engaging with her this way as often as they did... she was just too tempting to resist, even though he knew he should.

“Only around you, princess,” he purred, caressing her flushed cheek and admiring the look of her (she noticed, and teasingly ran her tongue along the length of him, from base to tip)... but let his hand fall away the next moment, hesitance clouding his expression. “But we should stop, before we are discovered. It isn't seemly.”

Frisk, clearly having been expecting this but sighing and pouting anyway, crawled out from beneath the table in just about the most unladylike manner possible, sliding up between his parted legs (his cock slid deliciously between her now obviously bared breasts along the way, and his eyelights dilated appropriately at the sight) to, with as little decorum as possible, perch herself in his lap, tracing the thin cracks running from his left socket with a careful hand.

Her breasts swayed temptingly nearly in front of his face, only his steely resolve keeping him from extending his tongue to lap at her rosy, peaked nipples.

“I don't know what you think is seemly about me... I'm sure we've slept together enough times to know better than that,” she insinuated, grinding her hips against him in emphasis, and Sans flushed even darker, swallowing thickly and turning his sockets from the bountiful sight before him and to his leige's stunning face, watching him from beneath thick, dark lashes and tempting him to sin.

She was an absolute minx, and she knew it.

“I would never insinuate my lady is anything but who she is... which is a far too seductive siren with very little care for decorum. I, however, care a great deal about how you are viewed, and will not have loose lips bandying foul rumors around the Underground regarding the state of your honor.”

“My honor, which you soiled very happily in my bed only a month ago, if I recall correctly?”

“The entire kingdom doesn't need to know about it!”

Frisk giggled at the flush now spread prominently across his cheekbones, relenting in her teasing to bend and embrace him, mercifully avoiding burying his face between her breasts in so doing. She stroked her fingers along the back of his skull, her eyelids fluttering closed in blissful contentment, and though he hesitated, he wrapped his arms around her as well, nuzzling against the crook of her shoulder and throat.

“I'm sorry, Sans. I'm just... very caught up in the romance of it all. Chara is so happy and excited... they've been giggling about their honeymoon for a solid week now. A girl can only take so much without wanting a little romance of her own,” she explained softly, pulling back only so she could press her lips to his mouth, and after a quiet, indulgent moment spent exchanging kisses, Sans pulled back to look into her eyes resolutely, one of hands gathering the voluminous skirts of her dress out of the way while the other flicked at the out of sight door, a violet hued bone forming between the handles of the library's double doors, lodging them solidly in place.

Frisk only came to realize what he was up to when, with her skirts out of the way, his still hard cock slid along the apex of her thighs, pressing with familiar surety at the crotch of her panties. His smile had a tinge of wickedness to it now, as her eyes widened and her lips popped open, his sockets narrowed with sultry desire and his tongue, finally doing as it desired, extending past his teeth to circle one of her nipples, and then the other, bringing to those petal soft lips the moans he craved in the darkest hours of the night.

“It goes against my oath to serve the royal family to leave your grace wanting...” he murmured teasingly, one hand running along the dips and curves of her before grasping one of her glorious breasts, while the other hooked into the material of her underwear, pulling them to the side to allow the sparking magic of his length to press against her hot, dripping wet entrance, a breath from sinking into her.

“And to take my just reward for services rendered~”

All the way across the castle, Chara paced through their chambers worriedly, wringing their hands and looking, every few moments, at the back of their door. Their husband-to-be was leaned against the banister of their balcony, smoking a cigarette and watching his fiancee worry themself to death with a tired but expectant look on his face.

“Where is she?! It's only five hours before the ceremony, and we haven't even gotten started! Ooooh, she better have... have fallen in a ditch and broken an ankle or something!” they steamed as they walked, and Papyrus, letting out a tremendous sigh and pulling at the eyepatch concealing his damaged eye socket, held out an arm to invite them in for a comforting hug, which they leaped for without a second thought.

“chill out, honey... five hours is plenty of time, and i'm sure she'll show up soon. if nothing else, i'll ask sans to help find her,” he reassured them, rubbing his hand along their spine as they clung to his chest and all but sobbed with nerves, and looked out over the rest of the castle with unbothered inspection, a smirk pulling at his fanged mouth. Wherever she was, he knew perfectly well his brother wasn't far behind...

Probably right behind, knowing those two.

Chapter Text

7 Sins

The one thing she had never gotten used to was the screaming.

There were lots of disturbing things about the circle of hell Frisk had consigned herself to so unknowingly, so foolishly and haughtily. The way the night stretched on for days at a time, the only light spilling from ash stained lanterns that filled the air with acrid smoke... the utter and complete disregard the beings had for one another, caring only for themselves and when they could next retreat to the loving embrace of sleep... the monsters themselves, so twisted and darkened by oppression of their eternal and undeserved punishment, with eyes cruel and greedy and far too intense for her liking.

The never-ending snow that not even the raging fire in her master's hall could completely steal the chill from, the whispering amongst the trees, as though they spoke hidden secrets to each other... the sinful lord of sloth that had stolen her wings from her back and sentenced her to her own eternity in his realm. No, even him and his callous words, his snide derisions and cutting diatribes, were not so bad as the screams.

They were the souls that had perished here in the dark, Sans had told her once, in one of his more giving and talkative moods. Souls unable to return to the stars, cast into eternal misery so long as they were trapped beneath the earth.

Knowing didn't make it any better. Now, there was a note of sorrow to accompany the rise and fall of their wretched cries for relief... yet another thing for her to cry over helplessly, in the secrecy of her lonely hours, added to the growing list of cruel injustices she had both experienced and witnessed in her imprisonment. Her inability to do anything broke her heart, froze her to her very core to deaden the soul that had once glowed so brightly with determination and purpose... she could, slowly but surely, feel the self she had been slipping through her own fingers, like trying and failing to cup water in her palms.

It fled her more every day that she was here, her wings and her holiness removed from her, her divine calling stripped away just as surely as her pristine white raiment had been, replaced with thick black robes and midnight cowls and dusky veils, inflicted upon her to hide the remains of her divinity from the prying eyes and grasping hands of monsters who would do worse than take her wings, should they discover that she was one of the seraphim.

“'s up to you if you wear it or not, but i don't think i need to tell you what they'll do if you don't, do i, angel.”

No, she hadn't needed the surely vivid explanation he would have provided her with. She had bowed and accepted the unbecoming and claustrophobic clothes (the only possible upside was just how warm they kept her), let the monster refusing to let her leave his castle present her as just another monster in his employ, a servant seeing to his needs and maintaining his abode... allowing him to place a collar around her neck, when he was forced from his frequent slumbers and made to accept dignitaries from other circles, nobles seeking boons from one of the seven Sinlords, and common demons begging for amenities.

They were his least favorite times, made to stay awake for hours at a time to take care of the business he had put off until then, and, by his own claim, he needed her by his side the entire time, attached to his throne by a chain clipped to her collar. It was to keep her from being assaulted while outside his line of sight, he said; with so many monsters inside the castle, there was no way he could keep track of everyone. It was just to be safe. She didn't believe that, but there was little she could do about it (she really, really didn't want him to put her back into the horrid, nightmarish slumber he had the first time she had made a solid attempt to escape), and again, she had bowed her head and stood beside him during his audiences, fetching him his wine and feeding him grapes and bringing him offerings and letters from his guests, as he was too lazy to get up himself.

Perhaps the only spot of joy in her life, now, was her captor's young brother, a bright, chipper, and fastidious little skeleton monster that loved charging about the castle at his leisure, begging for new toys and almost immediately breaking them, and annoying the ever loving sin out of his brother. Besides his bouts of brattiness, he was a darling boy, and she had grown to cherish him greatly.

Even that was threaded through with sadness and longing, though... Sans had given Papyrus her wings, and in his care, the once pure white feathers had been corrupted into deep, raven black. Even if she were to one day have them returned to her, they would no longer bestow on her the divinity she had been robbed of... her light was gone for good.

Just another thing to weep over, another thing stolen from her by her quest to save the damned monster race.

She had been right to suspect Sans had other reasons for putting the collar on her, though. What was surely several months of long and wintry days and cold, empty night had passed her by, all but the last dregs of her hope that something would change extinguished by misery and loss... another turning of the clock found her chained again to lord Sloth's throne, her head bowed and her thoughts scattered, dwelling absently on things she needed to do, once she had been released. She had been so lost in her own head that she very nearly hadn't heard the conversation being traded between Sans and the monster at the foot of his dais, an emissary from the circle of Lust.

“-rd and master made this request himself, I am only the messenger, my lord,” the leering, half naked incubi was saying, his hands held up in appeasement and his tail tucked between his legs, and it was only then that she noticed, at her side, Sans very uncharacteristically sitting up fully in his seat, leaned forward and baring his fangs furiously.

“doesn't he have enough sluts of his own without stealing from the other circles? saying nothing of the gall it takes to demand another lord's consort in exchange for practically nothing. this isn't just insulting, it's provoking . who in the hells does he think he is,” he snarled, his clawed phalanges digging into and cracking the bone armrests of his throne, and Frisk, fully called from the haze of her disinterest, blinked in consternation. His what ? They couldn't be talking about her, she was just supposed to be seen as a servant...

The monster below him merely bowed, though he now bore a slightly sinister look on his face as he very obviously sent her a sideways glance.

“He admitted he was... curious about your reaction, my lord. It's rare that an aspect of Sloth takes a lover... he wanted to see what was so special about her~” he purred, a forked tongue flicking between sharpened teeth at the very thought, and beside her, a cold, fell silence fell over Sans, his body completely and totally still, before, with a rushing of air and the singing of a drawn blade, he was gone from his throne entirely. He now stood where the smirking demon had only a moment before, his robes and cloak settling from his sudden movement; in one hand, he held a gleaming, cruelly sharp curved sword, dripping with bright, sickeningly crimson blood, and in the other hung the incubus' head, grinning even in death.

Wordlessly, he dismissed his weapon with a flourish of his hand, and tossed the head to one of the emissary's assistants, stepping over the body to turn and mount the steps to his throne again.

“tell your master that this is what his damned curiosity will earn him. this is the only warning he'll get. now out. all of you, leave now ,” he growled, waving a hand to slam open the castle doors behind them, but didn't once look behind himself. His veiled gaze was set on her, a snap of his fingers dissolving her chain and his hand, hard and cold and rough seizing her upper arm to pull her along in his wake.

In her confusion, horror, and whiplash, Frisk didn't even try to fight the sneering, snarling monster dragging her from the audience chamber and through the halls of his castle at first. She had never seen him this angry, not even close to it... she didn't know what to make of any of what just happened, from beginning to end. It was only as he pulled her into his private chambers, slammed the door, and immediately collapsed into his luxuriously plush bed that she came to her senses enough to form words.

“What... what was all that about?” she stammered, rubbing her arm where he had gripped her and flipping her veil up and out of the way, and though Sans' tail was still flicking in his anger, dragging across the stone floor raspily as though searching for her leg to wrap around, as it tended to do of seemingly its own volition, he made no other motion besides dragging his pillow closer to himself. Curses, she needed to get answers from him before he fell asleep-

“No- hey, don't you dare. You said and did a whole lot of things that don't make any sense, and I'll have answers from you,” she snapped, striding to his bedside and pushing against his shoulder with all her might (he didn't budge), and though he let out a stubborn, slightly whiny groan of annoyance, he turned enough to bare one covered socket and a sliver of his mouth.

“which part didn't you understand? seems pretty clear cut to me,” he mumbled, reaching blindly for a blanket to drag over himself, but Frisk snatched it away before he could find it, stern and practically vibrating with her anger.

“The part where I'm neither your consort, nor your lover! The part where everyone seemed to think I am, even though you told me I was just playing the part of a servant! The part where you killed someone , apparently over me, and I don't know why!!” she shouted at him, the loudest she had ever spoken in her life, and utter silence fell over his room in the wake of it, her ears ringing from both the volume of her tone and the quiet pressing in around her. She quickly became nervous, as he stared her down without a single word...

Until he started to laugh, heartily and mockingly, a cruel smile slashed across his face as he sat up laboriously to lean his weight on one arm. His raucous laughter carried on for just a note too long, enough to send shivers of foreboding up her spine, before he finally quieted, his chin leaned into his palm and one phalange tapping against his jaw.

“do you really think i would expend this much energy to keep up a front? that i would go out of my way to ensure that a spoiled, featherbrained angel didn't get felt up, with no benefit for myself? do you really think i'm protecting you by pretending you're my whore? let me let you in on a little secret, pigeon,” he derided, snorting and shaking his head in his mirth... and then his hand had shot out and grabbed her by the wrist, quick as a striking snake. In a flash much too quick for her spinning head to grasp, he had flipped her over his body and onto the bed beside him, knocking the air from her lungs as he did.

He was knelt over her prone form the very next moment, one hand gathering both of hers into its grasp while the other notched one finger into the ring on her collar, pulling at it meaningfully. His mocking smirk was gone, now, replaced with a fearsome glower, and only while being held underneath him did she realize just how much bigger he was than her.

“listen up, and listen good. i collared you like a kept slut because that's what you are; you are mine , my property, to do with what i will. if i want you, at any moment of the day, we both know you wouldn't be able to stop me. i could take what i desire from you, just like your wings, just like your freedom, and i wouldn't lose a wink of sleep,” he hissed at her venomously, pulling one last time at her collar before releasing it to bend over her further, pressing his mouth to her ear when she turned her face away instinctively.

“i don't play games, and i don't pretend , angel. don't forget that,” he muttered, clenching his fingers around her wrists again as though to cement his words into her mind, before he rolled off of her and returned to his pillow, rolling himself, clothes, cowl, and all, into the blankets to sleep, leaving her lying beside him without another word.

And at first, she had more than believed him. She was already willing to think the worst of him, her captor and the monster that had stolen her wings... what was one more sin added to the pile he had already made himself? It gave her all the more reason to despise him, to redouble her efforts to get away...

But then, that tiny, persistent note of hope rang within her mind, reminding her of the things she had seen, as opposed to the words he threatened her with. There had been no element of ownership in his defense of her. He hadn't snarled that she belonged to him to his court, when he had slain the demon. He hadn't called her his whore there... he had said consort. From her readings Above, she knew that word was close in kin with spouse.

His words and his deeds didn't match up... and though she didn't know what to make of it, why he was trying to scare her away, the knowledge that he was trying to deceive her into think he was worse than he really was softened her reactively hardened heart, her head turning to look at the back of his skull consideringly.

“...I think you do. I think that's exactly what you're doing,” she said softly, reaching out to arrange the blankets so they weren't twisted at the back of his neck. “I don't know why, after everything... but thank you.”

He didn't move or react for so long that she was certain he'd drifted off to sleep, and had made to roll off his bed... before his tail had wound itself around her ankle, pulling her back down onto the blankets gently. It's hold was much softer than either of his other grasps had been, stroking her bared calf in a near and wordless apology, even as his shoulders shrugged up and down beneath his mound of blankets jerkily.

“...hmph. think what you want. just be quiet- i haven't moved that much in months and i'm bushed .”

She let out a small snort of laughter, shaking her head and reaching out to pet the tip of his tail, before settling back down beside her, her back turned to him and her mind of everything and nothing at once.

Huh. Well that was something.

Chapter Text

Dream

Perhaps it was droll of him to think it, but much as the clamor of his little group of followers usually irked him, their more than obvious absence and the quiet that filled the space they usually occupied was setting him at odds. Without them to direct on missions, or some quest of his own to fulfill, he had been left to wander the splendorous halls of his castle, the white marble and gold filigree and fine tapestries telling the tales of the gods doing nothing to distract him.

Dream had seen them far too many times to waste more than a passing glance on them. He only walked on, hands folded behind his back, boot heels rapping softly against tiles and woven rugs, cape swishing gently in his wake... gaze set on the middle distance, on things both real and unattainable at once.

The pressing silence and lack of direction had left him a little too alone with his thoughts, much more than usual. He had never liked that, to hear his own mind twisting and turning according to its own machinations... spent much of his time avoiding the reminder that the loss of his dearest love had driven him just a little mad. His mind was darkened, now, bearing shadows that it never had, before his brother's treachery... it whispered foul deeds and cunning devices that far more suited the lord of night.

Once, in the time he had spent in mourning of his Star, he had done all he could to dismiss them. He was unwilling to sink to Midnight... Nightmare's level, to conspire and desecrate and seek only ruin. He attributed the change to the loss of the mother tree, as well as the glaring absence of their bride, and had sought to keep his mind above such things, as was befitting the god of the light and the good in mortal hearts.

His abstinence did nothing more than damn him further, than allow his brother to sink his claws even deeper and rend not just their worlds, but all others as well. He had begun a horrendous errand, in his bitter and jealous cruelty (had he truly learned nothing from Star's broken heart?), searching through the multiverse for Frisks to steal pieces of their Star back from, and was leaving a trail of destruction and despair in his wake, uncaring of the lives he had ruined in so doing. He had always been that way, though... so willing to leech the happiness of others and leave only darkness behind.

It was a terrible thing to see and feel at once, to be witness to the winking out of lights all across the wide multiverse they had been born to protect and bring balance to... it was only natural for him to strike out as well, to at the very least attempt to end the misery while, at the same time, begin gathering his own collection of Star's soul shards. He, however, had the decency and grace not to leave only destruction in his wake; Star certainly would not have approved of that. No, he took back the pieces of her broken heart gently, never once harming the safe-holders of her essence, and returned them to their worlds lacking only their souls, rather than their lives.

It was a slow process, of course, one that took a careful hand and a modicum of deceit... many monsters would consider it an unsavory and detestable thing, to remove a living being's soul, deeming it a fate far worse than death. How they could think that was beyond him, though. He knew several monsters lacking souls that lived productive and fulfilling lives; there were even a few humans that could claim the same, going on to lead the way to grand adventures in new worlds of both light and dark.

How could being alive be worse than being dead? He did not understand the logic, but was careful in who he told the truth of his venture nevertheless, and so far had seen great success in his gathering.

...well. Before Ink had disappeared, that was.

Dream's expression darkened for a moment, a furrow forming between his brows and his sockets hardening, before it was wiped away again in careful consideration and by a wash of golden sunlight cast through the large window he walked beneath, cast from the eclipsed sun far above. Ink had been instrumental in his quest across the multiverse, as a nearly conscienceless being that cared only for the preservation of the Aus; he hadn't cared that he was taking Frisk souls, so long as his own was spared. An easy enough promise to make... while he needed him, at least.

Ink would understand, in the end. Core wouldn't be gone, would still exist for him to fight over alongside Error... wasn't that what really mattered?

Yes. Yes, he would understand.

That had been before his disappearance, though. It had been at least a week, and though the amount of time wasn't all that unusual (the soulless creator was flighty and scatterbrained, often forgetting important things if not reminded often; he'd likely gotten distracted by something in a far off universe)... the timing was what was concerning to him.

Reaper, the god of the Dead, had been making more of a nuisance of himself of late, one of the many that simply didn't understand how important his work was. He'd heard that the vengeful god had sworn to capture one of either his brother's or his own cohorts, to attempt to find their hidden domains, and had redoubled his efforts to keep his kingdom hidden, to protect his forming but still incredibly fragile bride. He'd been certain that one of Nightmare's clan of murderers would be captured first... but it was very possible that Ink had been lured into a trap.

Trapped... or had gone of his own accord.

Dream considered it for a moment, but shook the thought away habitually, forcing a smile onto his face that did not reach the chilly, golden flecks of magic in his sockets. There was no need to be suspicious. Ink had no reason to betray him, and had been a good friend and partner to him ever since they had first met.

He certainly hoped he knew better than to sour their relationship and give him cause to show him the error of his ways.

As inevitably they always did, Dream's long and directionless steps brought him back to his bedchambers, to the tall and inscribed ivory doors that hid from him and the rest of the universe's eyes his resting and fragile lover. He opened the door only enough to slip inside, untrusting of secret and prying eyes, despite the lack any anyone but himself within the castle, and nearly melted into a puddle at the sight of her, resting on his bed in the rays of the sun and glowing the gentle hues of dulcet sunrise.

He dared not approach her to trace the shape of her forming face, the slope of her ephemeral waist and the fall of her mistlike hair. He had accidentally shattered her before, filled with too much excitement to resist any longer, and the pain was nearly as bad as when he had been witness to the cracks that had spread across and splintered her what felt like a lifetime ago. He had no idea how he hadn't managed to perish from the sheer pain of his broken heart, left without the one he cherished above all others... perhaps it had been out of fantastical disbelief, refusing to accept that she was gone. Perhaps it had been his anger with his selfish and jealous brother, for causing it all in the first place.

Whatever the case, she was left in an incredibly delicate state now, and his inability to be with her, to do anything more than look on her with the awe she deserved, left a bitter taste in his mouth, a foul tendril of ugly loathing rearing within his twisted mind.

Nightmare just couldn't let anyone but himself be happy. Couldn't see past his own desires, or how his jealousy had ruined it for all of them.

It had been so good and right, before it all. They had ruled the night and day in peace and prosperity, so well that they were granted the positions of higher gods and given their own realms... his realm had been a paradise, the sophisticated and learned coming to him for advice and the needy seeking him to lift their spirits and bolster their crops. His popularity had soared, and the stars, in their mercy and wisdom, had seen his greatness and gifted him a wondrous bride, a being of such beauty and power that he, a god in his own right, was brought to his knees in awe and worship.

He had never understood why he was meant to share her with his brother, but he had not been so jealous as to withhold her. She obviously brought him happiness, and he knew that his moody and temperamental brother needed that.

Soon enough, though, Nightmare had begun to cause problems. He became sullen and rash, lashing out and complaining of his power waning while Dream's grew exponentially... how was he supposed to help that? Mortal beings were growing and becoming more civilized, no longer living in mud huts and dancing naked to pagan songs in the moonlight... there was order, and grand buildings of stone and fine metals, and a calling for higher knowledge and philosophy, rather than the capricious arts and whimsical poems of the early days. It wasn't as though his job was easy. He had much to see to... it was better for Night to have less on his plate.

This was a bitter pill for him to swallow, though, and one he refused to accept. He called for a grand meeting, for Dream to reach out to the people and remind them of his importance as well, and sent multiple appeals to the greater gods, to gain favor towards his own side. Dream had, as anyone would have, became impatient, though, and told him to enjoy his lesser role. Surely still being a major god, and having the love of their bride, was enough? It made sense to him, and he had refused, as anyone would with a petulant child, to hear any more jealous complaints about their roles in the cosmos.

He had left it at that, too, certain that the castigation would force Nightmare to see he was in the wrong and to appreciate what he had... he was wrong. One night, while he and his Star had slept through the darkness, Nightmare had stolen away to the world tree of their birth, stripped it of the golden fruits meant to grant great power to mortal heroes, and consumed them all, thereafter tearing it down to remove any chance of him attempting the same. The betrayal had twisted his form, corrupting his core, but had also given him the power he craved so dearly, and had torn Dream's kingdom to shreds in his fury. He had stood over the flaming ashes and laughed, and had then demanded Star come to him, to be his and only his.

Her heart had, understandably, been broken. One of her loves had corrupted himself, no longer valued her choice or where her heart lay, and she had shattered in her misery, cast down to the greater multiverse to bless souls like her own and to experience selfless love, absent the control he had attempted to exert over her.

And so it had gone, in a predictable fashion. Nightmare had blamed him, naturally, just as he, much more truthfully, blamed Nightmare, and the rift between them had grown until they were as they were now, waging an endless war and engaging in a dire race for the restoration of their love. He had rebuilt his kingdom across the centuries, back into a facsimile of what it had been before but beautiful nevertheless, yet still so empty without the glow of his morning Star.

Dream sighed, rubbing a gloved hand across his face in weary remembrance. What he wouldn't give to have her back...

His thoughts were interrupted, though, by the sound of knuckles rapping against the door at his back, bursting the bubble of deafening silence that had surrounded him for days now. He stiffened, protective ire firming his expression as he turned on his heel, before a voice came from the other side of the door, heralding who it was and bringing about a rush of relief.

“Uhm... Dream, are you in there? I checked pretty much everywhere else, and... well, I needed to talk to you about something. My mate has expressed a few concerns that I am, quite honestly, having myself... did you have some time to spare to talk them over with me?”

Blue. Of course... Ink didn't bother knocking anymore, and any intruder wouldn't have given him that courtesy either. Concerns, though... Blue was not aware of just what he was helping achieve, as Dream knew the chivalrous and loyal monster wouldn't agree with taking souls... it was a necessary evil, to deceive him, and one he hadn't ever lost any sleep over. He had been easy to lie to, but Swap Frisks always were so much more suspicious, and wise to conniving.

This was dangerous ground... he'd rather not lose such a devoted ally by having to take his Frisk's soul now and alienate him.

“of course, blue. i will be with you in a moment, if you'll go to my office and wait there? we can discuss any and all concerns you have, and lay them to rest,” he responded, raising his voice only a little so as not to disturb Star, and through the door, Blue let out an audible sigh of relief.

“I'm on it! Take your time, I'll be waiting!” he replied positively, immediately turning and charging back down the hall that had led him there, and Dream waited for a moment, listening to him retreat, before letting out a slow and laborious sigh, turning his sockets to his slumbering bride and giving her an assured nod.

He would do what was necessary to bring her back, and to end Nightmare's reign of terror.

Anything, and everything .

Chapter Text

Axetale

For the first time in almost seventeen years, Sans took off his locket.

There hadn't been many occasions to, before that moment. Baths in the Underground had become a rarity, once the Hunger had begun to ravage the populace... any that he had dared to take had been quick affairs, a damp rag run over cracked bones to wash away the worst of the blood and gore from his kills. He never removed it to change clothes, far too wary of forgetting where he had put it and never being able to find it... never took it off to sleep.

He never slept, after Frisk had died. He feared the nightmares and the pain within them more than he feared death.

Things were different, now. Worse, in some ways... Aliza was gone. Taken from him, held prisoner and threatened to ensure his complaint obedience to the mad god of the night. His freedom of will removed, under promise of agonizing pain... the next unknown stretch of years robbed of him and dedicated to his indentured servitude.

They were better in some ways too, though... he was freed of the Underground, removed from the grasp of the Hunger and the never ending starvation that came with it, and had been allowed to free his brother of it as well. There was enough to eat and then some, his and his brother's minds returning to them slowly but surely, damages suffered beginning to repair... he had found a certain kinship, with those also forced into Nightmare's employ, brothers in disease and corruption and starved madness.

And through them... he had found her .

His first duties, in his inflicted service, had been simple ones, apart from the others and overseen by a creature of utter destruction and frequent sarcasm, Error. He had wondered why, what they could be doing that he would need to be apart from, but Nightmare had played such information to his chest, telling him to mind the business he had been assigned and nothing else. Then had come the late night meeting he had been practically dragged into, in the darkest and seediest bar that Mobfell had to offer and joined by a three eyed monster he had never met before that had made their mutual venture possible. He had been told of Nightmare's plans to acquire and strip all power from Frisk souls that he could get, to serve himself and his own lost love, and their intentions to capture and hide away Frisks of their own.

They had asked if he wanted in, and he had agreed without even thinking, and certainly without breathing.

There was no retrieving his own Frisk, of course. He'd known that before asking hopefully, and had tried not to let the negative answers sting too badly. There were other worlds like his, though, different but very much the same as well, that he could save one from, rescue from the cruel fate that awaited her, and he'd leapt at the chance, aching at not being able to save them all (“don't be dumb, man. nightmare will definitely notice if thirty-some frisks go “missing” overnight.”) but more than welcoming the opportunity to save one.

And she had been... radiant . Stumbling down the mountain in her hurry to save her already doomed Underground (Flowey's rampage had not ended in New Home, in her world... most of the monsters, including her version of himself, had already perished), so full of life and determination and stars, he hadn't been able to keep from holding her, just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating again.

He hadn't lied to her, after he'd brought her to the cabin he'd set up for his brother, deep in the woods outside the city. He'd told her the fate of her world, and of his, and that he'd come to save her from what he knew was coming for her. He'd promised he expected nothing of her (and had bit his tongue to keep from telling her that he still wished for it), as another version of her husband, but wanted to keep her safe and provide for her and the baby she still carried if she would allow him, and had left it at that, doing everything he could to make her happy and keep her healthy in his time away from Nightmare's work.

She had been understandably depressed, for several weeks. She'd lost everything she'd ever known besides the baby growing inside her, displaced to a new world and into the home of two grotesquely broken versions of the monsters that had been her family, once. He'd more than expected it, and definitely understood it; he'd been through much the same thing, but had at the very least been given the courtesy of years to process it. He brought her monster food to provide the magic she needed to support her magical pregnancy (he couldn't supply it the traditional way, wouldn't dream of suggesting it-), fetched her anything and everything that she desired, and, after nearly two months of tiptoeing around one another, she had sat him down on the bench beside the garden she'd planted, and spoke her mind.

She wanted to move forward. She'd been stuck in place for far too long, trying to see the path ahead and failing; the way she saw it, and she hoped he would too, they were in a position to, while not pick up where they'd left off, start over again. ' Every time I try to think of reasons for leaving, all I can come up with are more reasons to stay, ', she had muttered to him, reaching out to gently nudge his hand with hers, and he'd nearly leapt over the moon with ecstatic joy.

He hadn't known what it would be like, honestly... he wasn't so foolish as to think she would be exactly the same as his wife had been. He'd wondered before how bad the whiplash and overlap between them would be, if he ever got the chance... if they'd be able to manage it at all, no matter how hard he tried and wished and wanted. And to his surprise, it had felt... easy. Almost too easy, like tipping off the edge of a building and falling into deep and familiar waters.

It had been so long that he'd been without her, he'd forgotten what loving more than her memory had felt like. The hopeless, helpless infatuation that had overcome him in those early years, besotted to almost sickening levels and tripping over himself to please her, just to hear her laugh the laugh that had played in his skull on repeat until it had begun to warp and change into nothingness. Just to make her smile, and to feel her fingers laced between his, and to have her weight lean against him... seeing her in the light of the sun and beneath the glow of the moon, playing with Papyrus in the brook near the cabin and nagging him about his shoes on the floor and blushing when he stroked her cheek.

There were parts of her that were different. Different memories, different tastes, different scars... it was more than alright. He was different too, and it made discovering each other that much more interesting. A joy to learn something new, or to laugh and reminisce over something old... to make new memories together, like teaching her the names of stars and constellations, or her taking him to the edge of the woods to look out over the vastness of the nearby ocean. Letting her trace the cracks running along his skull with her fingertips... her letting him stroke his palms over her growing abdomen.

The taste of those moments were bittersweet. He had never gotten the chance to see her body change and grow, in his world... had never gotten to feel his baby kick, watch as her soul blossomed and grew with each passing day. It was a wonder and a blessing, one he had cried over many a time... but it always, inevitably, reminded him of the child locked away in the dungeons of Nightmare's castle, well fed and warm but bored out of her mind and exempt from this new happiness of his.

He felt incredibly selfish, to spend part of his time out of work not with her, but with the new family he was helping to foster, as much as he planned for her to be included in it the moment he got her free. He felt he should be trying harder to get her out, that he shouldn't be allowed to enjoy anything with her imprisoned as she was, even though everyone, Papyrus, Frisk, and Aliza herself, told him otherwise.

' Daddy, please be happy. You haven't been happy in so long. I'm not rotting away in here or anything... the guy with all the goop leaking out of his sockets brings me books and tells me really gross jokes when he comes down to feed me, so I'm not hurting for company, just a little bored. I know you're trying, okay? I know you won't leave me here, ' she had told him with exasperation, and he'd done his best to obey, while swearing to himself that the moment that the opportunity came, he'd jump at the chance to steal her back.

And, with luck, get the chance to take off Nightmare's head himself, but he wouldn't lose sleep over it if not, heh.

Which brought him back to the sound of his locket's chain clinking against the clean, gleaming marble countertop, reflecting the overhead bathroom light against the mirror and his phalanges, slowly but surely losing the ingrained bloodstains they had once borne. The locket and it's polished ruby settled atop the coiled chain, the tip of a filed down claw tracing one of its facets before pulling away entirely, and Sans, gaze flickering and mouth pulled down in melancholy remembrance, looked at it only a moment longer before shrugging off his jacket and pulling his clean sweater over his skull, baring his scarred and healing ribcage to the human woman watching him from the edge of the large whirlpool tub.

He kept his gaze averted from her for a moment longer, as his sweater joined his jacket, his shoes, and his socks on the floor, thumbing the waistband of his shorts nervously before glancing over to her.

“we, uh... are you sure? i don't want you to feel pressured, i can just sit on the edge-” he began softly, making his very best attempt to not allow his eyelights to lower to the full and glowing body she was barely concealing from him with her bathrobe, but the look she gave him silenced him just as much as her standing and letting the robe fall around her feet.

“I'm the one that asked, remember? I know what I want, and I want you to bathe with me... among other things,” she insisted gently, holding her hand out to him in a wordless beckoning, and if the sight of her bared body wasn't enough to get his magic running hot, the flush on her cheeks and her determined offer definitely was, his tongue growing thick and heavy behind his teeth and his magic practically begging to be summoned to form between his legs.

They had taken their time, progressing to this stage in the relationship. They'd touched each other, her bare fingers over his bones and along the length of his cock (and, once, her luscious lips around him, stars-) and his hands over her soft skin, his tongue against her sensitive nipples and two fingers thrusting gently inside her core, but her invitation tonight had been one of promised intimacy, a whisper against his mandible after a half hour of sitting in his lap and twisting her tongue with his.

She wanted him, she'd muttered there, and had pulled him by one of his hoodie's ties into the bathroom connected to her room.

If he was honest, he'd wanted her for months now, more every day he'd seen her body growing fuller with her pregnancy, her scent rife with magic and hormonal desires he desperately wanted to fulfill. She'd never asked, though, despite the times he'd smelled her lust and had heard her moaning his name late in the night, through the walls of the cabin, and he'd promised himself she would be the one to ask.

And now that she had, he was oddly fearful.

“...i know. i just haven't... i never... it's been a long time. my magic is different, my instincts are different... i'm different. i don't want to accidentally... hurt you,” he muttered uncertainly, though he didn't resist placing his hand in his and letting her pull him closer (as though he ever could), and Frisk, looking up at him considerately even as she pressed her body against his, radiating trust and desire and love, tilted her head to the side, her hair falling across her lovely eyes as she did.

“I'm not afraid of you losing control. If you bite me, it happens... if you're a little rough, that happens too. I've been through a heat season with a monster before, I think I can handle a little intensity. All I really care about is being with you,” she confided in him, her smile so tempting that he found himself kissing her before he could stop himself, and when he pulled back, her breath panting against his mouth and her arms wrapped around his neck, his hands framed the roundness of her baby bump, stroking her soft skin with his thumbs.

“there's no arguing with you, is there,” he chuckled softly, recalling all the times both she and his Frisk had outdone him with their sheer determination, his soul aching with rekindled and desperate love, and she smiled back at him, backing away only to take his hand and lead him to the churning, bubbly water of the jet tub.

“I don't know why you ever bother trying~” she replied, stepping into the water and sighing in bliss (her feet had been bothering her terribly lately; stiff joints from all the water weight, she'd told him), and once he'd finally shucked off his shorts, abandoning them with the rest of his clothes, he followed after her, taking her hand and one hip to help lower her into bubbling water.

Very little cleaning got done, between the both of them, though if they were honest, that hadn't been the intention of the bath in the least.

Chapter Text

Criminal Attraction Mobtale

“y'know, when ya said you were bringing handcuffs over, i didn't 'xactly picture it goin' this way.”

Frisk, blushing and fidgeting on the smirking mobster's bed, kept her eyes averted to her bared knees, her confidence slowly but surely draining away into nervous distress. She could feel herself regretting doing this already, could practically feel his laughter and his roving sockets on her bare skin, taking in the naked human that had, with very little explanation, sauntered into his bedroom, stripped, and handcuffed herself to his headboard.

She'd been able to think of no other way to get his attention, though. Not that she needed it! As if. She just... he'd been missing for nearly a week and a half now, with very little explanation. She liked it as little as she liked him showing up in her apartment without announcement (once, in the middle of a very embarrassing scenario featuring a blue silicone object and several repetitions of his name-), and she knew perfectly well that the best way to get his attention was to appeal to his baser desires.

Now, facing down the monster that she was locked into an on again, off again romance with, she wasn't so certain that it had been a good idea.

His grand, pristine, and rather ostentatious manor had been completely silent, when she had arrived, very odd considering the amount of gangsters he usually had lazing about the place nearly every time she'd dropped by to “visit” (her visits usually ended up rather messily; he loved the sight of his cum on her skin). It was clear the cleaning staff hadn't been around much, given the state of his take-out and pizza box littered kitchen, and though finding him had been easy, the state of him himself was... one she had never been witness to before.

Sans the skeleton seemed to live in his suits, very infrequently seen out of them, besides the times he had talked her into staying the night. He was precise in his upkeep of his hygiene, tidy and well-groomed besides the scent of his cigars, and was careful to keep his magic in check, to give the police absolutely no grounds to place him under arrest. The creature she had found in the doorway of his luxurious bedroom was entirely other to these preconceived appearances. He wore nothing but a pair of striped shorts, was sweating and panting rather heavily (and had clearly been doing so for a long time), and exuded an aura of power and hunger she had very rarely been witness to before.

He'd seemed almost feral, only more so when the flecks of magic in his sockets had dilated upon seeing the very skimpy dress she'd worn (and he'd bought; she'd never worn it before, but now had seemed like a good moment-), his hand clenching against his door hard enough to make the wood protest as he'd breathed in sharply, inhaling her scent and allowing a trail of saliva to leak from the corner of his very hungry grin.

She'd had no idea why he looked like that, wondering to herself if he was having another bout of depression that he sometimes lapsed into, before pushing her way past him, letting the dress fall to the ground around the sluttiest high heels she'd been able to talk herself into buying (and baring the lack of her underwear in one motion), and had chained herself to his bed before he could do anything to stop her.

He didn't look all too bothered by it, honestly. He looked rather enthusiastic, in fact, if evidenced by the prominent tent in his shorts, but still made no move to approach her, remaining steadfast in his doorway and sweating a puddle onto the carpet.

“What were you expecting, me to arrest you? You know better than anyone that you're clean... somehow,” she countered, wishing suddenly that she'd decided to wear the lacy underwear (yet another present from him...) that she'd been considering as his gaze traced along her presented body, taking in her every curve, the glinting steel of the cuffs around her wrists, her sheer thigh highs, and the velvety black heels. She pressed her legs together anxiously, breathing much more rapidly than was sexy, but he seemed unbothered by it, if he noticed at all. He was much too busy wiping the back of his hand across his chin to clean it of his drool, even as his gaze found and obviously admired the one tattoo she'd ever gotten, nearly hidden by the weight of her breasts.

“heh... not exactly. was figurin' you were gonna use 'em on me for... other intents. not that this is unwelcome. quite the opposite, in fact,” he snickered, seemingly unable to keep his sockets from roving over her body even as he remained steadfastly in place, almost resolutely so, and Frisk, swallowing thickly and attempting to keep up a facade of cool sexiness despite her unsure grasping at straws, did her level best to be appealing, arching her back and running one foot up the inside of the opposite thigh, batting her carefully made up lashes and trying not to blush any harder than she already was.

“Could be even better if you'd come over here,” she purred with every attempt at not being awkward, feeling intensely stupid but trying not to let it get to her, and though a look of intense and poignant longing shot across his face, his body jerking forward almost like it was outside of his control, he remained in place staidly.

“you have... no idea how bad i want to. but... stars fuck me, you look amazing... i can't sweetheart. somethin's goin' on you don't know about,” he muttered regretfully, his grasp on the door now so tight that cracks were starting to spread across the surface, and Frisk, with the weight of a lead balloon settling in her stomach, suddenly thought of something so terribly that it nearly brought tears of humiliation and heartbreak to her eyes. She shot a look to the half closed door of his bathroom, her hands trembling in their bonds so hard the chain rattled, doing everything she could to keep from crying and only embarrassing herself further.

“You're... you're not alone. You're here with someone else. Gods, how could I be so stupid-” she whispered in realization, her heart aching in her chest and the tears, hot and thick and painful, escaping her best attempt at controlling them despite her resistance and rolling down her cheeks in droves (she knew she couldn't trust him, she'd known all along, and yet she'd opened herself up, she'd let him use her, she'd... she'd... she loved the bastard, how could he do this-), and Sans' expression, blanking for a single moment in confusion, immediately creased into astounded laughter, one of his hands rising to clasp his forehead.

“someone else- frisk, honey, c'mon. y'know better than that. only woman in the world for me is layin' on my bed right now, and has no idea what she's gotten herself into,” he chortled, finally leaving his place by the door to seat himself on the edge of the mattress and thumb away her mascara blackened tears, and though Frisk's injured heart wanted nothing more than to resist, the touch of his hand in that moment was exactly what she needed, and she leaned into his palm almost without thinking, shuttering her eyes and letting him comfort her. His bones were so warm...

...a lot warmer than they'd ever felt before. By an almost ridiculous margin.

Confused, she leaned back to look up at him, taking in the way his bones trembled and dripped with perspiration, his heavy breaths (now even heavier, sitting next to her and, almost unconsciously, stroking his phalanges along the column of her throat and making her shiver), his intense gaze...

“Sans, are you sick? You really don't look well...” she muttered regretfully, shame and even more embarrassment overcoming her, and her skeletal lover only chuckled again, sockets hooded and hands wandering over the bared, soft flesh of her shoulders, the sheer warmth and the scent of him, somehow so much stronger and so... indescribable (she honestly couldn't put it to words... all she knew was she wished she could reach his bones to lick them, suddenly, her own lust tripling and making her practically drip with desire) filling her head with fog.

“only thing sick 'bout me is all the things i wish i could do ta you right now,” he practically crooned, his deep voice sinking into her blood like a fine wine and getting her drunk in an instant, and Frisk all but melted into a puddle beneath his touch, forgetting her shame as she rubbed her thighs together and attempted to arch into his hands further, to try to lead them to cupping her breasts. A very brief wonderment crossed her mind, of why she was acting like such a... such a wanton slut, but it was almost immediately gone, swept away when one of his fingers traced teasingly between her breasts.

“Why don't you show me some~ I'm right here... and gods I want you,” she all but begged, the heat of his touch and the ambrosia of his scent suffusing her body with nearly rampant desire, and Sans let out a low, desirous growl at her words, sending a delicious and titillated shiver through her body. He seemed to lose control of himself for a moment, bending to crush his mouth to hers in a deep, consuming, sloppy kiss and allowing his hands to roam freely; one grasped a full breast in its palm, alternating between squeezing the soft flesh and rolling a perked nipple between his fingers, and the other stroked down her abdomen, between her now fully spread thighs (please, please, please ), and dipped three phalanges into her soaking wet entrance, immediately curling to stroke her g-spot with practiced surety and, at the same time, rubbing his palm against her throbbing clit.

She was a mess within moments, whimpering and trembling and thrashing with pleasure as she sucked his thrusting tongue and rolled her hips against the fingers now plunging deep and hard into her core, and nearly wept in despair when he suddenly pulled away, practically throwing himself off the mattress and into the armchair beside his bureau. She ached without him, her body flushed and throbbing with need, and he looked much the same, only the clawed hands grasping the arms of the chair keeping him in it and away from her inviting, welcoming body.

“frisk... stars, i can't fuckin' think with you lookin' like that... frisk, i need to get ya outta here before i lose it completely. i'm in heat right now, and... fuck me... all i can think about right now is breeding the ever lovin' daylights outta you... an' i know you don't want that,” he rasped, turning his face away and squeezing his sockets shut in an attempt to gain a moment of clarity, and Frisk felt her inner walls clench desperately at just the thought of the very vivid imagining (gods, she could imagine it already... him cumming inside her over and over and over, filling her with his seed and growling in her ear what they both knew, that he was going to breed her by the end of it all-), moaning as quietly as she was able to and trying, very very hard, to remember when she'd told him she didn't want children.

Maybe it was the opposite, since she couldn't recall the conversation... she'd never told him that she did , in fact, want to have children. Six or seven, if she could manage it... growing up alone, an only child unwanted and unloved until being found and adopted by the monster royals, had made her crave the thought of being the mother she herself had been robbed of. She'd, of course, imagined putting it off until she had settled her grudge with the beast that had murdered her adoptive mother...

But why not now? She loved him, though she'd never told him so, and she knew, from the many, many times he'd told her, that he loved her. They were soulmates, they were lovers, they were, admittedly grudgingly, friends... he'd been waiting for her to come around and accept him for months. With luck, she'd have found out and dealt with her quarry, long before she started to even show, and honestly, from the stories he'd told her of how he'd raised his brother single-handedly, she had a feeling he would be an excellent father.

What was she waiting for, an even more obvious sign from the stars?

“And if I do want that?” she murmured quietly, watching him from beneath her lashes and biting her lip in her growing excitement (not just for the hotness of what was hopefully to come, but also for what felt like a new beginning; was this the roadblock in her life, what she hadn't been able to get around? Was it really so easy as accepting him at last?), and Sans, in his seat, froze entirely, not even his chest moving as he processed her words. Slowly, so slowly she could feel the tension in the air, he turned to look at her, his sockets cracked open enough to bare his magical gaze; the usually cool flecks of magic were burning with intensity now, bearing a seriousness that both chilled and heated her at once.

“i need you t'know that i'm bein' entirely serious right now, frisk. this isn't a kink thing, it's not for fun, or somethin' we can go back from. if you stay, you'll be mine for good. i will mark you, i will breed you. if that's not somethin' you can handle, or if you're just lost in the moment, i'll get the key to your cuffs and call you a cab. no hard feelings, no resentment. i want it so bad my fuckin' soul aches, but i can't let you do this without bein' sure,” he enunciated clearly, obviously worried that her headspace was being affected by their mutual lusting, and to her credit, she did spare it a second round of thought, especially as her heart was slowing and her brain unfogging, with him sitting further away. When she found herself at the same exact conclusion she has reached before, an unspeakable joy flooding her veins at the realization.

“I'm sure, Sans. I've... I've been sure, for a long time, I think. I just hadn't... you know. I'm stubborn, and I didn't want to... overstep, and get hurt,” she admitted sheepishly, sending the carefully watching and waiting monster a half-smile, and with her admission, he let out a snort of laughter, a look of fond knowledge overtaking his intensity as he stood from his seat, walked over to her again, and bent to press a soft kiss to her lips, gentle and full of so much adoration her head was left spinning.

“i don't think there's anyone in the world with a harder head than you,” he whispered there, when he pulled away, ticking his nasal ridge against the end of her nose, and without further ado, he stood back up and, with a joyous and crooked smile on his face, twisted the silver ring off his forefinger, the one he slipped onto her finger each time he took her to bed, to ensure he didn't bite her on accident. He bent over her body to slide it onto her left ring finger, the warm metal a perfect fit and a symbol of the accepted bond, and stood in silence looking at it for a moment, his chest swollen with pride and his sockets glinting with unshed tears.

And then the softness of the moment was broken when, with a flash of a smirk and a quickness that betrayed his enthusiasm, he flicked a hand at the door to his bedroom dismissively, slamming it shut and locking it with finality. The next moment, his shorts were discarded on the floor, baring the hard, obviously desperate length of his cock to her (was... was he bigger ?), already leaking a glistening string of precum. Wordless and eager, she turned sideways on the mattress and popped her lips open, begging to taste him breathlessly, and he obliged her with a satisfied groan, one hand threading into her hair to caress her while he thrust gently into her mouth and the other palming one of her breasts, exciting her even more with each circle his thumb made around her almost painfully tight nipple.

He was definitely bigger, unable to slide down her throat like she had trained herself to do despite her efforts, and whatever scent it was that surrounded him, it was having a devastating effect on her lust... she'd never felt hotter, more eager to have him touch her, pleasure her, fuck her, to the point that she was being driven nearly to orgasm just from the gentle pinches and caresses of his hand on her breast, from the sloppy sound of his cock filling her mouth and the reverberation of his moans.

Must have something to do with his heat... but she had no mind to care, at this point. She could think of only one thing, her hips bucking desperately against the air for a friction she couldn't give herself, and Sans more than noticed, pulling from her mouth with a delightful slowness and letting her see just how much of his thicker length she had taken (her lipstick marks only extended about halfway along it... gods...), before he turned her over onto her back again with a dominant pat to her hip, crawled his way between her legs, and plunged his overheated tongue deep inside her in a single plunge.

The heat of him, along with the undulations of his nubile tongue and the circling of two fingertips against her clit, had her orgasming for him within seconds, bucking wildly beneath him and pulling against the confines of her bonds and keening his name in rapture. He wasn't satisfied with just one, though... he made her cum for him four more times, all within only a few minutes time, turning her into a boneless, sweating mess before he sought his own pleasure, and the beginning of his promised breeding.

She was on her knees before her foggy head could even contemplate the change, her body naturally assuming the best position to take him deep inside, and with the overabundance of her liquid lust, along with a mix of their saliva and a generous amount of precum, he sunk into her with almost no struggle at all, despite his greater size, though he took the insertion slow, inch by inch, just to be sure. The first few thrusts, when he had pressed himself in as far as he could go (gods... she was having a hard time catching her breath, it felt like he filled her so completely... she could only imagine how ruined she was going to look after he was done with her), were shallow, slow, and gentle, his hands stroking along her back worshipfully and his voice husky with murmurs of love and praise, but before long, after he had seen she could handle it, his hips picked up speed, his room echoing with their mixed cries, the sound of the headboard smacking against the wall, and the wet slap of bone to soaked flesh, of his cock pistoning in and out of her with single-minded fervor.

As fast as he had brought her to orgasm, he very nearly brought himself; only a few minutes had passed, she was certain, along with another climax of her own that made her legs tremble with its strength, before his thrusts began to falter, his voice began to pitch, and with three sharp snaps of his hips to her rear, he sank deep inside her and spilled his seed with shuddering, throbbing pulses of his length, the magic hot enough for her to feel it as he filled her. She was no stranger to the feeling, but the sheer volume he produced set her hazy mind at odds now, so great that, even still fully seated inside her, it began to leak around his thick length and drip to the sheets.

The feeling was extraordinary, the knowledge that his instincts were provoking him into making a solid attempt to breed her enough to heat her blood all over again; the kisses he pressed to her spine, and his fingers, stroking along her abdomen and around the place where they were connected, stroking her stretched folds and circling her reddened clit, only inflamed her further, her hips bumping back against him unconsciously and, with the abundance of his seed filling her and lubricating the movement, allowing his cock to slide deliciously along her walls.

The sloppy, slurping sound of it sent shivers through them both, and sent moans tumbling from both of their mouths, before, with a ragged but deep and devastatingly sexy chuckle, Sans sat back up onto his knees, slapping a palm across her ass and sitting back enough to watch the sight of her bouncing on his length for a moment. Seemingly satisfied, he then dedicated almost too much energy to flipping her onto her back again while maintaining his place inside her, apparently unwilling to be parted from her for even that long, and, in a moment of intrigue, slid a few pillows under her head and upper back, to allow her to watch him sliding in and out of her core just as he did.

And what a sight it was, one she'd only seen herself in the videos they'd made... every one of his thrusts sent a gush of his cum spilling out from her widely stretched entrance, the size of him enough to raise a slight bump in her abdomen when fully inserted. She wished desperately that her hands weren't entrapped still, wanting nothing more than to feel the magic he was working on her with her own hands... but he seemed perfectly content to keep her tied for the moment, shifting her flat on her back again, slotting his hands behind her knees, and pressing them back until they were nearly touching the mattress, him kneeling all the way over her with a knowing and lascivious grin on his face.

She... she'd seen this position in the videos she'd watched on MH (MonsterHub), when she was in the mood to watch porn... if she remembered correctly, it was called the-

“mating press, heh,” he murmured, propping his hands beside her head and bending to indulge in a deep kiss, before pulling away and, experimentally, grinding his hips against hers. The position allowed him to thrust straight down into her, reaching deeply with extreme ease and ensuring his seed would stay in place right where it belonged, and he smirked at her cry of shocked pleasure, making the same motion again just to hear her moaning in bliss.

“you said ya wanted a baby, sweetheart... i'm sure as hell gonna give you one~”

Chapter Text

Myth Monsters: Nox

Just beyond the border of an ancient and most hallowed forest, beloved of mythics and the birthplace of wild magicks unknown to man, there lay a village. Once a prosperous place, well known for the fine crafts the humans there were able to create from the gifts of the woodlands, it now stood abandoned and crumbling, a vestige of the never-ending war between nature and civilization. The empty windows of buildings yet standing stared like the eyes of the dead, signposts creaked as their faded declarations swayed in the stiff, chill breeze, and at the end of a long street lined with moldering homes and shops, enclosed by a chain fence and exuding a spirit of lost whimsy, a dilapidated playground stood firm and unmoving, almost in spite of the elements and the creeping edge of the forest slowly but surely reclaiming the village.

Within its confines, mustard weeds, climbing vines of morning glory, and the saplings of young hawthorn grew in abundance in the fine sand, winding around and about the chipped paint and rusted metal of the play equipment. The greenery gave the impression that, somehow, the toys themselves had grown straight from the earth, crafted by some great hand that no mortal being could emulate. Verdant leaves flapped and danced in the wind that wended its way between half-fallen swings, rustling playfully with its passing, and joined in the play of a handful of small, gleefully romping monster children, scaling decaying ropes and the bars of the half-fallen in jungle gym and sliding down cracked plastic slides.

Their joyful laughter abounded, echoing throughout the empty cul-de-sac and filling the brisk air with the sounds of their scuffling. Claws scraped against rungs and clacked against wood panels, barbed tails hooked around poles and swatted playfully at brothers and sisters, and tiny skeletal hands grasped at vines and whooshed through the air as they hopped and slid and bounded. Monsters of their sort, an odd and startlingly colorful mix of skeleton and scorpion, had never been seen in that part of the world, much more common in the heat of the desert lands far away, but the baby monsters seemed completely unbothered by this point, freshly fed and glorying in the feeling of the sun and the wind and ecstatic to indulge in their first encounter with a playground.

Tucked into the shade of a towering, lightning split pine and a rusted metal overhang, a scattering of warped picnic tables stood on cracked concrete; one of the tables, halfway ensconced by a large purplish boulder, was occupied, its top littered with the crumbs of a swiftly and happily consumed meal and one of its seats filled by a watchful but indulgently smiling woman, her chestnut brown hair restrained by a ribbon in an attempt to keep it from being blown about in the wind. The attempt was a failed one, but she had, apparently, given up on trying to keep it in order, and let out a chuckle as a shriek of laughter rang through the air, one of the little monsters charging across the playground holding aloft the Grand Scepter (a stick) while the others stampeded after him in an attempt to retrieve it.

“Just look at them...” she sighed, leaning her chin into the palm of one hand, and behind her, what had appeared to be a boulder shifted and grunted in affirmation. Heavy plates of chitin shifted against each other as the not-boulder moved, several segmented legs scraping at the cracked concrete and a carefully curled, cruelly barbed tail only curling tighter, wrapped securely around the woman's ankle. She didn't seem to mind, apparently quite used to it in fact, and turned her head to look through the fall of her upset hair at the now unfolding form of what was obviously a close relation to the happily rampaging monster children, a thickly boned and viciously fanged skeletal torso unfolding from where it had been resting beneath the table.

The enormous skeletal scorpion spared the woman a glance from the multiple, venomously green irises hovering and flickering within his two working sockets, his expression, as usual, flat and expressionless, before laying across the table at her side, his broad arms folded against the tabletop to bear the weight of his cracked skull. His pincers clicked softly as he watched the much smaller monsters play, though, obviously pleased despite his taciturn visage, and Frisk, the woman at his side, smiled at the sound, reaching out to pat one of his elbows.

“I told you they'd love it. Don't they look so happy?” she nudged, raising her brows and leaning around his massive shoulder to make eye contact, but the monster only huffed, sending her a blasé look from the corners of his sockets.

“still think it's too risky. don't like being in the open like this,” he mumbled gruffly, flicking a crumb off the table and turning his magical irises again to watch what appeared to be his children kicking up sand and squealing with glee as they chased one another around the playground equipment, and Frisk rolled her eyes at his stubbornness, but didn't appear all that surprised by it. She only shrugged, leaned fully against his thick arm, and watched along with him, occasionally stroking the tips of her fingers along the slope of his skull.

Time passed as swiftly as the wind, interrupted only once (a gentle scolding of “No, no digging! You'll get dirty, and we don't have a place to give you a bath yet!” followed by a chorus of “Yes mama!”) as the sun descended from its zenith, doing little to dismiss the chill that only one of those present was capable of feeling. Said person shivered and shifted, on occasion, her arms tucked around herself but seemingly unwilling to do anything about it, until, with a heavy and annoyed sigh, Nox, the large monster at her side, unwound his tail from her ankle long enough to reach the pile of bags and supplies on the ground beside him, deftly hooking a blanket from within to throw over her head and, almost seamlessly, captured her ankle again.

Frisk snickered at his impatience, moving to pull the fleece blanket from the top of her head and around her shoulders, and leaned back against his shoulder again afterwards. A thoughtfulness had overcome her expression, though, one of her fingers tracing the line of a crack that meandered along his humerus, and she spent a moment lost to those thoughts before giving them voice.

“You've been broody today. More than usual,” she prompted softly, pulling the blanket around her arms more tightly as a particularly harsh gust of wind rattled its way through the enclosure, blowing a bevy of old, dead leaves around her boots, and though he had obviously heard the comment, Nox said nothing, remaining silent for so long that Frisk clearly gave up on him responding at all. It was only when she had closed her eyes for a moment, nuzzling her head against his upper arm, that he responded, one hand extending slowly to touch one of her knuckles softly, as though afraid anything more firm would break her.

He might have been right, honestly... he was exponentially stronger than she was.

“their happiness's only made me realize just how sad the others were. sad and scared and cold and hungry because of my failings... without warmth and love and their mothers, because of my hatred. so many of them never lived long enough to see the sun. and it's my fault,” he muttered, so quietly that if she weren't pressed against his bones she would have missed it, and though her brows drew down, her heart aching and her mouth opening in automatic defense... she shut it again immediately after, lowering her eyes to his fingers, slowly tracing along her knuckles.

He was right, despite the realization's unpleasantness. Reassuring him would do no good, not when he was clearly working through something, and so she kept her silence, though she did, thoughtfully, turn her hand for him to hold, which he latched onto quickly and tremulously. The sounds of his children's play were lessening, as they began to wear themselves out; most were now attempting to either turn or ride the rusted merry-go-round, and had thus far had little success. The growing quiet, only occasionally filled with the bluster of the wind, only made the lingering silence of his thought process more obvious, and only her gently squeezing his fingers seemed to propel him into continuing.

“...i justified it for longer than i should have. i killed innocents, both my children and their mothers, on my path of revenge, and none of it ever helped. ...i would have done the same to you, had i not seen how much happier they were with you,” he admitted, his voice cracking several times and his grip on both her ankle and her hand tightening reflexively, and Frisk, though she winced slightly at his strong grasp, remained solidly at his side, nodding in understanding.

She knew he'd been struggling with this different form of life. He had spent all his free life on the run from the company that had tortured and damaged him, living in eternal pain and mental anguish, and had been exacting his vengeance on humanity by abducting women, forcing them to bear his children, and then killing them brutally.

She also knew perfectly well that the only reason (in the beginning, at least) that she'd been spared the same fate as the rest of his other victims was her kindness to his children, found stuck in traps in the woods she had been patrolling. He had grown fond of her, as well as her adoration for his young, and when he had packed up his cave to leave, worried about staying in one place too long, he had, none too gently, plucked her out of her bed and brought her along with him. She really hadn't minded, as she'd grown rather fond of him and his brood of sweet, charming babies, and after reprimanding him for not asking and making a trip to a store for some much-needed supplies, she'd gone along with him quite agreeably.

In all the time she had known him, though, he had never shown remorse for what he'd done, even after halting his murderous, dark errand of vengeance. He had deemed it a simple fact, not worthy of consideration, and gone on ignoring it, frank and straightforward as ever. Hearing that he was forming new conclusions about the things he'd done was welcome, and showed once more just how much he'd grown in just the short time since she'd first met him.

“You can't go back. You can only do your best now, and for what it's worth, I think you're doing a pretty good job, for a big ol' grump,” she hummed, chuckling at the exasperated look he threw her, but then sobered and sent him a sincere smile, nodding her head towards the decidedly more sleepy little scorpions starting to trail back towards where they were sitting, hiding yawns and sagging lids behind tiny hands. “The fact that you wanted to change says more about you than the things you did in the past. Remember that.”

He chewed that over in his head as, one by one, Frisk welcomed the tuckered out baby monsters into her arms when they lifted their hands up to her pleadingly, tucking each one away in their own little blanket, with their stuffed animals and a kiss as well, and carefully handing the little bundles of joy to their father, who stowed them gently in the padded carrier slung across his back that she had made him. He watched her in silence as she packed up their supplies, allowing her to feed him the last bread roll that they had left over, but stopped her before she clambered up onto his back as well, one hand gently but insistently pulling at her arm until she stood in front of him, brows raised in curiosity.

His many irises took her in intensely, lingering on the sunkissed tone of her skin, her messy hair and the particles of sand clinging to her dress and her curious smile, before, with a short, ragged rumble that closely resembled a purr, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, resting his head against the side of hers. She stiffened for a moment, surprised by the show of intimacy from him (generally, all his affection was given through small, wordless touches), but softened and leaned into it welcomingly the very next, lifting a hand to gently stroke along his cervical vertebrae.

Nox was a frequently angry monster, made hard and cold through fury and constant pain, often distant and aloof and emotionally constipated. He had blood on his hands that he was only now coming to fully see, many regrets weighing on his mind, but she knew, with a clarity that both filled her and extended to him, that he was only going to get better.

Chapter Text

Farmtale

Before any misconstructions can be made, let it be made very plain: Frisk was no stranger to sex.

She'd had plenty of off and on flings when she lived in the city (mostly with monsters... hey, a girl could have a preference), some dirtier than others and some skipping straight over dirty and directly into degeneracy. She'd been with two lovers at once, a few times, usually in an effort to satisfy a partner's curiosity, and had even worked at a sex shop, for a short time. She'd done her share of flirting and being flirted with, teased and been teased...

So why just the sound of Saejun's voice, and the feeling of Sans' hands framing her curves, was driving her wild and fogging her mind into hazy bliss was beyond her understanding. More than likely, it had to do with just how besotted she was with the both of them, as well as all the times her imagination had run away with her and dreamed up scenarios just like the one she had found herself in. Whatever the case was, though, it had left her blushing a deep scarlet right in the middle of the barn, the feeling of Sans' large hands dragging over the fullness of her hips and the sound of Saejun's teasing tone, only an inch from her ear, making her tremble so hard that her knees nearly buckled, firming the grip of her hands, one clinging to Saejun's broad shoulder and the other twisted into Sans' plaid shirt.

A smooth, low chuckle resounded through the older monster's chest, huffing a breath of hot air against her ear; one of his hands joined the fray as well, once he'd shrugged off his gardening gloves, tracing a curled knuckle along her throat and forcing a shiver through her body. His broad-brimmed straw hat had slipped from his skull, dangling from the string around his neck, and what he'd done with the strand of wheat usually stuck between his teeth, she had no idea. All she could think of was how close he was, his chest pressed against hers

“lookit that blush go, darlin'... shy as a rosebud in spring. y'know how much we love it on you, don't ya? 'cuz we do... so much that given th'choice, it'd be the only thing y'ever wore,” he purred against the shell of her ear, parting his teeth to nip teasingly at the lobe and make her whimper for him, and at her back, his hands slowly but surely working to untuck her work shirt from her pants, Sans hummed in agreement, abandoning the feeling of her pert rear pressing against his crotch to bend and nuzzle his jaw against hers affectionately.

“best part of the day is seeing your pretty face wearing that blush... so often from your own lustful imaginings. did you know we can smell it on you, sweetness? the desire running hot in your blood, always so heavy around us...” he murmured there, turning his wide, sharp smile to press the lightest of kisses to her throat and running his fingertips along the bared skin his disturbing of her shirt had bared, and Saejun, encouraged by the whines she was making and the clench of her fingers in his shirt, lowered the hand not currently threading its way into her hair to the button of her pants, thumbing at it indicatively even as his tongue slipped between his teeth, tracing a heated line along her neck.

“t's a downright miracle we ain't jumped ya a'fore now... stopped countin' the times i've wanted t'bend y'over the tractor bed n' have my way with ya, smellin' just how much y'want it,” he murmured silkily, licking, kissing, and nipping along the length of her throat, and Frisk's knees buckled completely at the image, whining as she clung to them desperately just to keep her balance. Four strong, capable hands were there to catch her, though, keeping her on her feet among knowing and teasing chuckles, and to counteract her suddenly very weak legs, Sans back his way up to a milking bench set just beside the half-way open barn doors, seating himself steadily and placing Frisk in his lap, her back to his chest.

Saejun followed along in their wake with a knowing, playful smile on his aged but handsome face, hands in the pockets of his coveralls, and waited until she was settled more comfortably before approaching, bending to one knee in front of her to meet her hazy eye with a twinkling of humor in his sockets.

“was plannin' on knockin' ya off your feet, but not quite that hard,” he snickered, highly amused by his own turn of phrase and only encouraged more when she laughed shakily as well, before scooting closer, one hand sliding along the outside of her thigh and the other tracing along her jaw. She whimpered quietly again, the overwhelming feelings they were inflicting on her helped none by Sans' hands once again stroking along her belly and working the buttons of her shirt open, his breath washing over her neck as he resumed nuzzling at her throat.

“it's alright... won't need to be on your feet for a while,” he whispered huskily, the sliver of his enormous scarlet eyelight that she could see through her hair watching her with lustful intent, and though she attempted to speak, despite her tight throat and overwhelmed senses, her lips were very suddenly and very pleasantly occupied, Saejun's mouth and tempting tongue distracting her from any thoughts other than being lost in the both of them.

Even as she engaged in the hottest makeout of her entire life, one moment trading breath with Saejun and the next twisting her tongue with Sans' in a back and forth that left her mind fuzzy and her blood overheated, their teasing, questing hands were never idle. Sans kept up his work with her shirt almost tortuously slowly, alternating between undoing the buttons and stroking the bare flesh he found underneath, and Saejun, in between lulls in their kissing, very determinedly undid and slid her pants (and her panties, oh stars...) down her legs to dangle around one boot, and had occupied himself with leaving love bites along the insides of her thighs, so close to the pulsing, dripping wet heat of her core and yet not nearly close enough.

They were absolutely destroying her, leaving her a quivering, panting mess in Sans' lap before even truly doing anything to her... every time they allowed her a breath between their deep, intense kisses, she plead for them to take her desperately, to fuck her and make her theirs, and yet they simply continued to drive her mad, stroking her flushed skin and slicking their tongues along hers and making her so incredibly sensitive she might very well melt in their arms.

Only when Sans had completely pulled her shirt from her arms, and her bra had been discarded in a similar fashion, did either of them seem to take pity on her; Sans filled his palms with the fullness of her breasts, fitting there just as perfectly as she's always imagined, and Saejun, with a wicked glint in his gaze, scooted even further in between her legs, setting them on his shoulders and spreading her folds apart teasingly.

“heh... don't make a lick 'a sense t'put it off any longer,” he chuckled, flicking his tongue between his teeth indicatively, and just as he leaned in-

Frisk's alarm went off, waking her with a jolt and a gasp at the sudden change. She stared up at the ceiling in confusion, panting and sweating like mad, before letting out a sound very close to a sob and a sigh combined, throwing an arm over her eyes in frustration. Stars, that one had felt so real...

Chuckling to herself in self-depreciation and shaking her head, Frisk made to roll out of bed, trying to ignore the lingering ache of longing and lust pumping in her blood, before realizing that she was absolutely stark naked, her pajamas discarded in a pile beside the bed and her phone lying directly beside her pillow, not in its usual place on her bedside table.

Oh... oh .

She'd been indulging in some of her favorite fantasies the night before, watching some videos and imagining Saejun and Sans doing those things to her... she must have drifted off in post-orgasmic bliss. Certainly explained the dream...

Well... she might as well continue. She needed a shower anyway, and she had just the scene in mind to imagine.

Chapter Text

Fresh

“y'ever think about how things would've gone down, if they hadn't been screwed from the start?”

The question came as an honest surprise, one that woke Frisk from near slumber and turned her bleary gaze to the monster beside her's still bare spine, bent as he rested his elbows on his knees and contemplated the wall beside her window. She'd been drifting off in the debatably restful silence that usually followed their lovemaking and preceded his departure, floating on a high of pleasure and blissful soreness and the hits she'd taken from his vape when offered it... she'd partially forgotten he was even still there, so used to his comings and goings in her life that it was almost a reflex to turn and just find him completely absent.

He had his own agenda, after all. New sights to see, new parties to crash... more people to introduce the oddity that was Sansy Fresh to.

It was fine. She'd stopped breaking her heart over it, over him, a long time ago... it was the way that he was, the way he'd been from the moment she'd met him and would be until the day she died. Here one day and gone the next, flighty and unburdened with responsibilities and free from things like love and despair and heartache. It wasn't his fault. His soul wasn't his anymore... he'd offered it up to a dimensional parasite before she'd even been born, in a desperate bid to be freed from the Underground and his consuming, nihilistic depression both.

It had worked, too, granted him incredible power, the capacity to save his Underground single-handedly, and the ability to walk between worlds any time he chose... but it had also robbed him of his emotions, the things that made and guided monsters like him all through their lives. The parasite consumed them the moment they were created, subsisting off of the things he would have felt, and they had been such from that day, parading across the multiverse to whatever adventure he found and inserted himself into next.

There had been a time, before she had believed his warning that he wasn't capable of loving her back, that she'd resented him. Him and the weeks upon weeks he would disappear, only to come crashing back into her life unannounced, spouting stories of faraway places and different timelines, bringing her fantastical gifts and the company she had craved since the moment he'd left, and then talking his way back into her heart, her affections, and her bed with startling ease. She despised herself for it each time she let him back into her heart, hated the little spark of hope that always ignited when he looked at her and smiled that handsome, ridiculous smile... loathed that she couldn't hate him as much as she hated herself, each time he rolled back into her universe and swept her off her feet with incredible ease.

It didn't matter how long it had been, how many times she'd tried to move on, the spiteful and injured words she had shouted the last time he'd gone away... she always took him back. Always fell back in love with his clever tongued whimsy, his infectious laughter, the way he could make her smile within moments of trying. She never hesitated, accepting his wild tales and his wonderous, over-the-top gifts and his hands, stripping her clothes from her body and her feet from the floor.

He'd even stolen her away from her own attempted wedding, once... he'd been gone so long that time that she'd decided she had had enough and accepted the proposal of the first man that offered it, hoping beyond hope that wedding this normal, regular, steady man would finally end the whirlwind, heartbreaking romance that Sans dragged her back into every time he showed his face. Her guilt for using her fiancee in an attempt to move on was far overshadowed by the cracks in her heart, made deeper each time he left her no matter how much she begged, and she'd been determined to go through with it, no matter what.

And then he'd been there on the damned wedding day, as though he'd known, as though he'd come back just in time to make the most dramatic entrance possible, and gods damn her, she hadn't hesitated a moment in letting him steal her away from the altar, back into his arms and away from the solid future she'd secretly known all along would never fill the void he left inside her.

After that, she'd stopped trying to forget him, stopped being so furious with his desperate need to wander, stopped refusing to accept that he really was the only one for her, no matter how many times he had broken her and never even realized it. It wasn't fulfilling, in any manner, shape, or form, and left her lonely beyond measure when he was gone... but she couldn't fathom what else to do with the love that a hundred heartbreaks couldn't destroy.

As such, his quiet introspection during a time that he would usually be getting dressed up in his ridiculous, flashy clothes was an oddity, so much so that Frisk sat up against the headboard behind her, curling her arms around her knees and attempting to ignore the slow, heated leak of his seed from inside her, staining her sheets and reminding her of their former occupation.

“Yeah, sure... but there really isn't a point in wishing for the impossible, right?” she murmured, setting her chin on her knees and dragging her eyes slowly down the curve of his spine, the swirling purple magic that illuminated the dips and curves of each thick vertebrae tempting her touch, and he turned his skull to send her a searching look from behind the cover of his perpetually in place sunglasses, his usual carefree grin missing from his face.

There was a smear of her lipstick, across the corner of his mouth. It was stark against his bones, blood-red on ivory, and drew her gaze like a flame.

“what's it like, when you imagine it? if i weren't such a flakey wackjob, didn't have to always bounce and leave you,” he queried softly, so surprisingly serious and sincere that she worried, for a moment, that she was having a bad trip.

What had brought all this on? He was never like this... one thing she knew perfectly well he could never be, besides a steady partner, was serious. She'd said it and thought it so many times it was near to a mantra... and yet there he sat, being exactly that. Had something happened to him out there that he wasn't willing to tell her? Was he ill?

“I dunno, like... I dunno. Domestic I guess. Maybe we could be bonded, married... have kids and dumb photos on the walls and wake up together every day. I'd fold your socks and you'd leave them everywhere just to spite me. Stuff like that,” she replied, curling her toes beneath the blanket and shrugging to attempt to dismiss the sting of knowing it could never be, and he looked at her in silence for a moment, so long that she started to become concerned, before lowering his head and gritting his jaw tightly.

“...if there was a way to give you that, for us to be together and all that shiznit... if i tossed my wack little passenger and was able to stay put... would you still want to have that with me?”

Frisk's eyes widened in shock, her head drawing back and her lips popping open in the wealth of her surprise. She could do little more than stare at his averted profile, blinking and attempting to process the sheer impossibility of his offer. He'd told her before that he and the parasite he'd joined with were stuck with each other for life... the creature had gained such a deep hold on his soul that it would fall to pieces without it holding him together, and without his magic and emotions to sustain it, it would shrivel up and die.

How was it possible for him to even consider it?

“I thought you said you couldn't ever separate,” she muttered carefully, not daring to let hope into her heart only to have it dashed into nothing all over again, and Sans nodded his skull once, one of his hands rising to cup the back of his neck.

“and i can't on my lonesome. i... know a guy, though. he's like yours truly, got pulled out of his story and pretty much bagged who he was before, in exchange for power... he found a way to reach into the void and jimmy the code strings, flip flop people's fates. he's offered to do it for me before, but... the price is steep. real hard case, and before things started goin' to heck out there, i didn't...” he paused, sending her another glance. A flicker of guilty remorse flashed across his face, and a sigh escaped his mouth.

“...i didn't think it was worth it then, losin' out on all the dopeness there is out there. 'specially not for the price he asks,” he admitted, shame laying thick in his quiet tone, and even though Frisk felt a twinge of that old heartache deep in her chest, she knew him well enough to have anticipated that reasoning. She was well aware that she came second to his wanderlust, no matter how she wished it were otherwise.

So what had changed?

“I assume there's a reason you're considering it now?” she prompted, tilting her head to rest on her forearm, and he nodded mutely, the hand rubbing the along his cervical vertebrae lowering to flop back into his lap.

“there's some real uncool characters out there, hashing it out in the worst ways possible. fools that don't mind funkin' up entire worlds for their benefit. never really got it myself, 'til a homie of mine slipped me some news. ...word is that they're snatching up souls like yours, and r-ripping 'em open to get at something i-inside,” he revealed, his voice cracking alarmingly the longer he spoke, until he couldn't seem to bear it any longer, his head dropping into his hands to hide a sudden wash of grief strong enough to slip past the parasite, dripping down his jaw in purplish-black streaks.

“i couldn't... i knew someday you'd be gone, couldn't do a thing about it so i ignored it, but if they took you... i can't let them take you. i can't turn my back and just... i can't, frisk, i can't , i never faced the reality that you'd just one day be gone and i can't-” he whispered brokenly, his phalanges digging into his skull and his chest heaving with the fullness of his consuming, rarely felt emotions, and Frisk was at his side immediately, holding him and letting him clutch her painfully close, just as breathless as he was from the whirlwind of his anguish.

They rocked in place for an unknown time, whimpered sobs of her name and his rejection of her loss filling the air between them (“i can't... i can't... you can't leave me, i won't let you go-”), until his weary misery had faded enough to be consumed once again by the parasite, leaving him sniffling and trembling in her arms quietly. His sunglasses had fallen to the ground, at some point, forgotten in his upset, but he made no move to retrieve them, only nestling beneath her chin and clinging to her even tighter.

“...i made a deal with him. he's gonna help me find you a safe place to squat while we ride out the war, and if you want me to hang around, he's gonna take out the parasite too, make sure i keep on kickin' after. ...and if you don't want me around, totally understandably too, i know plenty of universes where there're sanses that would treat you right,” he murmured as soon as his ragged breaths had calmed, tracing a single phalange along her arm as he spoke, and Frisk, before she could even stop herself, let out a snort of laughter that startled him enough to make him sit up and stare at her.

She couldn't seem to stop laughing, either, almost hysterical in her stunned amusement, and was only able to stop after scooting across the bed to get a drink of water, wiping at her own tears now.

“Sans... you really have no idea, do you? Not a damn clue about just how long I've wanted to hear that you want to stay, how long I've been dreadfully, painfully in love with someone that couldn't feel the same way about me. How could I possibly want anyone else, or want you anywhere else, than with me? Numbskull,” she chuckled wearily, reaching out to shove his shoulder weakly enough to only barely jostle him, and Sans let out a shuddering sigh of relief, flopping backwards onto the bed and folding his forearm over his sockets.

She lay down next to him, reaching out a single finger to occasionally tickle his bare ribs until he grinned and swatted at her hand, peeking a single socket at her and snorting out a laugh.

“i got an actual buttload of time to make up for, huh,” he chuckled weakly, extending a hand to stroke along her cheek, and she nodded frankly in answer, not even bothering to lie to him.

“Time, at least seventy-two broken hearts, and an entire wedding.”

“shiznit. any chance i’ve racked up some credit with all the incredible boning?”

“Not nearly enough. But we’ve got time for that~”

Chapter Text

Rune

At the edge of both night and day, filled with the guttering light of flame and the dancing gloom of mocking shadows, the most curious of abodes resides. From the outside, through the windows of far more than one world, it was nothing more than a fortune teller's residence, several tents connected to one another rather haphazardly and hung with lengths of gauzy, gossamer fabric, chains of multicolored beads, and glinting, silvery amulets. The distinct, heavy scent of incense wafted from the temptingly open entrance behind the well-loved card table blocking it, accompanied by sonorous, dated music, its notes drifting out of the carnival grounds the tent dwelt within.

The tent, as well as its owner, were the stuff of urban legend, whispered about between those who had never dared to approach, children shooed away from it impatiently, and a few who claimed to have had their fortunes told; those whispers spoke of astounding things, very real sorcery, the telling of pasts that no one could possibly have known, and the offering of a future so bright that it was impossible to resist.

In truth, though, none who told the tale of Rune's talents had ever dealt with him. If they had, and could summon up enough will to even try, they would have warned any and all to stay far, far away from the benign and inviting tent, to ignore the posters, cards, and invitations that appeared only to those who were desperate enough to deal with the personage that dwelt within it, and to never, ever shake the hand of the monster that would offer them their wildest dreams, for the price of something most humans didn't know existed at all.

A soul was a small thing, after all, to those who had no idea just how valuable it truly was.

And so the tent and its owner, seemingly spread out across any and all universes they wished to visit, remained a mystery to all but those who had ever stepped inside, who had exited the world without and experienced what lay within... for just beyond the beaded drapes was where true magic dwelt.

The tent's insides were far more miraculous and intriguing than its outside, composed of large, richly furnished rooms that far exceeded the confines of what the walls without promised. The floors ranged from lush carpets to marble tiles to deeply colored and gleaming wood, littered with intricate rugs, baskets and trunks and cases of trinkets and baubles lying about at their owner's whim and will, and comfortable, plush furniture made to be lounged upon. The walls were hung with tapestries that trapped the warmth of the hearth fire crackling merrily in the center of the largest room, depicting scenes from many ages and worlds, and the wending smokes of nicotine, incense, and cooking meat drifted throughout the entire tent, twining around the curved metal of an impossible chandelier, strings of metallic beads and bundles of herbs, and the swaying forms of pheasants and hares, awaiting their turn on the spit.

The entirety of the tent was hung with veiled lanterns in various colors, flickering with flames that seemed to never need to be relit. Cases of books in many languages and states of binding, dusty wine bottles, and a variety of trinkets were a common sight within the many rooms, as well as cabinets filled with the paraphernalia of its owner’s trade; crystal balls in varying sizes, tea sets, boxes of dices, glowing crystals of many hues, packs of worn tarot cards, and several bags of bones resided within haphazardly, as though discarded with very little care. Amusingly, an automated, coin operated fortune telling machine sat in one corner, and appeared to be well used.

Through a beaded curtain dwelt an obscenely large bed, covered in so many blankets and pillows it looked almost like a nest; beside it, shining in the lamplight and playing a gleamingly shined record, was an aged but well-loved gramophone, seemingly responsible for the music drifting all through the tent. Tables piled with books, maps, and seemingly forgotten, half-empty cups abounded, standing in corners and against walls to hold the many interests of their owner, and beside one in particular, near the entrance of the tent and holding a large, intricately carved box, a small, brightly colored lovebird huddled, enclosed in a glimmering brass birdcage.

The bird was surprisingly quiet and still, within her enclosure, perched at the very edge of the cage furthest from the large room beyond it; she ignored the little bell that hung from the top, the sweet and honeyed seeds and the water that filled the bowls attached to the walls, seeming to nearly brood in her place, as though offended. She twitched slightly, her tail flexing to keep her balance on her perch, when the record on the gramophone scratched slightly, but only shuttered her eyes once more when it settled, fluffing her wings and returning to her silence.

She twitched again, looking almost annoyed, when from outside the tent, someone began to hum a tune at odds with the music drifting through the tent; she peeked one eye open, watching as a shadow outside the tent began to grow larger against the fabric, shuffling her feet and huddling in on herself as the humming gave way to a carrying song, sung in a voice so deep, tinged with echoes and mocking, that there was only one person it could be.

“you got to know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em; know when to walk away, and know when to run,” they sung sonorously, accompanied by a distinct jingling as their steps drew they ever closer; only a few beats more, and the beaded curtain at the entrance of the tent swayed and parted, and through the space ducked a persona whose oddity put even the strange tent and the silent bird to shame.

First was his face, creased with intrigue and mordant amusement. As a skeletal monster, his body was devoid of soft flesh, baring the thick bones of his kind unerringly, but his visage was different from theirs, a third eye socket, closed and nearly hidden by the drape of his low hood, set within his forehead. The sockets that were open were devoid of any light or visible gaze, seeming to hold a darkness that consumed all it fell on, and his mouth, tilted into a sardonic smirk, bared sharpened incisors. Several piercings had been drilled through the bone of his face, silvery against the ivory of his skull.

Every one of his steps jingled with the many bangles, chains, and amulets hung from his clothes, wrists, and neck, gaudy and cheap but clearly well-loved; a long coat, charcoal grey on the outside and startling turquoise on the inside, hung across his broad shoulders and over his bared chest. A pair of large deer antlers, painted or dyed a deep black, were attached to his raised hood, adding an air of drama to his appearance, and a pair of black pants hung low on his hips, held up with a braided, bangled belt and tucked into gray boots. Fingerless gloves covered the palms of his clawed hands, and glinting between two fingers was a thick silver coin, flipping up into the air and back into his grasp as he walked and sung to himself ironically.

All across his body, strange glitches formed here and there, pieces of him breaking off and floating in space before rejoining and separating all over again, and most strikingly of all, covering nearly every inch of his exposed bones and glowing with neon blue magicks, were ancient runes, seemingly etched into the bone themselves.

The monster, so named for the runic inscriptions upon his body, seemed totally at ease with his appearance, throwing back his horned hood with one hand and, once more, flipping the coin in his hand, watching it glint in the lamplight with gleeful satisfaction before glancing, with a raised brow bone, to the resentful and watchful bird in her cage, sending her a wide grin and turning on his booted heel to walk to the table beside her.

“you never count your money when you're sittin' at the table; there'll be time enough for countin', when the dealin's done,” he finished smugly as he flipped the coin again, meaningful and crass, before flipping up the lid of the box on the table, baring a shining pile of variously minted but similar silver coins. He tossed the one in his grasp inside, proudly surveying the mound of riches for a moment, before closing the lid and turning to the bird's cage, leaning closer to meet her almost accusing gaze.

“won't you sing for me, lovebird? they wrote songs and poems about the caged bird's song... grace me with it?” he purred to her in his divinely dark voice, opening the carefully locked door and reaching into the cage to run a crooked phalange over the fine, resplendent feathers on her breast, but only received a nip of her beak for his trouble, delivered with as much fury as the small, colorful bird could manage.

A flicker of annoyance and pain crossed his face, darkening his already blackened sockets, but the very next moment, it was gone, replaced by a lazy grin as he nudged the same finger she had bitten beneath her feet, prompting her to perch on it instead.

“heh... still in a bad mood, hm? it really isn't my fault, if they don't know the rules when it comes to gambling... if they're ready to give up everything for money and power and lust, i can only accommodate,” he murmured to her as, though clearly reluctantly, the pretty little bird stepped onto his finger to allow him to remove her from her enclosure, and once he had, he turned to carry her to the couch nearest the crackling hearth at the heart of the tent, petting down the ruffled feathers on her back before setting her on one of the cushions, kneeling beside the fire, and feeding another log to it from the small pile beside it.

He waved a careless hand over his shoulder as he did, a seemingly meaningless motion as small as one would use to dismiss a fly, but when he was satisfied with the fire's consumption of the new wood and had stood to return his attention to the bird, the small avian had disappeared, replaced by a stunningly beautiful but fiercely scowling woman dressed in an attractive costume of the same colors as the bird's feathers. Her arms were folded across her chest, her golden brown eyes snapping with fury beneath the sweeping locks of her chestnut brown hair as she glared up at the smirking skeleton monster.

“Rules you completely neglect telling them when they trade their soul for practically nothing!” she seethed, struggling to stand from the plush couch and slapping aside his hand when he offered it to help her up, and though he pouted at being denied the chance to help her up, he merely shrugged at her accusation, turning away to walk across the room and into the area his enormous bed lay, and the gramophone beside it. He lifted the needle from the record when he reached it, carefully and lovingly removing and storing it in its sleeve before putting away and picking another from the large, neatly organized box beneath the table the machine stood on.

“they usually aren't even using them, frisk darling. it's like... having your appendix removed, they don't even notice. besides, i offer a very valuable service, don't i? an artist deserves to be compensated for services rendered... it'd be criminal for me to undercharge myself for changing their lives for the better,” he argued peaceably as he placed the new record in its place, already tapping his foot in anticipation of the music to come, and sent a knowing look over his shoulder at the lovely woman that had followed after him to dawdle in the doorway of the room.

“you should know.”

Frisk's cheeks flushed, her eyes narrowing and her arms only folding more firmly across her chest as she hemmed and hawed, watching Rune shift the gramophone's needle to the record and listening as the classical thrum of Sinatra's 'Fly Me To The Moon' start to drift from the machine. She seemed to have no counter to this point, though her eyes glittered with unsaid words and unshed tears both, moving her gaze down to the thick rug covering the ground beneath his opulent bed.

“Couldn't you just take more money? You already charge them your stupid silver coin, just ask for more,” she mumbled, scuffing a golden sandal against the floor and watching the gossamer skirts of her flowing silken dress flutter around her legs, and Rune scoffed, though he too had turned to watch her dress sway around her body, deep appreciation moving the sarcastic dismissal that had filled it only a moment before. He walked across the room to take one of her balled up hands in his, to draw her further into the room despite her averted gaze, and pulled her into a slow, leisurely dance, his many bangles jingling as he directed her motions.

“you know as well as i do that my employer isn't interested in money. he requires vessels to drain negativity from, and it's my job to provide them. at least i give them the things they want in exchange, don't i? i could just go around making people miserable and give them nothing,” he attempted to soothe, watching the lamplight glint off the golden necklace clipped around her throat, from the gilted wishbone dangling from it just above the neckline of her dress, but Frisk only scoffed at him, rolling her eyes and turning her head away.

“There's really no point in lying to me. I know you love tricking poor, desperate people out of the thing that makes them unique and whole, just for the hell of it. You practically get off in it,” she scorned, wrinkling her nose and swallowing thickly, and Rune let out a small snort of laughter, halting their slow waltz to raise and turn her left hand, displaying the runic 'S' burned into her palm. He pressed a kiss to it, holding her gaze as he did.

“projecting a bit, are we?” he crooned, rubbing his thumb over the long healed mark, and smirked grimly at her when she pulled away sharply, hiding her hand against her chest and seeming to shrink in on herself. He followed after her retreat, though, dragging a curled knuckle along her jawline to lift her watery gaze back up to meet his frank and serious one.

“he'd have repaid your devotion exactly the same if you hadn't come to me, would have still deserted you and your selfless love without your sacrifice. you know that. would you really rather have submitted to the dark thoughts that consumed you after he left, than to have been able to rely on me and our contract to keep you alive?” he muttered meaningfully, dredging up old wounds with a potency that made her heart ache, and with stinging tears gathering on her lashes that she refused to let fall in front of him, Frisk pulled away from him angrily, turning on her heel and hurrying to the entryway of his room.

“I'm going home,” she sniffled quietly, folding her arms around herself as though to hold the pieces of herself together, but paused in the doorway to send him a stern look through her bitter and still unshed tears, pointing a finger at him sternly. “You'd better not turn me back into that damned bird in the middle of a conversation again, or I'll peck you to death.”

And then she was gone, in a swirl of elegant skirts and a gentle clicking of the beads at the entryway, and Rune was left alone with his own thoughts and the trailing notes of 'My Way', left to stroll to the edge of his bed and seat himself on its edge and, to all intents and purposes, stare into space blankly. The seat he took bared a glass flask attached to the rear of his belt, usually hidden by his calf-length coat; within it floated a startlingly bright scarlet soul, casting its light across his bedspread, the many dangling baubles on his belt, and the wrinkles in his pants.

He paid the soul and its light no mind, for the moment, settling his elbows on his knees and his chin on his laced together fingers. His mind wandered, as it tended to do when not focused on the brilliant and encompassing presence of the woman that had just fled his presence, on the things she had accused him of and the many, many things she had no way of knowing.

She was right, in a lot of ways. There were beings that he did indeed take pleasure in tricking into giving away their immortal souls, conniving them into letting him rearrange the strings of their fate with a few simple tugs and removing what made them who they were. The people that he enjoyed doing so for were terrors in their own right, though... by reading their fates through his crystals, through the cards and through their greedy eyes, he was able to see the darkness inside them, so reminiscent of his own, and he knew that reaping their souls would be for the good of all.

Frisk couldn't see that, though. For one thing, he'd never bothered to tell her that his preferred quarry were ones who deserved their fate... for another, she was more than a little biased, prone to believing that all of his prey were as innocent as she had been, when she'd come to him begging for help. She had been a special case... he had known her soul was meant to be his in the first place, and securing it was a selfishness he hadn't been able to resist. Preventing her from hurting herself after her partner had betrayed and deserted her had been a pleasant side effect, of course... as had been the pathetic man's screams, when he had found him and repaid him for the evil he had done to one as pure and good as her.

No, his sweet little lovebird, made into his “assistant” following her deal with him, much preferred to cast him in the worst light possible... she had no idea that he refused deals from those who did not deserve to lose themselves, that he instead traded favors for their desires. She thought he detested children, and sent them running out of hatred, when in fact he simply had no desire to see their innocent souls tainted with the greed that his powers so often gave birth to. Most especially, she did not know that he traded his abilities for practically nothing, when she begged him to spare certain folk that came to him in need.

Secret gifts to her that he would never divulge, small indulgences in her name.

Even his frequent habit of transforming her into a little, easy to hide bird was in the name of her safety, though she saw it only as a punishment... he guarded from her a dire secret that he planned to never let her discover, even more closely coveted than the fact that, in other worlds, he and her were meant to be soul mates. She knew of his “employer”, the half-crazed god of night and negativity that had saved him from the void at the cost of his eternal servitude... what she didn't know was what Nightmare was doing to beings just like her all across the wide multiverse, and that not only had Rune taken and hidden her from such a fate... he had also refused to participate in the gathering of their souls.

The punishment he had received for such disobedience had been a dire one... it had cost him his own soul, held in eternal captivity to pay for his refusal, and had brought down the fullness of the dark god's extremely short temper on his head. He had been set a quota of souls to turn to darkness in exchange, a ridiculous amount that he very rarely was able to reach, and when he failed... it wasn't an exaggeration to say that he'd become something of a whipping boy for Nightmare to take out the worst of his tempers on.

He didn't want to think about what Nightmare would do, if he discovered that on top of his insolence, he had hidden a Frisk from him (on top of the various deals he'd reached with other Sanses across the multiverse, to help them hide their own Frisks). Torture and certain death were at the top of the list for the both of them, though, and so he'd done his level best to hide her presence from him, changing her into a simple, unremarkable bird in case Nightmare decided to drop in unannounced, as well as to keep anyone that visited his tent from recalling her face in dreams. She naturally saw only the humiliation of it, but that was fine.

So long as she was safe, and he could keep her with him, he could bear her poor view of him.

There was a quiet rustling of fabric within the room, then, likely nothing more than the wind shuffling at the tent... but Rune knew, in its place spliced between several different realities at once, that there was no wind present to cause such a sound. He froze in place, considering who would have been able to slip into his home without his noticing, then slowly let his posture relax, a light scoff escaping him.

“to what do i owe the pleasure, dust?”

A beat of silence passed, then another, before the dour assassin strode into view and sat himself in the chair across from him, unsurprised by being called out but smirking all the same. He reeked of blood and dust, accumulated LV and corrupted magic... but there was an underlying scent he recognized on top of it all, one that brought a smirk to his face as well.

“i take it things are going well with frisk?” he queried when Dust made no move to answer his former question, sitting up and popping his spine to release some of the tension in it (he must have been sitting there thinking for longer than he thought...), and Dust, his multicolored irises flickering in his sockets, gave a short, curt nod in answer, settling his forearms on his legs.

“well enough, considering,” he murmured in his low, nearly toneless voice, his skull turning to the side as though listening to something only he could hear a moment after, and Rune nodded, lacing his phalanges together to pop them as well. It had been surprising, honestly, to have Dust show interest in acquiring a Frisk of his own to hide away and protect... it had been surprising for all of the monsters working for Nightmare, honestly, considering the history they all had with her, but Dust most of all. He'd been expecting to hear that he'd slit her throat the same as he'd done with the one from his own world only a few weeks in.

“good. any word of the boss man getting suspicious?” he asked, again continuing the conversation when Dust made no move to supply any more information (not a surprise, really; Dust wasn't exactly talkative at the best of times, and was especially close-lipped with things he considered private. Not like Killer, who would talk for hours if allowed), and this time he received a sharp shake of the monster's skull, indicating the negative.

“not yet. he's in a foul mood though... error's gone missing, on top of all the frisks that have been “disappearing”,” he replied, sketching quotations around the word with his fingers, and Rune cringed visibly, his own mood souring at the news. Nightmare had been more and more temperamental with each of the Frisk's he'd helped hide, rearranging their fate strings to trick the mad god into thinking they had been killed... he could still feel the agony of his fury from his last punishment.

“he's sent you to fetch me, i take it.”

There was an exceptionally rare flicker of pity in the assassin's sockets as he nodded mutely, though it was gone quickly enough to make Rune wonder if it had been there at all, but there was no use wondering over it. Every moment wasted would only make Nightmare more impatient... that never turned out very well for him.

“well... shit. better not keep him waiting any longer,” he sighed, forcing himself to stand up despite his every desire to remain seated, and though Dust nodded again in agreement, he made no move to stand as well, keeping his gaze pinned on Rune as he carefully detached Frisk's soul flask from his belt and stowed it in a disguised lockbox beneath his bed. He seemed to be deep in thought, but kept his own counsel as Rune dusted off his coat and raised his hood over his skull once again, and stood to join him in the series of teleports it would take to reach Nightmare's plane of existence.

Rune cast a last glance around the inside of his tent, his gaze catching on the still open door of the birdcage across the way. The record played the first bars of ‘Come Fly With Me’, in the background, and he smiled despite what he knew awaited him in the castle of his punitive master, courage bolstered by the reminder of why he was doing it at all.

And then, with a turn of their heels and a spark of magic, they were gone, only the shadows, the flickering light of the lanterns, and Frank Sinatra’s serenade remaining in their wake.