STILL DOESN'T HAVE A TITLE (COPY)
When Papyrus was seven, Sans gave him a snowglobe.
He’d spotted it in Gerson’s shop one day, he’d told him, miraculously mostly still in decent shape; as it originally had come from the dump, according to the old turtle monster.
It was small. It had a mold of what looked to be a Gyftmas tree inside a transparent, fragile bubble, and when Papyrus shook it, as Sans suggested, the weird pellets on the ground got shook up too and fell like snow.
It was a really, really nice gift. And from that day on, Papyrus decided he really liked “snowglobes.”
.
.
.
When Papyrus broke it only three days later, he panicked.
He’d stupidly left it near the edge on his desk at school at some point or another, for one reason or another (to show it off so everyone else might admire it and then if asked he could boast about how his brother had found it for him and that his brother was very nice and cool and smart), but when he got up to go to his next class he clumsily, stupidly bumped the desk, and stupidly he was too slow to catch it and he let it fall. On impact with the floor, the glass cracked.
He had tried to fix it with some glue from arts and crafts but he must have done something wrong then too, or used too much glue, or not enough because it only made the cracks worse and the—
…
The… Entire globe had shattered. And fell apart completely. The liquid hadn’t spilled everywhere but it’d been enough of a mess on the classroom floor and he’d had to find a lot of paper towels and…
Instead of trying to make new friends that day at recess, like he would normally, he sat outside on the gravel path and cried into his knees.
For once, Papyrus was glad he was alone.
He didn’t know what else to do with the broken pieces of what his brother had once gifted him whole, so he carefully stuffed the remains inside his backpack, scared to break anything else; as if there was anything else to break.
(There was, he thought, fearfully. If he told him. If he told him what happened, if…)
The worst part, he’d figured, would be returning back home, knowing what he had done. And it was very nearly the worst thing. The sins he’d committed at school that day weighed heavy on his back, and he couldn’t look his brother in the eyes properly anymore.
But, the very worst part, was when Sans had finally, gently pulled him aside to ask him again—as he had earlier, when he’d first noticed the no-eye-contact-thing—what was wrong.
“Did something happen?” The corners of his smile looked off, which meant he might frown if Papyrus didn’t— “Pap, what’s wrong?”
In that moment Papyrus felt like crying again but he swallowed it down; barely managing a too big, too wide smile of his own. “NOTHING!! IT’S FINE! I’M FINE!!! SCHOOL WAS GOOD!!! EVERYTHING IS GOOD, CAN I GO TO BED NOW??? PLEASE?” he couldn’t help but add somewhat weakly at the end, said around the lump in his throat and it took a good deal in him to not let the lump escape with it.
He didn’t ask for a bedtime story that night.
He doubted Fluff Bunny could make him feel better.
From then on, Papyrus avoided his brother.
If he had all the tools, he’d be doing it for a good reason—in that in secret, that whole time he’d be working to repair the snowglobe. He almost wanted to ask the new(?) Royal Scientist for help, she was always very nice and interested in human things but Sans was really good friends with her and Papyrus was too scared that word might get out if he tried something like that.
And that was if she even had the means or supplies to help him. He was probably hopeless already.
…
That…
That was why he just couldn’t bring himself to come out with the truth.
In retrospect, if he’d thought on a scenario like this before it happened he’d have thought it easy. But it had happened and it wasn’t easy, and he…
He felt so, so awful.
More so, when Sans started drawing into himself too.
Sans had stopped going in to hug him, or bonk their skulls together, or nuzzle him or hold him or do anything normal other than to ask him, Are you okay?
At some point Papyrus had started to see his usual grin falter, until it dropped completely. Sometimes he was a beat too late to put it back into place when he knew that Papyrus noticed.
Papyrus couldn’t peer into his head, but he figured Sans might be upset with him, at this point, even without the knowledge of what had happened to the snowglobe. If he did find out, would he grow to hate him?
Maybe he already hated him without it…
…
One day Papyrus locked himself up in his bedroom so he didn’t have to face his brother at all.
The guilt clawed, and clawed at him, to the point where he couldn’t so much as move from his bed because it was too much.
He wasn’t quite sure, at first, why Sans worried enough about him to knock on his door again. Or—more like pound on it, once he found out what Papyrus was doing and that he couldn’t even open the door to get to him.
“P— Papyrus? o-open the door, please.” His voice was hoarse. Small.
Papyrus brought his knees closer, closer to himself, pressing his teary sockets into his pajamas with a sniffle.
You’ll just hate me more if I do, he wanted to say, but…
“p— p-please, just, just tell me what’s wrong, i…”
He choked on his words.
Was… He crying…?
Papyrus stiffened.
Suddenly, the claws faded.
…Why wasn’t he… Shortcutting, either?
If he really wanted to, he could just…
. . .
Before he could think too much on it Papyrus shot up out of his bed, unlocked the door, and flung it open before quickly retreating.
Hugging his knees tightly again to his chest, the younger watched his older brother watch him, eventually slowly entering the room but not coming any closer.
Something about Sans made him seem smaller than he’d ever been before; almost scared, when they finally locked gazes.
Sans had been crying. There were teartracks down his cheekbones. His eyesockets looked more sunken in than usual.
His arms twitched at his sides, like he wanted to reach out, but just couldn’t bring himself to.
Papyrus wanted to reach out too.
He wanted nothing more than to feel Sans’s comforting arms around him, holding him again,
and yet…
Sans drew in a soft, shaky breath.
“tell me. tell me what’s wrong. please.”
Papyrus looked at him, wary still, tears fully welled and pouring out of his own sockets. He quickly buried them into his knees again, avoiding his brother’s gaze—and somehow, his slight indirect refusal seemed to cause his brother even more distress.
Sans, too, panicked.
“j-just— tell me what i did wrong, Papy, please,” Sans at last begged of him, desperate, “s-so i can— i-i can fix it, i promise, i—“
What?
No no no no that wasn’t—
“No,” Papyrus at last blubbered out, “th-that isn’t— That’s not it, that isn’t it, I…”
The claws returned. And he quickly dissolved into trembles and tears, sobbing only harder when he felt the bed shift a moment later, and Sans pulled him into his lap.
“I d-don’t want you to—to h— Hate me,” he choked, curling up further in his brother’s lap, as though to hide himself even then. “I’m sorry I’m s— sorry, I’m— I-I’m…”
“shhh…” Sans soothed him. He halfway curled himself around Papyrus in turn, almost protectively, brushing his teeth to the side of the younger’s skull. “’s okay. ‘s okay, Papy…”
Was it…?
“N— N-no, i-it’s not,” Papyrus shook his head against his brother’s affection and assurance, sobbing out further, “I’m— I-I’m stupid, I’m r-really—”
“what?”
Sans recoiled away, like something had burned him, and Papyrus almost irrationally felt even worse—until his brother met his gaze with the most fretful, most distraught look the younger skeleton had ever seen.
“wh— what, why would you…” Even with tremors ever so slightly twitching his fingers about, Sans reached for him; gently, so very gently wiping away Papyrus’s frightened tears. “…you’re… you’re not. you’re not. you could never be— wh-why would you…?”
…
Papyrus ducked his eyes away from Sans’s worried frown.
“…B-because I… I-I couldn’t…” More tears escaped him, more than Sans carefully brushed aside, and the younger skeleton had to fight not to instinctively nuzzle against his brother’s palms. “…I’m… A b-bad, bad brother, because I b-broke…”
…
Well.
There wasn’t a point in keeping it from him, anymore.
“I-I… I broke the snowglobe you gave me,” he managed at last—before immediately dissolving into tears once more, pushing Sans’s hands away and sobbing miserably into his own.
He expected his older brother to let him go at that, to be disappointed in him, maybe even shake his head at him and say he was stupid, and didn’t appreciate his gifts or him enough, and he was a bad brother and—…
…
Sans didn’t move. Or say anything to that effect.
In a moment, he seemed to realize where all of this had stemmed from. His eyes had widened, eyelights blown large in his sockets, like it was the last thing he expected to have happened at all.
But surely, he would still be
“…Papy…”
Yet again, Sans reached for him, yet again bumping his teeth lightly to the top of his baby brother’s head.
“Bro, I’d never hate you for something like that,” he murmured, nuzzling him, and for once an ounce of Hope made Papyrus stagger. “It’s okay.”
. . .
“Y-you…” Papyrus sniffed. Almost disbelieving, still. “Y-you’re not… Mad at me?”
“’Course not. heck,” another nuzzle, with a slight chuckle, “I kinda just assumed you’d forgotten about it.”
…
What?!
“WHAT!? NO!!” That time Papyrus pulled away from his brother, his still-gleaming eyesockets now glaring at the older. “I WOULD NEVER FORGET ANYTHING YOU GIVE ME!!!”
And he meant that.
“AND!!! …And… I was… Going to, try to put it back together, too,” he admitted, quieter. “B-but I… I haven’t. I-I don’t know… H-how to. I-I’m…” Just like that, he felt the guilt coming back. “I’m sorry…”
But, Sans wasn’t having that.
He brought Papyrus back into him, hugging him to his chest, and resting his own skull atop his as he hummed, “Well, we could try to fix it together.”
“…We could?”
“Or I could get you a new one. or something better.”
“NO!! It was already perfect…”
Unbeknownst to the littler skeleton, Sans’s eyelights shone just a bit brighter, at that.
“Do you still have it somewhere? …Or, uh, what’s left of it?”
Papyrus bashfully hung his head. “Um, yes…”
“How ‘bout you show me what happened, then we can decide what to do with it?”
…
“…Okay.”
And he did, climbing out of Sans’s arms to go retrieve his backpack from the other side of his room. He hadn’t really taken the broken snowglobe out, not ever since he’d haphazardly stuffed it in there in the first place.
He returned to his brother’s lap, unzipping the bag open, and almost instantly when Sans saw the damage he ushered Papyrus’s hands away from the crime scene.
“Woah woah, wait. Please tell me you put it in there after taking everything else out?”
“Um. No?? Why???”
Sans’s eyelights shrunk and—oh.
“I promise I was careful!!” he protested. “I! ONLY CUT MYSELF ON THE GLASS ONCE THAT DAY WHEN I HAD TO TAKE MY HOMEWORK OUT AND IT WAS A PRETTY BIG PIECE OF GLASS BUT IT WASN’T A VERY BIG CUT—”
“Oh my stars I’m going to kill you.”
Papyrus looked back at him strangely.
(Wasn’t that the exact opposite of what he was concerned about in the first place?)
Sans simply grumbled under his breath, rubbed at his nose ridge, then sighed out.
“Yeah so, it’s pretty much beyond repair, by the looks of it.”
Papyrus visibly deflated.
“But— I…” His eyesockets started filling with tears, all, all over again,
and Sans quickly pushed the glass-filled backpack away, far out of reach, pulling his brother closer.
“hey, hey… It’s okay,” he reassured him, with a small, but steady smile, “I promise, I’ll find you something just as cool, and—”
Without warning, Papyrus cut him off by planting his face directly into Sans’s shirt. Nuzzling his dreary face in the fabric, his voice came out in a quiet whimper:
“I don’t want anything else cool… I just— I…”
He blinked, slowly.So very morose.
“…I really, really…” I love you. “…I just… Want to make it up to you.”
…
Sans chuckled, softly. A bit sadly.
“I’m… Really not sure what else you could do for me, Pap. I mean, you’re… Already really great.”
Papyrus kind of doubted that, somehow.
“…But, uh… There is one thing you could do to make it up, I think. Maybe, even like, a couple. Actually.”
And somehow, the littler skeleton’s soul sank.
“Like what?”
“For one,” Sans grinned—before booping the spot where Papyrus’s nose would have been, making the child let out a squawk of full-on indignation, as he pointedly flinched away (though not leaving his brother’s lap just yet). “You could clean up the mess in your backpack before you cut open another finger.”
“I DID NOT CUT OPEN MY FINGER!!!” Still offended by the previous sin his brother had committed (I.E. the boop), Papyrus all but scowled up at him. “THAT’S NOT EVEN POSSIBLE!”
“Yeah, and also I’m gonna help you with it because you might manage it in the process.”
“I WILL NOT—”
“And one more thing.”
…Papyrus almost rolled his eyesockets, but.
He probably deserved this one more thing.
“Yes?” he asked.
“I love you.”
…
. . .
“What?” he asked.
Sans rested his chin on Papyrus’s head once more.
“I love you,” he said, again. Without hesitation. “I need you to believe that.”
. . .
“Even if you… Make me mad. Somehow. ‘Cause, I dunno how. …I’d still love you even then.”
As though to prove his point, again, Sans nuzzled him.
“Even if you disappoint me, or mess up. Or… You have a hard time seeing it.”
His voice was verging on a whisper, now.
“I’ll love you.”
…
“Can you make it up to me by trying to believe that?”
. . .
Papyrus responded by, once more, burying his face into the folds of Sans’s shirt. At last his own arms went to wind around Sans’s back, too, fingers curling securely into the fabric. Clinging to him.
“Okay.”
In response of his own, Sans gave him a nuzzle yet again.
“…I love you too.”
It was almost inaudible, muffled, and so, so quiet.
But even if Sans hadn’t heard it (which he had indeed),
he still would have known.
…
Maybe, then…
Maybe Papyrus wasn’t stupid, but just… Very silly. For all that avoiding on the account of one snowglobe.
Maybe his brother was too forgiving, but…
. . .
Maybe it really was all just one big silly thing.
…Either way.
Should his brother ever give him another snowglobe…
He promised to be extra, extra careful, for next time.
(. . .)
(And even if he wasn’t…)
(He knew his brother would be there to literally help him pick up the pieces.)
---------------------------------------------------
@hesperdoesstuff @bearsugarbear
16 notes
·
View notes