Ch. 2 Oh Sweetpea, This Is Just The Beginning

You awoke the next morning sprawled on the couch, one leg hanging off, the foot on your other shoved deeply underneath the cushion of the couch and your head wedged between the backrest and a support pillow. Currently, you regret everything in your life. You could barely turn your head without sending immense pain to your head and shoulders. Your chest also felt heavy.

Slowly, you sat up and looked around your living room. The morning sun was trickling through your the cracks of your curtains and you stretched then stood. By that time your shirt was being pulled down and you finally noticed the small skeleton hanging on your front like a possum or koala?

You tried pulling the little skele off, but to no avail and just left him hanging from your torso as you went around to start your morning ritual (minus the bathroom). You check his clothes on your drying rack in the kitchen while you prepared coffee and oatmeal. You also sent a quick text to the Chief about finding him last night and bringing Sans in today, she had no problem.

You never thought you'd ask yourself the question, "How hard can a skeleton sleep?".

The answer?

You had to google it of course, you didn't exactly know much about monster pets anyway and google was your best friend.

Ah, a few links later you finally found a forum of a concerned skele owner who feared their skeleton was sick. Scrolling through the forum informed you on the different attributes skeletons had (accompanied by strange breed names). But alas, you know nothing and you were going to be late if you sat around waiting.

"Sans?"

Nothing.

"Sans sweetie you need to wake up."

Is he even breathing? Do skeletons breathe?

At this point you were literally trying to tug the little monster off, and when you finally peeled him off he woke up.

It wasn't even like a cute or pleasant awakening but instant panic and tiny little surges of blue magic zapping and nipping at your fingers and hands which surprised you. How much magic can a tiny little thing have to surpass a magic inhibiting collar? Despite all those thoughts you squished him right back into your chest and stroked your palm over his skull.

"Shh shhh, it's alright it's just me darling."

After a few minutes of rocking, patting, stroking, and kissing the bundle of sniffling jabbing points in your chest Sans had calmed down and wearily eyed around your apartment then you. He seemed to have finally understood his situation and pushed against you until you stood him on the floor.

"I'm sorry I had to wake you up but I have to get ready for work. I made breakfast if your hungry and your clothes are dry, will you be okay in the kitchen by yourself while I get ready?"

He nodded and you patted his head, "help yourself to anything in the kitchen" and darted into your room to get dressed.

The Chief leaned back in her chair and sighed. "Clearly he's abandoned, previous abuse is evident. But the lack of information on his collar is concerning enough to opened a search case on his previous owner." She opened a drawer and took out a manilla folder and a stack of stapled papers separated in two stacks.

"This stack is to open the case for other officers and detectives be aware or to take the job, this other stack is for legally documenting him under foster care."

"Foster care ma'am?" You gently picked up the paperwork and skimmed through it as she spoke.

"Yes. Unlike animals, I'm sure you've noticed, Monsters are intelligent sentient beings. That being said it's illegal to euthanize a monster without cause. Under the strange circumstances of this one," she motioned to Sans who had been quietly observing the universal chip scanner the two of you had used to pull up his information, "it's not safe to put him up for adoption. There's a possibility he's still processing the past events he had gone through and may have a break down. In this case we have specially trained officers that foster abused monsters and help them mentally, emotionally, and physically recover."

She rubbed her temple, "Though, we've never taken in a skeleton. I don't know how long it would take for an officer to take him in. And he's going to need one fast if we're to get a professional monster vet to unlatch that collar for evidence."

That's true, you completely forgot that could happen. You glanced at Sans again, this time he was watching the clacking balls on the Chief's desk completely mesmerized. You were stuck at an ultimatum. You found him, he was cute, you did want to do the case on your own just for the pleasure of interrogating his previous owner, but, and that's a big but. Your lack of knowledge made you iffy on fostering him.

You've never had a pet, let alone a plant. Who's to say you could take care of a monster.

After flipping through another few pages you stopped. This was interesting, if you or any officer were to foster him (or any monster) you can legally take him anywhere, even places that had banned monsters that would normally accept regular animals (like some vets, service animal accepted establishments, pet stores, parks, etc). That was definitely a thumbs up.

"I guess we'll just have to keep him at the shelter for now."

"The shelter ma'am? I thought he'd stay somewhere else to prevent a possible break down."

"That is if someone claims him today."

You forgot to consider how long would take for him to be picked up. Man your not good under pressure.

"Sans, what would you like for lunch?"

Currently you were at your desk with Sans sitting on the top looking through restaurant pamphlet. You needed to finish the case work on him so you could file it but you didn't want to starve him.

"I get to pick?"

"Of course booger."

You poked his hard little cheek bone. His face brighten up and he held up a paper.

"Ooh honey, that's a coupon for a bottle of ketchup."

"I know!"

"Why don't you choose something more filling?"

"(r/ln) (r/ln) (r/ln), you really don't know anything do you?"

You didn't even have to look up to know Brian Larson was standing behind you. "May I help you Detective?" He walked around you and lounged in a chair next to your desk, you didn't exactly like the way he was eyeing Sans.

"No. But it seems you actually need my help right now."

"Oh yea?"

Brian leaned over to scoot his chair closer, Sans tried to back away from him but couldn't with all the clutter surrounding your desk. "See the shape of his skull? You have an Older Brother breed."

"Uhh?"

He sighed and reached over to your mini printer and took a sheet of clean paper. "Skeletons have two breeds then a list of breeds within those two. The two main breeds being Older Brother and Younger Brother." As he spoke he was delicately folding and creasing the paper in separate strips. "It's common for the Older Brother breeds to have an obsession with condiments, each breed has their own favorite though. The Younger Brother breed is the same but with pasta's."

You were completely baffled that he knew any of this when the internet didn't even have information.

"So how do you know all of this?"

"I've done a few cases where the client had a monster. In some of those cases the monster ended up being a key witness or evidence. In one of those cases the client had a pair of skeletons."
He had a small pile of hexagons laying in front of him as he handed one to Sans who watched in curiosity.

"In that particular case…"

Brian pinches the sides and pushes. The hexagon slowly forms into a 3d star, the lights in Sans' sockets exploded into little sparkles and he automatically started to attempt squishing the remaining hexagons into stars. Brian claimed your attention when he spoke up again.

"The Older Brother went missing. The Younger Brother broke down. Later on the case we found that someone was using the unique body shape of Older Brothers to fake child deaths. Anyway, I'm not going to get to far into it," he nodded his head into Sans' direction "but finding one separated from the other is typically bad news."

Your blood ran cold and your chest ached. The only thing you could do was imagine that skeleton being your Sans.

"After that case I did what I could to learn about all monsters."

Wow your starting to actually respect your superior. Brian leaned over and snatched up the case file and stood.

"Skeletons are all about trust. I recommend you foster this one, he already trusts you."

With that he walked away and you watched Sans pinch and squeeze the hexagons, the ketchup coupon laid forgotten next to him.

Fuck.

Your too far deep.

OoOoO

I hope it actually stays posted normal this time. I don't know why I have to struggle with this fic with that problem and not the others. (Though if I was actually good at code it'd be cool and make sense)

Also I re-edited it to have the chapter name before the story so everyone that was trying to read it before that couldn't would now the chapter was replaced.