Chapter Text
“c’n i have a hug?”
Red’s eye lights practically creak as they tear themselves away from the TV and hit Sans with a thud.
“uh…what?”
“a hug,” Sans tries again. “can i have one?”
Sans doesn’t stir from where he’s sprawled on his side like he fell there a while back and couldn’t get up, but this is just how he relaxes. Red’s sitting on the middle of his spine in his usual spread eagle slump, mellowing out on this random show they discovered where puppets make fun of bad movies.
It’s the kind of experience that demands absolutely nothing from the viewer, not even paying attention. Sans has been playing Bejeweled and reading papers challenging his last one in intermittent driblets on his phone since….who knows. Discovery turned into a marathon at some point yesterday, maybe.
Red actually has been watching it full on, hence the squeaky hinges on the attention switch. Sans doesn’t remember the last time one of them said something. Red’s gaze is weighty as hell, but also somehow simultaneously demands nothing. Sans doesn’t know why Red’s so hard for him to read. You’d think someone who’s also basically you would be an open book, but…not so much.
“why?” Red asks with absolutely no inflection.
Because he’s lonely. Because no one except his brother has touched him for more than a few seconds in nearly a year. Because Red’s one of the few people he feels like he can ask without risking something amorphous and inexplicable that he is nevertheless not willing to.
“because i want one,” he rumbles, since that is also true. “it’s just a question,” he continues, belatedly getting flustered, “and ‘no’ is an answer.”
A faint crease appears between Red’s sockets, like Sans’s disclaimer is weirder than asking for a hug in the first place. Which it isn’t, but Red’s over there acting like he doesn’t know it’s weird, as if he was-
“how ‘bout a cuddle?” Red asks, tilting his skull at the TV and keeping his eyes on Sans. “i wanna see how many more pieces a magic jewelry are gonna deus outta this machina.”
Sweat mists his frontal bone, but with him that doesn’t really mean much. He’s just a sweaty guy. Probably partly from carrying around the sheer amount of magic that holds him together. It’s what gently swells out the front of his threadbare black band shirt, its overwhelming force in potentia holding his clothes away from his bones same as Sans, just a little more. Funny, because his scarred bones are slightly smaller all over. A touch more delicate. Kind of a weird way to think about it, and he doesn’t know why he is. All it means is Red’s a little fatter, Sans slightly bigger-boned. Heh.
Sans does something like a shrug, something like a nod.
Red grunts, pulls his stocking feet up on the couch cushion. He stands up on it, which—okay, that surprises Sans a little. But he just walks across the cushions to Sans’s side of the couch and bends over to touch the armrest above his head. Then he slots himself neatly between Sans and the back of the couch, lowering himself quick in a weird sideways pushup. Also surprising.
Not as surprising as how good it actually feels to have all that potentia crammed right up against him, gently thrumming and alive, touching him in all the right ways and none of the wrong ones. Red puts an arm over him like an afterthought, but the way it settles Sans back against him is careful and precise. Sans had no idea he actually carried tension is his body, but he discovers there was a surprising amount as it drains away into Red’s cradling warmth.
His lumbar has never been this supported.
Oh god. It’s nice. It is really nice.
Red’s got his bigass head balanced partly on the arm of the couch and partly on his fist, chin hovering over Sans’s skull. Every once in a while he frowns, exhales with a subvocal grunt like he always does when he’s watching something. Sans can feel it from this close. Little puffs that tickle the rims of his sockets.
He smells inexplicably and pleasantly of grape soda, along with his usual sweaty skeleton smell. Seems Sans finds the combination agreeable enough to make the pleasant looseness in his hips from getting cuddled turn a little warmer than he expected. The warmth begins a slow creep into the bowl of his pelvis, and Sans looks around for a distraction.
“do you sharpen these or something?”
“mmh?”
“they just grow like this? or d’you do something to make em sharp?”
Red looks down at Sans playing with his fingertip with a weird little smile. Same one as when he forgets to be mean about something, makes a buttless joke, or is just kinda having an okay day.
“i bite em,” he says shortly. “harder habit to kick than smokes, and i don’t even remember starting, so.” A soft huff. “figured you woulda noticed by now. remind me to invite you to my poker game round back.”
Oh. Well, now that he says it, Sans remembers seeing him and his brother with their fingers in their mouths, worrying them absently between sharp teeth. Like, all the time. Sans diddles the tip with his blunter distal phalanx, watches the movie and enjoys the cuddle. It’s nice to have his theory confirmed that despite Red being a sentient dick joke with wheels and bells on, he’s not the ‘when in doubt, start groping’ type.
And it’s not like that with them, anyhow. It’s...not. Is it? It’s not. Red just has a vested interest in Sans for his own mysterious reasons. And if it was like that, he would have made a move or something by now. It’s not like he’s fucking shy.
“host guy ain’t bad looking for a human,” Red mutters, reclaiming his hand to diddle at his prosthetic tooth. It gets little bits of stuff stuck between the bone and the gold sometimes, and Red tends to pick at it even when nothing is. He licks it anyhow, then wipes his finger on the couch before putting his hand back. He doesn’t react when Sans reclaims it, nor does he seem to expect a response to his observation. Red doesn’t seem to expect anything of him, ever.
Sans knows why the bar’s on the ground, which is precisely where it should be. Red took a shortcut into Sans’s bedroom one day, found him half dusted in his own filth for no reason at all. There wasn’t much left in Sans capable of caring about things at that point, but his mind still filed away what he saw in Red’s eyes. Not what Sans was used to.
Red seemed to take it personally, but not….it wasn’t… eh. It was like he was annoyed. Vaguely offended, as if Sans was walking in front of him too slowly and he was in a hurry. Like Sans wasn’t literally dusting the hard way, as if Sans’s response to being unable to even just fucking live was…proportionate. Understandable, yet unacceptable.
Nothing like the look in Tori’s eyes when she finally figured out that Sans was going to keep laughing her overtures off forever, always sliding to the side when it got a little too real for a second. Sans just nodded and shuffled away, relieved when the window shut on the smell of potentially forgotten pies burning. Grillby saw something in him at some point, maybe. His mistake. Fun while it lasted, but all Sans saw was a future full of missed shifts, dirty glasses, and uncooked books. Sans was nothing but honored to be his best man when he found someone. A real partner. Someone who can be relied on. Sans doesn’t miss the look he still gives him sometimes, same one he shot Sans at his wedding. Once in a while Sans gets drunk enough to remind him how much better off he is.
Red’s never looked at Sans like he expected better, because it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t. Sans just is whatever he is at any given moment. It’s as if Red is somehow immune to being disappointed. Probably not true, but he seems like he is. And something in Sans vibes with that hardcore. It’s like Red doesn’t read into shit, either do or you don’t. The kind of guy you can ask for a strings-free cuddle on the couch, without having to be the kind of person who deserves the comfort of being held gently for no reason at all. It’s nice.
It takes him way too long to realize his mind’s doing the thing where Sans thinks he’s paying attention to something, but he’s actually thinking about a bunch of stuff he’d rather not instead. He makes a renewed commitment to applying himself, which he only does for things that do not matter. He grounds himself in the warm body cradling his own, a presence so sweet and strange it dilates his mind like alcohol.
Take a page out of Red’s book. Just be, instead of being preoccupied with how bad he is at it.
Sans watches the plot of the movie crumble like overworked tinfoil and plays with pointy fingers, eventually becoming aware of a slow change in the way Red holds himself behind him. Doesn’t think much of it until he shifts for real and takes his hand back. Sans glances up at him. He’s up on his elbow and starting to slither away. He still seems to be watching the movie. Maybe.
“’m gonna sit back over there f’r a bit,” Red says, a barely-there hoarseness making Sans’s soul flutter for no particular reason. Sans only reaches back and touches his shirt, but Red stops leaving anyhow.
“why?” Sans asks before he gives himself a chance to think about it.
A few beads of Red’s sweat join forces to trickle downward.
“’cause you asked for a hug. not my boner pokin’ ya in the back.”
Red huffs through his sharp, humorless grin. He keeps his eyes on the screen.
Sans’s fingers close on cloth.
“you don’t have to.” He doesn’t mean to whisper it. That’s just how it comes out, and he’s expecting just about anything in response. Sans wouldn’t have pushed it this far if he didn’t already know Red’s just as much a mess as he is. A crass joke, maybe? A quick move to pin him, then shortcut to the other side of the room to laugh? An awkward declination seems likely, or an even crasser proposition to dissolve this not tense but not exactly comfortable atmosphere.
He’s not expecting Red’s eyes to tear themselves from the safety zone once more and fall on Sans’s mouth, of all places.
“you want a kiss to go with yer hug?”
The hoarseness rises to the top of Red’s already-rich voice like cream, sending a thrill down Sans’s spine that turns into movement. A quick flicker like a fish’s tail, a spiral that turns his body smoothly so he’s facing Red.
“yeah.” Sans lifts his chin like a challenge, like he’s daring him to drink wasabi through his nasal cavity.
Red just lies back down, the distinct absence of fuss knocking the wind out of Sans’s sails before they have a chance to billow free and flip the table. Which was the same thing that happened when he did dare Red to drink wasabi through his nasal cavity, now he thinks about it. He just fucking did it. Then he burped the words “good shit” and blew it across the table to make Sans smell it.
Red’s body does its own flicker that ends with Sans’s head pillowed on his bent arm. Then he puts a hand on Sans’s hip to keep his pelvis where it is. Before Sans has a chance to process the implications of that, or the ones in Red’s faintly puzzled smile…just like when he’s doing math in his head….
The press of Red’s sweaty maxilla to his makes it clear that Sans did not think this through. He had not pondered what it would actually be like if Red kissed him. He failed to consider what happens when sharp teeth part and the gentlest touch Sans has ever felt explores the tight seam of his own flat teeth. Alphys would have been disappointed that Red’s tongue doesn’t do anything fanfictiony; it doesn’t seek or delve. It’s passively curious, idly tasting at him while Red’s calm exhale blows grape soda and hot bones into Sans’s skull.
Well. That can’t stand. Sans opens his mouth, and Red shows him not only how to mind the teeth, but demonstrates where he keeps all the softness Sans got a half-imagined glimpse of the day they met. He’s seen it a time or two since, but now he’s feeling it, tasting it, chasing it further into the pliant sweetness of Red’s mouth.
Sans realizes he’s holding him, that he’s holding his breath too. He suck in a big gasp of air through his nasal cavity, abruptly and painfully aware of how hot and full his pelvis is. Tries to get closer, but Red’s still got him at shoulder and hip. It sparks something, though, and Red’s tongue presses into Sans. A ponderous energy like something massive underwater deciding to make its play, made fast and weightless by its environment. Slow swiping, massaging, then all soft again for Sans as he is unexpectedly moved to fanfictiony extremes.
Red has the absolute gall to be the best kisser Sans has ever...kissed. They’re kissing. Shit. Sans yanks his mouth away, gasping. Red gives it up without a fight.
“why do you smell like grape soda?” Sans pants breathlessly right into his face.
The points in Red’s hooded sockets are big as pumpkins. He doesn’t even blink.
“been eatin’ jolly ranchers outta my pocket for pas’ twelve hours or so,” he rumbles, not out of breath at all. “i asked if you wanted some yesterday,” he adds defensively. “i only like the-”
The purple ones, right, Sans remembers as he cuts him off with a clack. He doesn’t hear anything, but he feels a gentle vibration in bone and magic as Red opens right up for him. Sans is already breathless again. Red’s hold is subtly softening, and Sans creeps closer. Red doesn’t do anything, just keeps on letting Sans kiss him as he glides toward him, bone sliding on threadbare cloth making it easy. And it is. So easy to just bring them together, show Red the consequences of his egregious oral talents.
The rest of their bodies meet like their mouths, and Red’s breath finally stutters hard. His hand tightens on Sans’s hip again….but he pulls them tight together instead of trying to keep them apart anymore.
It’s so quiet.
Just the increasingly indistinct wub-wub of whatever’s happening on the screen behind him being drowned out by their ragged panting. The kind of fabric their shorts are made of is slippery. Feels slicker than lube, the friction so minimal Sans nearly wishes he wore jean shorts…or even pants. Something with a seam maybe; a zipper, rougher cloth or something, anything. That’s how he knows his mind’s gone. Flipped right out of his skull like a sizzling burger patty spatula-style by the unhurried, alternating press and give of Red’s tongue, his sharp mouth gone quiet and soft.
Might be the most surprising thing about Red, to Sans at least. That he can be quiet, that he gets quiet on his own if you spend enough time around him. Sometimes listening, or thinking...or the best times when it’s neither. Just hooded sockets, a beer sweating harder than he is, neck craned slightly forward like a turtle about to fall asleep in the sun. Just a little lump on the couch, still and avid as he watches some weird show they found. Turns out that’s the Red Sans asked for a hug, the one who offered a kiss to go with it.
And that’s when Sans realizes not only that he can come from this….he is absolutely going to. Thing is, without something to ground the sensation barreling toward him, he might actually just fly apart. Sans imagines his bones exploding to release the motes of weightless light he feels gathering in his body and soul, this superdense moment sucking in the whole universe like static made of fireflies.
Turns out slipping his hand down between them doesn’t break the spell after all. Just catalyzes it into something that makes the solidity of Red’s arm behind his neck go tight, makes the hand on his hip become another arm wrapped around him. Sans sucks in air and holds it, barely pressing with his fingers so Red knows how close he was, how little it’s taking. Sans can give him that much. Then the moment snaps, tips right over the edge where it promptly implodes.
Sans doesn’t stop kissing, he won’t. This is his kiss. Red gave it to him and he wants it. His mouth goes lax and sloppy anyhow, pleasure blasting through his body like an overcharged wire, just enough pressure like a housing to keep it impossibly contained. Red holds Sans together and kisses deeper against Sans’s clumsy tongue. He sucks in the air cycling raggedly through Sans’s skull hard and sudden like he just woke up. Literally stealing his breath, like he’s reminding Sans that it’s his kiss, too.
Sans thought it would leave him empty, husked in its wake. Instead something sweet and heavy fills him to overflowing as his panting calms, even as he moves his suddenly cringing pelvis aside and gives Red all of his palm instead.
Red’s body curls up tighter but he won’t back away, refusing to put distance between them. Bones tremble in conflict, but his need finally breaks their kiss. He buries his face in Sans’s neck, his voice barely there in the breath that gushes out of him. It cracks right down the middle of his soft oh anyways.
Red wraps around Sans and squeezes him, curling and squirming until Sans feels like a panting shipwreck in the arms of a tiny giant squid. It’s so good Sans tries his noodle-limbed best to reciprocate, but Sans is well and truly Got. Another squeeze is tight enough it makes Sans grunt softly, and Red shimmies so hard against his hand that Sans has to brace his elbow. Then Red’s hips freeze, and he lets out a faint cough. Sans doesn’t have to do anything then except firmly cradle the heartbeat of Red’s climax, experience the uniquely penetrating heat of synthetic fabric slowly becoming wet against his carpals.
Their bodies are so close he can feel each twitch of the tension unwinding from Red. He’s melting in his arms, against his palm...and Sans feels like he’s melting, too. Maybe they’ll merge into the same messy puddle to slip right through the cage of their own bones, leak down through the dirty grating of existence and finally escape. Finally just… get some rest. Together.
It’s a long time before Red finally heaves up on an elbow. His shaky inhale goes out calm and satisfied when Sans cracks open a socket and peers back into the strangeness of a world outside his own skull.
Red looks down at him like a ton of bricks, and Sans goes still.
Whatever’s in those loose orangey-red eyes is something so heavy, omnipresent, and inevitable that Sans failed to dodge it sometime already long past and gone. A slow-motion curveball bigger than the earth, zeroing in on it until it…somehow became it. It’s just where Sans lives now. It just…is. Sans doesn’t dare name it, merely feels it like barometric pressure surrounding him from every direction.
Including from inside.
“think ‘m gonna catch this nap before it catches me,” Red rumbles, sockets drooping in a sated way that makes the base of Sans’s spine tingle. He doesn’t let Sans break his gaze as he pulls a fluffy comforter from the back of the couch over them both in a single, smooth motion. Nor as he tucks it in tight all around them, until Sans is cradled front and back in inescapable softness.
Then he just….touches his face.
Red blinks down at Sans under his spiky paw like a fat, lazy cat that swatted a careless bird clean out of the air… and is about to just fucking sit on it until it loses consciousness.
There’s more than one way to hunt.
Sans’s teeth part in awe. Or chagrin, he’s not really sure.
Red winks.
Then he does just lay down on him. Unapologetic, shameless, and now smelling more like a sweaty guy who just came hard than mysteriously alluring grape candies, Red plops his face in the crook of Sans’s neck and lets out a soul-satisfied sigh. Sans tries to drum up some incredulity as he feels sleep take Red in a wave, bones loosening from the top down until Red’s a living deadweight. Even his snore is quiet tonight.
Sans stares at the deviously familiar fabric of his own couch from a foot away like it betrayed him. Sans isn’t a bird. A bird would've stood a chance. Red just made a nest on Sans’s couch, put Sans in it, and went the hell to sleep on top of him like the absolute egg Sans is. That big feeling comes again in a hot wave, even without lurid scarlet eyes to burn it through Sans’s thick skull. Truth is, Sans doesn’t meet many people smarter than him. So. He doesn’t exactly have a fucking rubric for it, but that matters less than the fact that none of them have been Red.
Red, whose twelvepounder bowling ball of a skull pins Sans’s neck to a wad of blanket he’d already tucked supportively beneath it, his whuffling sleep-sounds pouring down inside Sans’s ribcage.
He feels disturbingly, thoroughly made love to.
Puma Man!! He flies like a moron!! tweedles faintly from behind him.
A secret smile Sans doesn’t know Red’s spied a time or two, to ruinous effect and great consequence, plays across his mouth. The one that only happens when Sans feels sure no one’s looking.
Sans silently decides what he’s going to do about what just happened while Red starts sleeping off his hard work. Okay, so, that was a pretty flawless victory. On the plus side, he probably just got a lot easier to read. Whatever. Sans can count his small change and be glad he doesn’t own a watch in the morning, which is what he and Red both call whatever time they happen to regain consciousness.
Sans lets his sockets close, decides to do what he does best about having just been seduced like a dirtknuckle rube with the least counterable move of all: making Sans think it was all his idea.
Nothing.