I woke up to find that Sans was already awake, looking at me. As usual, it was hard to tell what he might actually have been thinking. He had that easy grin on his face that could've meant anything.

"Good morning," I muttered, rubbing my eyes. "Time is it?"

"Late enough for me to be awake," he said. "So a bit later than you intended, if the five texts I got from your family mean anything."

It took me a second to remember that my phone was no longer working and since my Dad had gotten a text from Sans' phone, it was the only number he knew he could reach me on. I sighed. "You coulda woken me up, numbskull."

He chuckled. "Yeah, coulda," he agreed, "but you just looked so cute."

I rolled my eyes and held my hand out, and he passed the phone from the side table into my palm. First thing I checked was the time—it was only one, so not as late as I feared, since Sans was infamous for occasionally waking up around dinner time.

Then I checked the texts. There were two from my mom, one from my dad, and two from Keely, all impatiently telling me that they wanted me to come home with lots of hearts and smiley faces so it seemed less hostile.

Instead of answering, I looked up at Sans.

"You don't have a lock on your phone," I said.

One of his brow arches raised. "Uh, nice observation, kid."

I ignored his sarcasm. "I just mean you're one of the most secretive people I know. How do you not have a password?"

He rolled his eyes. "Who says I'm secretive?" I just stared at him exasperatedly until he laughed. "Hey, it's not bein' private, Rye Bread, it's wanting not to kill the mood, you know? Nobody wants to hear my depressing shit."

"You know that isn't true."

The authenticity of his smile faltered. "Riley—"

"I'm an anthropologist and a blogger. Find something I don't want to know and I'll pay you."

He sighed heavily. "You don't know what you're asking," he said a little coldly.

"What, to know what's always weighing so heavily on you? For you to tell me what gives you nightmares and why you're so scared to let yourself be happy? It all might just get a little lighter if someone else is carrying it with you."

He was still smiling, but there was nothing happy about it. He didn't seem angry with me though, which was the best I could ask for at the moment. I was being nosey and I knew it, but it just didn't seem healthy for him to hold all this shit in all the time. The little I knew made me sure that no one person should have to handle this alone.

"You don't know what you're asking," he told me again, the venom in his tone replaced with misery. I scooted closer to him and he let me slide my arms around him.

"Sans, I'm not making you say anything. It's your life. But I'm just telling you that you shouldn't ever think I don't want to hear it, because that's not true. If you ever want to talk, I'm always around to listen. And no, I won't write a blog post with all your secrets in it."

The joke made him laugh again, thankfully. In the end, Sans never wanted to keep things serious. Sometimes that was annoying as hell, but it sure made it easy to get away from awkward subjects. "If you did that, you might have a bad time," he told me. He sounded so casual, clearly teasing, but I remembered him saying something similar to the dudes who attacked me a couple months back and got shivers before forcing it down.

To switch subjects again, I said, "You should invite Frisk over more often. I like what you act like when they're around."

Sans rolled his eyes. "You sound like Paps. He loves when I'm around Frisk because I don't drink or smoke."

The drinking was something else I'd been wanting to discuss, but if I wanted to continue being the girl he was dating and not become his mother, I couldn't nag him on anything else for at least a week. So I let it go. "I better get ready," I said.

He grumbled, tightening his grip around me and putting his face into my neck, his voice muffled when he said, "Or you could not. I mean, my bed's all comfy. You should just stay."

I whined half-heartedly, smiling when I complained, "Sans! Don't make this harder than it already is!"

"Cuz you wanna stay, right?" he teased.

I rolled my eyes. "Of course I do. But I have to go. It's Christmas. Plus, if my Monster friends keep me away any longer my mom will hate you all even more."

"Screw your mom."

"Couldn't agree more, but I'd like to someday introduce you to her if you're gonna be my boyfriend."

He froze and then backed away to look at me. "Is that what I am?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

I felt my face getting hot. "Well. I mean. After what we said last night… I kinda thought so…" I murmured uncertainly.

After a moment he nodded. "Yeah. Okay. I like it."

I grinned up at him. "Good. Now get out of my way, boyfriend, I need to go home."

"What, are you tryin' to get rib of me already?" he said with a melodramatic pout.

It took some convincing for him to let me out of his bed, and once he did he even teleported me home. Then I told him I'd text him from my sister's phone later that night.

"You can put me on speaker and I'll be real charming for Mommy Dearest," he told me, and something about his tone of voice made me think that by 'charming' he meant he'd spend ten minutes squashing whoopee cushions into the receiver. Or worse, maybe he'd start playing that "I Love Bread" song for them, which he decided was the ballad of our relationship.

I privately noted that I should stay out of the room my mom was in when I called him as I smiled, pressing my lips to his boney cheek, making him flush blue again.

"See you in a few days," I told him, and he nodded, vanishing from the room.

When I showed up to my house, Keely was waiting for me in the huge window by the front door, reading a book. She looked up and waved at me, grinning.

My fifteen year old sister looked pretty much nothing like me. She had light brown hair with a natural blonde sheen in sunshine that was board straight and went down to her hips. She was petite—short and thin (two traits I definitely didn't get in my genetics). She spent almost all her time doing homework—the book in her hand was Othello, surely a book for class.

"Took you long enough!" she quipped as she walked out the door and to my car.

"Sorry. I was at my boyfriend's house," I told her. I didn't bother to sugar coat things with her anyway and it was mildly possible I had been dying to call him that. I'd been afraid of labels last week and all of a sudden I was giddy for this stupid skeleton.

He was doing something to my head, I swear.

"Um you did not tell me you had a boyfriend," she accused. "You're gonna have to tell me about him."

"Not when Mom's around. He's a Monster."

Keely rolled her eyes. "Monsters are part of society now. Mom should just learn to deal with it. Honestly, if I were you, I'd invite my friends up so she can forcibly learn to get over it."

I wasn't sure if she was kidding or not, but I didn't hate the idea. I stashed it in the back of my mind.

"I didn't know you were so pro-Monster," I said.

"I didn't used to be," she admitted, "but I really like your blog."

I widened my eyes. "You read my blog?" I asked.

"Who doesn't?" she asked. "I've been asked by like at least twenty people at school if they could meet you."

I blinked at her. No way. I mean, sure, I had a lot of followers. It was kind of amazing. But I was no Markiplier. There was no way people were asking about me in a random high school.

"Holy shit," I muttered.

"You're famous, Ri," she said, smiling at me with something like pride like she was the older sibling and not me.

I rolled my eyes to hide how overwhelmed I felt. "Whatever," I muttered. "It's fucking cold, let's get inside."

After Dad teased me for breaking my phone and Mom worried over my outfit, saying it was wrinkly like I'd slept in it or something, I sat down in Keely's room and she told me about school and about her boyfriend Cory. She asked me about Sans and I didn't have a lot to say. Everything I knew about him was either surface level or private, either something I understood as well as myself or something I knew nothing about at all. In fact, it was weird how much I didn't know about him. I wondered if I'd ever get him to let that wall go. I wondered if I would mind if he never felt comfortable opening up to me.

I decided that this early in the game, there was no point stressing about it. He didn't know every little thing about me either. In fact, most of the private stuff I hadn't divulged yet. My story, like his, was not always happy, and I didn't necessarily want to dump it on every person who walked by.

After sitting and chatting for a while, Keely and I went in and helped Dad cook dinner while Mom not so slyly wrapped presents for tomorrow in the other room. Keely and I were old enough not to want our gifts spoiled, so she didn't have to hide when she wrapped anymore. When the lasagna was in the oven, I helped Mom wrap a couple of Dad's presents. She didn't talk to me much other than to continue to tell me that I needed to buy an iron for my clothes and it was about as awkward as I had feared it would be.

At dinner, I sat between Dad and Keely, as I always had, with my mom across from me. Right now our table was a little square, but when we had three grandparents, two aunts, and an uncle come over, we'd have to put some leaves in it to make room. Dad prayed over the meal and it got quiet again. Keely saved the day after a minute and started blabbering about a sermon Cory's Dad had given the week before and we discussed that for a while.

Religion was a popular topic at my family's table. The rest of the family was much more devout than me. I believed in a higher power, but I didn't have a church in Ebott. Most of my personality was offensive to most Christians I met. Which was not to say that I didn't meet more liberal ones, but they were a little harder to find than the conservatives. But still, I'd been raised Lutheran and I could talk bible with the best of them, so we spent a lot of dinner talking about it and it felt comfortable. Normal. This was what my family did and me being a semi-famous blogger that preached a message my mother was fundamentally against didn't change it.

You know, until we got to the topic of certain politicians and their undying hatred for Muslims because they apparently were all terrorists. Even though it wasn't really a joking matter, we laughed about it, not even knowing how else to handle it.

"Oh yes, please tell me more about how you're calling yourself a Christian and your plan as president is to exclude half the population of this country from having rights and blow up most of the other ones. Jesus would be so proud."

This conversation, too, was comfortable, but in the back of my mind I was so frustrated because my mother was talking about this issue like it was at all different from the Monster issue. The Monsters she so feared had done nothing at all to deserve it. Her fear of them was based on what she had read about things that look vaguely similar—AKA Smaug the Terrible and Aragog the Acromantula—that actually have no relation to them at all. Had she even bothered to read my blog? If she had read a couple entries, she would see how completely undifferent they are from us.

But she refused to see it as the same thing and it made me want to flip the table over.

And finally, it became too much.

"Hey, Dad?"

I don't know what he'd been saying, but he stopped speaking and looked to be in concern. "You okay?"

"I only thought I should tell you that I have a boyfriend. And he wants to meet you guys."

His eyebrows shot up.

Before he had a chance to say anything, my mom piped in. "OH! You do? That's wonderful! Why didn't you ever tell me? Is he free on Sunday? He should come on by and we'll make him dinner."

I looked to Keely and she caught on. "Mom, that's too weird. They only just got together. You can't already have the one on one dinner. You gotta invite a couple of her friends over. I'll invite Cory. It can be a big thing."

"A big thing a couple days after Christmas?" asked my father distastefully.

"Riley and I will do all the cooking," Keely added. "All you have to do is get charmed by Riley's new man. Okay?"

Dad still looked a little unsure, so my mom without realizing what she was asking, pouted while saying, "Come on, honey, we have to meet Riley's boyfriend."

He sighed. "Yes, alright. But when the house gets thrashed on Christmas and you don't want to clean it on Saturday, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Deal," I said quickly.

I knew it was a dirty plan. Not even warning her what she was getting into wasn't particularly kind, but I had to show her that she was wrong about Monsters and she would've immediately vetoed if I had told her. And if she refused to see it even after meeting some, then there was no hope for her and I had to believe she wasn't that bigoted.

Well. I certainly hoped so.

Guess I'd find out.

The song I Love Bread that is mentioned is in reference to the song by ParryGripp and can be found on le Tube of Yous. I would post the link but I can't because this site is super annoying about that.

Blah blah I don't own it please don't sue me blah.

It made its way into this story thanks to a comment on the AO3 version of this story by a reader named Kyndy101. Thanks for making me laugh out loud!