Chapter Text
Time always passes fast when you’re not keeping track of it.
It’d been around two decades or more now since Sans and Gaster discussed the former coming to work at the laboratory after recovery, and well Sans was as recovered as he was going to get.
In the last few years all residents of the underground went through their own bouts of growth. All in their own time.
Monsters noticeably aged in very different paces. For example, while Papyrus was already tall to the point Sans didn’t have any hope of catching up with him at any point in the future, the former’s aging had slowed down quite a bit. He was still a monster child, but Sans on the other hand was a teen monster already. In fact, after recovering his health, and being left only with few lingering issues that would likely never disappear, Sans’ growth and aging had sped up, in clear contrast to Papyrus’ own. It would be more appropriate to consider Sans to be in his late teens as far as monster physical maturity went.
However, some things never changed. In the early morning Papyrus came to wake Sans up as usual, and he had breakfast with Papyrus and Gaster.
Papyrus had greatly increased his repertory of culinary recipes in these years that passed. He cooked up beautiful sunny side up eggs and crunchy strips of bacon for each of them.
“Is delish bro. Never eaten a bacon bettah than dis”, Sans complimented. As time went own Sans began to lay back into his original accent. What was unintentional at first returned to becoming a habit.
“You are truly the greatest culinary genius, Papyrus”, Gaster added.
“Nyeheheh. Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Although Papyrus said that he placed an extra strip of bacon in each of their plates, clearly pleased by the flattery.
Sans and Gaster shared a snort and chuckle respectively.
They ate and chatted happily as they have been doing for over roughly two decades now.
“What do you think about joining me in the laboratory tomorrow? I was thinking of you just getting familiar with the place and the monsters first. You’d start actually working sometime next week. How does that sound?”, Gaster chatted between bites of his last remaining strip of bacon.
“Sure”, Sans ripped a strip of bacon cleanly with his teeth as he agreed nonchalantly.
“Great!”, unexpectedly, or maybe not so much so, Papyrus was the one happy to hear his agreement, “I’ll be more busy with school now, and I would like to join a few clubs that are newly established in the academy. Now I can relax that Sans will be in good hands with Wing Dings’ colleagues.”
Sans scoffed. There he was again worrying about Sans who was clearly the older brother instead of himself. In fact, Sans knew he was interested in all those annoying extracurriculars and whatever, that only expanded in numbers every year, but refrained from joining because he didn’t feel comfortable leaving Sans at home alone everyday.
“What about me?”, Gaster’s gasped dramatically, “Why just my colleagues? He’s in good hands with me, right?”
Papyrus side eyed him. “I trust your colleagues can handle him because they can handle you. Older brother you can barely handle yourself. It’s quite bold to say you can handle Sans on your own without me.”
Papyrus had grown more sassy these days. Gaster liked to blame Sans for it. To be fair anyone could see where he was coming from. Sans didn’t feel offended, rather he was very proud.
“Oh okay”, Gaster dropped a fake tear.
Papyrus rolled his eye lights.
He needed to return it.
Sans grabbed the only set of keys remaining in the counter and headed out, walking towards the Librayr.
Sans merely smirked smugly in return, his pearly shark teeth sparkling at Gaster.
Gaster frowned, or more like pouted, at the action.
The breakfast table dissipated and the brothers separated, leaving to do their own things.
Gaster went to work and Papyrus to school.
Once the two left and Sans bid them farewell, he picked up a book he had left in the counter next to the TV, and turned it around.
He needed to return it. Sans grabbed the only set of keys remaining in the counter and headed out, walking towards the Librayr.
Pause. That’s right. That isn’t a typo you just read. For some odd unexplainable reason, the Snowdin Library, which in most timelines had a misspelled sign reading “LIBRARBY”, actually had a sign that read “LIBRAYR” in this timeline.
Is it Sans fault? Maybe a little. He swears he was trying to stop the creation of another librarby, it wasn’t his fault the fish bitch who wrote the damn sign doesn’t know how to spell. Of course, he originally didn’t care that a sign may say “LIBRARBY”. It’s pretty standard, a charm point even, some might say. It’s just that Undyne was the one who wrote the sign. Which was usual, and yeah maybe if he hadn’t said anything this would be one of the few timelines with a normal “LIBRARY”. But where is the fun in that?
Amongst things like his speech patterns, Sans also regained some of other general habits from when he was Red, including calling Undyne, fish bitch. Undyne had remained a good friend of Papyrus, and an acquaintance at best of Sans. Basically it was almost the same relationship Sans once had with Felldyne, but he somehow cared for this Undyne even less. Why? It was mainly because she was kinda of a hypocrite. Though I guess he should have expected that from a classic-esque Undyne.
For Papyrus’ sake he didn’t refer to her as fish bitch out loud, no. Instead he took to calling her something he’d heard Classic call his Undyne before, fish sticks. Oh boy was her reaction to being called that the first time hilarious. After a while the novelty wore off and she stopped caring so much about it, but she clearly still disliked it. But hey, there was nothing much to it. They weren’t close, but they were close enough that Sans was allowed to tease. Specially when she drags Papyrus around as she pleases and made him cancel several plans with Sans before, just to hang out with her. Papyrus insisted that he could see Sans at any time and that he already spends less time with Undyne, so he had to prioritize her sometimes. Which is bullshit, because he sees her everyday. They’re classmates. Is Sans being petty? Maybe. Did he care? No. He was still pissed.
He didn’t specifically care that Papyrus spend time with her often, he just didn’t like that Papyrus was willing to cancel plans he had already previously made with Sans just to spend time with her. Reminded him of Boss’ second rebellious phase. That is his adolescence. Because Boss was born in his rebellious phase. So Sans considered puberty to be his second one. That brat had actively avoided him for several months once. Undyne had been his excuse every time. A grudge Sans never entirely let go of formed.
At least Papyrus wasn’t avoiding him. If he was he might have walked up to Undyne and given her a magic show like she always asks him to do.
By the time his tumultuous, petty thoughts settled down he had already arrived at the Librayr and was handing the book over to the green lizard librarian, who had opened the place officially as a library a few years ago.
Sans began to trudge back through the snow, deciding to stop somewhere first.
He’d already decided where he would eat lunch today, since both Papyrus and Gaster wouldn’t be home for it. He took a shortcut and arrived in the next second.
Grillby’s.
The newly installed bell on the door rang to announce his arrival as he opened the door and trudged in, walking in a straight line to the counter seat facing Grillby.
He sat down and waved at the fire monster who was busy making someone’s drink.
Grillby’s fire crackled in response, and after he presented the drink to the random monster Sans could care less about, he walked towards Sans.
“Ketchup?”
“And some of your pipping hot fries”, Sans winked.
Grillby nodded, not commenting further.
Yeah, he’d started consuming ketchup since a few years back. Originally he did everything he could to prevent that, because it gave him this weird anxiety that he was somehow turning into Classic, or one of the Classic adjacent boys. It freaked him out for a long time. Then you know, time passed, and they faded from his memory little. Not significantly. Never significantly. But he realized some things weren’t that important anymore. Specially things that would never come back. So yeah he started drinking ketchup like he used to drink spicy mustard. He still couldn’t understand why his tastebuds didn’t like spicy mustard though. Guess it’s like a physical preference and not a psychological one. Or something like that. Sans didn’t read up on this kind of area.
In fact he kinda avoids topics on psycho-anything. Including therapy. Hah that’s a joke. There is no therapy here in the underground. Guess that’s why it always ends up fucked up.
Grillby slides a big portion of fries that just came out of the fire and plops down a bottle of ketchup by his hand.
Sans makes a gesture of thank you, and picks up a bunch of fries with his hands before shoving them inside his mouth very ungracefully. They are just like he asked ‘pipping hot’, if the non-existent inside of his mouth were sensitive it would have burned. Smoke wafts out through the gaps of his bones, from the hot food. Fortunately for monster anatomy that extends to purely temporary magic, like a tongue in a skeleton monster, you could generally control whether to include your senses to it or not.
Sans actually likes the feeling of the hot food against his tongue and mouth cavity. It’s delicious, and it lets him know he’s alive. It’s just that Grillby is standing right there and facing him, and he’ll be able to tell, and frankly Sans doesn’t want a repeat of last time. He didn’t even know this Grillby could get angry. It was the first time he’d ever seen it.