Chapter Text
For the second time since appearing in this universe, Ace wakes up before his brother. This isn’t super uncommon. Despite the punctual, early-bird image his brother likes to project, he’s always been more likely to sleep in since he was a babybones. For a few minutes, Ace just stares at his brother, grey eyelights trained on his lax face while his mind is miles and universes away.
For the scarce few moments he can allow himself, he imagines things as they used to be. He imagines he’s 4, standing in his father’s doorway with Papyrus clinging to his sleeve, teary-eyed. He’d been easily spooked then, any mention of anything even slightly scary was enough to give him nightmares that’d keep him up as long as his little body could take. He’d climb into Ace’s bed, toss and turn and kick him in the jaw until Ace got sick of it and decided to let his brother give the same treatment to his father.
He shuts his eyes then. Takes a deep breath and tries to clear the sensation of scarred hands rubbing gently over his skull… And moves. He hasn’t had good luck with stealth lately, but he won’t let that discourage him. Cut him some slack, he’s going in blind here. No Alphys to feed him info, no dogs to sniff out incoming hostiles.
As he creeps through the hall and down the stairs, he feels the absence more than ever. He sighs, physically shuddering as if that will clear the sense of loss from him. It doesn’t. He turns the corner, more determined than ever to find some kind of something, some hint that they’re evil, some hint that will take him home —
And he runs directly into himself. There’s the contradicting dull and sharp sound of bone on bone as their skulls connect, and there’s an unsettling moment of mirroring in which they both jump back and raise a hand. A few seconds pass, deadly still, neither skeleton willing to end the staredown they’ve found themselves in. Something falls in the other monster’s expression and Ace’s personal funhouse mirror straightens. Vanilla’s eyelights dart to the side—fuzzy at the edges, he’s tired, Ace can take him—as he sighs, long and deep.
“what are you doing down here so late?” Ace squints, eyes flickering to the clock on the wall and back.
“it’s already past six.” Vanilla’s eyebrows rise, a flash of genuine surprise before he speaks again. “what are you doing down here so early , then?”
Suddenly defensive, he straightens up as well. “nothing.” the skeleton levels him with an unimpressed stare. Why did Ace think he could lie so badly to himself? “...reconnaissance. i’m just… scoping out the place.”
Vanilla sighs—he does that a lot, doesn’t he?—and makes a follow-me motion. With a vague sense of foreboding, he does. The skeleton leads him to the kitchen, and he’s hit with a sudden bout of deja vu. Warily, he asks, “you’re not going to try to feed me, are you?”
Vanilla answers with an appropriately bewildered look, and subsequently glosses over that question entirely. “listen, i understand that you might’ve come from a rough place and all that but—” he stops, suddenly. “no, that sounded wrong. it’s too late for this. just…” He lifts a hand to rub irritably at his eye sockets. Abruptly and entirely against his will, Ace gets the impression of an exhausted preschool teacher.
“stars. just… don’t do that. i don’t have the energy or the compassion to explain why to you right now, but just know that’s a very dumb idea.” Ace bristles, eyelights brightening.
“what the fuck else am i supposed to do? and i don’t wanna hear about dumb ideas from the guy who’s stupid enough to drag—” he does a quick bit of math in his head, “—ten other versions of himself and his brother into his shithole of a universe.”
Vanilla blinks. “you haven’t even been outside.” His brows furrow, expression taking on something that can almost be considered offended. “how do you know what my universe is like?” Ace opens his mouth to answer, only to be interrupted by a raised hand. “actually, don’t answer that. i don’t care right now. one,” he counts off on his fingers, “we’re the same person, so don’t call me stupid. you’re calling yourself stupid.” Vanilla skillfully ignores the creative insult Ace supplies about his mother. “two, i don’t know!” He throws his hands in the air, borderline hysterical. “read a book or something! start knitting! climb the damn walls if you want to, just don’t do something that can start a fight when you obviously aren’t up for one.”
Ace stiffens. “what do you mean?” He stops himself there, resisting the urge to go on. Talking too much signifies a liar.
His copy—he’s running out of mildly offensive nicknames to use—gestures to his entire person. “aside from the fact that you haven’t teleported once as far as i know, and you’re a sans?” He’s too stunned at his name being used as a noun to respond to the rhetorical question before Vanilla goes on. “you’ve got virtually no magical signature. nobody’s been able to hear or sense you unless you’re in the same room. so either you’ve naturally got the presence of an overachieving houseplant, or something’s wrong with your magic.”
Vanilla continues, eyes sliding to one side as he continues to layer on deductions. “and considering the fact that you are, once again, a sans— and one from what’s gotta be a fell variation more than a swap variation at that…” Fell? Swap? What the hell is he on about? “...magic is probably your primary weapon.” He pauses for a moment, taking in Ace’s shocked expression, and something vaguely smug settles in the lines of his strained smile. “so, in conclusion,” he makes an appropriately dramatic gesture, letting both eyes slide shut. “if you manage to get yourself into a fight here, you’re fucked.”
Ace stands there, shocked. For the first time since getting wrenched from his home, he feels well and truly stupid. Vanilla takes advantage of this fact to shove a bag of chisps into his hands. He stares at them blankly for a moment, before lifting his eyelights to see the other skeleton eating from another bag he produced from… Somewhere.
“...i thought you weren’t going to feed me?”
The skeleton has the wherewithal to look sheepish, but he doesn’t admit to it. “i don’t remember saying anything like that.” He jumps back onto the previous topic of conversation, leaving Ace with the distinct feeling of being caught on his back foot. “but, seriously. is something wrong with your magic?” Tired eyelights scan Ace’s body, before landing on his neck. As Ace tenses, Vanilla squints for a moment, vague recognition alighting on his features.
“is that—?”
Papyrus comes crashing down the stairs. He’s disheveled and panicked, his soul humming at a distinctive tremulous pitch. It’s a bit grating, but the sound of his brother’s song is nothing but a balm to Ace’s soul. Papyrus’ eyes scan the living room, freezing when they land on him and Vanilla in the kitchen.
He stands there, stiff and unbalanced, before Vanilla clears his throat and speaks up. “you good paps?” All at once, his brother straightens, blinking the last of the sleep from his eyes. Ace watches in amusement, the previous tension melting in the face of his brother’s antics. “...Vanilla.” Papyrus sidesteps the question, looking vaguely uncomfortable at being perceived so early in the morning. His gloves are gone, probably sleepily discarded at some point in the night, and only one of his boots managed to survive the hurricane that is Ace’s sleeping brother.
“Would you be able to show me to the bathroom?” A breath. “And lend me some clothes as well? I’d like to freshen up.” As he speaks, he discreetly starts adjusting his stained underclothes, like the blood and dust will disappear if they sit properly on his shoulders.
To Vanilla’s credit, he doesn’t let it phase him, pulling away from the corner and shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “yeah, of course.” He joins Papyrus at the foot of the stairs, looking him in the eyesockets apologetically as he passes. “sorry i didn’t tell you where it was last night.”
Papyrus turns to follow, before pausing. He turns over his shoulder, a slight crease between his brows as he glances Ace up and down. Satisfied by whatever he finds, he turns back around to trail behind Vanilla. “It’s fine. I know last night was hectic.”
“tell me about it. so, how’d you sleep?”
“Pretty well. And you?”
Ace doesn’t hear Vanilla’s answer, their voices having finally gone too far to reach him in the kitchen. He stays there for a few minutes, glued to his spot and trying to process the way his morning has gone so far, before finally cluing into the fact that Vanilla probably isn’t coming back. It’s at this point that he finds himself upstairs once more. It’s still dark. Their little conversation wasn’t nearly enough time for the wintery sun to crest over the horizon, so there’s plenty of time for reconnaissance: part three.
Reconnaissance: part three leads him to a door with what seems to be a stolen no-trespassing sign, looking all the world like the rooms of the teenage human boys he’s seen in movies. He tucks his hand gently into his sleeve, reaching for the doorknob—
“what th’ fuck are you doing?”
-
Alright, he’ll admit it. When it comes to things that just plain aren’t his business, Red is nosy as fuck. It’s gotten him into a lot of shit in the past, present, and what he imagines will be the future. But like hell he’ll ever stop. Aside from the moments in which it’s saved his ass, it also makes for some crazy fucking gossip.
So, he eavesdropped on Vanilla’s conversation with the new arrivals. And then he eavesdropped on Vanilla’s conversation with the new Sans, Ace. And then he did a little light stalking to figure out what the hell this guy was looking for. In Red’s defense, the monster makes it way too fucking easy. He’s really out of it.
But when he tries to go into his brother’s room? Red appreciates a little nosiness as much as the next guy, maybe (definitely) even a bit more, but his business is where he draws the line. So, he spooks him a bit.
“what th’ fuck are you doing?”
The guy jumps at least a foot into the air and whips around lightning-fast to face Red. It takes at least 60% of his self-control not to point and laugh. He manages though, through a mix of low simmering rage at the guy’s gall to dig into his business and his ironclad impulse control.
Instead of responding to his question in any coherent way, Ace says, “i swear, i thought i was sneakier than this.”
You probably are, when you’re not exhausted and almost dangerously low on magic. But Red doesn’t say that. “well, before this, you weren’t tryin’ ta hide from yerself .” Ace’s face does something complicated before he visibly accepts the point. Red backtracks. “so, again. th’ fuck are you doing tryin’ ta break into my bro’s room?”
Ace winces, probably realizing the size of his fuckup. Even if he doesn’t know how much of Red’s pride is at stake, he likely knows what it means to mess with a Papyrus. He is a Sans, after all. “i didn’t know. i was just trying to… reconnaissance. i was doing reconnaissance.” At the look on Ace’s face, every ounce of fun he possibly could’ve gotten out of this interaction drains away.
Stars, he forgot how mentally unstable these fucks are when they first get here. He sighs, really letting his ribs contract as much as they can go before taking another breath. “alright. never mind, don’t worry about it. jus’ don’t let me catch ya doin’ this shit again. ‘n i will catch ya.” He lets Ace process that for a moment.
After several soulbeats of Red burning holes in his skull, the smaller skeleton speaks up. “...so what are you doing up this late— this early?”
Easy enough question. “jus’ got off work.” He watches Ace finally take in his Grillby’s uniform, sockets widening just a tad. He answers his unspoken question, shifting his weight. “i’m a cook. and a waiter, when grillbs is really desperate.”
A tentatively teasing look falls on Ace’s scarred face, his nervous grin taking on a distinct shit-eating quality. “you can cook?”
Red responds as soon as the last syllable leaves his teeth, crossing his arms over his chest. “th’ fuck’s that ‘sposed to mean? i’m a great cook! y’aint had food until you’ve tasted the burgs i make. not to mention the shit i make that isn’t drowned in grease first.”
“what, like a salad? anyone can make that.”
“oh, fuck you. i know yer jus’ tryin’ ta rile me up.”
Ace’s smile widens, some more of that nervous energy leeching out of him as it does. “it’s working, though.”
“th’ hell it is!”
They go on like this for a bit, falling into an easy rhythm that keeps both of their minds off of the shitshow that is their lives. Red ends up sharing a bit more than he expected to,
(“is it always this… quiet?”
“nah. but ‘s never that bad.”)
and ends up learning a little less than he’d like,
(“so, what’s it like over by yers?”
“...bad.”
“ah. ‘s like a war there too, then.”
“‘like?’”)
but it’s not bad. He’d even venture to say they bonded a bit. Stretch would probably say something about how it’s not the healthiest thing ever to bond over trauma, but who the fuck cares about what he has to say? Not Red.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Today, that end is in the form of the second most annoying incarnation of Red. Like, be completely and absolutely fucking for real for a minute. Who the hell wears that much blue willingly?
“HI! I’M GUESSING YOU’RE ACE?” Blue thrusts out a hand, using the concentrated power of the sun to smile at the skeleton in question. He’s not in his full armor, seemingly having opted to wear his usual neckerchief alongside the usual pants and the cotton undershirt. “IT’S A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU!”