“astounding.”
He snorts and you shift your hands in your pockets, straightening your spine proudly, “S'good, yeah?”
“oh my god,” Sans snickers, “yeah. you did good, kid.” He passes you the zip lock baggie of cold popcorn and Frisk shoves a handful in your mouth. You kick your legs idly against the side of the building you and Sans are sitting on and giggle when someone else stops and bends down to try and pick up one of the quarters you hot glued to the sidewalk.
He laughs hardest when one pulls a pocketknife from their coat and proceeds to rip one of the quarters away from the pavement. You holler at him and boo, which only makes Sans laugh harder. Frisk hopes the man who took the quarter buys something nice with it.
“Frisk, Chara, have you two done your homework yet?” The two of you jump, startled, at her voice behind you. Your character jerks on the tv and falls into a lava pit. You turn and smile warily at her.
“Uh… Yes?”
She snorts and plucks the controller from your hands, “Aha! I did not think so. Get to it, little ones!”
“Ha ha,” Asriel laughs, little leaf arms wiggling toward the controller that Mom hands him, “get wrecked.”
“Asriel,” she tuts, “Be nice. Did you finish yours?” She asks.
“Yup,” he says, resetting the game and opening his save file. “Finished reading The Great Gatsby like an hour ago. Paper’s dictated and done. Can I have butterscotch pie after dinner?”
Mom’s face lights up and she leans down to smooch the top of Asriel’s petally head. He tries to look tough and ignore it, but he’s blushing. “Of course you can, my child. Frisk, Chara! I haven’t forgotten about you! Go get your backpack!”
Frisk wades out into the surf hesitantly, and Undyne follows a bit closely, clearly nervous. Frisk steps a little further, so the water comes up to your chest before taking in a deep breath and puffing out your cheeks. They duck their head and dive under the water, arms flailing wildly like a cartoon character. They try to breathe through their nose but you stop them. You’re trying very hard not to interfere, to let them learn to swim on their own, but you really don’t want seawater up your sinuses.
Undyne grabs them by the shoulders and hefts them back to their feet when they start to sputter. You get sea water in your sinuses anyway, and after Undyne unsuccessfully shows Frisk a few POWERFUL swimming techniques you take over, and dog paddle a few circles until they seem to get it, then back off and let them do it themself.
By the end of the day they’ve exhausted you both swimmin up and down the beach and they sit in Alphys’s lap in the sand and eat Nice Cream Papyrus brings you while Undyne and Alphys pretend they aren’t sneaking kisses in your peripheral vision. Papyrus brings you two Nice Creams, which is thoughtful, but unnecessary. You eat both anyway.
Grillby pushes a basket of fries toward you before you have to ask for it and the two of your tear into it hungrily. His are always the best, fried just right with real magic. You’re halfway through the basket when Sans wanders in, yawning, and plops down next to you.
“Where you sleeping in the middle of the day?” Frisk asks and you snort. He shrugs and grins and picks up a ketchup bottle. You smack his hand and he drops it and frowns and sighs and steals a handful of your fries instead.
“ay, what can i say. i was bone tired.”
“Feeling well ribs-ted?”
He grimaces, “that was bad, kid.”
“What can I say, I was on the spot. You’re right though, it was a little on the nose.”
“Tangential at best,” he snickers, and steals another of your fries. Your frown. He can just get his own. This is on his tab anyway.
“I thought you had my back, Sans,” you grin when he rolls his eyes, “I thought you’d give me the benefrisk of the doubt.”
He actually laughs at that one and points at you with a fry, “there we go, that’s more your level.”
You frown, “Was that a pun?”
“huh?”
“Level.”
“wha- oh. huh. i guess it kinda was.” He scratches his jawline thoughtfully and cuts you a glance when you don’t laugh, “ah, kid, don’t worry about it. it’s knife to know ya.” You grimace, and play with your food a bit. “seriously, don’t get all worked up over it. you ready to go work on your science project?”
“I’m not done with my fries,” you say, and hold one up to illustrate the point. He grabs a messy handful and shoves it in his mouth. You grab at the remainder desperately before he can and the two of you slap each other over salty french fries trying to finish the bucket before the other can. Frisk has several comments about how you’re acting like toddlers you ignore, but you won’t lose an eating fight to a skeleton.
Grillby just sighs at the mess.
You feel a little silly.
Frisk’s wearing an Audino t-shirt from redbubble and a pokemon trainer hat from ebay, waving. Little flag with a crudely drawn approximation of Asriel’s face on it. You feel a little weird cheering your brother on at a video game tournament. You don’t really understand the rules so when people hiss in shock and awe or cheer you aren’t… Entirely certain what’s happening. You try and be supportive anyway, but you kinda wish Frisk had let you stay home.
Asriel mashes his tiny leaf hands against his gameboy. You know the Pokemon he’s fighting with right now is a Crobat, because he said that’s what it was called, over and over again, when he would go on and on about its stats and all kinds of wild stuff he was doing to make the perfect one- it seemed to be paying off though, you guess, the way everyone was cheering.
Asriel hits some kind of button and the other Pokemon falls down- oh god, you have no idea what it is, it’s blue, you don’t know these things at all- and the crowd roars. He turns and looks at you and waves, smiling, actually smiling, and you wave back right handed. You think he just won.
Frisk’s fingers are slow against the keys, tapping with unjustified concentration, off tempo but accurate. Undyne gives them a patient, toothy smile and corrects the placement of their hands. Shyren hovers to your right and smiles at you when you get it right, pressing keys with ghostly hands she probably has that you can’t see.
Frisk and Shyren play a choppy, ugly little song that reeks of needing practice, but Undyne’s delighted and keeps saying how much better it was than last time. She makes you both tea while Frisk and Shyren play Chopsticks in Undyne’s apartment and you hope Frisk gets good enough to cover Dragonforce songs for you.
Frisk isn’t very good at holding heavy containers of liquid like milk jugs, but you are, so you do most of the holding of the watering can. Frisk picks which flowers you water, though, and Dad plucks weeds from the flower beds while they’re still dry.
“Chara, Frisk,” he says, plucking a dandelion from the petunia bed, “It’s almost time for lunch, do you know what you want?”
You tip the watering can over a row of tulips, “Frisk wants grilled cheese.”
“Do you want grilled cheese?”
“I want bagel bites.”
Dad laughs, a big, booming noise you can feel in your bones, “How about half a grilled cheese and four bagel bites?” You smile and nod enthusiastically. He ruffles your hair and wipes dirt from his paws onto his jeans.
Sans leans back against his chair and you look up from your homework at his low groan.
“Refill?” Frisk asks and he nods without opening his eyes. You push yourself to your feet and grab his cup from beside his keyboard and pad into the kitchen, grabbing a two liter of soda from the fridge and pouring it into the glass.
“What page are you on?” You call from the kitchen and he makes a bleary noise.
“it doesn’t really work like th- seventeen, i guess,” he sighs. You think seventeen sounds like a lot of work.
“Is that almost done?” You ask, hesitantly, and put the bottle back in the fridge.
“no.”
“Oh.”
“it’s been- it’s been like thirty years since i wrote this,” he says, and takes the glass from you, “i barely even remember what my thesis was supposed to be.”
“I believe in you,” Frisk comments, and plops back down on the couch with your math homework.
He snorts and sighs, rubbing at his eyes.
“Hey, not-doctor,” you say, and he leans around the screen to look at you, “What’s the root of X squared minus two X minus two equals zero?”
He stares blankly at you for a moment before the lights in his eyes dart downward and back up, “x minus one, squared. uh, x minus one in parenthesis, squared, equals three.”
You smile at him, “See? You got this.” He rolls his eyes at you.
“that has literally nothing to do with my area of study,” he groans and goes back to the screen, but he’s smiling a real smile. You write down the answer on your homework.
You adjust the corners of the frame a little more. It’s hard to tell if it’s even, but it looks okay, so you step back and tilt your head a few directions until you’re satisfied it’s the best you’re gonna get and nod in satisfaction.
“It looks good!” Frisk says, smiling and your snort.
“Yeah, it’s not bad.”
You get a few weird looks from passing mall patrons that you ignore. You’re quite used to it, but everyone who matters knows your deal, so.
“I really like it! You totally deserved to win, yo.”
You turn, and shove your hands into your pockets, embarrassed. MK is beaming at you, tail wagging.
“Thanks, buddy,” you say, and he trots up next to you to look at your painting. You and Frisk collabed on it- it’s mostly yours, you’re the artist, Frisk is better with music and dancing and that sort of thing, but Frisk helped. Neither of you really do anything without the other in some capacity. It’s a picture of your family. You, and Azzy, and Mom and Dad and at Frisk’s behest, Undyne and Alphys and Papyrus and Sans and- well, at that point you’d gotten a little carried away. There were dogs and spiders and planes and robots and every random person who had showed up at your house to check on you when you’d caught the flu after you and Sans’s fight in the snow. Mom had been so inconsolable. So many people showed up to take care of you.
MK bumps you with their head, some approximation of a hi five or something, a passive gesture of solidarity and runs back around the other side of the divider to find their own art project, which hadn’t placed, but was nice enough. The sophomore art class mall installation was small, this wasn’t a big town by any means, but nice, and you were proud that no one could walk into a JC Penny without seeing your prize winning artwork. A far cry from where you were a year ago, hiding inside Frisk, pretending you weren’t real in a world that didn’t know you existed at all.
Plus, the ribbon is blue, Frisk’s favourite, and every time they see it they swell with pride and you’re a big fan of that. You pull out your phone and take a photo of it hung against the divider and send it to Mom before shoving it back in your pocket.
“Come on,” Frisk says and turns you back toward the other side, “Let’s go tell MK their flower pot looks pretty.” You snicker and they pinch you, but they’re still smiling, so it’s okay.