The music was loud and tinny, coming from the old and battered boombox Sans had found in the dump. Something with a deep bass played—not the music of their choice for this sort of thing, but the beat was good enough for its purpose.
Two monster children played in the snow nearby. The cap that the elder child wore had faded, with threads dangling in places; the scarf the younger one wore was tattered and dirty.
The taller of the two (relatively speaking; he couldn't have reached over four and a half feet) and obviously the elder held the younger child's hands, leading him in a sort of dance. He coached his brother through the movements before letting go. Excitedly, the younger child took a few steps to the beat, grinning wildly; but then his foot caught against the other and he cried out as his knees hit the ground. He wailed in frustration, falling onto his backside and hitting his little mittened hands on the ground.
"Try it again, bro," the elder skeleton brother coaxed, but his little brother stayed where he fell in the snow, pouting.
"Ugh, it's not like it will make any difference," the younger brother snapped, his face set into a scowl. The missing front tooth made the expression a lot less scary than intended. "You're just so good without even trying, Sans! And I've been practicing every day for hours…" His face softened into something less outwardly angry, and more frustrated with himself. Sans knelt down, his grin less wide.
"Hey, nobody's dance is the same, Paps," he reassured, but his brother's face only sank deeper into the oversized red scarf as he looked stubbornly away. Sans laughed under his breath and touched Papyrus's small shoulder. "If my dance is as good as you think it is, and I'm not even tryin'," he reasoned, "then imagine what yours will be like when you really do try." Papyrus didn't turn his face, but he was eyeing Sans sideways, as if trying to hide his interest. "C'mon, I bet it'll be really cool," Sans grinned, winking.
"Saaaaans, now isn't the time for your weird jokes," Papyrus muttered, hiding his smile unsuccessfully into his tattered old coat. "You really… think it'll be cool?"
Sans's eye sockets crinkled at the bottom. "'Course I do. You're the coolest kiddo I know." He scooped his smaller brother into one arm, holding steady as Papyrus squirmed and screeched.
"Noooo! Sans, lemme go!" His giggles were almost like squeals as Sans rubbed his bony knuckles across his brother's skull, minding the tiny flailing legs. Papyrus's too-large boots nearly fell off his feet. "Don't noogie meeeee!"
"Okay." Sans dropped his brother back into the wet and cold snow, to which Papyrus shrieked in dismay.
"You're going to pay for that, brother!" he shouted, but Sans dodged out of the way of his brother's dive, shrugging.
"Oh yeah? Why don't ya challenge me to a dance-off, bro?" he suggested slyly. The smaller skeleton's face was set, determined. Sans's smile widened.
"You think you can defeat the Great Papyrus? I don't think you can, brother!" Papyrus challenged, standing up to his tallest height possible. The winter wind blew and teased at his old, tattered clothing, red scarf whipping behind him. Sans chuckled. His brother really was cool… Papyrus just needed to be reminded sometimes.
"Well, let's find out," Sans shot back, lowering his center of gravity. The song boomed behind them and the two of them danced until dusk. That day, much to Sans's pride, Papyrus had discovered his dance, spurred on by his big brother's encouragement.
Sans unlocked his door and trudged inside, kicking off his shoes with a small sigh of relief. Work had been a fairly normal day, which meant a lot of insults flung his way and insinuations that being a monster would dirty everyone's coffee. It wasn't all bad, though; what he'd said to Holly when they first met was true. There were the bad people, and sometimes the occasional truly awful person… but there were also the kind, polite people, and sometimes that one person who went out of their way to be really stellar. Those people made up for all the racism and impatience Sans had to put up with on a day-to-day basis.
Today, there was one customer who had barely looked up from her phone to place her order. When she did happen to glance up, her lip curled in disgust. The first thing out of her mouth was to ask if her latté was going to have rotten dead people bits in it if Sans handled her drink. He was about to explain for the umpteenth time that he was a skeleton monster, not a literal human skeleton, when someone behind the customer had spoken up for him.
"Wow, that's fuckin' rude. He's a monster, not a dead body. Don't be an asshole," he'd said, looking at the woman with plain dislike on his face.
The bickering between the two of them had been amusing, even though Sans really couldn't interfere unless a physical fight broke out. It'd ended with the woman huffing and walking off to wait for her order to come out, and Sans giving the kind customer an employee discount on his order. He had been a nurse at the local hospital, so it really did make a difference in the price with all the coffee he bought for his co-workers and himself.
Despite the kindness of those occasional humans, however, it seemed that none really wanted to actually befriend a monster. There were nice co-workers, the Good Samaritan passing by, little kids who were fascinated with the idea of them. But when monsters were still so new and different, humans were still frightened by them. And it was difficult to start being friends with someone who frightened you.
So it was with a lot of confusion and skepticism that Sans regarded Holly. She had approached them first, had been curious and wanting to get to know them. She seemed genuinely excited to be around them, learn their customs. Hell, she didn't really bat an eye at his teleportation magic, or even the concept of souls being real, tangible things. She'd really just… fallen into their lives, accepting all parts of them.
Sans's gaze fell upon his kid brother, fast asleep on the couch and snoring softly. Sans stifled a quiet laugh; Papyrus denied he snored at all, and would be offended when anyone suggested otherwise. His grin dimmed in the next second when he saw that Papyrus's head was leaning into the human's. Holly had her forearms wrapped around Papyrus's upper arm, leaning her head against it with her knees curled inward. Sans wondered if she was actually comfortable leaning on hard bone. A mix of warmth and unease crept through his soul.
What was really strange about Holly was her personality when compared to her main soul color. Humans had a mixture of all colors, really, and could show positive and negative traits of each color and a rainbow of virtues in between those, but everyone had their "main" color. Holly's was purple, soft like orchid petals. That was perseverance. A bit like determination, but instead of changing every obstacle in their way, people with good perseverance would endure in spite of obstacles in their path. They would mold and change themselves to adapt and survive, not the other way around.
But what confused Sans was that Holly seemed to show kindness above all else. Not that it was impossible for someone with a purple soul to be very kind; it was just strange to see someone not actively showing their main personality trait very much. If Sans had to guess her color without having seen it before, he would have said green. Heh, like holly leaves.
It was also odd—though not unexpected—to see her dance with his brother and bring out his soul's echo in just one color. Papyrus showed a lot of moral integrity, but his main trait was courage, for certain; so it wasn't surprising when that was the color that showed for Holly. Her human soul was unused to all the magic of a monster's soul, so it only filtered out the main color of Papyrus's magic, instead of the presence of it all in the form of the white soul all monsters had.
Sans wondered what color she would pull out of him, if they ever danced: yellow, or cyan? He knew he had both forms of magic, but he wasn't really sure which one defined him more, personality-wise.
He shook his head. He hadn't danced in years. This strange human may have charmed her way into a dance with his friendly brother, but Sans was not so trusting. She was afraid of him, anyway; not that it was necessarily her fault. He'd been a bit of an ass to appear so threatening to her, though he didn't really regret it. The only thing he really regretted was making her confess something so personal about her life in answer to his demanding questions.
And then learning about the dynamics of her relationship with her mother… well. Holly hadn't gone into too much detail there, but even drunk, she'd shown despair, guilt, grief for the kind of mother she'd never had. He empathized with her, even when he really didn't want to.
He watched them for another moment before heading to the dining room, where Alphys was sitting in the glow of her computer at the table. She had turned all the lights off.
"Hey, Alph," he called out quietly. She jumped and looked up at him as he untied his apron and draped it across a chair before sitting in it. Her glasses reflected the moving images of one of her anime, an earbud dangling where it had fallen out with her movement.
"Oh, h-hey, Sans," she said, seeming relieved that it was just her friend. The two of them weren't overly affectionate or close, like Undyne and Papyrus, but they were good friends all the same. They had a strange history of acquaintance and comradery in the labs, working together. It had turned into a mutual respect and friendship up on the surface when Undyne had started bringing her around to the skeleton brothers' house. "I was just, uh, w-watching a show."
"Yeah? Your girlfriend here?" he asked, glancing around to the kitchen.
"Oh, yeah she is. Undyne b-borrowed your brother's b-bed for a few hours of sleep." She pushed her glasses further up onto her snout. "She w-works odd hours, so…"
Sans nodded, settling back into the chair with a sigh. It felt nice to unwind after all day on his feet. "Mmm. I feel that." His cervical vertebrae cracked as he shifted and stretched.
"So…" Alphys began, watching him carefully over the rim of her glasses. "Asgore stopped by." Sans didn't move in his chair, but his gaze sharpened. "He, um… w-wanted to check up on me. And, um…" she faltered, seeming upset. "H-he wanted to hear my v-version of events…"
Sans tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. "He asked ya with Undyne here?" he asked incredulously. Her face fell, gaze averted, and his grin slid down at the edges. "Or he jus' waited for her to go to bed. Gotcha." He released a breath in mild annoyance, but his face was softened by concern. "You a'right, Alph?"
She nodded and shrugged at the same time. "I g-guess. It was… pretty hard to talk about, i-if I'm being honest," she admitted. "B-but I'll get over it. It's not l-like it's the f-first time Undyne and I have been... t-targeted." Her voice took on a dark tone at the last bit. Undyne was well-known among monster haters as being generally terrifying and the most willing to fight back out of any other monster. Her reputation attracted bold and hateful attackers who wished to be rid of her, or to put her in her place. (Below them. For those horrible humans, monsters were always below them.)
But in the middle of all these attacks was Alphys; shy, soft, weak Alphys, unused to fighting and certainly not equipped with the mental strength to handle that sort of abuse and terror. Each time there was an incident with them, it had taken months for her to recover and get back to a sense of normalcy. Undyne didn't really help with her overprotective nature; it only made the shy monster feel even more helpless, and oftentimes suffocated.
"Brother?"
Sans looked over to see Papyrus rubbing his eye sockets in the same way he had as a babybones. The sight made something swell inside Sans's ribcage.
"Hey, bro. You takin' after me now, huh? Takin' naps on the couch," he teased, winking. Papyrus scowled sleepily, the movement showing his cheekbones better in the light. Sans immediately sobered, seeing familiar streaks down the skeleton's face. "Paps? You been cryin'?" he asked, getting abruptly out of the dining room chair. He gave Alphys a hard glance over his shoulder while reaching for his brother. "What happened?"
"I am offended! Of course the Great Papyrus doesn't—" the taller skeleton began, sounding affronted, but his brother's sharp glare made him falter.
"U-um, when Asgore came to talk, he… we were all…" Alphys began, sounding guilty. Everyone knew how protective Sans could be of Papyrus, shielding him from all the evils of the world he possibly could. But Papyrus was an adult, and the other monsters treated him as such. However, it sometimes meant catching the older skeleton's ire, like now.
Sans gave a short, irritated sigh. "Paps, I'm sorry they… they shoulda talked about that stuff somewhere else," he said to his brother, who was looking more and more uncomfortable by the second. Papyrus shook his head.
"No, Sans. I'm not a babybones anymore, I can handle—"
"But ya hate hearin' about that kinda thing, they shouldn't've—"
"Will you stop interrupting me, Sans!" Papyrus cut in irritably. Sans blinked and quieted down. "No, I do not enjoy hearing about such things. But Alphys is my friend, and I wanted to be with her while she spoke about the awful things that happened to her." The yellow monster gave Papyrus a grateful look. "I only have to hear about it. I did not live it." Sans was silent, watching his brother with a careful gaze. "Besides, our human friend was there and we made dinner! There's spaghetti left on the stove for you!" he said, seeming much happier to change the subject to spaghetti. Sans raised his eyebrows at Alphys, who gave him an affirmative nod.
"Y-yeah. She's really nice," the lizard monster confirmed, her voice a little firmer than usual. She knew that Sans was skeptical of Holly, though she wasn't aware of the reasons behind it. But as Holly's first monster friend, Alphys felt a bit of responsibility to defend her as a good human. Sans was stubborn, but even he couldn't deny that Holly had been nothing but sweet as long as they'd known her.
"That's great, buddy," Sans relented. His frame drooped in acceptance and Alphys felt secretly relieved. She wasn't very good at arguing with anyone, and Sans was especially prone to digging his heels in about anything he felt he was right about. But when it came to their human friend, she thought he seemed unsure of himself, so it was easier to get him to come around. Having Papyrus on her side was a major help.
Sans walked into the kitchen with his brother, seeming to be very small and haggard in Alphys's eyes.
A/N: Thanks to CadetSparkleWolf and my sister for beta reading!