Save Point (Sans x Reader)

Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

Grillby hesitates at the firegirl’s doubt as to whether she should translate his sentence or not. Though he doesn’t have any facial features that resemble eyebrows or a mouth, you’re still able to see confliction when his bright orange fire pales into a yellow colour, eyeglasses focused more than ever on the cup he was wiping down with a cloth. Slowly, he shakes his head from left to right and stops staring at the cup to look at her. He dismisses the idea and delivers another message in return, making her turn back to you.

“He asks if you want a refill for your coffee,” she explains, small, dot-like eyes narrowing in mischief -- you were certain she would be grinning right at this moment if she were to have a mouth. She receives a nudge from Grillby, and the latter stares her down until she gives in to his silent scolding. “And. . . for how long you’ve lived at this city.”

You take the empty coffee mug and hand it over to Grillby, shaking your head ‘no’ in response to his first question. Then, you shift on your seat and think back on how long it had been since your arrival here.

“Three or four months,” you reply, trying to reel your thoughts back in. “I’m still getting used to it, if I’m gonna be honest. The town I lived in was pretty. . .  secluded, to say the least. And it didn’t really see all. . . this as acceptable.” You gesture at the premises surrounding you, from the group of six -- four humans and two monsters -- chatting away among themselves and the few families eating together regardless of their appearance or race. It feels like a safe haven for both human and monster kind -- that is, until you hear someone laugh in a mocking manner, the words that follow making you freeze on the spot.

“Never thought a guy like you’d be hanging out with someone like that.”

Tense, you almost crack your neck trying to get a view of who’s talking to who. Your eyes come across a drunken bunny monster with an arm hung over Sans’s shoulders. They seem too close for comfort by the way Sans leans back, though they don’t seem to pick up the signs. Rather, they press themselves even closer to the skeleton’s side, removing their hand away from his shoulders to stand in front of him and jab a finger at his chest.

“You know what people like them do to us,” the monster scolds, ears flopped as they send a disapproving look his way. “Frisk might be nice and all. . . But all the other humans just take advantage of us and spit on our faces whenever they don’t like something about us. A fun guy like you shouldn’t be taking this chore -- leave it to the monsters actually patient enough to deal with humans like (Y/N).”

You gulp down the saliva stuck on your throat, the thick substance almost burning you when it goes down. You’re about to speak when Sans beats you to it.

“Nobody’s free from judgment or consequences,” he intervenes, leaning back until he reaches your seat, his escape from their constant proximity cornering him between you and the bunny monster. “So far, I have no reason not to trust (Y/N), so I’m gonna keep hanging out with them -- whether you like it or not. You’re not my brother or anythin’ like that to be sharing your two cents like this.”

Without any argument to retaliate, the bunny monster scoffs and balls their hands tight. They spare a glare your way and push themselves between you and Sans, jabbing a finger at your chest the same way they had done with him.

“You better watch what you’re doing, (Y/N),” they hiss, words heavy with venom and rencor. “This may be a friendly place, but that doesn’t mean I like the game you’re playing with us here -- You can’t just jump in on this city all of a sudden and act like you’re not one of those people who want nothing to do with us in the first place.”

“I think you could use a moment to cool down,” you reason, trying to ease them down. The thick, orange hairs on their arms were all ruffled and their ears were perked up, signaling they were on edge and ready to keep going with their argument. Instead of following along, you push their finger away from your chest and look at them in the eyes. The smell of booze is strong and prominent in their breath, though -- from the looks of it -- it seems they’d already entered the premises drunker than the average person could probably tolerate. “Do you want some water or anything to wash down what you had?”

“I’m fine as is.” They end that sentence with a sharp finality behind their voice, glaring at you and Sans one final time before pulling away and stomping off to one of the empty tables around. Grillby only spares the two of you a look along the lines of if should he throw them out or not, but you shake your head gently and manage to regain some calm, assuring him it was fine as long as they didn’t turn to insults or threats again.

★

It’s one hour earlier from the time you expected to be back when you make it to the safety of your home. Sans is walking next to you, still choosing to stay by your side after the tense incident at the bar. He looked to be onset on keeping you company until the very end as a way to make up for that confrontation.

You reach your front door without so much as a word exchanged between you, the tentative subject you had between you refusing to be addressed. The door opens with a click after you insert the key and turn it around.

“Do you want to come in? There’s no one here -- Faust’s still with his other parent, so he won’t be back until two more hours.” A faint heat rises your cheeks when remembering the night you first shared with your ex. You’d done something like this -- the cliche of saying your family wasn’t home, with the addition that your bed had room for two.

“Sure,” he replies, a chuckle finally breaking the dubiousness he seemed to have on his face since leaving Grillby’s diner-slash-bar. “I don’t really feel like being alone to think right now.”

The two of you enter your home and settle on the living room. You quickly resort to bringing up the only other subject you could think about out of the few you had to choose: how work was going for him, and how it was on your side. The elephant in the room shrinks in size the more you exchange words with him, growing more at comfort the more minutes go by.

“So how’s it going for you?” the skeleton asks, deciding to change the topic of his job and the new things that came to him each day at work. Now, the attention was concentrated on you as he waited for your response. “That flour in your hair from a few weeks ago has to mean something. Do you always bake stuff for the shop, or do you only work behind the counter?”

“I’ve been in charge of breadmaking recently,” you reply, placing your hands on your lap. “But that’s really all I can bake properly -- I’ve been meaning to take a course on baking, but I can’t really do that right now with our budget, schedule, and all that.”

He arches an eye socket, staring at you, a puzzled look showing on the white light of his irises. “Do you always have Faust with you still? I figured his other parent would wanna split the time now that they’re back.”

“Oh no,” you correct, shaking your head with a strained smile. “They’re not back permanently -- they usually come over to visit on holidays or summer, but they’ve been visiting more often lately to see how Faust’s doing at school. I still have him with me seven days a week.”

The more you talk about that subject, the more you begin to think you were being taken as a fool by your ex, but you weren’t exactly ready to come to that conclusion just yet. You still understood they had to help out their family to adjust in life overseas, and that they would come back as soon as that was settled with. You were told to wait -- a wait that seemed to be stretching out more and more each day.

“You doing okay there, pal?”

You’re shaken out of your spiral at the sound of Sans speaking up again. You look at him again to see a touch of concern marked on the white of his irises -- as if fearing he’d taken up a touchy subject.

“Yeah. . .” The word that leaves your mouth doesn’t quite match what you choose to do next. Slowly, you shuffle closer to his side and hesitate when it’s time to follow with the next step. You wanted nothing more than to ask if he'd like to go for a walk with you until you cleared your head, yet the drunken bunny’s words kept you from doing that. “I just. . . have a lot on my mind right now.”