Chapter Text
Sans doesn’t want Red to get up. His alarm is going to go off in exactly three minutes, so Sans knows he only has a little bit longer before Red blinks open his sockets and kisses him before rolling out of bed. The kiss he’s looking forward to, but he hates the rest of it. Red is so warm against him, with his arms wrapped tightly around Sans’s ribs. Sans has his skull nestled into his favorite place in the whole wide world - right between Red’s clavicle and cervical vertebrae.
Sans’s fingers are tracing the divots in Red’s bones - scars from his past that Sans has spent their time together mapping and memorizing. Red had told him where each of them had come from - secrets that he’d entrusted Sans with, painting Red in more vulnerable a light than he would ever let anyone but Sans see. No one else knew about Red’s past. No one knew how much he’d struggled, how hard he’d fought, how hopeless things always seemed but how despite it all Red never gave up. And it was all so Red and his brother would live to maybe one day see the light of the sun, and the dazzling sight of brilliant balls of gas twinkling in the night sky from millions of lightyears away.
Red loves the night sky, but he’d always say he loves Sans more. He held strong that Sans was the best thing about escaping his hellish home. Sans wasn’t sure why he’d think that. there’s nothing to love about me, Sans would think. After everything Red had been through he should be the one struggling, but no. It was Sans.
Sans should be happy. He was free, he was loved. But the ghosts of his past still haunted him - how many times he’d failed to save his brother, how many times he’d had to kill the kid, how much he had constantly let his entire race down because he was too weak. No one held a grudge, because no one else remembered. But Sans remembered. And it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He spent most of his time hiding out at home. Occasionally Red would get him to go to Grillby’s, but they would have to go to Red’s Grillby’s. Sans couldn’t bring himself to face his own. Once every few weeks they’d get together with the other skeletons - but no one ever asked Sans and Red to host. It was understood that Sans needed the ability to escape when their gatherings got to be too much for him, and the others knew that home was Sans’ safe space.
Even though he was expecting it, Sans jumps when Red’s alarm goes off. Red stirs a little before opening his sockets, greeting Sans with a smile and a gentle kiss to his frontal bone, and a croaky “good mornin, sweetheart.” Sans clutches onto him a little tighter, still not ready to let him go even though he knows Red needs to get ready for work. After all, he is the one who provides for them because Sans is, in his own eyes, completely worthless.
“five more minutes?” Sans asks as Red tries to let go and roll away from him.
“yeah, alright,” Red agrees, pulling Sans into him.