You don't come home that night.

No, you stay out.

Doing what you have to do.

You do what you have to, until you don't think you could feel your throat even if you weren't so cold everything was numb.

Turns out staying out the whole night for it is more lucrative then just a good 6 hours, anyway.

You don't come home in the morning- no, it's Tuesday. You go to Work.

You show up to the restaurant two hours before it opens, glad you have the keys so you can get in. The place is deserted- you'd been briefed, however, people start showing up an hour till opening for the coffee shop. You came in at opening, or so you would normally.

You relock the front of the coffee shop as you enter, and take the elevator up to the offices, just as deserted. No lights peek from under any of the doors, you wonder if anyone's asleep in the Emergency Room. it didn't look extremely lived in while you were being shown around, but most of the place was pretty well kept.

You slip into your office, still shivering like you were outside. Your feet are freezing, ice water and melted snow right in through the socks. You slowly peel them off, rubbing one at a time.

You spy a vent in the floor, but its not on when you step over on aching feet. No heat. You are, after all, the only one here. There's a thermostat in your room- yours controls the third floor. Something Kal mentioned, briefly, is that you'd be responsible for turning it off when you left in the evening if no one was currently staying in the Emergency room, or reminding anyone staying late to turn it off when they lock up.

You fumble- aware your hands are shivering- with the heater until you figure out how to turn it on. Theres a sticky note with the temperatures your allowed to turn it to in the summer and winter.

70 degrees beats 0 outside, for sure.

You huddle on the ground at the vent- itll take some time for it to kick up, so you wait, huddles at the vent, for warmth to come.

You consider, you may need to bring toothpaste and a brush to keep at work. Or at least mouthwash. In case you decide to make a habit of working all night. Your mouth- your throat- your stomach- it all feels dirty, and it'll be that way all day it seems.

You haven't let yourself wonder about the apartment since you left. Increasingly drowsy, you let yourself think. You wonder if Undyne stayed warm on the couch and if anyone showed her to the shower. You wonder if anyone did anything with the tuna, and if the mayo sat out all night and went bad. You wonder if they'd find breakfast in the fridge. You'd had a can of those cinnamon rolls for you and the skeleton brothers- without you, there'd be more for, hopefully enough for, Undyne. Hopefully enough.

Without you.

You curl up tighter, the first trickles of warmer air slipping up from the vent, trying to get the sparse starts of heat over more of you.

You don't think your welcome back.

You don't think you should go back.

You don't think you want to go back.

If it was probable, you'd just… let them have the apartment. Call it a day. You could pretty much live in your office until you got fired, and… from there… something.

Hm, even then, youd still have to go back for some of your things.

You don't want your things.

You don't want anything.

You don't want to do anything.

Nothing but throw up. You want to throw up.

You want all of it out of you.

The downside against how lucrative it is, working all night fills you in a way you have never missed.

You consider getting a head start on some work, since you're new, you'll probably need it to keep up.

You don't have your laptop, though, what you can do is limited for now. Youstart working up a lie why you didn't bring it for later, when youll need it.

The day drags on.

You get up when you hear the sounds of people on the bottom floor- the sound of something loud in the kitchen turning on. You start working.

Kal comes up to your office about 5 minutes after you would have arrived normally. He starts helping you run through your work with ease, taking your lie at face value. You work with paper work today, instead.

The office is warm by then, and your socks have dried, and sitting mostly at your desk the whole time as he teaches you about the paperwork and shows you things on his own laptop, its never notice you don't have shoes. That's the highlight of your day.

The lowlights include throwing up on your lunch break when you try to take a small bite of a muffin you got in the café, not realizing you wrist was bleeding until blood had soaked through your hoodie and left a mark on the desk kal had almost seen, and an intense painful numbness that coincides with a struggle to stay awake toward the end of the day.

On the Brightside- you now know your first pay day will be the Friday of next week?

You leave when the place is empty- slowly trying to prolong going him. You turn off the heat, off the lights, and lock the doors as you leave to walk home- no money you can spare for a bus, you need it all to buy food to feed the house. Trying to distract your mind with thoughts about what you've learned at work from when you get home.

You stop at Solars, if only to procrastinate going home. Grillby's behind the counter. The last friendly face you feel that you have.

He doesn't see you coming. You slink up to the counter and sit on the stool, socks soaked once again, cold as death. You peel them off and flip them right side out, lay them across your lap, and sink against the counter.

You're spotted as he's handing another man a burger, and almost drops the plate completely. Do you really look so bad?

He quickly gives the man his food and moves over toward you. hes crackling inserious sounding concern. "Sans… has been looking for you…"

You hum. "I'll probably be in a gutter somewhere soon."

"…look cold…"

"I'm always cold." You hum, softly.

He taps the counter. The usual method to ask if you want the usual. You shake your head. "2 burgers, one fish and one regular, and a salad to go. Something cheap and strong for here."

You can tell the way he hesitates that he wants to say you should eat. He's done that before. You shake your head, and his flames fizzle softly in a sigh.

He leaves and returns in a few moments with your drink, and in a couple minutes, a bag of burgers. Papyrus' salad is settled in a container at the side. You've already drowned your drink, but you make no move to get up.

You order another.

A third.

A fourth, and in the process try not to cry while drinking it.

A fifth and a sixth and you feel so cold and the whiskey burns your throat and its already after 9:30 at night and closing in on 10 and solar's will close soon. You order 2 more.

In the fog of drunken blackness you hear a buzzing in your ears your convinced is your own dying pulse as at closing, Apollo says something to you that you cant hear, and tired and lost and confused you vaguely remember being led up stairs to the little apartment where Grillby lives.

In your hazed confusion you forget its not Grillby whos leading you up and that its Apollo, even when you see the haze of flaming monster man pacing in a panic behind the bar, watching you go; the sight of hime tricks you into thinking the bar's on fire, and you say that out loud to the man in the suit whos guiding you up the stairs and he laughs.

"you're so sweet when your drunk, honey."

You grin and giggle, but that ginger man in the suit is not Grillby like your so drunken memory swears confusedly even once your sober, and you shouldn't have let him take you upstairs. He was never warm like fire- he was cold and colder than you.