In which, to Sans's disgust, morning begins before sunrise.

Sans

This "Valentine's Day" thing is gonna be the end of me, I swear.

It's mainly a couples thing, that much is obvious, but Paps recently informed me that people who care about each other in other ways also give each other "valentines." He's been working on valentines for me an' Checkers for, like, a week. He won't tell us what they are but couldn't keep his mouth shut about the fact he had plans. His bosses and coworkers are getting some too, apparently, and he's so excited it's kinda scary.

So what do I do?

I've now got an obligation to get a valentine or some kind of gift for my brother, and that means I've gotta get one for Checkers, too, or she might feel left out, and that means I need to survive the minefield that is buying a love-themed thing for the friend I'm in love with without cluing her in to the fact that I love her in a definitely more-than-friendly way.

Startin' to freak out a little, there, Sansy. Okay, cool it down. Valentine's Day isn't for another week.

One minefield at a time.

I train the pocket telescope on the rooftop of the office supply store across from the tall, dense hedge I've designated as the drop spot. The hedge runs around the front of one of the larger houses in town and butts up against a high wooden fence at the back. We're on the outskirts of town, me and the guy I'm lookin' at, and while I watch him, he watches the hedge and occasionally scans the surrounding area, looking for me. There's another couple in a car around the side of the house, and one inside the shop, though with the lights off I can only see him if he's close to the window and if he moves. That's four pairs of eyes I've gotta avoid.

It's late, it's dark, it's fucking cold, and the file I'm waiting for a chance to grab is in danger of getting snowed on.

Checkers would flip if she knew what I've been doing recently. Don't know if she'd try to stop me or if she'd want to help, but either way, I figure it's best not to tell her. She thinks I'm in the basement right now, building stuff. She doesn't like to disturb me when I'm science-ing.

You're a fucking liar, Sans Snowdin.

And Checkers deserves better.

Okay, lemme back up.

Remember when that little human girl went to the hospital after being hurt by magic? One of her monster schoolmates got too rough, and reading between the lines, it sounds to me like they were playing and being reckless. But of course there's no way to tell for sure since the whole thing has been twisted and blown so far out of proportion it's starting to seem to me like one of those unidentifiable balloon "animals" Paps and I saw at that fair last summer, and I want nothing more than to pop the fucker in the most dramatic way possible.

Our small-town elementary school has no security cameras, so there's no footage of what happened. The only lasting evidence of the incident is the girl's medical records. Now, breaking into small businesses is one thing, but breaking into a hospital? Heh, good luck. There're cameras all over the place and, maybe worse, hospitals never sleep. The Medical Records people and cafeteria folks and some other groups go home for the day, but the halls are full of nurses and doctors and techs 24-7, and there's no way I could access an internal computer without getting caught. With no way to get those records all by myself, I had to enlist help.

By that, I mean I followed some doctors, techs, nurses, janitors, and last but not least the girl's parents around until I finally found a different kind of evidence: I got some pictures of the girl's mom meeting a secret lover at a seedy motel. (He was wearing a leather mask and short shorts, carrying a whip, and was about three hundred pounds. I was sorta impressed, in an "Oh my god what the hell?" kinda way.) Since the kid's a minor, her mom's in charge of making her treatment decisions and has access to all her medical records if she wants them. After a short telephone conversation, she decided she really, really wanted them.

Thank god for scumbags.

Of course, this whole thing has basically bitten me in the ass. I grumble to myself as I scan the area again: flash of reflected light from the roof, dim shift of motion behind the shop window, shadows in the car parked 'round the side. I told her no police. And I know she heard me. Gotta bite the bullet on this one and admit I misjudged her. Her anger at me is obviously stronger than her fear that her dirty secret will get out. If only all scumbags were cowards. It would make life so much easier. Jeez, lady, don't'cha know it's nothing personal?

I heave a sigh and put the telescope back into its little case, stowing it in my pocket.

I know what I need to do, but damn. Aside from the danger of arrest and the certainty of pain, which I am not looking forward to, I might give away the fact that magic was involved in this fiasco. That'll narrow their suspects down to several thousand, but they're a several thousand I'm pretty protective of, and I don't want to implicate them in this sort of thing.

Hell, that file's probably a decoy. Maybe there's nothing useful in it. But this kid's only eight. She's already a rallying point for the anti-monster movement. If there's a chance that file's the real deal, I need to try and get it.

I scratch my cervical vertebrae, grumbling quietly. No help for it.

I wrap my phalanges around the weft of the world, preparing to tug at it, and hesitate for just a moment.

This is gonna suck.

I can't just stick my arm into a proverbial hole in space and feel around for the file. I'm not making actual portals, here: I'm messing with reality itself. And space gets confused if you're in two places at once. Spontaneous dissolution happens. Gotta avoid creating the kind of situation where my arm stays hundreds of feet away from my body long enough for space to figure out something's amiss and resume its natural shape. Try it and I'll come out of this with one less limb.

Aaaugh. It's holly, too. Pointy fuckin' leaves and all.

I screw my eye sockets tightly closed and slide behind the weave of the world. A moment later, I'm crammed into the bushes, with no intermediate step of making room for myself.

Hard, tightly-packed branches rake at me, leaving burning trails on my body. Stiff, pointed leaves like little thorns scratch at every piece of exposed bone. The hedge is so thick that by the time I settle on a position, I've twisted into a sort of pretzel shape, winding around the larger branches as much as possible. I've never been so glad to be small and bony. Heh. At least the holly is dense enough that, from the outside, there's probably almost no movement. Some rustling, maybe, but that's it. With luck, they'll just think a raccoon is poking around in here.

I saw where the lady left the file, so I know it's close. But I'm afraid to open my eyes to look for it. I might have nightmares of branches gouging my eye sockets as it is. I start patting around on the ground, feeling for the smoothness of the file folder, as I hear a car door shut. A second later, another slams. Muttered voices drift to me on the chill night air. One of them is familiar. Tomlinson. Aw, geez. Sorry, man. I'm about to make a fool outta someone I genuinely like. I feel like a heel.

Footsteps crunch on the pavement. Shit. Here they come.

My groping fingers find the file and trace it to its edge. I grip it tightly and, as the sound of approaching footsteps draws rapidly closer, I slip through the earth directly beneath me and drop onto the carpet in my living room. Paps, who's been putting on his jogging shoes, makes a sound like a startled duck. The "gateway" snaps closed behind me, the weave of the world reconfiguring itself as suddenly as I'd distorted it, and I finally turn my weary gaze to the file folder. I hold it up, open it, and several forms, prescription copies, and a couple of x-ray films fall out.

Got it.

I sigh and let my arms flop to the ground, exhausted and bleeding from a hundred stabs and scratches. I have a moment of perfect peace before Paps starts shouting.

"BROTHER! WHAT IS THIS? WHAT HAS HAPPENED? YOU ARE BLEEDING ALL OVER THE CARPET! QUICKLY, TO THE KITCHEN!" He picks me up, tucks me under one arm like a bundle of laundry, and hustles to the kitchen, presumably to get me onto a surface that wipes clean and doesn't stain. He plops me into my preferred chair. I sink down and lay my head on the table. I'm starting to shake: my body's not reacting well to all the damage.

I don't feel right.

Shit.

I hear Checkers's door open. Paps's outcry must have woken her. She comes into the kitchen like a ray of sunlight bursting through a layer of clouds, all sleepy and mussed and exactly what I needed to see. Not that rays of sunlight are sleepy and mussed. Just... I'm rambling now. Sorry.

"Oh, god, Sans!" Checkers pulls up a chair to sit next to me. "You're bleeding!" She pauses, taking in the fact that all the damage is superficial. Then she asks the obvious question. "How are you bleeding?"

"profusely," I mutter, shaking harder. It's not exactly true; I'm not losing that much blood and I'm not seriously injured. I've even fully recovered from that dumbass shower thing. The real problem here is... well, you might've figured it out by now. I'm smaller than I should be, I don't have much energy, it's pretty obvious I'm not... ugh. Not as healthy as I could be. There, I said it.

"I WILL GET THE FIRST AID KIT," Paps announces. "SANS, YOU MUST TRY TO KEEP YOUR BLOOD ON THE INSIDE WHERE IT BELONGS."

"sure thing, bro," I mumble. The room sways for a moment. I squint at it and it stabilizes. Yay me.

Checkers tries to stroke my skull, but she can't seem to find an uninjured area. Finally she lays her hand at the back of my head near my cervical vertebrae. She gasps. "You're so cold! Oh, not again!"

"aw, i'm okay," I try to reassure her. "could use some coffee and a good long nap, but..."

"Don't give me that!" she snaps, her voice full of a desperate worry that I feel guilty for causing. "I know you like your privacy, but I'm your friend, and you're hurt! I want to know what happened!" As she speaks, she scoots her chair over until it's fitted against mine, and she takes me in her arms and pulls me into her lap like a doll.

"ow," I protest as Checkers wraps her arms more firmly around me. God, she's so warm. Immediately, I feel the wrongness in my body subside a little. My chest warms slightly as my ailing soul finds new strength.

"You're so cold," Checkers mutters against my skull. "Why are you so cold?"

I reach for a pun or at least a witty remark, don't find one, and, feeling Checkers's worry with a strange, sudden sharpness, I surprise myself by opting for honesty.

"our bodies aren't like yours," I say, leaning into her a little more, leaching off her heat. I hear a clatter and shout upstairs that's probably Paps discovering I've used almost all the band-aids to cover the big hole in my mattress. Luckily, my stupid body is finally starting to heal itself. I can feel the scratches on my more sensitive parts itching as they begin to knit. "monsters' bodies and souls are almost the same thing," I continue as Checkers listens. "my body heat? that's excess magic dissipating as one of energy's simplest forms. right now my magic is going towards healing myself, so there's none left over to diffuse as heat."

Checkers's eyes are wide as she looks at me. "That... is so cool," she says, and I chuckle weakly at the pun. A moment later, she laughs. Guess she didn't make it on purpose. "But," she continues, "I thought monsters could handle a lot of damage. Right? Unless there's malice involved." She frowns at me and I can practically see thunderheads of fury gathering around her. "Sans, did someone do this to you?"

"oh, hell, no, not at all," I hurry to explain. My voice is getting slowly weaker, and I have to exert more energy to make myself heard, but I figure it's worth it. "most monsters can heal damage like this in a heartbeat, but i'm... weak, i guess? don't ask why. just, my soul doesn't handle injuries the way other monsters' souls do." I almost stop there, but I can feel Checkers's inquisitiveness waxing, and I have to remind myself that human bodies are very different and maybe I should give her some basic info on monsters and injuries. "there's a... a division, i guess, of damage, that happens when one of us gets hurt. the soul takes the hurt from the body, takes the damage, and then recovers. souls are generally pretty resilient. but mine... it isn't like that. it can't handle this sort of thing, but it tries anyway, and..."

"You hurt your soul?" She sounds appalled.

"i'll be okay," I tell her, and can't help adding, "gotta soul-dier on, right?"

"Augh," Checkers says, laughs, and holds me tighter. I'm getting blood on her pajamas. Man. Maybe I can do her laundry later to make up for it. Orange juice gets blood out, right? ... Maybe laundry isn't the best idea. I'll come up with something later. I snuggle closer to her and am too out-of-it to even be embarrassed about that.

"You're getting a little warmer," she says. "Are you feeling any better?"

Come to think of it, I am. I really am. And now that I'm not struggling to heal myself anymore, weariness flattens me like a runaway steamroller. "yeah," I murmur, eye sockets sliding shut. "loads." Laundry pun. She'll never know. It's hilarious.

"Why are you laughing?" Checkers asks, a bit suspiciously.

I decline to answer on the grounds that I've passed out.

* * * * *

You

You stroke the back of Sans's skull gently as you listen to Papyrus rummaging upstairs. The way your small friend has gone limp tells you he's fallen asleep. His breathing evens out and his body seems to melt into yours, releasing all the tiny tensions you hadn't even known were there.

Beyond the doorway you can see the file and some of its scattered papers out of the corner of your eye.

"Sans," you murmur quietly against the side of his head, "What have you been doing?" And, your inner voice adds silently, why wasn't I a part of it?

That's the worst part, isn't it? After everything the two of you have been through together, after telling you that he'd include you in this, he's still leaving you behind, shutting you out, keeping you away from all the parts of himself he won't, or can't, share.

You trail a hand over his blood-sticky hoodie, idly playing with a new tear in the fabric. You feel a twinge in your own skin, as if, for a moment, you're sharing the pain associated with the damage. You sigh, arms tightening around Sans involuntarily.

If he was just another friend, you'd be all right with his emotional isolation. But Sans is so much more to you than that. In some ways, you've never been as close to anyone in your whole life as you are to him. In other ways... well, it's like there's a wall between the two of you that Sans carefully maintains and which you're starting to think you may never be able to breach. The possibility sits like a cinderblock on your chest, pressing the breath from you.

You don't know why, after everything you've shared, he's still keeping you at arm's length. But...

You grip Sans's hoodie in your fists and hold him tightly as a spasm of pain knifes through you.

He's so alone.

He doesn't have to be so alone.

With the thought, you find everything in you straining towards Sans, as if you might be able to help him in his struggles, ease his pain, by the power of your will alone. And, gradually, you become aware of a strange sensation, as if a warm stream of water is moving within you. It feels natural, as if it's been there all your life, and you're caught for a moment in the disorienting and somewhat disturbing feeling that you've suddenly discovered you have an eleventh finger, or another ear under your hair.

For a moment, you're afraid. The flow of the "water" slows in response, reverses direction, begins trickling towards your center rather than out through your...

Through your hands. And into Sans.

What... is this?

You hesitantly reach for Sans again with your... your mind? Your emotions? It takes a second or two to redirect the flow back outwards, but it sluggishly complies. Once you feel a connection has been firmly established, you lift your hand slightly away from Sans and scrutinize the space between his body and your palm. Is there a subtle waver in the air there, like a heat shimmer? Or are you just imagining things? You snort softly to yourself. You're probably trying too hard, fooling yourself into feeling and seeing things that aren't there.

Papyrus stomps back down the stairs carrying the plastic tub containing the house's first aid accoutrements and catches you staring at your hand as it hovers over Sans's skull.

"YOU CAN PET HIM IF YOU LIKE. I PROMISE HE DOES NOT BITE." The tall skeleton cackles at his own joke. You don't laugh.

"Is he going to be okay?" You were on the verge of asking about the strange (new? old?) feeling you're experiencing, but if it's nothing, you don't want to seem foolish. And poor Sans is such a mess. You can't shake the fear that his injuries are worse than they seem.

"HE WILL BE FINE, SISTER. YOUR CONCERN IS QUITE TOUCHING!" Papyrus ruffles your hair before opening the first aid kit. As he pulls out lengths of bandage, he continues, "HE ARRIVED HOME ALIVE, SO HE CAN ONLY GET BETTER. AFTER ALL, WHAT DOES NOT KILL US MAKES US STRONGER!" The lanky skeleton "flexes" to punctuate his statement. You finally allow yourself a small giggle.

"You're sure?" you ask, already relaxing a little. "Good. That's good." The final words are muttered under your breath, semi-conscious attempts to release the last of your anxiety. You jostle Sans gently and sing softly in his earhole, "Sans? CB? You've gotta get up, honey. We need to clean your scratches." For some reason, you find yourself speaking to him as if he's a child. When he stirs, but only to grip you around the middle and groan into your shirt, you chuckle and bump him again. "Come on, Sansy, time to wake up."

"'n m'rnin umn..."

"Those aren't even words," you inform him good-naturedly, shaking him a little harder.

"are too," he mumbles, and goes back to sleep. Papyrus groans in frustration. He doesn't find Sans's sleepy mornings nearly as cute as you do.

You sigh, smirk, and blow a puff of air into Sans's earhole.

"khh!" Sans startles awake, hands fisting into your shirt, and freezes when he finds his face inches from yours. His pupils shrink, and then expand, focusing on your eyes. "h-hi," he stammers, seeming a little woozy still.

"Hi," you say back, amused. "We need to clean and bandage you."

"oh," he replies. "oh, yeah, okay."

Papyrus sets a bowl of warm water on the table and hands you a damp washcloth. He wields a second one in his bony hand and commands, "BROTHER, REMOVE YOUR CLOTHING FORTHWITH."

Sans chokes and looks at you, blushing. You shrug. "You're a skeleton," you tell him. "Don't tell me you have something you need to protect from prying eyes."

Sans gives you a mild glare as he slides out of your arms, taking a chair of his own. "you wouldn't be so blasé if i told you to get naked," he grumbles. Now it's your turn to blush. Sullenly, Sans starts removing his hoodie. Almost immediately, he stops, a small sound of pain escaping him.

"Wait, wait," you tell him, stilling his hands with your own. You proceed to slowly peel his bloody hoodie away from his shoulders yourself. The blood has started to dry, and some of his wounds reopen as you pull the cloth away as gently as you can. Sans grunts. "Sorry!" you say.

"don't be," he responds. "'s my own damn fault." Once again, he tries to remove the jacket himself, but you softly push his hands out of the way. Then Papyrus steps around behind his brother, grabs the back of the hoodie, and tears it off in one quick motion.

"eeyowtch!" Sans whips around to glare at Papyrus. Many of his injuries are seeping blood again: you can see the spreading patches on his t-shirt.

"YOU ARE SLOW," your gangly friend announces. "WE DO NOT HAVE ALL MORNING." With that, he grabs the shoulders of Sans's t-shirt as if to rip it off as well.

"s-stop!" Sans grabs at his hem, and the brothers briefly struggle against each other, Papyrus pulling upwards and Sans dragging doggedly downwards.

"Boys! Boys!" you intervene loudly. The two of them stop briefly to look at you. You scramble for something to distract Papyrus with. "Doesn't Sans need food in order to heal properly?" you ask. You don't know much about how monsters' bodies work, but the food-to-energy equation seems to apply to them as much as it does to humans.

"YES, OF COURSE!" Papyrus latches onto the idea like a puppy with a toy rope. He springs to the refrigerator and starts pulling out ingredients with the energetic joy cooking always brings out of him. "I SHALL MAKE THE LARGEST AND MOST MAGNIFICENT BREAKFAST THAT HAS EVER BEEN EATEN, AND YOU, SISTER, CAN CLEAN AND DRESS OUR BROTHER'S WOUNDS... IF YOU CAN WINKLE HIM OUT OF HIS CLOTHING. HE SEEMS VERY ATTACHED TO IT TODAY."

"it's attached to me," Sans grouches, tugging at his shirt. You wince in sympathy.

"We'll go slow, okay?" you say, taking his hem and peeling it upwards a centimeter at a time. When you reach his ribcage, you gasp. Scratches and cuts criss-cross his bones, some so deep they're more like gouges. Most of them have scabbed over, but several are still bleeding, and more break open when you pull the t-shirt away from them. "Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick," you breathe, dismayed.

Sans snickers. "is that one of roxy's?"

"Usually," you admit. "I only use it on special occasions." Your eyes rise to meet his. "Are you going to be okay?"

"i'll be fine," he reassures you. "i actually feel better than i thought i would." His eyes wander away, taking on a distant, thoughtful expression, and he mutters, "weird."

"YES, BROTHER, YOU ARE RECOVERING REMARKABLY WELL," Papyrus interjects, glancing over his shoulder at the two of you. "I AM SURPRISED YOU ARE CONSCIOUS. CLEARLY, I HAVE HAD A POSITIVE INFLUENCE ON YOU!"

"'cause obviously, health is just a matter of willpower," Sans grumbles.

"Sarcasm is beneath you," you tell him archly, and recommence removing his shirt.

"aww, but it's so easy," Sans whines, and then winces as you tug the tee over his head. You wad up the ruined shirt and toss it onto the table.

"I AM MAKING CROISSANTS, AND IF YOU ARE SARCASTIC AGAIN YOU WILL NOT GET ANY," Papyrus scolds, not bothering to turn and look at his brother.

"You're so snitty this morning," you add, not without fondness, as you reach for a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

"everything hurts, and it's not morning until the sun is up." Sans is still grouchy, but he's smiling a little now.

You apply some peroxide to a clean rag and dab at one of the deeper cuts on his ribcage. You can see him struggling not to flinch. "Can monsters get infections?" you find yourself asking.

"yeah, but they just prevent wounds from healing. i heard they can make humans sick, even kill them?" The last is phrased like a statement but presented as a question.

"They can," you confirm. You're focused on cleaning Sans's wounds, and don't look up at his face.

"sounds inconvenient." There's a slight tension in his voice that wasn't there before, accompanied by a stiffening of his body. You chalk it up to pain and keep disinfecting, but you do respond with a nod.

"Can monsters bleed to death?" you ask next.

"sort of?" Sans sounds uncertain. You lean close to him to clean a cut on his collarbone. The wound wraps around the delicate bone, ending on the inner surface near his vertebrae. He must have twisted as whatever-it-was raked him, to get a scratch like this. "it's more from loss of magic," Sans continues, voice tight. "magic and blood are connected. if you're hurt like that... aah..."

"Sorry."

"'s okay. you lose magic when you lose blood, and whatever magic you have left is being consumed in the healing process. if too much magic drains out or gets used up, there's nothing left to keep us together. we're made of the stuff, after all." He grips your hand in his, stopping your cleaning efforts. "let me finish that one?"

"It's done already," you inform him. "Why didn't your pseudo-flesh protect you?" You start on his face. He watches you work from a distance of centimeters, expression intense and oddly conflicted.

"it did. just couldn't protect me from everything."

"God, Sans, you can feel through that stuff, right?"

"uh-huh." Your face is so close to his you can feel his breath brush against you. Your heart chooses this inappropriate time to stutter and clench, and you have to remind your hand to keep moving.

"It must have hurt so much," you mumble, almost to yourself.

"wasn't so bad," Sans replies with a shrug. Because you've been resting your elbow on his shoulder joint, this disrupts your equilibrium and you accidentally slap him across the face with the rag.

"Oops! Sorry!"

"why you gotta rag on me?"

"I changed my mind. I'm not sorry." You flap the rag against his cheek again. Sans chuckles. You move around to his back.

"They're everywhere. What were you doing?"

"i, uh, i 'ported into a holly hedge."

"Har har, funny bones."

"no, really, that shit is way worse than it sounds. for real."

You pause, blinking. "Holly hedge?"

"holly hedge."

You have to stick your fingers between two of Sans's ribs to reach a gouge that, if he can be believed, is from a branch that literally impaled him. He gasps and grips the edge of the table. The pale blue light in his chest flickers brightly for a moment, like a loose light bulb.

"We should get one for the yard. We can train it to eat anyone who comes too close."

Sans laughs at that. When you ask your next question, though, the atmosphere sobers immediately.

"Why are you still keeping me out of this?" You reach for the bandages and begin the process of wrapping them around his torso. You don't need to cover every scratch; you only need to protect them from dirt and debris, so there's no need to bandage each bone individually.

"dunno," Sans says quietly. "i don't want you to get hurt? don't want you to worry or argue with me?"

"I guess those are reasons," you say doubtfully. "They might even be convincing if you didn't start with 'dunno.'"

You're at his back, so you can't see his face, but his posture droops a little. His phalanges play an anxious tattoo on the table. For once in his life, he's silent.

"You really don't know, huh?"

"i have some guesses." His voice is so low the sound of sizzling bacon from Papyrus's masterpiece-in-the-making almost drowns it out.

"You don't have to do this all alone."

Sans starts to turn, as if to look at you, but you push on his shoulder to keep him facing forward. Most of his gouges have stopped bleeding again, and you'd like to keep it that way. You almost don't hear Sans mumble, "i've been doing things on my own for so long... i just don't know how to..."

You're reaching for Sans again, not physically but emotionally. You didn't even will it; it's happening naturally. This time, you can immediately feel that warm current inside you start to trickle into him from your points of contact. "Let me in," you say softly, half-pleading, half finishing Sans's sentence. You're only vaguely aware that you said it out loud.

Sans stiffens. "what're you doing?"

"Uh... what?" The flow stops at your surprise.

Your hand has been resting on his shoulder. Now Sans reaches back to grip your wrist and pull your arm forward, over his shoulder, so he can scrutinize your hand. Pressed to his back, you can't see his face, but his sudden intensity is readily apparent. "What is it?" you ask, shocked.

"what was that? was that what i think it was?" Sans releases your wrist and examines his scratched and bloody arm instead. You follow his gaze, and then follow his motion, grabbing his wrist and pulling his arm up so you can see it better.

"ow!"

There's a light scratch running down his radius that you're sure was a deep gouge before. You're sure of it. You trace a finger gently along next to it. "Wasn't this deeper?" you ask, but you know the answer before the question leaves your lips.

Sans is gazing at your face, head turned so he can see you as you rest your chin on his shoulder. "a lot of these were deeper," he answers, and you can't tell whether that low rich voice of his carries wonder or dread. "what did you do?" The question is almost a whisper.

"I don't know. Nothing! ...I think." But even as you reply, you're recalling that feeling, the warm current, the pull of connection between you and Sans, and as it's remembered, so it happens, as easy as drawing breath now, and nearly as unconscious.

The light in Sans's chest pulses like a heartbeat. The two of you look down at it simultaneously, and then return your gazes to Sans's un-bandaged arm. Your eyes widen and your breath is stolen away: the bone is knitting before your eyes. The change is slow, but it's there. There's no denying it.

"how are you doing that?" Sans asks, seemingly awestruck. He lifts his eye lights to look at you, and you watch his eye sockets widen in shock as if you're on the other end of a long tunnel. He lurches to his feet, chair clattering to the floor, reaching for you even as your arms slip from his shoulders and you fall backward into darkness.

"Checkers!"

~ Author's Note ~

You'd think Papyrus would be all sweet and accommodating when his brother is hurt or sick. Surprise! His bedside manner is the WORST. :P He just doesn't understand weakness at all and thinks everyone can bull right through their troubles the way he can.

There's been entirely too much getting sick and injured and passing out recently in this story. EVERYBODY NEEDS TO BE SAFER! I swear, I should probably baby-proof this biz...