Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If someone had asked him, in the spirit of scientific speculation, to put forth a well considered hypothesis Sans would not have predicted that he was physiologically capable of becoming this hungover.  His head ached.  His bones ached.  Hell, even his intangible soul ached a little.  He had somehow fallen asleep with his tongue still summoned, and it was mashed dryly into the backs of his teeth.  He peeled it away, grimacing into whatever soft thing he was face-down on as the metallic taste of stagnant magic filled his mouth.  

To put a finer point on it, with his miserably low HP he really thought he would have just dusted before he made it to this degree of crapulence.  Heh.  Look at that.  You were never too old to learn something new.

Sans groaned.  He could tell he had slept in his clothes; and while most of his outfits were carefully selected to be nap-friendly, whatever he was wearing now was decidedly not.  Some kind of stiff jacket with its buttons digging painfully into his false ribs, and it felt like something was bunched up and digging in between his collarbones and his cervical vertebrae. 

Sans groaned again.  Perhaps restating his complaint would somehow give him the strength to raise his hands to face level.  Instead, all it did was inspire an answering groan from the soft thing under his face, a vibrato near-growl that ended in an extravagant belch.

Oh.  Well, that was alright then.  He knew that grunt-rumble.  It was just Red, and this was neither the first nor would it be the last time he woke up draped over his drinking buddy after a night on the town.  

"yer droolin' on me," Red muttered, planting his claws in the middle of Sans's forehead and gently shoving him from his perch atop the voluminous ambient magic padding Red's midsection.

"thx, buddy," Sans mumbled.  His tongue-construct abruptly evaporated into a cloud of sluggish spent-magic vapour and he sighed it out of his various skull-holes like cigarette smoke.

Sans cracked an eyesocket with the same caution he would use when opening an ominously bulging can of Snailo-Cola.  Blessedly, there was no explosion, only the blurry wasteland of their hotel room.  The sunlight never really made it past "gloomy" out here in the asteroid belt, but whatever time of day it was the natural light was overwhelmed by the virulent visual cacophony of neon that bathed Space Vegas in its hellish glow.  The Party Belt was bright enough to see from the core worlds with a recreation-grade telescope; he'd measured the albedo himself.

Red creakily turned his skull toward Sans, eyes still closed, and growled, "got any 'a them sketchy dispenser tokens left?"

Sans awkwardly transitioned to technically upright and patted himself down.  He was wearing a powder blue suit jacket with inexpertly applied sequins on the lapels.  The pockets were filled with handfuls of polystarch confetti and a glossy pamphlet he was too bleary eyed to read right now.  

"nah dude, i'm fresh out of semi-legal currency."

Red made a noise that Sans didn't have enough vowels to express in text.

Something bumped lightly into the back of his head, and he swatted it absently.  Turned out to be a microgravity balloon.  Actually, it was only one of a small swarm slowly drifting around the room at various heights.  Not the weirdest thing he had woken up to after a bender, but it was probably worth investigating once he had procured coffee.  And in pursuit of that goal, Sans rolled off the side of what had been designated as Red's bed the previous afternoon and tottered shakily toward the dispenser capsule.  

"Coldbrew coffee, black," was thankfully on the Popular Items shortcut list.  Sans tapped x2, then scanned an actual legit credit token.  A pair of coffees wasn't going to break the bank; he'd generate another set of vouchers once he was recovered a little.  Besides, the hotel would get suspicious if they didn't spend at least a few Standard G on refreshments over the weekend.  

The capsule beep-booped a cheery lick of classical chiptune to indicate that it was done.  Sans considered proposing marriage to the little machine as he lifted its mantle to reveal two tall glasses already beginning to bead with condensation.  

"good morning, starshine," Sans sing-songed.  "the earth says drag your lazy coccyx out of bed, there's coffee."  Ice rattled as he picked his way amongst unnameable debris to the room's small dining area.  

"sansy, angel, i ever tell you yer my fav'rit miniature skeleton?" Sans could hear disorganized rustling as the very slightly taller skeleton flopped toward the edge of the bed.  

"you say that like someone who doesn't buy all his clothes in the tween monster section of hot tangent."

Sans gratefully placed his precious cargo on the table and slumped into a chair, turning to watch Red blinking sleepily as he hunched over the side of the hotel bed.  He had on about four hilariously skewed, lacy black petticoats over his basketball shorts, and there was a powder blue corsage pinned to his t-shirt.  It didn't clash too badly with the dried tracks of spent magic zigzagging from the corner of his mouth.

"that's an unfalsifiable statement," he grumbled, sharp teeth tugging upward into a scowl-smirk.  Sans called it his grinmace.  "and i am deeply appalled that you'd accuse me of such a thing. now bring onea them coffees over 'ere and i'll buy you a new pair 'a lifts." He finally turned to look at Sans, eye-lights glowing like the coronae of dying suns within his deep, dark sockets.  "whatddya say, li'l fella? mebbe they'll let ya ride the mag-lev coaster all by yerse-"  He cut off as abruptly as a 'net outage, eyelights winking out.

"uh, red?" Sans tried.  "y'okay, pal?"  He seemed to have softlocked somehow. 

"hhhhh," he wheezed, sockets wide.  "yyyy-"

"what is it boy?" Sans snarked.  "USS Timmy fall down a gravity well?"

"yer neck!" Red snapped.

Oh.  Had he bruised it or something?  It did still feel kind of uncomfortable.  He raised a perfunctory hand to fix his shirt or whatever it was and stopped short when his distal phalanges clicked against smooth metal, and closer to his neck the velvety softness of heavy suede.  

"uh," Sans eloquently countered.  He brought his non-dominant hand up as though it would somehow have something different to report than its twin.

Nope.  Blunted metal spikes, rich suede, a solid buckle.  There was a soul-shaped charm dangling from the front; that was what had been pinching his clavicle.  He absently freed it and let it clink against his manubrium.

Now that he was touching it, he could feel the intent coming off it in waves.  Inexpert and clumsy, but it buzzed insistently against his phalangetips.  Comfort, admiration, some things that were harder to identify.  

That was a collar.

Definitely a collar. 

Five nines degree confidence that it was a collar.

"what the fuck," breathed Red.

Sans's sluggish mind tried to find sense, eyelights darting around the room for something that could explain this.  Balloons, confetti, crumpled synthetic flowers…. Oh!  He dug the pamphlet back out of his pocket and gave it a closer look.  His own lopsided mug grinned up at him from the page with Red plastered all along his side, arms sloppily wrapped around his shoulders.  The text at the top read: Comec Sans and Red Underfel, Joined Together in Holy Matrimony on SC 1832.9.4(Fri), and below their skeletal grins, Solemnize your union at Big Elvo's Olde Tyme Rock 'N' Roll Wedding Chapel, Suite 247B, Luxor Asteroid, Vegas Belt.

"what the fuck," Sans repeated, turning the pamphlet so Red could see it too.

A long beat of silence stretched between them.

"we uh," Sans began.  "it looks like we got mar-"

The room's holophone interrupted him before he could name it and Sans tapped "accept call, audio only" so fast his wrist popped a little.

"Oooo good morning lovebones!" an unfamiliar voice crowed.  "Hope I didn't interrupt anything since it's the middle of the morning and not everyone can spend the day in bed doing whatever newlywed skeletons do with each other!  And neither can you because we need you at the spaceport for your photos before the shuttle leaves!"

"shuttle?" Red latched onto the least troubling part of that greeting.

"Well of course!  You didn't forget about your honeymoon did you?  You two cuties were the forty-two thousand, sixth-ninth couple to be married at the Space Luxor, and as such you've won an all expenses paid, once in a lifetime, week-long dream honeymoon at the Palm Craters resort!"

Red signed: nice.

Sans signed: cuties??

A hazy memory swam through Sans's skull - something about balloons and confetti, and a flamboyantly depressive cat-guy declaring them to be the "lucky winners."

"i think we uh, need a minute."

"Oh I had a feeling you would after the way you two were looking at each other last night!  And that's why I called early.  You have an hour to get decent and come down to the port.  We'll be set up at berth LX7.  Just ask for BP!"

"sure thing, doll," said Red.

"Toodles!"  The call terminated.

So, clearly, the right thing to do here would be to explain themselves.  To tell the nice cat guy that the whole thing was a mistake, and they should just pick the next, actual couple to go on their honeymoon getaway.   And then they'd go down to the sector marriage office and get an annulment, putting an end to what was almost certainly an elaborate drunken prank.  Probably designed to get under his brother's non-existent skin, if he was a betting man.  On the other hand….

He met eyes with Red, who was absently stroking his claws over the slightly crumpled flowers pinned to his shirt.   On the other hand. 

"free vacation?" suggested Red.

Sans felt his ever-present grin widen.  "free vacation," he agreed.

Chapter Text

After showering, dressing, and hastily shoving their belongings (and as many of the celebratory balloons as Sans could capture) into their inventories, the skeletons made it to their spaceport photoshoot with a generous two and a half minutes to spare. 

Their shuttle was one of those luxury cluster-craft, made up of about a dozen individual spherical pods slung together by i-tethers like a handful of marbles.  Here in its berth it was supported by an armature that slowly rotated the pods down to ground level so that their occupants could climb inside.  BP's photographer was set up unobtrusively to one side, with the camera angled so that the glittering spacecraft would form the backdrop of their photos.

"There they are!"  BP was, as Sans vaguely remembered, a light-furred cat monster with a resting expression of flamboyant nihilism.

"where d'ya want us?" Red asked, surprisingly amicable.

BP turned out to be an efficient director, giving rapid-fire stage directions only occasionally interspersed with maudlin proclamations.  They got pictures of Sans and Red standing back to back, side-by-side, embracing, and one of Sans holding Red cradled in his arms with Red's lacy skirts cascading down to his knees.  BP had brought along some potted martian palms for set dressing and they even got a few shots with them peering at each other through the pastel coloured fronds while people sedately climbed aboard the craft behind them.

"Okay lovebones I think we just have time for the money shot before you two have to get on your shuttle!"

The photographer choked a little.  Red snickered.  BP gave them all a long-suffering look.  "This isn't that kind of photoshoot!  Now, Sans, I need you to get on your knees."

"you're not really reassurin' me," Sans said, kneeling.

"Perfect," BP rolled the 'r' with perhaps an unnecessary amount of gusto.  "Really wanna bring the romance.  Gaze longingly into each others' eyes.  Can either of you do that thing where your eyelights turn into little hearts or is that just something they made up for the holo-novellas?"

"red can," Sans said seriously.  "he gets 'em sometimes when he's watching old carl sagan videos."  Red made a betrayed honk.

BP directed Red to stand in front of Sans, both of them in profile to the camera. At the director's urging he placed his hands on Sans's shoulders, thumb distals brushing against the spikes on Sans's collar.  The quiet click of bone on metal was accompanied by a less corporeal sensation; a sort of gently buzzing feeling of warmth, like snuggling up to a purring cat. It swelled in his bones where the collar rested and then pulsed away like ripples spreading across the surface of a pond.

Must have been some kind of interaction with the magic on his collar.  Interference or feedback or something.  Sans looked up from under his brow-bones, catching Red watching him.  When their eyelights met, Red restlessly circled his thumb over one of the blunted spikes, repeating that strange, warm pulse.  Sans shivered and shrugged a little, trying to diffuse the sudden tension.  Red's left hand slipped off of the collar and onto his shoulder, his phalanges just barely brushing the tiniest sliver of clavicle exposed in the gap between leather collar and glossy synthetic t-shirt fabric.

Sans suddenly realized his tongue was summoned, and swallowed drily, the construct rasping audibly against his bony hard palate.  He found himself wondering what the hell kind of joke this sham marriage was supposed to be, anyway.

Rescue came in an unexpected form.

Between one second and the next, their impromptu photostudio was flooded with an oddly identical cavalcade of humans and monsters in tight jeans and expertly applied eyeliner.  Some of them were holding professional-looking streaming equipment.

"Oh you two are just perfect, and you're already in wardrobe?"  A wild-haired, vaguely reptilian monster rapidly directed a small crowd of non-descript people to form up around Red and Sans as though they were queueing for the shuttle.

Sans creakily climbed back to his feet and looked to BP for some kind of explanation, but the cat monster just sent him a look of mild devastation and stage-whispered, "Sorry.  Just try to play along, kid.  He works for the Resort."

Bewildered, Sans opened his mouth to ask any of the obvious followup questions but was interrupted by a heavy drop of echoing dubstep music.  A voice growled, "I am the witsgeek….  I'm an anomaly…. Witsgeek!  Witsgeek!  Witsgeek!"

A human oozed out from amongst the crowd in such a way that he must have almost seemed to teleport in, if Sans was reading the angles of the recorders correctly.  He was smallish, dressed all in black, and had made the interesting fashion choice of pairing a tophat with a double digit amount of pendant necklaces.  His eyeliner put that of his lesser cohorts to shame.

"I've been presented with a unique challenge," he flatly stated, staring blankly into a camera.  "Every week hundreds of people travel inside this very cluster craft through the unforgiving vacuum of space.  And later today I, Pawl Seraph, am going to be the first man in human history to make that journey strapped to the outside of the vessel.   No space suit, gas bubble, or protective gear of any kind.   Instead I will hold my breath for the 4 hour journey to The Space Luxor's Palm Creators Resort."

Sans gaped.  He wasn't what anyone would call an expert on human biology - in fact his knowledge of non-thaumaturgic lifeforms pretty much started and ended with mechorganic spacecraft.  But it didn't take an expert to realize that what this human - Pawl, apparently - was describing was obviously a swift and painful death sentence.  Admittedly livestream shows could get a bit ridiculous at times, but surely no-one would believe a human could actually survive a suitless, four hour EVA?

"But first, a little pre-flight entertainment."  The recorders skillfully wheeled to keep Pawl in the shot as he stalked over to them, though the boom mic operator had to pull back a little when a gust of wind set his many necklaces jangling.  "Is this your first time in town?"  He had one of those thick Jovian Moons accents and drew 'town' out into at least three syllables.  "Where're you visiting from?"

"tranquility city," Red said cautiously.  "on luna."

"Is that right?  I'm from Ganymede, no wonder you fell into my orbit."  The crowd laughed unevenly.  Sans felt a moment of weird existential dread at being served one of his own worst jokes as though it were a fine comedy aperitif.  "Are you moon babies or did you move there for the tech boom?"

"sansy is, but he grew up on the far side in this weird commune of science hippies."  Red neatly threw Sans under the conversational bus to distract from any questions about his own background.  Sans was well practised with this gambit and was happy to play along.

"hey!" he feigned anger, moving like he was going to put himself between Red and the human.  "'weird science hippies' is redundant!"

"Aw don't worry little buddy," Pawl patted Sans on the top of his round skull.  "No need to get jealous, I'm not gonna steal your girlfriend."

Sans's jaw dropped.  An unexpected burst of actual outrage overtook his feigned irritation.  "excuse you?  he's my husband."

Pawl chuckled as though this had been a spirited bout of witty repartee.  Then without any particular segue he was holding a pack of playing cards fanned out under Red's nasal aperture.  "Pick a carrrdddd," he drawled, monotone.

Surprisingly, Red did, taking a moment to show it to the cameras.  It was the jack of diamonds.

"Now, put it in your friend's pocket."

"husband," Sans hissed.

Red followed the instructions and slid the playing card into the pocket of Sans's shorts, leering for the camera the whole while.  He also took the opportunity to give Sans a probably-meant-to-be reassuring pat on the rump.

"No bags I see, guess you cats are travelling light?"  They weren't, actually, but Sans wasn't going to explain how monster inventory worked to a random… entertainer?  BP looked like he maybe wanted to say something about Pawl's use of 'cats' but managed to restrain himself.  "I guess we'll have to borrow someone's carry-on."  He grabbed a bag from a human woman and rifled through it, pulling out an old-fashioned paperback novel.  He pointed at Sans.  "What's your anniversary?"

"1832.9.4."

"This book doesn't have that many pages so we'll just go with 18."  He opened the book close to the front cover and mimed sliding a playing card from between the pages.  From his angle, Sans could see him surreptitiously drop a card from his sleeve into his concealed palm, and briefly felt a bit of envy about how much easier that must be when ones palms were made of meat.  A brief look of confusion crossed his face but he held the card up for the recorders anyway, drawling, "Is this your card?"

It was the ace of spades. From a visibly different deck.

"yeah!" Red lied cheerfully.

There were murmurs of confusion from the crowd.  The reptilian monster made a sharp gesture toward the recorders and there was another brief burst of music.  People clapped.

When the chorus of "Witsgeek! Witsgeek!" had died down, Pawl leaned back into their personal space.

"Well I guess I'll see you at the other spaceport.  Maybe we can meet up and play badmington in Palm Craters or something."  The crowd cheered.  Probably meant 'badminton' but one never did know.  "I like your style, that's a real nice necklace-" he reached for Sans's collar.

BP, the reptilian monster, Sans, both camera operators and surprisingly at least three of the humans all shouted some variety of "no don't!" in panicked unison.

Pawl froze like a glitching holocall.  Sans didn't even see Red move, he just phased directly from his characteristic languid slouch to up on his tiptoes with a jagged, ominously glowing bone attack pressed to the back of Pawl Seraph's neck.

"i  f u c k i n'  d a r e  y a," Red whispered.

Pandemonium broke out.  People screamed.  The reptilian monster repeatedly ordered Pawl not to move, and to his credit, he obeyed.

"Alright, well I think it's time for you two to catch your shuttle," BP squeaked.

Sans couldn't have agreed more. "c'mon, fighty." Sans wrapped his arms tight around Red's middle just under his lowest ribs and shortcutted them both away.

They landed with the characteristic ozone-crackle of void magic right in front of the ticket desk.  Overhead the armature rotated a gleaming pod down into loading position 

There was a beat of silence while the ticket attendant stared at them in shock.  Then Red blinked his eyelights back on and said, cool as auxiliary butter, "hey. i think ya got our names spelled wrong in th' reservation.  it's comic with an 'i' and underfell needs two 'l's."

"Great!" The attendant graced them with a flawless customer service smile.  "Come right this way and we'll get you two seated!"

When the shuttle eventually lifted off from the spaceport, they could still hear faint sounds of dubstep music.

Chapter Text

Four hours was a bit long to be confined to a travelling pod, even if it was a luxurious one; confined spaces made his LV itch.  Red had no idea how Edge managed being deployed in the Oort cloud for months at a time.  His brother probably skipped rope during crew performance reviews and freaked the rest of his shipmates out with his aberrant natural athleticism.  Sometimes Red wondered if he ought to have tried harder to get that kid into some more normal hobbies like macrame or bare-knuckle boxing or something.

The pod was dominated by a central table with an inset food and drink dispenser, currently liberally speckled with playing cards (including two identical jacks of diamonds).  Sans, unsurprisingly, was napping on the round booth-seat that surrounded the table, about a quarter turn around the circle from Red.  One leg was carelessly draped across Red's lap, the socked, shoeless foot occasionally twitching as it hung unsupported in the air.  There was nothing particularly unusual about that, except that normally Red would have been just as sound asleep as his friend.

And despite the early hour, Sans was sound asleep.  Sprawled across the stiff travel pod cushions with one arm flung protectively across his closed sockets to guard them from the bright interior lights.  Occasionally an Aster font Z would drift away from him to dissipate into intangible magic vapour.  He looked relaxed, confident, safe, his body language open and unthreatened.  And the relaxed angle of his chin did nothing to conceal the spiked collar hugging his vulnerable throat.  Red definitely felt some kind of way about that narrow band of leather wrapped around unmarked, ivory bones.  Some kind of way that he probably shouldn't examine any closer while creepily watching his friend sleep.

Red had been content to accept the hasty explanation that this whole Vegas Wedding business was some kind of ill conceived drunken prank.  If he had to speculate, he would have figured it was somehow designed to get his brother's dramatic panties in a knot,  On the other hand, he hadn't anticipated the blind rage that had blossomed within him when that human magician reached for Sans's collar - and Red was pretty accustomed to his various rages.  Obviously he couldn't have let someone invalidate his claim like that even if it had only been a joke, but in the moment it hadn't felt like just acting the part.  It had felt visceral, despite his personal lack of viscera.  Like the emotions had welled up out of his marrow or the spaces in his spine or something.

Sans shifted, trying to get more comfortable on the firm upholstry.  Red absentmindedly reached out to pet his shoulder, keeping his phalanges away from the protruding spikes of the collar as he smoothed his hand over the stiff fabric of Sans's jacket.  The other skeleton shifted slightly in his sleep, pressing back into Red's metacarpals like a cat.  He mumbled something unintelligible.  It wouldn't take much at all for Red to slide his hand up so it was cupping Sans's round skull, maybe stroke his thumb across the deeply incised shadow below his socket-

Red shoved Sans off the bench.

"ow, hey, what gives?" Sans complained, blinking up at Red from the carpet.

"we're almost there," Red explained.  "about to enter atmosphere.  didn't want ya to miss pawl seraph's big stunt."

"what a pal, always looking out for me," Sans simpered.  He clambered back onto the seat, kneeling up to get a good look through the dome overhead.  It was difficult to see the divide between the black of space and the artificial atmosphere surrounding their destination asteroid, but overhead the other silvery spheres of their vessel whirled and spun in a pattern that would have seemed random if one didn't have an eye for orbital resonance.  Which Sans, of course, did, what with being a fancy space engineer and all.  The only thing that announced their gentle immersion in the atmosphere was the sudden shift of the stars from steady, piercing glow to gentle planetside twinkle.

Overhead, a keen eyelight could just make out the airlock on one of the other spheres hissing open, and a skinny-jeans clad form struggling out onto the exterior of the pod.  There was an i-tether cuff on one of his ankles.  Though not as secure as an actual harness, the inertial tether would bind the human into a close orbit with the pod if he were to fall off, in the same way that the loose spheres of the craft were tethered to each other.

"i hate to say it, but i'm a little impressed." Sans craned his head to follow the sphere's orbit.  "i woulda thought he'd just leave it up to editing to make it look like he rode the space ball."

Red disagreed.  The guy was clearly both a dumbass and an asshole.  A dumbasshole, in point of fact.  Who didn't know what a wedding collar was in this day and age?  Monsters had been in society since before humans figured out how to build a cloud city for fuck's sa-

"red, you're muttering," Sans said absently.

"i'll mutter you," Red muttered.

"what does that even mean?" Sans wondered.

"might as well wonder what any of this means."

"hey, you know we agreed no inflight existential dread."

As their pod rotated, they got a glimpse of the spacedock below.  A respectable crowd was gathered around, probably a combination of resort staff meeting guests and people the Witsgeek production team had gathered to look suitably impressed when Pawl completed his clearly impossible journey across the asteroid belt.

Surprisingly, once the cluster craft had settled into the landing rig the first few pods to disembark seemed to be ordinary travellers, accepting half-coconuts of probably booze from the resort staff before heading off to get their room assignments.

Red watched the recorder crews focus in on the next sphere.

"i bet this is the one," Sans commented.

It looked nondescript until the armature rotated it into alignment and revealed Pawl Seraph clinging to the obverse.  The i-tether cuff was nowhere to be seen. Red could hear the triumphant burst of dubstep even through the shell of their pod, accompanied by faint chants of "witsgeek!" from the crowd.

"well that's a relief," he commented.

"yeah," Sans agreed.  "i thought he was going to get off after us and we'd have to deal with his crowd."

About half of the gathered people went with Pawl when he made his way off the landing pad and hopefully out of their lives.  Their turn to disembark came a few pods later.  Red made sure to scoop up the playing cards and request another couple of beakers of complimentary ginger beer from the dispenser before they left.

They had barely set foot on the ceramic when some random human in the crowd pointed at them and shouted, "Hey, there they are!  It's those cute skeletons!"

Another human started toward them, holding out a slightly dogeared jack of diamonds.  "Hey, can you guys sign my card?"

Sans hissed, "what the hell is going on?" into Red's acoustic meatus.

Red had no idea, but he was pretty confident in his ability to answer any and all questions with a sharpened bone attack.

"There you are!" One of the uniformed resort staff stepped in, most likely saving several human lives.  "Right this way, Mr. and Mr. Sans!" they said, and quickly ushered the skeletons into a nearby cabana constructed out of probably 100% recycled bamboo.

"Sorry about that," the staff member apologized once they were inside.  Her name tag featured a radiantly smiling headshot and below that: Tippie, she/her.   "I bet you had your devices in Space Flight mode and don't know?"

Red shot Sans his "please handle this, i'm not diplomatic enough to deal with whatever is going on" look.  Sans replied with his "what? why me?  alright fine" look.

"tippie." Sans slid forward with his usual schlubby grace.  "we have no idea what is going on.  could you clue us in here?"

"Oh, well!"  Tippie was practically quivering with excitement.  "It's just that, well, you were in that Pawl Malak livestream and it's kind of blown up all over the Extranet!"

Red felt like the artificial gravity was on the fritz.  "you mean…?"

Tippie was almost incandescent with bubbly excitement.  "Yeah!  You two have gone viral!  Everyone is talking about the cute skeleton newlyweds that totally punked Pawl Malak!"

Red looked on mutely as Sans unlocked his phone and switched it out of Space Travel Mode.  It made a weird, extended wheezing noise when it connected to the resort wifi that Red would later realize was the sound of several thousand notifications arriving at once.  He watched over Sans's shoulder as the little numeric indicator spasmodically lurched into the hundreds, then turned into a sweatdrop emoji.  He barely had the chance to process that information before the phone started ringing.  Jaunty clarinet music; Red knew it well.  That was Papyrus's ringtone.

"uh, sorry i gotta take this."  Sans glanced out the window where the crowd was still milling about, then looked around the single-room cabana.  He seemed to decide that one strange human overhearing the call was better than several dozen strange humans overhearing the call, and stepped marginally aside to let his phone finish the requisite four rings before he answered it.

"SANS!  I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU AND CHERRY ELOPED AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN TELL ME ABOUT IT!  I HAD TO LEARN ABOUT IT FROM SPACEBOOK!  AND NOT EVEN YOUR SPACEBOOK BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T UPDATED YOUR RELATIONSHIP STATUS YET! I LEARNED ABOUT THE MARRIAGE OF MY BROTHER AND MY BROTHER-FRIEND FROM A MEME!  I AM AGHAST!!  I AM MORE THAN AGHAST, I AM AGHOUL, PERHAPS EVEN ASPECTRE!!"

Papyrus's familiar nasal screech blasted out of Sans's phone like a comforting left hook to the earhole.  Tippie cowered a bit.

"heh, uh, sorry bro," Sans quietly muttered once the echoes had faded a little and the glass windows stopped resonating.  Red would have sworn the human's ears literally strained in Sans's direction.  "it just kinda, uh, happened i guess?  we didn't plan on it when we went for our vacation but when on romulus, amirite?"

The silence spoke volumes, before Papyrus carefully inquired, "DOES EDGE KNOW?"

Sans glanced up at Red and Red vigorously shook his head.  Even if he could have gotten a voice communique through to his brother while he was deployed on the edge of the solar system, he wouldn't have done it.  Their brothers could be eerily alike at times and honestly Red was not looking forward to trying to soothe his giant little brother's hurt feelings that he would never admit that he had when he found out that Red had gotten married without inviting him.  Fake married.  Gotten fake married without inviting him.  How exactly was this joke supposed to work again…?

"no," Sans confirmed.  "edge doesn't know.  we haven't really told anyone except I guess the people at the chapel and the resort staff.  we uh, were hoping to keep it quiet for now?"

"OH THERE'S NO CHANCE OF THAT!"  Papyrus's voice was dripping with schadenfreude.  "BUT I AM AT LEAST SOMEWHAT MOLIFIED TO LEARN THAT THERE HAS BEEN AN EQUAL DEGREE OF BROTHER SNUBBING ON ALL SIDES.  YOU UNDERSTAND I WOULD BE MUCH MORE UPSET IF I FOUND OUT YOU WERE KEEPING THIS MOMENTOUS OCCASION A SECRET FROM ME SPECIFICALLY."

"uh, of course paps.  i wouldn't do that to you.  we just uh… mumble mumble."

"DON'T TRY TO GET OUT OF THIS BY MUMBLING!  I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I HAVE ALREADY STARTED BAKING IN PREPARATION FOR YOUR RETURN FROM THE HONEYMOON!  IT IS INAUSPICIOUS TO START OFF A MARRIAGE WITHOUT SOLVING AT LEAST ONE CAKE AND I FOR ONE WILL NOT STAND FOR THAT!"

"thanks, paps."

"AND I'M SENDING EDGE AN EMAIL TO EXPLAIN WHAT IS GOING ON!"

"thanks, paps."

"AND SANS?"  There was an audible wobble in Papyrus's voice.  There was a pause, and then a flurry of holographic crying emojis burst from Sans's screen to ricochet around the cabana.  "I'M JUST SO HAPPY THAT YOU AND RED FINALLY GOT MARRIED!"

"uh, thanks, paps," Sans said one more time before he ended the call.  His thumb distal rattled a little against the screen.

Tippie beamed at them both.  "Was that your brother?  Oh, I'm sorry to eavesdrop it's just-"

"yeah, we know," Red shrugged.  "it don't count as eavesdropping if he's shrieking."

"he's doesn't really have an indoor voice," Sans noted.  "try to contain all that verve and vigour?  can't be done, he's just too cool."

"He sounds like he's been really rooting for you two crazy kids!"  Red wasn't great at guessing human ages but he was pretty confident that this one wasn't more than 25 metric years old.

"he's a real creampuff, that's for sure," Red said, fondly.

Tippie turned a sharper gaze on him.  "And you!  I can't believe you haven't told your brother you got married!  Do you want him to find out from the For You tab on Y?"

"he's deployed in deep space!"  Sans came to his rescue.  Which meant they probably had at least 2 days for Paps's email to reach him and 2 days for the reply to come screaming into Red's inbox before he had to figure out how to address the situation.  So that was clearly Wednesday!Red's problem.

"Hmm," Tippie said noncommittally.  "I suppose I'll allow it. But don't forget about him just because he's out of real time communication range!"

"that would be impossible," Sans's answer was immediate.

"Good!  So, speaking of remembering things, here are your resort lanyards and room keys!"  She presented them with a handful of strings and key cards.  The lanyards were printed with their names and photos - he recognised the headshots from this morning's photoshoot.  Whoever had selected the photos had chosen the one where Sans was awkwardly holding Red in a bridal carry.  Sans looked like he was about to burst into laughter, with just a hint of blue flushing his cheekbones.  It was a nice picture.

Red's card was labelled "Red LLunderfel."

Sans's said "Cimec Sans."

"You're in the Galactic Emperor suite," she explained.  "So you've got barely-limited access to the resort restaurants and bars, and all of the resort activities are pre-paid except for Swimming with Space Whales.  But we all understand if you just want to stay in your suite!"  She winked at them.

"thanks, tippie," said Sans.

There was a little bit more orientation after that, including a map to their assigned cabin, before Tippie let them out the other door of the cabana and into the resort proper.

They hadn't taken two steps before a dubstep sting announced the appearance of their travelling companion.  The camera crew and assorted onlookers seemed to materialize from the dusky pink stone of the asteroid itself.

"Heyyyy," the human magician drew the word out into a lengthy monotone drawl.  "Long time no see.  I just wanted to congraduate you two again on your nuptuals.  And since it's your honeymoon," he pronounced honeymoon with 4 syllables, "I just wanted to thank you for your participation in my little magic show."

"cool," Said Red.  "ya wanna-"

Sans stepped on his foot.  It didn't hurt, Red had steeltoes on, but he understood the message.

"thanks, pawl," said Sans.

The magician mimed plucking something from behind Sans's mastoid process, then handed the objects to Sans with a flourish.  It was a pair of magnetic data cards.  "As a show of thanks, I wanted to invite you both to a fancy five course meal.  Thursday night, at the Starquake Saloon."

"oh, uh, i don't think-" Sans tried to handle the situation diplomatically.  Red would have handled it anatomically if Sans hadn't stomped several more times on his foot.

"No need to thank meeee," Pawl intoned.  There was another burst of dubstep and he and his entourage oozed away before the skeletons could either accept or reject the offer.  Discordant shouts of "witsgeek" drifted on the artificial breeze.

"so that's… something.  you wanna go find our room?"

Red grumbled.  Sans was paging through the pamphlets Tippie had given them a few minutes ago.

"it says it's got a macrobar?"

Red made finger-guns.  "you had me at macro."

Chapter Text

Red shambled his way back from the macrobar, a tropical cocktail in each hand.  Red's drink was an entire papaya with a bendy straw protruding from the top; one of the high proof orange ones.  Sans's drink was half of an enormous genetically modified rambutan shell filled with liquor and colourful balls of sherbet.

Sans straightened up marginally from where he had been sprawled across his hammock when Red thrust the spiny fruit into his hands.  "wow," he commented.  "this looks almost exactly not like a bloody caesar."

"aww, c'mon starshine, we're on our fraudulent honeymoon!  now is the time to expand our horizons."  He sucked noisily on his bendy straw.  "mmm, that's the shit.  this papaya's as sweet as your brother's-"

"hard nope," said Sans.

"-baking."  Red grinned like an anglerfish.

Luxurious didn't begin to describe their honeymoon suite.  The bottom floor of the cabana was open concept, light and airy and decorated like a tropical beach house.  On the east side, huge windows had a clear line of sight out to the edge of the habitat bubble where the starry majesty of the cosmos showed through the tattered veil of atmosphere boiling off into the void.  There was a dining area over there, along with the automated macro-bar and a food dispenser masquerading as an old fashioned oven and defridge combo.  At the other end of the room a gentle breeze sighed in through the slatted window-covers.  Everything was decorated in clean white and pastel blues.  It was supposed to be reminiscent of Earth's cerulean seas, but it reminded Sans more of the pale bluish foliage that was the norm on his home moon.

They'd been chilling here for a few hours, long enough for Sans to really settle into his hammock.  His intangible ambient magic spilled down around him to pool languidly on the cool tile floor.

Red was less relaxed, roaming around poking into the room's various access panels in search of concealed recording equipment and setting some nasty digital traps in case of attempted incursion.  His papaya rattled icily while he worked.

"found another one," he announced between slurps.  There was the brief scent of scorched silicon.

"if you disable this moduuuULE, you will not receive ads tailoreddd to your ta-a-a-asteeeee," slurred the spyware before Red managed to kill it.

"that's what, five of them?" Sans wondered.

"yep, and i had to lobotomize the food dispenser a little.  i'm pretty sure that was the last one, though."

"phew, good thing we have you to save us from targeted advertisements.  and what are you going to do now, oh brave protector mine?"

Red scoffed lightly as he moseyed over to the hammock district and flopped into one of the hammocks, careful not to spill his drink.

"well, i was taking a look at the resort activities."

That surprised Sans a little.  He had expected Red to vote for spending the rest of their day napping, resting, or rest-napping.

"it's saturday night, so there's lotsa stuff goin' on," Red explained casually.  Too casually.  "heh.  get this: they've got a minimum-gravity shibari class starting in an hour."

Sans caught himself just before he would have laughed.

Sans had known Red for a long time, and in that time he had come to recognise his many subtly different crooked grins as the camouflage they were.  Red's face was as malleable as Sans's own, barring the stiffness around his left maxilla from the fracture that had cost him his second-to-last fang.  An outside observer might have looked at the wide smile and crinkled sockets and assumed his friend was joking.  But, Sans would dare to say he was fluent in Red's expressions.  The other skeleton was definitely setting himself up to pass this request off as a joke if Sans laughed, but the particular focus of his fiery eyelights spelled out clear as a bell that Red was actually interested.

Was Sans?  Interested?  He couldn't say that getting tied up particularly appealed to him.  It didn't not appeal to him either, though.  He felt pretty ambivalent to the idea.  He wasn't 100% sure what Red planned to get out of the class.  On the other hand, Red had always been pretty bad at putting himself out there and asking for what he wanted, despite what his brassy confidence might lead one to believe.  An artefact of his ludicrously shitty upbringing.

"alright, i think we can make it.  shouldn't take more than half an hour to pry myself outta this hammock."

He caught a look of surprised interest crossing Red's skull; guess he hadn't thought Sans would go along with this.  heh, i'll be the most cooperative!  that'll show him!   There was a problem somewhere in that line of thought, but Sans chose not to examine it further.

An hour gave them time to order some fries from the food dispenser to counteract the booze they'd been downing all afternoon.  The fries were great, and the dispenser even had Veusian mustard on its list of available condiments, much to Red's delight.  After they'd eaten and sent their empty fruit husks to the recycler they changed into some atrocious floral print shirts and khaki shorts that Red claimed were "more appropriate" and headed over to their class.

It was located outside of the main resort, among the remaining buildings of the old mining colony that had occupied this planetoid back when the asteroid belt had been a mining frontier instead of a tourist trap.  The old settlement was all stilted habitat towers, nestled safely in a steep-walled crater.  A number of the towers had been converted into historic houses, set up like an open air museum to show the tourists from the resort how people had lived here a century ago.  This place wouldn't have had a climate-controlled habitat bubble back when it was just a company town on the edge of inhabited space.  Sans took a moment to imagine miners and townspeople wandering around in environmental suits under the towers, the frozen pink dust crunching under their gravity-assist boots.

It was a whole lot more hospitable here nowadays.  The air was a comfortable mix of nitrogen and oxygen at optimum humidity levels for humans, and the buildings' stilts were no longer necessary to insulate the habitation areas from the freezing cold of spacerock.

Their class was in the community centre, in one of the old stilt-and-sphere buildings that still seemed to be in regular use.  A lot of the resort staff lived here, in refitted habitats.

"Hello, dearies."  Their teacher was a spider monster with a cute retro aesthetic; her voice was very soft.  It seemed like she started each sentence in a subvocal whisper and only ramped up to audible levels a few words in. "-take a seat.  -starting shortly."

There were about a dozen other students.  Most of them seemed to be in couples or groups already, though there were also a few singletons.  The crowd was evenly split between monsters and humans, including one human femme dressed in simple athletic attire who seemed to be the instructor's practice model.  Planetside, (regardless of which planet) humans made up a significant majority of the population.  Space was more hospitable to monsters though, as their magical bodies were far less impacted by things like microgravity and background radiation. An exotic destination like Palm Craters attracted a lot of human tourists, and the environment was designed to cater to their physiological needs.  But, back in the mining colony days this place probably would have been populated almost entirely by monsters.

The seats turned out to be comfortable piles of pillows and mats on the ground, each one stocked with several bundles of slender, silver-grey rope.  Once everyone was settled in, and the singletons had been either paired off or folded into larger groups, the Spider-monster launched into a surprisingly business-like lecture on safety and good practices.  They were instructed in their materials (ropes) and their tools (things like safety scissors in the event of an emergency).  There were some safety tips for the humans about circulation and pressure points, and a similar advisory for the monsters present about integral magic and how to tell if it was being cramped by the ropes or an unusual body position. She also introduced herself as "Sweetea."

It was twenty minutes before they even made it to the part about learning actual knots, and those were reassuringly basic.  Just two simple ones to start with - one for tying together two limbs or similar, and one for fastening a limb to some other object.  Sans felt himself blush a little when the soft-spoken instructor suggested bedposts or table legs as convenient anchor points.  There were diagrams, even.

Finally, it was time for the practical portion of the class.  Sans stroked a finger over a bundle of rope, finding it smooth and silky but not exactly soft.  Despite the businesslike nature of the lesson, he still found himself a little unsure of the prospect of being physically bound.  Sure, it would just be Red doing the binding, but as a low HP monster Sans had spent his whole life dreadfully aware of just how small of a misstep it would take to dust him.  Not that Red was much better off. His HP was an order of magnitude higher than Sans's as a result of the LV he carried around, but that was really more of an indictment of Sans's miserably fragile health than an indicator of any particular vitality on Red's part.

When he turned to glance at Red, Red let his sharky grin creep slowly wider and held up both of his wrists the regulation five centimetres apart.

"oh," Sans said dumbly.  "i thought you wanted to…"

"nah, c'mon, sweetheart.  ya didn't think i'd sign us up for a class where i had to do something, did ya?"

"heh."  Sans looked at Red's hands and back up at his face.  "you… you sure about this?"

"yeah," Red drawled.  "but if yer not into it, ya don't have to."

Sans picked up one of the ropes and laid a loop of it over Red's forearms, where it contrasted strongly with the warm ivory tone of Red's bones.  "nah, i suppose i can find the appeal."

He wrapped the rope around Red's paired wrists, snugging the turns up behind the flared distal ends of his radius and ulna to keep them off the intricate mosaic of his carpal bones.  When he tested the snugness of the soft coils by sliding his phalanges between rope and bone, Red tensed, then relaxed again, slumping warmly against Sans's side.

They practiced fastening and releasing the simple ties while the instructor tiptoed amongst them, offering correction and advice where necessary.  "-'s good," she said, when she skittered past.  "-tempting to wrap the strands between those bones.  -not good for anything structural.  -only for making him pretty, ahuhuhu."

The next lesson was a harness; ropes wrapped and woven around a person's torso to allow other ties to be fastened there.  There was a brief intermission while Sweetea conferred with a few monsters who didn't have anything that could be easily described as a torso to figure out how they could participate in this exercise.

Red tugged at his shirt, smoothing it over his ribs and the generous curve of his ambient magic.  Sans found his eyes drawn to the movement of boney hands over synthetic fabric  His shirt was a truly atrocious print of thorny roses and brambles on a blood red background.  Some of the roses had little skulls hidden inside of them.  Red had been absolutely insufferable when he found it in a consignment store in Space Vegas.  Then Red pressed his hands to the small of his back and stretched, and Sans found he had to look away from the lewd crackle of his friend's vertebrae.

"i'm red-y when you are," Red said, posing with his hands folded behind his skull, elbows splayed wide.  Then he comedically ruined the vibe by belching.  Sans felt his cervical spine flush a little.

"heh."  Sans indicated that Red should give him his back while he clumsily found the centre of his rope.

The issue started when he cinched the first loop tight around Red's chest.  Although the outward pressure of a skeleton monster's ambient magic could interact with very light objects like fabric, it had no substance with which to resist any actual pressure.  Despite appearances, there was nothing under Red's edgy-ass floral print except bones.  And those bones, being mostly ribs, could only provide a hollow scaffold for a body shape, not any real solidity.  So when Sans cinched the rope right, pulling gently against Red's spine, the coils took the path of least resistance and slotted nearly into his intercostal spaces, pressing the crisp fabric of his shirt into the narrow gaps between ribs.

"nnnn," said Red.

"shit, sorry dude!" Sans let go of the rope.  It slackened a bit, but didn't fall completely loose.

"no, heh, that's fine," Red said, a bit shaky.  He took a deep breath in, which finally dislodged the rope so that it fell and pooled around his hips.  "s'okay, didn't hurt.  you just startled me.  my ribs are kinda, uh-"

sensitive? Sans wondered.

"ticklish," Red lied.

"i'll try not to pull so hard," Sans whispered as he fished the rope up from where it had landed and snugged it around Red's ribs once again.  He immediately wished he had spoken at a normal volume.  Following the instructor's diagrams, he wrapped the rope around and around his partner's torso, careful to keep the coils from crossing or tangling so that they all laid smooth.  Red was mostly impassive, eyes closed like a cat in the sun, until it came time for Sans to loop the rope over his shoulders and through the turn that lay over his sternum.

All he did, while Sans had his knuckles pressed tight against Red's manubrium to make a place to slide the ends of his rope under and through, was hum.  Just a little pleased "mmm," but Sans felt the sound rumbling in Red's bones through the flimsy barrier of printed not-cotton.  Had a sudden flash of realization that his hand was mere centimetres from where Red's Soul would manifest, if Red were to call it to hand.  Or if Sans did.

That was… beyond inappropriate.  Damn wedding collar must be going to his head or something.

Sans guiltily avoided Red's eyes as he completed the harness, bringing the rope ends back over Red's shoulder and tying them off.

"-dearies," the Instructor had made her way to the environmental control panel beside the door.  "-ready for some real fun?"

She prodded gracefully at the controls with three of her hands.  The room seemed to shiver, small objects shifting as she overrode the local gravity boosters.

Sans grew up on Luna, which was the fourth largest inhabited moon in the solar system but very much still a moon.  Although most of the settlements were adjusted to Earth- or Mars- Standard gravity, he had spent enough time out in the gunpowder dust of the wild country to be intimately acquainted with low gravity.  This planetoid had far less mass than even Luna did, and so the sharp drop in gravity was immediately obvious.  He felt his clothing drift upward, felt his knees press less firmly into the cushions.

Red grinned, sharp-toothed and wild, his red eyelights sparkling as the loose ends of the harness rope drifted up into the air.

"ahuhuhu," the instructor tittered.  "-show you some tricks."

—

Later on in the perpetually twilit evening of the asteroid belt, Red slumped on his barstool like a sack of potatoes that had just been thoroughly put through its paces.  After even a short time in reduced gravity, his bones felt strangely heavy against the barstool in Earth-standard G.  On the walk over here, he found the heavy thud of his boots into the stony ground strange and cumbersome.

But though he felt a bit heavy, he also felt deeply relaxed.  Sans looked like he might not have gotten quite the same result.  The other skeleton was hunched over the bar, shoulders tense, fidgeting with the festive glass stirring stick in his ñebula colada.

"hey, buddy," Red put on his best sympathetic voice.  Out over the dusty, cratered plains, the sun was setting in a blaze of green and magenta glory.  A full rotation was only about 9 hours on this asteroid so that happened a lot.  "ya doin' okay there?"

"hmm?" Sans startled out of his reverie.  "oh, nah, it's fine.  just thinkin' about what we're gonna do when we get back home to luna."

He slid his drink a little further away, revealing the phone sitting on the bar surface.  Red caught a glimpse of his unread messages count, which had gone from :D to D: at some point.

"what d'ya mean?  same as every year, right?  sleep off the hangover 'n' go back to work?"

Sans rattled a phalange against the side of his phone.

"uh, no i mean about paps.  he's been messaging me this whole time about our… wedding puzzles.  seems he's got this idea about hosting a big shindig when we get back."

"oh." Red plucked the swizzle stick out of Sans's drink and licked it clean of coconut cream rum.  "you didn't tell him…?"

Sans looked alarmed.  "shush, red.  people are listening."

Red scoffed.  "aw, c'mon, what're the chances that anyone-"

As if summoned by Red's denial, a pair of monsters shaped like enormous hands swooped in to bracket the skeletons, leaning against the bar and invading Red's personal space.

"Hey, you were at the shibari lesson, but you left before we could say hi!"  The one closer to Sans had a warm baritone voice and an old fashioned baseball cap perched on his middle finger.  The monster on Red's side seemed a little more reserved; they just made a peace sign and said "Hi!" in a lighter tone.  That one had the appearance of a left hand, while the one beside Sans was a righty.

"that was kind of on purpose," Sans said.

The hand monsters laughed.  Red resisted the urge to wince; that hadn't been one of Sans's joking tones.

"We saw you two at the spaceport!  You're here on some kind of free prize vacation, right?"  The monster beside Sans was clearly the more talkative one.  But the one beside Red added, "We saw you were on Witsgeek!  That must have been so cool!"

"we won a honeymoon," Red explained.

"we're newlyweds," Sans added rather flatly.

c'mon, buddy, don't sound so enthusiastic.

"Oh, soon we will be too!" simpered the quieter one.  They twisted around to show off the hefty engagement ring on their index finger.  Red could have worn it as a belt.

"But that doesn't mean we can't still have some fun on our vacation!"  The one closer to Sans made a finger-gun gesture, and the one beside Red tittered.

"And you're just as cute in person as you were on the holovids!"

"oh," said Red.  He put the swizzle-stick back in Sans's drink and gave the hands his least threatening wink.  "i can't quite put my finger on it but-"

"actually i think you'll find we're all thumbs in person," Sans interrupted.

Red turned to his friend.  Sans had slipped his phone into his cargo pocket and was white-knucking the ñebula colada glass.  This was… a pretty unheard of amount of aggression for his laid-back moon hippie.  Kinda hot, though.

"Oh I doubt that," said the monster beside Red.  They crooked their pinkie as though they might be considering curling it around Red's shoulders.  "I bet you two have plenty of… first-hand experience in-"

"no, sorry," Sans interrupted again.  "i didn't express myself very clearly.  what i meant to say was," he ah-hemmed theatrically to clear magic in his skull, cracked his cervical vertebrae, and growled.

Red had never heard a sound like that come out of Sans in all the years he'd known him.  It sounded like bared teeth and crooked claws, like territory defended and dust shed.  Sans's bass voice made for a bone-rattling gnarl like distant thunder.  It reminded Red of his first home, and for once not in a bad way.  It was also, weirdly, kind of adorable?

"Oh, jeez, sorry."  The left hand backed away immediately, and the right was quick to follow, linking pinkies with their companion.  "You could have just said you were exclusive, no offense meant!"  They beat a hasty retreat.

"wow." said Red.

"shaddap," Sans muttered, and took a long, long swallow from his drink.

Chapter Text

Sans rose with the dawn, which was a novel experience.

He rose with one of the dawns, anyway.  This little spacerock had two and a half of them per system-standard day and right now the earlier one was hitting right around 1300h.  Also, in his defense the dawns were about a month apart on Sans's homeworld.  Papyrus or Edge would have called that a flimsy excuse, of course.

Sans stirred slowly, first hugging his pillow tighter in protest of impending consciousness and then stretching luxuriantly under the fluffy pink duvet.  Red watched Sans's back while he grumpily slouched his way upright, and through his bone-rattling morning stretch.

Of course their suite had only one bed - they were here for their "honeymoon," after all.  That bed was massive, dripping with pillows and frilly bits, and clearly sporting the latest in modern mattress technology.  There was more than enough room for both skeletons to go full starfish without even approaching the cuddle neutral zone, and when Sans dragged himself out of bed and shuffled away toward the east-facing window to squint at the rising sun, Red didn't even feel a shift in the mattress.  So, Sans could be forgiven for not realizing that Red was awake.

Was awake, and had been awake for some time.

There was a tropical bird just outside the window, perched atop a lavender palm.  It was putting on a hell of a show, hopping around and making weird electrical appliance noises.  Either horny or in serious physical distress; Red could relate.

At the window, Sans scratched lazily at his cervical vertebrae, yawned and flawlessly imitated the bird's call.  Outside, the bird froze, perched on one foot with its wings slowly drooping, big feathery head cocked curiously to the side to regard them with one huge, dark eye.  Then Sans made another noise at it, and it fled, squawking.

"bird's smart enough not to flirt with a guy in a collar," Red commented.

Sans flinched, then pasted his nonchalance back on.  "heh.  good morning to you too.  you still on about that magician human?"  Their all inclusive vacation had also included complimentary bathrobes, and Sans picked one up from the floor and tossed it over his shoulders.  Their wardrobe had been stocked with a variety of robes for all sorts of body shapes and sizes.  Sans's favourite was a pink one that was cut to be revealing on a much larger monster but enveloped his stout frame in fold upon fold of fluffy velour.

"nah," Red drawled, "i got plans for that guy."  He rolled out of bed, winding his way over to where Sans still stood by the window.  "this time i was talkin' about them monsters from the bar last night."

Sans tensed just a little, hands going to the sides of his robe but finding no pockets to hide in.  He said: "heh."

"never heard you growl like that before, sansy," Red teased.  "yer cute when yer jealous."

The visible bones of Sans's neck flushed faintly blue.  "i'm not jealous," he muttered.  "i just uh, kinda panicked there.  i figured i oughta keep up the whole legitimate newlyweds illusion thing…"

Red stepped closer, close enough that he could have wrapped his arms around Sans's waist if he wanted to, and leaned up onto his tiptoes, studying the other skeleton's face over his shoulder.  He was close enough that he felt the familiar touch of Sans's ambient magic against his own, easy and relaxed.

"y'know polyamory's a thing," he pointed out.  The spikes of Sans's collar glinted in the midday dawn.

"well yeah, i mean, 'course i know polyamory is a thing but i didn't think of that at the time.  i'm not great at improv."

"i dunno, ya seemed pretty convincing to me," Red rumbled.  Perhaps he was tempted by the sparkle, but Red couldn't help tapping one of the collar spikes with a distal phalange as he encroached on Sans's back. A harsh shiver passed through Sans's ambient magic, perceptible through Red's own seeking threads and even more strongly felt through his phalange on the collar.  A flash of agitation, like glittering fish fleeing the shadow of a heron.

Red stepped away.  Sans was fun as hell to tease, but not if he was going to get upset about it.

"hey so speaking of things you're not great at," Red awkwardly segued, "you wanna see what this place has got for breakfast?"

They bickered companionably as they made their way downstairs.  Red didn't bring up the Unspeakable Incident of the Dinosaur Egg Oatmeal.  Sans didn't point out that Red had eaten it anyway.

Downstairs was more or less as they left it the night before, though cleaning drones had recycled their discarded cocktail rinds and collected the various abandoned socks into a pile.  A pleasant breeze stirred the marabou feather trim of Sans's housecoat, but nothing else moved; the cleaning drones were programmed to vanish like gnomes in the presence of guests.

Sans was halfway around the kitchen island when he startled to a halt.  Red was making his way to the macrobar to ask it to make him an Enceladus coffee, so he didn't pay Sans a lot of mind until the other skeleton cursed and stepped away from the counter.

"what is it, one of those shouty lizards?"  Enceladus coffee was not in the presets, it turned out.  Red had some programming to do.  He looked up in time to see Sans squint his eye sockets and duck down behind the counter.

There was a mechanical whirring sound and a tiny little robotic drone wheeled itself up onto the countertop.  Sans's round skull popped up behind it a moment later.

The drone was about the size of a housecat, (not Edge's monster, a regular one) with three pairs of knobbly all-terrain wheels and huge old fashioned solar cells covering its back like beetle wings.  Instead of the cleaning attachments and all-purpose grabbing arms that household drones were normally equipped with, this one had a cluster of cameras and other sensory equipment mounted on the end of a slender, upright neck.

Red summoned a bone attack to hand.  "what the hell is that?"

The little robot turned its sensory apparatus toward Red.  there were two glowing rings of status indicator lights where an animal's eyes would be.  It emitted a lick of scratchy chiptune music and said in a warbly, mechanical monotone, "Greetings, Valued Guests of Palm Craters Resort, brought to you by Luxor Resorts and Hotels!  I am Robbie the ROVer!"

"kay…" Sans cautiously stepped closer.  "and why are you in our kitchen?"

"My operators detected several fatal hardware faults in this suite's tailored advertisement modules and dispatched me here to act as a replacement.  Are you in the mood for breakfast?  Nothing gets me up and mining in the morning like a piping hot cup of Mineco Brand Asterspresso, available from your kitchen's beverage dispenser or in many fine establishments system wide!"

"fatal error, huh?"  Red hefted his stabbin' bone.  "well ya might wanna warn yer operators that they're about to detect a few more."

"red!"  Sans had stepped around the counter and put a warning hand on his shoulder.  "don't!"

"what?"  Red cocked his head incredulously.  "why the hell not?"

"you can't kill it, red.  look how cute it is!"

On the counter, the robot rolled in a little circle and then blinked its status lights winsomely.  "You can start off your day rocktastically with a heaping bowl of cinnamon moon rocks!"

"its just gonna keep tryin' ta shill stuff."

"yeah, but look how cute and retro it is?  c'mon, red.  it'll be like a vacation pet."

"ya can't be serious? c'mon sweetheart, it's just gonna try to sell us granola bars the whole time." Sans blinked his big sockets up at Red, eyelights wide and a little wobbly at the edges.  It was a transparently obvious manipulation; he did this all the time.  Red knew from experience that Sans would pull out this begging act at the drop of a hat for a joke, but once in a great while the act was just plausible deniability for Sans to fall back on later.  Despite his lackadaisical attitude, Sans wasn't really very good at asking for things that he actually wanted.   And Red was sure as the Venusian day is long that Sans actually wanted this.

"please, red?  i'll reprogram it and everything!"

Red hemmed and hawed a bit like there was any chance that he was going to actually deny Sans.  "ahhh, alright fine.  but you gotta do all the maintenance on it."  Red turned to stomp back over to the macrobar.

Sans made a gleeful noise and immediately started prying open the maintenance panel on the back of the little robot's head.

"That action runs the risk of voiding my warranty!  Instead, why don't you try running to your local beverage dispenser to order a nutritious instant breakfast shake from-"

Red tuned the mechanical voice out and went back to tapping through the customization options of the macro-bar's menu.

"hey red?"

"yeah?"  Red looked over his shoulder.

"thanks, buddy."  Sans tapped his phalanges to his teeth and blew Red a skeleton kiss, his sockets crinkled up into happy crescents.

When Red rapidly turned his back, it was because he wanted to get back to programming his breakfast and absolutely not to hide the faint blush blooming across his cheekbones.

–

Palm Craters proudly advertised itself to be located within a climate controlled gas envelope on a cozy planetoid in the heart of the asteroid belt, within a convenient spaceflight from either Mars, the inhabited moons of Jupiter, or even Earth itself.  Customizable regional weather conditions allowed it to sport a huge variety of activities, from skiing down the sloped walls of the eponymous craters to warm weather sailing on the gentle azure seas.  But by far, the greatest influence on this place were the old tropical island resorts of earth, and the meticulously maintained shore of the artificial bay was one of its most popular amenities.

After Sans had finished modifying the robot and they'd had their fill of Red's best attempts at getting the macrobar to put horseradish in the coffee, the skeletons headed down to the shore.  Sailcraft dotted the horizon, dappled by the shadows of massive space whales swimming dreamily by in the upper limits of the artificial atmosphere.

Sans flipped through the glossy pamphlet of activities and attractions.  It was strange, in this day and age, to be given actual paper instead of being directed to the guest experience app or something, but Sans wasn't complaining.  He'd had to lock down nearly all network activity on his phone, except for the ever-continuing conversation with his brother, in order to stem the tide of Y and Spacebook and Microgram notifications.  Which rendered the device kind of useless for information gathering.  Red didn't seem to be having nearly as much trouble.  Sans should probably ask him about that.

"soo…" he mused, reading down the list of Sunday Afternoon activities.  "looks like there are a bunch of shows and concerts tonight. cirque de ceres, pawl seraph, the sinatras are doing some kind of gladiator thing…" Red made a series of generally negative noises.  "hmm, there's also sensual massages, ballroom dancing lessons, tandem paragliding, couples yoga for humanoids, quadrupeds, or miscellaneous…"

"kinda sensing a theme, there," Red grumbled.  He was sulking because they hadn't been able to find any sufficiently emo swimming trunks and he'd had to settle for a plain black set paired with a barely acceptable cock rock t-shirt.

"yeah, it's almost like this is a honeymoon resort or something."

They eventually agreed on building a sand castle.  This planetoid didn't have anything that could cause tides, but the water-level of the artificial sea was slowly raised and lowered throughout the day to flush the sand of contaminants and create a more "traditional," earth-like environment.  So, Red spent the afternoon adding fortifications onto the pinkish lump where Sans had scrawled "castle" before flopping over into the wet sand, until the rising water forced them up onto drier shores.

The beach was full of things to do: they avoided the beach volleyball tournament like unpaid overtime, talked circles around the souvenir vendors, and dominated a game of bocce ball until they were expelled for using blue magic to cheat.  They probably got away with it a lot longer than they should have as a result of being recognised by several of the other players as the "cute skeleton newlyweds who were on the edgy magic show."  Sans hoped someone was already Yning online about "the cute skeleton newlyweds who cheat at bocce ball."  Maybe that would get people to stop following them around waiting for them to kiss.

It was kind of unreal how interested people seemed to be in them.  Sans didn't particularly get the appeal - maybe it was the novelty of seeing an ordinary schlub married to someone who looked like Red?  Regardless, he hadn't seen thirst this misdirected since Alphys got that promotion to the planning committee and stopped filling the team drive with "accidentally uploaded" friend fiction.

If he was honest, it was a narrow thing that they talked their way out of the wet t-shirt contest.

By the time the dim, distant sun was sinking below the horizon again, the crowd had considerably thinned.  Some of the resort staff were packing up the daytime equipment, stowing away the volleyball nets and boogie boards and whatnot.  The solar sailboats were all back ashore or else sailing into daylight on the other side of the asteroid, though the space whales continued their slow dance far, far overhead.

They were walking along the high water line, their bare boney feet leaving narrow tracks in the damp sand.  Sans kept a keen eyelight on the ground as they walked.  The artificial sea had been seeded with functional and aesthetic genetically engineered life, and the shore was littered with colourful cast off invertebrate shells.  Some of them were pretty spiky.  While Sans enjoyed the gentle abrasion of the sand on his metatarsals, he didn't want to find out what stepping on a sea urchin would do to the integral magic between his cuneiform bones..

He bent down and scooped up a bright blue bivalve shell, its open edges fringed by long spines.  Nearly all of the delicate protrusions were intact despite its time tumbling in the sand.

"heh, i found one that reminds me of you."

Red held the shell up next to his eyes, obviously confused.  Red's integral magic, like his eyelights, was crimson.

"nah.  not your magic."  Sans gently turned the shell around in Red's hand so that its spiny edge mirrored the curve of a skeletal grin.  When he turned the shell around that way, the one missing spine was the second-to last one on the upper edge of the shell.  "reminds me of your smile."

Red squinted at the shell, maybe trying to see the resemblance.  "heh."  He slipped the seashell into his inventory.  "good one.  you wanna go eat?"

There were a number of vacation-themed restaurants along the edge of the sand, from ice cream stands and kebab huts to a few more formal establishments.  They picked the tackiest one they could find: it had a simulated palm thatch roof and was decorated with strings of pastel green and pink martian coconuts and artfully mangled surfboards.  The sign identified it as "Shark Bite's."

They got recognised as soon as they walked through the batwing doors.

"Ooohhh," the hostess cooed.  She was a very tall slime monster, and her pseudopods flailed hyperactively when she spotted them.  "Oh!  Oh!  You're the skeletons!  Oh, I'm so happy to have you in my restaurant!  Please come right this way!"  She rapidly slurmed out of her podium and guided them through the maze of tables to a secluded balcony overlooking the sea.  "I'm not gonna lie I was kind of hoping you would come by here so I've been keeping one of the honeymoon balconies open at all times just in case."  Her several dozen eyes were surrounded by cilia like long lashes, and she batted them at the skeletons excitedly.  "Heehee,"  She pulled out both chairs and ignited the candle in the middle of the table with a showy burst of fire magic.  "I'm going to bring you the honeymoon table d'hôte!!  Just make sure your guest files are updated with any dietary restrictions or requirements, okay, sweeties?"

She folded her pseudopods over her gaping maw and gave a happy little wriggle from top to bottom.  "Oooh, it's so romantic!" She cooed, before she went aqueous and oozed away through the balcony floor.

"well that was… something."  Red looked a little shell shocked.

The candle was emitting a stream of ephemeral heart shapes instead of smoke.

Sans apprehensively removed his increasingly beleaguered phone from his pocket.  Holographic Like emojis dripped off its exterior like condensation, but he was able to brush aside enough of the hearts and thumbs upses to access their guest profiles.  Their names had mutated to "Red underfelLL and Comec Sins" after Sans's latest attempt to correct their spellings. He pulled up their dietary preference profiles and scanned through them to make sure that Red's Intent Intolerance was properly notated.  It was.

"hey, that reminds me."  He shook the clinging emoticons off his phalanges before they could stain.  "what did you do to make your phone stop blowing up?"

"deleted my socials," Red said.

"you what!?" Sans almost dropped his phone.  "how?  those are tied to your lunar citizenship record…" he trailed off.  Red gave him a level look.  Red's citizenship record could be described as somewhat fraudulent, but only if one was in a particularly charitable mood.  He really was from Venus, and he really did have one living family member: Commander Edge Underfell.  Pretty much everything other than that was either embellishments, lies, or just pulled completely out of Red's ass.

"i'll make a new netsona when we get home.  or something."  Sans stared at him.  Red might as well have just casually mentioned he had faked his own death.

"but… what if someone needs to contact you?"

Red shrugged.  "anyone that i want to be able to get in touch with me already knows that i'm where-ever you are."

Sans was aghast.  "so you're just gonna let me deal with edge when he comes looking for you?"

Red shrugged again.  "pretty much.  don't worry, sweetcheeks.  edge likes you."

"edge likes arugula and doing pushups.  he tolerates me."

Red laughed.  "yeah, he sure does, don't he."

Sans didn't get a chance to say anything more, because the hostess was back with a bottle of champagne and their starter: baguette rounds and a baked cheese with a dusty white rind.  It was heart shaped.  She gave them a rippling shrug of her many tendrils when Sans looked at it in mild horror.   There was a blob of cheesy goo oozing out of the heart's cleft.

"This is a human-owned restaurant," she said sheepishly.  "You know how they are about iconography."

Red didn't seem bothered.  He was already transferring the melted cheese onto the provided bread.  "c'mon, sansy, eat your soul goo like a good boy."

More dishes followed.  Finger limes and creamy avocado toast, little mushroom sausages in a thick red sauce, braised leeks and tangerines, and tabbouleh with heart-shaped flatbread.  The main course was individual pot pies.  Sans's pie had "Red" pricked into its top crust, while Red's proudly proclaimed "Comec."  Red made a half-hearted attempt to exchange the pies, but Sans insisted on following the instructions and feeding them to each other one bite at a time.  Red got real blushy about three bites in and stayed that way for the rest of the night.

It wasn't just the food that was romantic.  A violinist serenaded them from the sand below the balcony, while imported moon jellies illuminated the artificial sea in waves of blue and pink.  The hostess unsubtly slipped Red a long-stemmed rose "for his sweetheart" when Sans was watching the space whales.  (Sans saw the whole exchange; he never did get the rose.  Red just gave the hostess a strange look and tucked the flower into his inventory).

Sans was sure that some day in their distant future, when they were scamming free jello at the nursing home, they'd laugh about the time they went out for an absurdly romantic dinner.  Right now though, he couldn't quite find the joke.  What the hell had they been thinking when they decided to get fake-married?

The meal ended with chocolate-dipped strawberries beneath a sparkling curtain of stars, and the long, lonely calls of space whales drifting down from on high.

They walked home along the shoreline.  When they got there, (and after Red locked Robbie in the bathroom) neither skeleton was in the mood to recline in one of the hammocks, so they sprawled out together on the couch.  They both just sort of ended up leaning against each other at one end.  It was easily big enough for them to sprawl comfortably without being in each other's space, but Sans was too lazy to move to the far side and Red didn't seem to mind Sans resting his head on the slightly taller skeleton's shoulder.  Plus, only one end of the couch was perfectly placed to view the night sky through the solarium's seamless glass bubble roof.

They sat in companionable silence while Jupiter rose.  At this distance, the angular separation between the giant planet and its moons was sufficient that they could be easily seen as many smaller dots ringing one big light.  They were close enough that Jupiter appeared more like a gibbous than a dot, the way the Earth appeared over Luna as it waxed and waned through the long night.

Their suite was equipped with a massive holoprojector; they could have spent the evening hours watching shitty edutainment and dunking on the crappy research methodology.  (Some claim that the lifeforms in the subglacial oceans of Europa are the results of accidental contamination by early human spaceflights.  But what if instead, they were the result of a much earlier, much more intentional event?  Ancient Astronaut theorists speculate that…)

Somehow though, calling up the voice menu and selecting a stream seemed like too much work.  Or maybe just not enough reward.  Easier to listen to the night bugs chirping and Red's occasional inappropriate banter, and enjoy this different angle on the stars hanging above them.

When Red spoke up, Sans thought it was going to be another joke.

"so uh, we've been doing couple-y stuff all day."  Red had his arm casually around Sans's shoulders, and one of his claws very lightly brushed Sans's humerus under the edge of his shirtsleeve.

"un-huh."  Sans waited for the punchline.

There was a too-long beat of silence.  Red tapped his phalange nervously against Sans's arm.  "yeah so i really thought i was going to come up with a smoother way to say this than i did.  you wanna fool around?"

Sans slowly rolled his head on the back of the couch to look Red in the face.  He didn't say anything.

"see," Red continued.  "we been around all this romance stuff all day.  not to mention all them attractive people in their tight little swimsuits.  so i'm uh," he shifted his pelvis illustratively.  "and obviously i can't just go cruise at the bar because of the whole, y'know, marriage.  so i thought maybe we could make out a little or somethin'?  just a no strings, friends with benefits kinda thing."

"husbands with benefits?" Sans commented.

"hey, it's alright.  if you're not into it we can just forget i said anything, okay?"

Sans leaned over and kissed him.

It wouldn't have been accurate to say they'd never done this before.  Red had been Sans's closest friend since they were barely into their twenties, when Sans had tried to impress this handsome bad boy at the local watering hole with his newly minted Ph.D. and got his ass absolutely handed to him by what turned out to be a self-taught engineering prodigy.

"what're ya supposed to be, some kinda rocket surgeon?"

"uh... yes?"

It had been a little awkward at work the next day when Red turned out to be his department's newhire.

Sans hadn't been remotely successful in his attempt to pick Red up that night, and after a while they had just settled comfortably into their current dynamic.  Mostly.  There had been a couple of times over the years when they got drunk and handsy with each other, but by the light of day it never quite seemed worth pursuing; Sans had long since accepted that Red didn't want to return his early romantic overtures, and that was fine.  Friendship wasn't a consolation prize.

So Sans kissed Red, just a chaste click of teeth against teeth, and he stopped his rambling with a little "mrph" noise.

"nah."  Sans backed off only enough to speak, their zygomatic arches still touching.  "i'm game."

"oh!  well alright then."

Red raised a hand, tracing the curve of Sans's cheek without touching him, ambient magic mixing in the scant space between their bones.  It was as though he was suddenly nervous to actually lay hands on him.  Ridiculous, given how consistently and thoughtlessly he invaded Sans's personal space on a daily basis.

Sans leaned into Red's hand like a cat, and Red ran his thumb-claw over Sans's teeth.  He slipped the sharp tip of it between to gently encourage his mouth open.  Magic gathered in his mouth when Red caressed the sensitive inner faces of his teeth until Sans summoned his tongue.

"yeah, that's right."  Red circled the ball of his thumb phalange over the soft pseudoflesh.  "c'mere sweetheart."  He pulled Sans back in for another kiss, claw still hooked in the corner of his mouth.  This time it wasn't just sensitive teeth pressed together, but the heady rush of magic-on-magic as Red pressed his own summoned tongue into Sans's mouth and explored him thoroughly.

This wasn't the first time they had ever done this, but it was the first time they had done this sober.   There was no haze of intoxication for Sans to hide behind; the champagne wore off hours ago.  Instead he was consumed by Red's mouth on his, and the arm curling around his waist to hold him closer, and the fingers caressing his zygoma.

The kiss broke apart but they stayed close, breathing in each other's magic while Red pressed kisses to the glowing blue ligaments at the corner of Sans's jaw.

"shit, red," Sans drew in a shaky breath.  "you don't really think this is gonna make you feel less horny?"

Red sucked one of Sans's transverse spinal processes into his mouth, tonguing at the intricate, bony protrusion until Sans gasped.  "yeah, okay, it's becoming pretty clear that it's not gonna, no."

Sans cupped Red's skull in his hands, tracing the sutures with his fingertips.  "do you, mmmm, wanna stop then?"

Red hummed thoughtfully against Sans's neck, just shy of touching his collar.  "nah, i'm good."  He stroked a claw along the tiny gap between vertebrae, agitating the integral magic gathering there.  Sans felt that all the way down to his coccyx, and groaned appreciatively.  "how's about you, you wanna stop?"

"fuck no."  Sans was fervent.

Red pushed him over then, into the yielding embrace of the couch cushions, and climbed onto his lap.  "i'm real glad ya said that, sweetheart."  He rested his elbows on the back of the couch, hemming Sans in with his forearms.  Sans pulled him down and kissed him again, melting under the weight of Red's body and magic draped all over him.

Sans let his hands wander up under the back hem of Red's t-shirt, fingertips dancing along his spine to make him moan into Sans's neck.  It turned out Red was vocal as all hell, muttering praise in Sans's ear between shaky breaths.

"ah, fuck sweetheart, right there."  Red called him sweetheart all the time but it hit a little different when his could feel Red's flushed sacrum, slippery with liquid magic under his fingertips, and Red had pulled his shirt collar open to nibble Sans's clavicle.  A hand stroked down the placket of his shirt.  "c'n i take this off you?  fuck, i wanna look at ya."

"yeah, yeah, whatever you want."  Sans nodded fervently.  He tugged at Red's shirt too, hoping his friend would reciprocate.

They parted for a moment, stripping off their shirts.  Boldly, Sans tugged at the waistband of Red's shorts too.

"yeah?" asked Red, clearly delighted.

"please," said Sans.

Red only stood up long enough to kick off his sandals and trunks.  He left his socks on.  Then Sans pulled him down onto his lap again, grinding their sternums together.  He'd seen Red shirtless before.  He'd seen Red naked before, for that matter.  Nothing strange about some just friends platonic skinny dipping in the lunar hot springs.  But, like everything else tonight, not like this.  Not groaning and shuddering in his lap, not flushed crimson in all of his joints with excited magic, not whispering sweet nothings in Sans's acoustic meatus.

He gripped Red tightly by the hip bones while Red wove his phalanges into the narrow gaps between Sans's ribs.  Stars, but he was good with his hands.  He had a surgeon's precision with his sharp claws, finding all of Sans's most sensitive places but never drawing more than the thrilling possibility of pain from his tender bones, no matter how much Sans writhed under him.

"ah, red, red!"  Sans ground Red's pelvis hard against his own, gripping Red by the ilia and dragging his bare pubic symphysis over the smooth fabric of Sans's shorts.  Red was doing something to the inside of Sans's sternum with one clever hand that made Sans's heels drum against the front of the couch in shocked delight.  Then Red used his other hand to grab his collar and pull it tight against the side of his neck and his voice broke entirely.

It felt, fuck, it felt indescribable.  When he'd touched his collar before, when Red had touched his collar before, it felt like slipping into the hot springs outside Tranquility City on a frigid lunar midnight.  Like a hug that came from inside his own bones, comfort and safety and support.  This wasn't that.  This was like taking a shot of pure pleasurable intent straight through the frontal bone.  This was like singing a wine glass to pieces.  This was like deep throating a van der Graaf generator.  This was like-

Red let go of the collar, looking dazed.  Sans's magic had summoned at some point during… that, his dick hard and leaking magic in the confines of his shorts.

"what was tha-ah!-at?  do wedding collars mmh, do they normally do that?"  Red was rubbing his pubic arch against Sans's summoned magic.  It was less overwhelming than his hand on the collar had been.

"no idea!  never been married before, sweetheart."  He kissed Sans, slow and gentle on the mouth.  "hey, c'mon, lemme go."

He was trying to get to his feet.  Sans realized belatedly that he was gripping his friend by the lumbar spine, and he let go.

Red didn't go far, just slid down to kneel on the floor at Sans's feet.  He kissed Sans's kneecap, and tapped a distal to Sans's fly.  "can i?"

"fuck, baby, whatever you want," Sans repeated.

Red didn't take his shorts off, just opened the fly and reached right in to guide his trapped cock to freedom.  It was dripping with liquid magic already, little streamers of smoke drifting away as the magic flashed from physical to intangible and joined Sans's aura of ambient magic.

Red spent a moment admiring the twitching ecto.  Sans hadn't put any thought at all into what form his magic would manifest in; the dick he summoned was thick and curved with a broad, fleshy head and generous foreskin.  He and Red both watched as a viscous droplet of magic welled up from the slit.  Red leaned forward and ran his tongue up the underside of Sans's dick from the meaty swell where it connected to his ischia to the cluster of ridges just below his head.  Then he looked up at Sans under his half-lidded sockets, lowered his hot, wet mouth and swallowed Sans down like a damn duck.

He bobbed his head, and Sans was the first one to break eye contact, helplessly dropping his head against the back of the couch.

"red, aw mm, you're so-"

Red hummed, sounding smug as hell, and bobbed his head.  Sans could feel his pseudoflesh throat fluttering, tickling his sensitive ecto, and knew that he wasn't going to last long at all.  Sans had one hand on Red's shoulder, and the other one hovered beside Red's skull, unsure if his friend would welcome it until Red grabbed him by the wrist and pressed his hand to his head.

"really?" Sans husked.  Red hummed in assent, making Sans's toes curl, and Sans brought both of his hands up to cradle Red's skull between them.

He could feel Red shuddering, could hear his bones rattling musically as he held himself tense over Sans's straining magic.  Then he seemed to will himself to go lax and loose, his head turning heavy in Sans's hands.

"fuck, i can't be this lucky."  He tentatively guided Red's head in a deep bob, and Red went where he was bid, broad tongue caressing Sans's dick, the soft magic of his mouth cushioning Sans's passage.  Mindful of those sharky teeth, Sans bobbed his head slowly again, then again, then held Red's head in place over his groin and tried thrusting up into Red's mouth.  Liquid magic dripped from between Red's wide open teeth, leaving a tinge of purple where the crimson magic mingled with Sans's own cyanotic hue.  And Red groaned deep and satisfied, his sockets pressed shut in contented crescents.

It didn't take long.  Sans bones slipped on Red's sweat-streaked skull when he swore and thrust up hard into Red's mouth.  "red, can i-"

Red had been utterly pliant up to this point, but now he resisted Sans's grip.  Not to pull away, but to sink down and swallow around Sans's dick until he went rigid and came, eagerly gulping down the magic that flooded his mouth.

"oh ohhhh, fuck red, your mouth.  stars!"

He was gentle when he let Sans go, pressing an almost sweet kiss to Sans's oversensitive frenulum.  But he didn't give Sans even a moment to compose himself before he was climbing back up onto the couch.

This time he crouched over Sans instead of sitting on him, and when Sans dared to open his eyes he could see Red's summoned pussy glistening ruby red between his femurs.  That was somehow less obscene than the way the magic staining his chin glowed violet.

Sans reached for him, but Red caught his hands.

"nope," he said.  "my turn."

He folded both of Sans's hands up behind his head on the back of the couch, then transferred them to one hand to lock them in place.

"you don't gotta do nothin' but sit there and look gorgeous, moonbeam."  Red had the audacity to actually wink at him.  Sans didn't know why that, of all things, made him blush.

Red came in for another kiss, feeding Sans the taste of his own magic mingled with the warm, smoky flavour of Red's.  Sans let his eyes close, let Red have his way with him, and he groaned from the bottom of his soul when he heard the obscene sound of Red playing with his tender folds.

When Red dropped his head to Sans's shoulder, Sans cracked a socket open to watch Red's hand move through the lattice of his friend's ribcage.  He was already stretching his pussy around three fingers, and while Sans watched he struggled to slip in a fourth.

"yeah, that's it," Sans found himself babbling, "yeah, take it, you can take it, fuck you're good, you've earned it, i want you squirt all over me-"

Red made a broken sound and came, soaking Sans's lap with his magic and Sans shuddered hard in a sympathetic paroxysm when the Intent-laded magic seeped into the receptive cloud still swirling in his pelvis.

Red let him go, but he wrapped his arms around Red, pulling him in for one more desperate kiss as he felt the magic in his pelvis shiver and try its best to resonate with Red, and Sans struggled to force it not to.  That was not appropriate for no strings attached just besties boning and Sans did not want to spend the next ten years listening to Red mock him for the time he resonated with him like a lovesick teenager.

Red collapsed on his lap, boneless and warm.  When Sans had calmed the rattling of his spine, he shifted his friend so he was curled against his chest.  Red snuggled in against his sternum.  He thought about maybe getting a blanket from somewhere to drape over them both, but it was comfortably warm amongst all the pillows, even in their bare bones, and Sans didn't stir from his place for a long time.

Outside, the sun was rising again in a spectacle of violet and magenta light - and if either skeleton had bothered to crack a socket, they might have observed that lovely hue also blooming in each other's joints.

Chapter Text

They still used the language of a fixed, 24-hour day throughout the system, no matter how foreign that timekeeping method might be to any particular world.  Individual days were arbitrary on tidally locked Luna, and were made even more arbitrary by Venus's slow backward crawl through its year-long rotation.  Sol might be the physical centre of their solar system, but culture and language revolved around the Earth.  So, although the dim, distant sun was beginning to sink beneath the western horizon, the skeletons thought of the time as "mid afternoon" when they headed to the historic mining colony.

Centuries ago when humans and monsters took their first, tottering steps away from their home planet, they stopped at this little rock to extract its precious minerals.  Now that it was home to a whole luxury resort industry, some enterprising historians had set up a museum and restored the old colony's main street to fascinate visiting tourists with the bygone days of the inner system frontier.  There was a great showcase of the history of robotics assembly code.  The costumed animators and gaudy amusement rides outside in the street weren't quite as true to history.

Outside in the fading afternoon dusklight, the main street of the old colony was lined with stalked habitation spheres and glassy vacuum domes.  They were, perhaps, a little more artistically tilted and skewed than was strictly accurate, but the rough, frontier town atmosphere was great.  There were dune buggies parked in the dusty street, and the monday afternoon crowd was about half costumed animators, along with a variety of roving mining robots.

"hey sansy, take my picture."

Photo ops abounded.  Here, in front of the lovingly restored librarby, was a standee of a nattily dressed network administrator with a white headphone cord protruding from the pocket of his environmental suit.  Red had somehow managed to clamber around behind the cut-out so that his ample rump protruded through the face hole.

"heh," Sans laughed back, and braved his phone's ever more inoperable lock screen to snap a pic of Red's invitingly wiggling, shorts-clad ass.  Not invitingly, winsomely?  Comedically!  It's funny.  Yes.  Right.

This was pretty typical behaviour for Red.  Probably because he never really got to act juvenile when he was actually in stripes or something, but Sans wasn't interested in deeply psychoanalyzing his buddy-husband.  He was much more interested in admiring said buddy-husband's plump backside.

That wasn't, like, new.  It wasn't like Sans had suddenly developed a crush on Red after years of somehow not noticing how attractive, (and funny, and loyal, and brilliant) he was.  Yes, it was a little harder to keep his thoughts from straying to Red's shapely bones now that Sans knew exactly what it was like to have all that scarred ivory at his fingertips, tense and rattling and flushed hot crimson from his touch….

Sans cleared magic in his skull while Red emerged from behind the particleboard sign.

"y'okay, sweetheart?"

"yeah yeah, it's just kinda," Sans scuffed a foot over the packed gravel, raising a cloud of pinkish dust.  "gritty out here."

"mm," Red agreed.  "prolly high time we hit that saloon, then.  c'mon."  Red bumped shoulders companionably and strolled off across the street.

It wasn't that Sans somehow didn't know what Red looked like.  The guy was hotter than an induction welding arm and twice as good at building spacecraft; that was just an objective fact.  If Sans had a system-standard credit for every time he caught someone checking his friend out when they were out in public, he wouldn't have to commit wire fraud to keep them in drinks.  (He'd still do it for ethical reasons, of course.)  Hell, Sans'd been the one who finally clued Red in to the fact that people were trying to flirt with him once Sans figured out that Red wasn't playing too cool for school with his suitors, he just actually couldn't tell when people were coming onto him.  Red's nightmare upbringing hadn't quite furnished him with a full set of interpersonal tools; Venusians had a high base level weirdness and that was even before what had happened to Fell City.

He had been insufferable for a lunar fortnight after that.

The centrepiece of the ghost colony was the old hotel.  Back in the frontier era the upper levels would have been used to accommodate guests and travellers passing through the settlement.  It was difficult for the miners and settlers who lived here to travel back to larger population centres, so there was always a supply of travelling optometrists and whatnot plying their wares across the asteroid belt.  Below the upper domes was a terrace glassed in by an opaque vacuum dome that would have served as a public cafeteria in the colony days.  All of this information was helpfully spelled out on a series of illustrated plaques in front of the building.

These days, the upper globes had been converted into the Starquake Saloon, a luxury restaurant, and the lower portion served as a seperate, more casual eatery and watering hole.  The Starquake Saloon had a months-long reservation queue, but the ground floor establishment served cheap mining-colony themed drinks and snacks and was always open for walk-ins.

Next to the airlock door was a huge sign advertising "Spacesparilla Soda."  When Sans got close to it, it animated into a cartoon of an ROV with big orange status indicators.

"hey," Red said, "isn't that your pet robot?"

A text box complete with old timey font appeared.  "I spend all day in the mines foraging for phosphates, but you can get 100% of the mining authority's recommended daily amount of phosphoric acid in just one serving of delicious Spacesparilla Soda!  It's the phorphorest!"

"huh, wouldya look at that," Sans murmurred, "i guess that explains why it was trying to get us to eat name brand cereal."

Red growled dramatically, startling a group of unattended human teenagers coming out of the airlock.  "damn robot," he muttered.  He was probably still sore about Robbie waking them up at one of the dawns to try to sell them breakfast foods.  Even Sans was a bit unsettled at the way the little guy had unscrewed the hinges on the bathroom door.

Once the airlock cycled, they moseyed over to one of the booth seats.  The saloon had a magnificently restored old fashioned bar, complete with serving staff, but it also had modern dispenser terminals at each table.  Red grumbled his way through the menu.  "ya gonna try it?"  Red wondered.

"name-brand cereal?"

"nah, the old timey soda."  Brightly coloured posters over their table proclaimed that Spirit Brand Spaceparilla Soda could prevent "microgravity induced muscule wasting" and "long orbit seasonal affective disorder."

"i… don't think it's safe for skeletons?"  Sans was pretty sure that people who were essentially made of calcium would do best to stay away from anything with 700mg of phosphate per serving.

"hmm," Red poked delicately at the interface.  "i dunno, that sounds like something for non-vacation us to worry about."  The dispenser played some twangy notes and dropped its mantle to reveal two tall, frosted glasses.  "i got you a large."

"thanks, buddy."  Sans unbent his bendy straw and took a cautious sip from the bubbling tumbler of soda.  There was a brief tug-of-war as the phosphoric acid tried to dissolve his teeth, and the metaphysical void in his oral cavity tried to break down the molecular matter of the liquid to incorporate it into his integral magic.  His magic won.  Barely.

Sans took a bigger sip.  "it kinda tastes like… purple, but in a sharp way?"

Red laughed.  "right?  we had something like this on venus.  used to synthesize it out of the atmospheric phosphine.  edge loves the stuff."  Red sipped at his own soda, looking content.  The cement holding his gold fang in place bubbled a little.

Beside the bar, an unmanned keyboard started buzzing out suspenseful chiptune music.  The dispenser console at their table briefly flashed a disclaimer about not interfering with historical reenactments, and that the ghost colony tourism foundation reserved the right to use their beverage usage data for internal directed marketing purposes.  Sans only read about a quarter of it before it blanked out again.

The main external airlock hissed open with a dramatic puff of vapour.  A costumed actor was posed in the round entrance, dramatically backlit by low-angle sunlight.

"heh, sweet," Sans elbowed Red in a friendly way.  "looks like we're in time for a show."

Red tensed up, eyeing Sans's elbow.  Then he shrugged and dragged Sans around the curve of the booth until he was almost in Red's lap.  "gnarly."

The animator's bubble helmet had tinted itself dark against the harsh overhead fluorescents, casting their features in shadows, and the heavy gravlock soles of their boots thumped against the high traffic rubberamic tile as they approached the bar.  Their environmental suit was fashionable high visibility green, partially obscured by the woven poncho draped across their shoulders, and mysterious clinks and jangles emanated from the many utility belts cross-crossing their hips and waist.  They paused at the bar, and a second hiss heralded the release of their collar seals before they detached their helmet and thunked it down on the brushed steel tray rails.

The bartender seemed unimpressed.  She didn't even look up from the glassware she was sterilizing with a handheld UV source.  "What'll it be, stranger?" she asked, sounding bored.

The newcomer's gloves creaked as they leaned on the bar.  They were a rawboned humanoid with several days of stubble on their chin, and the skin of their cheeks was dry and chapped as if they'd spent weeks and weeks in the sterile, low humidity environment of an old, slow, long haul planetary transport.  "I'll have a Spirit Soda," they drawled.

The bartender finally looked up then, but she didn't move to retrieve a glass or touch the gleaming chrome taps of the soda fountain.  Instead, she visibly looked the newcomer up and down, and didn't seem pleased by what she saw.  Her mouth quirked in disapproval as her eyes lingered on their extended arm resting atop the tray slide.  "That'll be a system credit."

The visitor tilted their head to one side, and then the other.  The sound of boney joints cracking was unnaturally loud in the saloon.  Red cleared his throat, almost directly into Sans's earhole, and Sans handed him one of the soda glasses over his shoulder.  "You sure about that, little missy?  Sign over yonder says it's a quarter."

The bartender's frown deepened into a sneer.  "For you, it's a full one.  And you'll have to forgive me if I ask to see the colour of your credit up front."

The gathered patrons tensed when the stranger reached under their poncho, but relaxed again when they just produced a scuffed and faded credit card to tap against the counter's reader.  "No need to get testy," they said mildly.  "I get it, times are hard."

The bartender didn't seem mollified.  "Hard, and getting harder," she said enigmatically.  She leaned over and filled the beaker she had just been sterilizing from the soda fountain without breaking eye contact with the drifter.  When she thunked the beverage down on the bar, it sloshed foam over the top lip of the vessel.  "Will there be anything else?"

The stranger picked up the beaker and downed its contents in one long, satisfying quaff.  A bead of faintly luminescent soda slowly oozed across their stubbly jaw and down into the collar of their environmental suit.  "Ah," they sighed happily.  "That really hits the spot.  Don't think I can afford another at these prices, much as I'd like to.  But there is one more thing I think you might be able to help me with, little missy."

"And what might that be, sir or madam?"   The bartender made the bland honorific sound like a curse.

"You got any idea where I might could find a gentleman what goes by the name 90 Words Per Minute Will?"

"I ain't never heard of nobody with no name like that."

Further down the bar, another actor in non-descript workers' clothes surreptitiously ducked away through an automatic door beside the keyboard.  Neither the bartender nor the newcomer seemed to notice.

"My mistake.  Do you know who might have a better idea of who comes and goes in this little colony?"

The bartender went silent; instead of answering, she picked up the empty beaker and began vigorously sterilizing it.  "I gave you your drink.  If you don't want to order another, I got no further business with ya."

The stranger hummed.  "Well then in that case, seems I gotta do my own research.  Might you be willin' to enlighten a fella as to the local Wi Fi credentials?"

The barkeep ignored that request like she hadn't even heard it.

The stranger looked around, sharp, pale yellow eyes rolling across the bar's various patrons, tourists and actors alike.  "Anyone?  I heard you Ceres folks keep your public LAN open to any traveller what needs a connection."

The friendly electronic music abruptly cut off when the door beside the keyboard slammed open, knocking the instrument off its stand in a discordant crescendo.

"Ain't nobody in this settlement gonna give the wifi password to the likes of you, friend."

Nearly silent on soft, non-conductive soles, the speaker stepped out of the backrooms of the saloon.  He was a gawky, blue-feathered bird monster, and his stark white anti-static coverall was unfastened to the waist, the sleeves tied casually around his hips.  A pair of bandoliers crossed over his narrow chest, studded with a variety of precision soldering iron tips and cable adaptors.  The popped collar of his polo shirt framed an expression of cool boredom. 

He stalked across the saloon to where the stranger remained standing at the bar.  Not a one of the patron actors dared look up from their drinks; the bartender was wiping at the plexiglass sneeze-guards like her life depended on it.

The bird monster had a pair of round, wire framed glasses perched on his yellow beak, and he plucked them off with a fluid roll of one wrist.  Then he blatantly invaded the drifter's space, leaning close to grab a corner of their poncho to clean off his lenses.  Before he returned them to his face, he used the temples to lift the draped fabric away from their shoulder, revealing the insignia patches on the upper arm of their environmental suit.

"Network man."

The stranger - the network man, nodded gravely.  "That's me.  And if I'm not mistaken, you must be 90 WPM Will."

The bird monster nodded in acknowledgement.  "I wish I could say I was pleased to make your acquaintance, friend."

The network man nodded again.  "Then it is my duty as a representative of the Interplanetary Broadcast Corporation to inform you that you are being placed under sanctions as a direct result of digital license hacking, location spoofing with intent to circumvent interplanetary broadcast agreements, and stream russlin'."

Will nodded again.  Rough looking folk rose from their seats around the saloon, gathering at his back.  The bird monster placed his glasses back on his beak.  "Hmmm.  Well that all sounds pretty bad, but you're a long way from Earth, friend, and I think maybe you don't know how things work round these parts.  Now, I think you and I could agree to stay out of each other's pin feathers if'n we really put our minds to it, but I don't think me nor any of my people are real interested in what your corporate masters have to say.  So why don't you find yourself a real job doin' real work, maybe get yourself a nice VPN, and stay outta everyone's way?"

The network man squared their shoulders.  "Partner," they drawled, "this town ain't got enough bandwidth for the both of us."

The bird monster nodded gravely.  "Then, friend, I guess I'll see you outside at low noon."

The two nodded to each other, and the network man readjusted his poncho with an air of grim determination.

Sans realized that Red had snaked his arms around his waist at some point in the showdown because he leaned even closer now, to whisper into his ear hole.  Sans couldn't hear him over the sudden applause that broke out from the patrons of the bar.  The two actors bowed politely, and the various animators returned to their places around the room.  Someone picked up the keyboard and restarted the background music track.

"heh, that was pretty good," Red commented.  "was kind of hoping some punches would get thrown, but not bad for a tourist trap.  definitely worth the price of a soda."  He gave Sans a little push to indicate that he wanted to head back out, and Sans started scooching his way around the booth.

A dark purple, scaly arm blocked his path, followed by Pawl Seraph's reptilian manager eeling his way into the skeletons' booth.

"Darlings, I am so glad I happened to run into you!"

"kay," said Sans.  He stopped scooching, and gave Red a shove to indicate that they should consider exiting the booth in the other direction.  The agent propped a foot up on the opposite end of the round bench seat, boxing them in.

"That stunt you pulled with Pawl was just completely genius," the agent enthused.  "Highest ratings we've had in… well, a decade.  I know Pawl invited the two of you to dinner but I wanted to give you my personal thanks.  Merch sales are up by 3 percent and the Skeleton Newlyweds Collector's Edition Ace of Spades Pendant Necklaces aren't even live yet!"

"are you going somewhere with this, buddy?"  Sans wasn't super thrilled about revisiting their encounter with The Amazing Husband Misgenderer.  Red had on that expression that meant he was amused and/or thinking about where to hide the dust.

"I can see that a couple of busy newlyweds like yourselves have got places to be, so I'll just cut to the chase."

The agent did not, in point of fact, cut to the chase.  It actually took him about ten more minutes of taking up the Witsgeek media empire (during which time Sans ordered and drank another biohazardous soda) to get to his point, which was, "so, the creative team has suggested and I agree that the two of you would be perfect members of the Witsgeek family.  Say, as recurring guest stars whenever we do a feature episode on… did you say you were from Mars?"

"yep," Sans lied.  

"Right, beautiful.  See, we're on Mars a couple of times per quarter to record a livestream, so I'm thinking we could have the two of you show up and make goo goo eyes at the recorder, maybe do some close magic with Pawl, bingo bango and next thing you know you're both stars!"

"wow," Red simpered.  "do you really think we have what it takes to be stars?  sounds awful generous of you to put us small town skeletons on your big streaming show."

"Oh, well, that's the thing about running a media enterprise.  You need to have a broad cast of characters in order to create the appearance of verisimilitude.  Now…" He slapped a legal tablet down on the table, "Just go ahead and sign these exclusivity agreements and we'll get down the specifics."

"damn," said Red.  "exclusive, like as in not just anyone gets to sign an agreement like this with you?"

Sans rolled his eyelights.

"Uh, yeah," said the agent.  He looked delighted.  "No everyday Hollyworld boilerplate for up and comers like you.  Now, I guess you two can't do retinal scans so I'm gonna need a sample of your magic…"

"whelp," Sans stretched, yawning.  "sorry to cut you off there, but the mister 'n i have got, uh, gay stuff? to do."

Red interrupted.  "we've got reservations for the mettachippendales show."

The agent looked back and forth between the two skeletons, slowly withdrawing the legal tablet.  "Alright… well, If I don't see you two before, we can always finish this up at Pawl's supper on Thursday."

Red finally responded to Sans's repeated slight shoves and slid himself out of the booth, unbalancing the agent when Red pushed his foot out of the way.  Sans followed, leaving the purple-scaled monster behind.

"oh," Sans said pleasantly, "i wouldn't count on that."  He held a hand out to Red, wiggling his phalanges until the other skeleton intertwined their fingers and led them off toward the airlock.

Sans bumped his head against Red's temporal bone, and Red leaned into him like a cat.  "you didn't actually reserve seats for the mettachippendales, did you?"

"heh.  what do you think?"

Chapter Text

"Why did the PhorphorOs go to space?"

A lovely, cool breeze tickled Red's nasal aperture, countering the soft warmth cocooning him, and he breathed in deep, ribcage hitching.  The sharp scents of pine trees and gunpowder tickled his sinuses.  On the border of sleep and waking, he imagined himself standing in a frozen forest glade, pale blue shadows stretching away from the bare black trunks of massive conifers that stood in silent ranks all the way to the distant, curving wall of a crater that rose into the star spangled void above.  Chill wind tickled his exposed skull, turned the metal studs and buckles on his tattered leathers to points of ice.  In the privacy of his own bones, though, he was warm.  Strange and bleak as the setting was, he was welcome beneath the bluish canopy.  He was exactly where he was supposed to be.

"Error: missing input!  Input requested: Why did the MineCo Brand PhosphorOs cereal go to space?"

The dream fuzzed, fading, and the silent starlit forest blurred until all he was left with was warmth and the strangely pleasant scent of a snowy forest on the dark side of the moon.

Red flexed his bony fingers in the plush blanket.  This luxury resort had blankets so fluffy he could bury his hands in them, pressing against the slight resistance and kneading deeply, warm and content as a cat in a sunbeam….

"nnhma…?"

Red's eyes snapped open at the sleepy interrogative.

Ah.  So, he wasn't kneading a fluffy hotel blanket.  Red was face-down in a pillow with one out-stretched arm splayed possessively over Sans's belly, aimlessly playing with his intangible bodily magic where it puffed out his shirt in a generous swell.  His friend's eyelights were barely visible in his slitted sockets, like pale specks of earthlight in the endless black of the night sky.

Sans's ambient magic was wrapped around Red like a cloak.

"morning?" Sans rasped.  Which was a fair question.  The sun wasn't up, right now, but that wasn't very informative on this rapidly rotating little rock.

"prolly," Red shrugged.  He didn't take his hand off Sans's shirt, but he did stop kneading and smoothed the fabric out instead with circles of his palm.

"mmm, you think we've got time to-"

An atonal buzzer blared from the headboard.

"WARNING!  PROGRAM(JOKE) CANNOT CONTINUE.  USERINPUT: i don't know REQUIRED TO RECEIVE OUTPUT: PUNCHLINE!"

Red scrambled up into a crouch, caging Sans in between his knees.  A bone attack manifested in his hand, buzzing with harmful Intent.  Sans's creepy little pet adbot was perched on the side of the headboard, its treads somehow clinging vertically to the surface.  It swivelled the cluster of sensory apparatus on the end of its stalk back and forth, lenses irising as it shifted its focus between Red and Sans.  The indicator lights on its faceplate blazed gold.

"i told ya that little fucker was going to kill us in our sleep!"

Sans groaned tiredly.  "red… c'mon, it's fine.  it's just trying to tell us a joke.  right, robbie?"

The thing crept over to Sans's side of the bed, beeping mournfully.

"Why did the PhosphorOs go to space?" it warbled.

"i don't know, robbie, why did the phosphor-o-s go to space?" Sans asked dutifully.

That seemed to cheer the robot right up.  It did a pirouette.  "Because it wanted to see the…. milky way!"  This was followed by a discordant sound that Red was ashamed to recognize as an 8-bit approximation of a rimshot.   Sans made jazzhands.

"oh no."  Red tried - really tried - not to laugh.  "my one weakness."

Sans finished his thought.  "great, innit?"

–

They headed down to the beach again when the sun was sliding down the sky's greenish slope.  On Luna, the sun only rose and set once in most months, and the final spectacular descent through the artificial atmosphere took about sixteen hours.  It was traditional to take some time off on a really good sunset day to sit outside with friends or family and watch the vast plains of the moon turn orange and gold in the dying light.  Red hadn't grown up with anything like that tradition, but after years in Tranquility City it had kind of grown on him.  Once or twice a year he and Sans usually managed to schedule a day when both of their brothers were in the planetary neighbourhood to go up to the top of Mount Boscovich and watch the sun set over the Sea of Rains.  It was nice.  So it was a bit strange to see the resort-goers walking around under the technicolour skies as though nothing was happening.  Must've gotten used to worlds with short rotational periods, or something.

On Venus, they only had one sunset a year and it looked like shit.

They were lying back on the soft, sandy beach, bare feet just barely in range of the gentle ebb and flow of the artificial waves.  They had a pretty good algorithm for simulating randomness, but Red had figured it out quickly enough to avoid getting his shorts moistened by the occasional much larger waves that rolled in.  Sans didn't bother, letting the water drench him.  He made a pretty appealing picture with his shorts plastered to his pelvis like that.

"i kinda want to go swimming," he said idly, dragging a toe through the wet sand.

"so? the water's right there."  Red pointed helpfully at the simulated sea lapping at their feet.  "y'want me to push ya in, buddy?"

"nah."  Sans didn't elaborate.  Red's neck cracked when he craned his head to look at his friend.  Sans's creamy pale bones reflected warm pink under the sunset; and Red was inescapably reminded of the way those bones had shone blue with vital magic shedding under his touch.

"ya sure?"  He shoved Sans a little.  Sans rolled easily onto his side and then flopped onto his back again, apparently unbothered by moderate manhandling.

"hmm, nah.  not in this… tidal pool."  Sans smoothed over whatever he had been doodling in the sand.  Probably a dick.  "they're gonna start up the refresh cycle soon and i'm not real buoyant, i don't wanna get sucked into the deep end and have to spend all night walking back to shore."  Shortcuts didn't work underwater; their magic saw the water as a contiguous entity and refused to separate the water that seeped into their skulls from the rest of it.  So, unless it was a small enough amount that they could take the whole thing along with them, they were stuck.

"fair.  hows about one of those, then?"  Red pointed up into the sky.

Sans's sockets pinched in a performative squint.  "are you pointing at the space whale?"

Red scoffed.  "no i'm not pointing at the space whale!  not unless you want to turn this free vacation to palm craters into a free vacation to titan."  Above them, the massive form of the space whale was a deep dark silhouette against the fading sky, drifting by without a single fuck to give.  Majestic bastard.

Red rolled onto his front and then lumbered his way to his feet.  Then he stooped to drag Sans up after him.  "look, c'mon, i'll show you what i mean."

It was a bit of a trek along the beach and up onto the boardwalk.  Sans bumped shoulders with him a few times as they navigated the sculpted dunes until Red grabbed his hand and held on.  Purely for practical purposes, of course.  Easier to keep track of if Red had his hand on him.

"swim… bubbles?" Sans questioned.

They had reached one end of the boardwalk, where a gaudy sign announced their destination.  There were little curtained changing rooms made of recycled bamboo surrounding a huge metal grate over a pool of water.

"i saw this in that activities brochure they gave us," Red explained.  "they use a little gravity generator to bind up a big ball of water, then you get to swim in it while they send it on a little tour.  's like a private swimming pool in the sky."

Sans arched a browbone.  "welp.  not gonna lie, i'm pretty suspicious about your motivations here but i really do want to go for a swim.  so, i'm in."

"you wound me, precious.  does this look like the face of a skellington what would deceive you?"  Red gave Sans his least trustworthy socket flutter.

"well golly, pardner, are you a campfire?  'cause you're makin' my marshmallow melt."

"just go get changed," Red grunted.  "i'll get us set up."

It only took Red a minute to get changed into his swimming attire, which gave him plenty of time to get their bubble parameters sorted out with the attendant.  (Medium-shallow, heavy on the saline, and the extra-long honeymooners route over the apatite flats.)

"seriously, red?"  Sans sounded exasperated when he joined Red on the grating.  "are those actual marbles?"

"nah."  Red struck a pose to better show off the tiny, tiny swim briefs he had stretched precariously over his pelvis.  General propriety said that skeleton monsters shouldn't wear this kind of swimsuit in mixed company, since without a shirt it was pretty hard not to flash his entire sacrum at anyone who was either taller or shorter than him.  Plus exposed ribs were pretty poor for hydrodynamics - Papyrus always swam in a precision engineered body condom and he swore it cut seconds off his lap times.

The attendant, a weirdly sweaty fish monster, was trying not to get caught staring at Red's kibbles and bits.  It was great.

Sans had gone in the opposite direction, with big brightly coloured trunks covered in cargo pockets and one of those long-sleeved swimming tops surfers wore.  At least he wasn't covering up his collar.

"do i wanna know?"

Sans was impassive when Red invaded his personal space to roll up the hotdog-patterned sleeves of his top.  It wasn't like he was going to bleach, not this far out from the sun, and Red wanted to look at those smooth ivory forearms.  When he was done with Sans's sleeves he gave Sans's collar a little nudge to settle it more symmetrically on his clavicles.  The little burst of friendly feedback it gave him felt like good food and bad laughs.

"depends on if you want to share this snack or not."

Sans looked at the attendant like they were going to rescue him.  The attendant gave back a very clear "neither my primate nor my carnival" look. "You two gonna get into the launch circle, or….?"

Sans obediently stepped up to the marked circle, where a basketball-sized orb of ceramic and glass glowed with dark blue gravity magic.  Red waited for him to look back over his shoulder before Red reached into his speedo and pulled out one of the spiky little fruits he had stuffed in there.

"is that a fucking lychee?" Sans asked, incredulous.

"dunno."  Red popped the spiky fruit into his mouth and obliterated it, shell and all, between his jagged teeth.  "tasty, tho."

"I think that one was a rambutan," the attendant unexpectedly piped up.  "Lychee are a little less spiky?"

Red shrugged.  "nuts are nuts, right?"

Sans rolled his eyes, but when Red stepped into the marked circle he slung an arm companionably around Red's shoulders.

"Alright.  You two both read the safety guidelines, right?"

"yep," Red lied easily.

The attendant did something with a tablet, and the grab core glowed more intensely.  Water began flowing upward around their feet, pulled in by the magitech orb.  When it had mounded up to about chest height, Red felt Sans's weight come off his feet as he started to float.  Red put a foot on the grab core to steady himself.  Sans's slender toes found a spot beside Red's curving claws.

Once the water had formed a smooth sphere around the grab core, comfortable swimming depth for two fun sized skeletons, the attendant pulled a comically large lever and the sphere slowly rose up off of the grating.  "Alright, enjoy your trip!  Remember to keep your breathing apparatuses inside the gas envelope at all times!"

There was a deep thrum of harnessed magic, and with hardly any kick at all the bubble of water and its skeleton cargo launched up into the sky.   And, when they were almost out of earshot, the attendant shouted: "Palm Craters Luxor Resorts waives all responsibility for your health and wellbeing should you fail to follow the safety guidelines!"

Their trajectory was almost vertical at first, pinging them up into the thin streamers of cloud trailing across the upper atmosphere as the resort grew tiny and toylike below them.  Little whisps of vapour trailed in their wake, like shed magic phasing into smoke, but the immediate layer of atmosphere surrounding them was held almost motionless by the relative gravity of the grab core.

The climb levelled out into a gentle arc that carried them out over the circular sea.  Sans let go of Red and experimentally pushed himself off.  The extra-dense water Red had ordered was easily enough to float him on his back, and he drifted backwards around the small sphere until he bumped into Red from the other direction.

"heh, fancy meeting you here."

Red pressed down on Sans's chest to make him bob in the temperate water.  Also to get to have his hand on Sans's sternum, which felt warm and smooth through his dumb swimming shirt.

Sans flailed his way out from under Red's hand and paddled himself backwards.  Red pushed off from the grab core to lazily chase after him.  The bubble of water with its central point of gravity didn't let them get very far from each other in absolute terms, but there was more than enough surface area for both skeletons to stretch out and splash around.

If Red hadn't been born with the trait for Gravity magic he might have found it nauseating to swing around the orb of water and suddenly find himself staring "up" at the crater-pocked pink rock wilderness of Ceres far, far below the bottom of the swimming bubble.

Eventually they both managed to get themselves floating stably on the starward facing side of the globe, starfished out on their backs below the twilight sky.  Overhead, Rigel was barely visible through the bright splash of the Betelgeuse nebula, and the gas clouds of the milky way drifted by like a river of mist.

"d'ya think we'll ever get out there?"  Sans had his elbow hooked around Red's knee, and his head resting in the middle of his femur.  Red could easily reach down and smooth his phalanges over the voluptuous curve of his skull.  Actually, he couldn't come up with a compelling reason not to do that, so he did.  Bone rasped on bone in the comfortable quiet of their tiny private world.

"to rigel?  would we even want to?  the thing's probably blown up by now."

"and we wouldn't know about it for a thousand years," Sans agreed.  This wasn't the first time they'd philosophized about the ghosts of stars.  "nah, i mean deep space in general, other star systems.  proxima centauri or wolf 359 or sirius or whatever."

"some day, sure.  edge's ship's gone out on a couple of test cruises into interstellar space. it'd take one hell of a genius engine design to get 'em all the way to sirius tho."  Red could feel Sans tilting his head more toward Red; or maybe he was just leaning into where Red was petting his skull.  "good thing we got one hell of a genius engine designer."

Red could feel the heat rise in Sans's bones when he blushed.

"heh," Sans muttered.  "well, the new gluon pumps are gonna be a step in the right direction, anyway."  Sans liked to downplay his intellect, but Red had never seen anyone with the kind of half-mad genius spark his husband/buddy did when it came to theoretical physics and starship design.  They raised some mighty fine skeletons on the far side of the moon.

There was a moment of companionable silence before Sans suddenly elbowed Red in the iliac crest and pointed wildly downward.  "shit, red, look at that!"

Red looked.

Below, visible through the clear water of their bubble, the enormous form of a space whale glided ponderously between them and the rocky surface of the planetoid.  It was massive, black as the bootes void, with rough patches of pearlescent barnacles clustered on its face and the leading edges of its flippers   It was so close Red imagined he could see the glimmer of an intelligent eye watching them as it drifted through the thin streamers of cloud below.

Sans rolled over in the water and paddled around to the bottom of the globe for a better view.  Red didn't want to take his eyelights off it for even that long and just swam straight through the centre of their bubble.

"i've never seen one so close," Sans whispered, like he thought he might disturb the ancient creature.  Below them, the whale's mouth gaped wide as it sucked up the thin clouds into its gaping gullet.  It could have swallowed him and Sans and the swim bubble whole, and Red spared a moment to wonder if there was something about this in the safety instructions he hadn't bothered to read.  Well, nothing he could do about it now.

A deep vibration shivered through their water; whale song made almost inaudible by the thin atmosphere.

"makes sense," said Red.  "don't see them 'round luna.  they got no use for thin atmospheres."

It almost seemed like the whale was keeping pace with them as they drifted over the dusk line and into daylight.  Sans was at his side again, ribs pressed against his.  Red thought he must have a foot on the grab core to keep them both stable in the water.  "have you…?" Sans started to ask, then trailed off.

See, the thing about that question was, Sans would already know about it if Red had ever seen a space whale up close.  They just didn't really spend enough time outside of each other's orbit for Sans not to.  Unless he was asking about the time before Red washed up on the lunar shores, which by mutual agreement was a thing that he didn't do.

"nah, i never saw one this close up either.  always wanted to though," Red admitted.

Red was from Venus.  From a backwater city-ship that orbited well north of the fashionable jet stream over Guinevere Planitia, floating in the temperate upper atmosphere on wings of reclaimed hydrogen.  Venus was one of the first extraterrestrial worlds people ever set out to colonize.  Not the hadean surface, of course; that was so hostile that even now they couldn't get a probe to last down there for more than an hour or two before it collapsed under the immense pressure and melted into slag.  But high up in the atmosphere, there was a point where the temperature and pressure were nearly earthlike.  Unbreathable to humans, of course, but the first Venusian airships were a far simpler venture than pressurized habitats on Mars or Earth's moon.  So Red was from Venus, from an unfashionable, unremarkable cloud city floating somewhere in the high northern latitudes.  That was the story his immigration papers and his birth certificate told; just some kid from a backwater skyfarm that taught himself spaceship mechanics suping up his father's old agricultural equipment.

That story was, naturally, all lies.

Well, Red really was from Venus, born and raised.  And his city had been one of the older ones, though it orbited in the southern hemisphere rather than the north.  Once upon a time, when Red was a kid and Edge was just a babybones, it had been called Vir Ava after the landforms far below, unseen beneath the choking clouds.  Now, they just called it Fell.

He was 12 standard years old when the mutiny happened; 19 and a half in Venusian years.  Hadn't known a damn thing about the political climate that led to that bloody coup; didn't really care, either.  He was just a stupid kid with half an engineer's certification, his first LV burning in his soul and dust clogging his knuckles while he tried to hold the city's fusion reactor together with his bare hands.

The day of the mutiny was also the first time he had ever seen Venus's surface with his own eye lights.  The ventral hull down under the labyrinth of conduits in the belly of the engineering section was ripped to shreds when the waveguides blew, and he could see all the way down to the chaos tessera and gleaming leaden snow of Aphrodite Terra; right down into the ember glow of the planet's exposed mantle at the bottom of Artemis Chasma, where the skin of the planet parted under the strain of its own internal turmoil.

He'd thought for a moment that the city would keep falling, right down into that infernal rent.

But, they'd stabilised. The thick clouds closed back up, over and under Fell, and as far as anyone outside the city knew, that was the end of it.  Because although they managed to stop the descent, nothing Red or anyone else onboard ever did could make the cityship climb up out of the choking clouds.  They couldn't even get a message out, not when the communication array melted off within minutes of their nosedive.

So that was how they lived, for years; trapped, terrified, and growing more furious with each passing day in the endless gloom.  The king finished raining righteous vengeance and secluded himself in his throne room.  The rest of them tried their best to survive.   Kill or be killed, with only the sullen glow of magma below and the dim, brownish blotch of the sun above to keep them company.   Except-

"they like t' come to venus sometimes," Red said softly.  "never came this close tho'.  not all the way down to fell, i mean.  but there was this old hull breach in the compartment where edge and i lived, edge called it our skylight.  sometimes i could see 'em off in the distance, divin' through the clouds…"

Sans put his arm around Red's ribs, high up under his armpits.  

"sometimes y'had to wonder if the time before the mutiny was all just a dream.  if there really was anywhere out there that weren't just… y'know?  but whenever i saw the space whales swimmin' past above me, i knew that there had to be more than fell.  there had to be a world out there that was better.  'n i swore i'd get me and edge out here to where the whales live."

Below, the enormous animal gave a long, low bellow and pumped its massive tail against the sky.  Then the air blurred as it seemed to freeze in place, before the leviathan phased out of normal spacetime and into whatever strange realm the space whales used to travel between worlds.

The resort and the night side were over the horizon from them now, and out here only a few scattered structures broke up the cratered plains.  Red let his skull rest on Sans's clavicle, and they drifted.

"don't tell anyone i got all sappy," Sans said after a long moment of comfortable quiet.  "but i'm really glad you made it out."

"you've gone all soft since i married you," Red complained.

Sans splashed him.  Red tried to give him a noogie, and then ended up just kind of rolling around half-submerged in the water.  When they came up to speak, Sans was laughing.

"so how long is this pleasure cruise?" Sans wondered.

"i think we got about an hour left."

"hmm.  so, stop me if this seems outta line," Sans said, "but i was thinking that 'flying and also swimming' is a pretty once in a lifetime set of circumstances, so, uh, maybe we oughta…"

"are you asking me to join the mile high swimming pool club?"

"uh, yeah?"

"sweet, i'm in."

Sans seemed a little surprised.  "oh!  awesome."  They hadn't really had a chance yet to revisit that night after dinner on the boardwalk.  Robbie kept breaking out of the sexile closet and… looking at them.  It was kind of a mood killer.

Red reached below the water, phalanges flirting with the drifting edge of Sans's shirt.  Sans kissed his neck, dragging the glassy-smooth surfaces of his teeth over Red's roughly scarred vertebrae.

"hmm, nah," Sans hummed, batting Red's hands away.  "not just yet.  lemme look at you."

"heh, well then feast your eyes, sweetheart," Red rumbled, spreading his arms wide.

Red knew he wasn't much to look at; which is why he pulled stunts like the soapberry speedo in the first place.  Lipstick on a pig might not exactly improve its appearance, but at least it was good for a laugh.

Sans wasn't looking at him like he thought he looked funny.

Sans hummed, a deep vibration on the edge of a purr, and stroked a finger along his collarbone.  "nice."  Bent again, teeth flirting with the waterline as he followed the arch of bone to Red's shoulder.  He had an ugly old scar around his acromion where the joint had dislocated one too many times, and Sans was painfully delicate as he nuzzled into the overgrown bone.

It wasn't just that Red was scarred.  Scars could be sexy; just look at his brother.  His cracked socket was badass as all hell, even if it made his eyelight a little googly sometimes.  But Red didn't have nice scars, dignified cracks or smoothly raised melds.  Red's scars were ugly, the bone gone brittle and sponge-like with unnatural overgrowth where it had tried to repair itself.  The texture felt wrong beneath his fingertips, and he tried not to look at it too closely lest the light catch on the patches of silvering left behind by long healed acid-burns and remind him of just how little unmarred bone he retained.

Sans didn't seem to have a problem with it though, exploring Red's bones with the care of a miner prospecting for gold.  Teeth and tongue and clever, clever fingers probed every sensitive facet of his cervical spine and dipped below the water to trace the curves of his ribs.  Red did his best to return the favour, petting Sans's smooth skull and scritching along his lambdoid suture to make him groan.

Then Sans let himself sink in the warm, clear water.  Red was balancing them both on the grab core at this point, and Sans sank right down until his knee touched the sphere between where Red's toeclaws gripped it, hands coming up to rest on Red's hips.  His eyelights wavered a little with the water's distortion, gazing wide-eyed up at him as he hooked his thumbs through the band of Red's swimsuit.

"oh, go ahead sweetheart," Red groaned.  He had no idea if Sans could actually hear him so he tried to get his agreement across by stroking the backs of Sans's metacarpals and winking lecherously.

Sans's grin went sharp with delight, his eyelights shining like stars as he slipped the tiny little swimsuit off from where Red had plastered it to his iliac crests… and a handful of rambutans bobbed up to the surface.

Sans surfaced a moment later.

"wow, i'm actually kind of impressed how many of those things you got in there."

About a dozen spiky little fruits were drifting on the subtle currents of the swimming bubble.  Sans snagged one and crunched into it while he treaded water.  He paddled a few of them toward Red.

"aren't you gonna eat your crotch nuts?  c'mon buddy, you're gonna need to keep those magic levels up."

"ya promise?" Red joked.

"y'know, i really, really do."  Sans's smug smile sent an unexpectedly intense burst of hot want down Red's spine.  Fuck, he was pretty when he grinned like that, magic lighting up his zygoma.

Sans plucked a floating fruit out of the water and swam in close, wrapping an arm around Red's waist to hold himself still as he pressed his other hand to Red's mouth.  A finger tested the sharp points of Red's fangs before Sans introduced the fruit, pressing the spiny surface against Red's teeth until he opened and let his friend place it delicately on his tongue.

Sans didn't take his fingers out of Red's mouth.

Red couldn't crunch down.  The soft spines of the fruit's shell tickled his palate as he swallowed nervously around it, his magic struggling to dissolve it whole.  Sans's eyelights bored into his as he gently probed the inside of Red's mouth until Red's magic finally overcame the physicality of the rambutan and it transmuted it into magic that his body could absorb.  Some silvery, vaporous magic issued out through his parted teeth like smoke.

Sans followed his fingers with a kiss, breathing in the magic on Red's breath and pressing his tongue in where the fruit had been.

"you know what, let's just…" Red thought Sans was going in for a hug, but instead of wrapping his arms around him the other skeleton was kinda corralling his arms…

"oh, hell yeah," Red rumbled as Sans caught his wrists and folded them behind his back.  "that how this's gonna be?"

Sans managed to get both of Red's wrists in one hand.  He didn't have very large hands, but Red didn't have particularly beefy wrists either, so it worked out just fine.  One of Sans' pinkies was hooked around the sensitive inner flare of his ulna.

"don't want you distracting me while i work."  Sans's breath was a warm puff against Red's jaw when he spoke.

Red growled.

Sans went to work.  Red found himself wondering absurdly if this was going to later lead to Sans claiming "i can wreck you with one hand tied behind your back," because that's pretty much what he was doing.  His teeth and tongue claimed Red's neck and shoulders while his free hand dipped back below the water to expertly tease the exposed arches of Red's pubis.   Red struggled to support himself on the grab core, claws skating over moulded glass, while Sans carelessly hooked a foot into Red's bathing suit where it pinned his thighs together to anchor himself in place.

He was completely, heh, off balance, trying not to fall off the sphere.  One foot slipped off it and he spun around in a circle before he could halt his momentum, all while Sans held his hands behind his back and licked his sternum like a damn bisicle.  When Sans surfaced again so he could nibble the little processes behind the hinge of Red's jaw, he groaned from the very bottom of his soul.

Fuck, he needed this.

"ah, sansy," he gasped.  "y' want me ta-"

"nope," said Sans, cool as a cucumber.  "i don't want you to do anything right now except relax and look gorgeous."  He had the absolute fucking audacity to bat his sockets at Red.  "can y' do that for me, precious?"

"holyfuckyes."  Red did not have time for spaces.

"sshh."  Sans sounded almost dismissive.  But Red caught the little shiver in his voice, and more tellingly the bright supernova blue of the magic in his joints.  His sweet gentle little moon hippie was really getting off on bossing him around.  Which worked out great for Red, since he was pretty much ready to bust a rambutan over this himself.

Clever fingers smoothed over Red's pelvis, catching the drops of liquid magic blooming there and rubbing them back into the hot bone to be absorbed.  The magic didn't really interact with water any more naturally than it did with air, and curls of spent magic were oddly surreal as they whisped right through the water to join Red's aura of ambient magic.

"you mm, y' want me to make ya somethin' nice to play with?" Red groaned, while Sans casually introduced his metacarpals to Red's obturator foramen.

Sans drawled, "nah, not really.  lemme just play with these pretty bones."

Red laughed.  "heh, they're not really that pretty?"

"i beg to differ," Sans declared, and dipped back under the water.  Red watched as that clever mouth opened and hovered over his pubis, even warmer than their sheltered swimming sphere.  When that hot mouth closed around his most sensitive bones, Red's eyes fell shut.  When Sans pressed the vibrant, throbbing magic of his tongue against the tight seam of Red's symphysis, Red cried out.  And when Sans wrapped his fleshy tongue right around the bones and sucked, Red almost fell off the grab core.

Sans surfaced again.  He still held Red's hands tight behind his back, but a finger soothed over trapped carpal bones.  His other hand was still under the water, blunt phalanges threaded through Red's ischia to disrupt the flow of magic.

"you doing okay there, starshine?"  he asked with mocking solicitousness.

Red blinked at him helplessly.  "sansy, yer killin' me.  are ya gonna let me form something?"

Sans leaned in for a leisurely kiss, all languid strokes of his tongue and gentle nuzzles to Red's maxilla.  "nope."  He popped the 'p.' then levered himself up to kiss Red's nasal bone.  The smug bastard even said "mwah."

"you're not gonna form your magic.  i wanna see you get off with just your bare bones."

Red almost choked on the liquid magic pooling in his mouth.  "that sounds hot as fuck but i'm not sure i can do - ah!"  Sans had spread his hand out so that he simultaneously had his thumb in Red's ischium and his pinkie on his sacrum.  Red swallowed and tried again.  "not sure i c'n do that, s-sweetheart."

"aw, don't worry gorgeous."  Sans kissed him again, like he couldn't live without the taste of Red's magic in his mouth.  "i'll help you."  And after a moment, more sincerely, "just tell me to stop if it stops being fun for you."

When Sans dove below the water again, he moved like he wanted to drive Red insane, all long sensual glides of soft tongue over bone and the shocking intensity of hard phalanges crammed into every unyielding opening the bony lattice of his pelvis possessed.  Red didn't quite struggle in his grip, but he could feel the tension in his wrists against Sans's firm grip.  A long string of shivering spasms flowed down his spine with the aimless roll of his integral magic.

Just when he was certain that there was nothing he could possibly do to prevent the manifestation of his magic where it pooled in his pelvis, Sans surprised him.  Red felt his best friend's blunt little fingers feeling along his back, fingers walking down the ladder of his spine until he located the hiatus at the top of Red's sacrum where the flowing magic was most exposed.

And then he did.  Something.

Red was convinced for a couple of seconds that Sans might actually, factually be sucking his soul out through his assbones.  There was an intense sensation of drawing, of the integral magic in his bones flowing away from himself, the hot pressure in his pelvis easing up as his magic wicked away and became a part of something other than his own body.  Euphoric was too mild a word.

He looked down into the water in time to see Sansy looking back up at him as he opened his mouth and exhaled a cloud of crimson smoke.  Then he went back to work on Red.

It went on like that for… a while.  Red lost track of the passage of stone below their bubble as Sans mercilessly worked him up to a panting mess and then syphoned off the magic before it could snap into solidity.  Sometimes Sans sucked it up like smoke; other times he ground his tongue or the open joints of his hands and fingers against Red's vulnerable gaps and let his own magic draw it in like subatomic particles fusing in the heart of a star.

Red hadn't been aware that this was a thing one could even do to another monster.

Red's claws were scrabbling against the grab core.  Every time Sans touched him, his hips jerked helplessly, threatening his balance as he undulated in the water.  Sans wasn't doing a whole lot better; Red could feel him rubbing off against his leg, deep vibrations conducted from bone to bone when he moaned.

Then he looked up at Red, mouth falling open as he panted beneath the water surface, and Red could see that his whole tongue, the discs of his neck, even the tiny intricate joints of his wrists and fingers were stained violet by the overflow of Red's magic seeping into his.  Into him.   When he blinked up at Red, his silvery-white, soul coloured eyelights were tinted faintly pink like the setting sun.

"fuck, sweetheart, sans," Red pleaded.  "come up here."

Sans couldn't have heard him through the water, but he listened anyway, bobbing up to the surface and nuzzling Red's mandible.

"you ready for it?" Sans gasped, breathless.  Skeletons could breathe water about as well as they could breathe air, which was to say they didn't really need to do either.  Sans's shaky exhalation was all desperate arousal.

"please," Red begged.

"mmm, that's it, lovely," Sans crooned.  His grip on Red's wrists tightened; his other hand petted up the inside of Red's pubis almost gently.  He stared into Red's eyelights with the intensity of a gemcutter looking for the planes of cleavage that would turn a glassy rock into a faceted gemstone.

Red shattered.

When Sans finally let his hands go he lost his footing on the grab core and keened.  Red grabbed desperately at his clothes, splashing and rolling in the water and trying to tangle their legs together to keep Sans close, to climb inside his rib cage and be close, closer, to- Sans's hand was moving roughly between them, shoved down inside his own swimming trunks, and when they surfaced briefly the music of his frantic moans sang in Red's skull.  And then he groaned like a dying thing before their heedless momentum sent them spinning under the surface of the water again and Sans's teeth were pressed against his as they both quivered and shook, collar singing ecstacy and joy between them like a conduit between their souls.

When Red regained the ability to uncurl his toes, he was still clinging to Sans, and Sans was plastered to him like wallpaper.  They were floating in the middle depth of the bubble, so Red gave a gentle kick to orient them vertically again.

"holy shit, sans, you just-"

Red cut off.  Sans had twisted in his arms right after they surfaced, gone stiff and quivering with his back to Red.

"sansy?  what's wrong, buddy?"  Was he… what?  Was he hurt?

Sans flopped spasmodically.  His hands were up around his face, sort of batting ineffectively at the bone.  One eye was closed, the other barely cracked open, and Red was pretty worried until he realized Sans was breathlessly laughing as he pawed at his face.

"....sans?"

"red," Sans giggled.  "r-r-red."  He pried his shaking hands away from his face.  "heh heh he-hallllp-"

That was the point at which Red saw the rambutan that had become lodged in his eye socket.  

"it ticklesssss," Sans wailed.

Red needed a moment to get himself under control before he trusted himself with Sans's socket.  Then he immediately made the situation worse by accidentally snipping off the protruding spines with his sharp claws.  Finally, he got the bright idea to cup Sans's lovely round face in his hands and seal his mouth over the socket.  A careful application of suction and bingo bango, one socket was restored to its natural, fruit-free state.  And Red got a little post-coital snack out of the deal, so it was win win.

"i can't believe you ate the eye-fruit?"  Sans sounded impressed.

"'s good.  kinda salty."

"yeah… we're swimming in salt water."

"whatever."

They had passed back into the night-side of the planetoid, and up ahead the lights of the resort were creating the horizon once more.  Their little cruise was nearing its end.  Sans snuggled in close at his side, bony limbs entangled with Red's.

"what were you going to say before I got the rambutan in my eye?" Sans wondered.

"heh." said Red.  "just that you played me like a damn trombone."

Sans laughed, warm and content and honest, and pulled him in for a sweet, chaste press of teeth to teeth.  Even without touching the collar, Red could feel satisfaction and affection vibrating between them.

But when the bubble landed, Sans wouldn't meet Red's eyes.

Chapter Text

Sans knew he fucked up even before his toeballs had clicked down onto the boardwalk.

That knowledge followed him home like a seagull trying to steal his french fries.  Shrieking overhead when he ate dinner.  Flapping in his peripheral vision while he watched vintage sci fi on the couch with Red.  Pecking at his phalanges when he went to bed, awkwardly stiff in his comfy nest of pillows with the edges of his non-corporeal magic all pulled in tight

He really, really, really shouldn't have done that.

Sans could smell the mood curdling, and of course it was.  Red had been perfectly clear about what he was looking for from Sans - their usual friendship stuff, but with a bit of sugar on the side during their fraudulent honeymoon.  Which had seemed totally reasonable, it really had.  It's not like he'd been secretly harbouring some kind of silly crush on his best friend for twenty years or something.

Boneplay in the swim bubble had already been pushing it a bit.  Eating Red's magic like the gentle yet masculine star of a romance audio was one thing; he probably could have recovered from that, especially with the unexpected help of a rambutan in his orbit.

But that kiss.

Kisses were fine on the face of it.  He and Red had drunkenly made out once or twice even before this whole increasingly incomprehensible marriage prank fiasco.  But Sans hadn't been trying to make out with Red.  He hadn't been macking, or sucking face or trying to fire Red up for another go.  It's just, he liked Red.  Really liked Red.  Liked his stupid dad jokes and his solar flare temper and his vulnerable little artist's soul, and in that moment he needed Red to know that.  To feel what he felt.

It was a fucking disaster - and Sans wasn't even a little bit cheered up by the pun.

Red must be so uncomfortable.

Well, mentally uncomfortable.  Physically he was lounging in a mag-lev egg chair in their living room, sleeping off the heavy breakfast of instant pastries and cereals Robbie had ordered for them from the food dispenser.  Sans periodically peeked at him from his vantage point of upside-down on the couch.

"What is the cereal's favourite constellation?"

Robbie was doing a slow figure-eight in the middle of the floor, trying to keep both skeletons in its field of view.

Red snored noisily, which was made a lot less convincing by the glowing embers of his eyelights visible in his slitted sockets.

"i don't know, robbie, what's the cereal's favourite constellation?"

The rover blinked one indicator light.  "Ursa Major."

Red grunted.  "that one was bad-bad, not funny-bad."

"shouldn't that be the big dipper?" Sans wondered.  "like a big spoon."

The bot warbled happily.  "Error:category_mismatch.  The Big Dipper is an asterism.  The joke specifies output:constellation.  I have fixed it."

"heh, i take it back, that is funny."

Sans darted his eyelights away before Red could catch Sans creeping on him.

"right, sansy?  i mean the part where the ad robot is correcting your joke's scientific accuracy for you."

"heh. yeah… heh," Sans's artificial chuckle deformed the tenuously restful mood like a lead ball on a rubber sheet.  He glanced at Red in time to watch his sharp toothed grin lose its sparkle.  Sans's eyes darted back to the safety of the rafters.

"Would you like to hear a knock knock joke?" Robbie warbled.

Sans was saved from having to answer by a sickly trilling from his overloaded phone.  It made it through a few fractal iterations before the atonal wailing resolved into the jaunty clarinets of his brother's ringtone.

Sans pulled his phone out of his inventory.  The back of the case was bulging, and covered in greasy machine sweat.  Sans tapped the "speakerphone" button.

"hey paps," he greeted.

"SANS?  WHAT'S WRONG?  IS CHERRY OKAY?"

"uh… nothing?  it's all good, bro, red's right here."

Red wolf whistled.  "hey, good lookin'."

"I AM PRESSING X TO DOUBT, SANS."  The phone made a touch tone noise.  "IT'S BEEN OVER 14 HOURS SINCE YOU SENT ME A KNOCK KNOCK JOKE SO OBVIOUSLY I ASSUMED AT LEAST ONE OF YOU HAD BEEN SWALLOWED BY A SPACE WHALE."

"heh, nope."

"we did see a space whale, but no-one got swallowed."

"not by the whale, anyway," Red muttered.

"knock, knock," warbled Robbie.

"WHO'S THERE?" Papyrus asked cautiously.

"Cornflakes!"

Seeming to accept that this was, at the very least, a properly constructed knock-knock joke, Papyrus played along.  "CORNFLAKES WHO?"

The rover played a short jingle and rolled in an excited circle.  "That's right!  Cornflakes who?  PhosphorOs cereal is superior in every way!  Why settle for a measly 10.34mg of phosphorus per serving when you could have MineCo brand PhosphorOs cereal?  They're the phosphorest!"

"WOWIE, SANS!  YOUR ROBOT CHILD HAS INHERITED YOUR SENSE OF HUMOUR.  YOU MUST FEEL VERY PROUD.  INCIDENTALLY I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT I WOULD BE HAPPY TO LEND YOU MY CRITERIA FOR A FUNCTIONAL KNOCK-KNOCK JOKE GUIDE SO YOU CAN PREVENT THIS CRIME AGAINST COMEDY FROM EVER OCCURRING AGAIN."

Red heaved himself up to his feet and trundled over to the macrobar.

"so, uh, it's pretty early paps-" Sans began to hedge.

"IT'S NEVER TOO EARLY FOR PROPERLY CRAFTED HUMOUR OR CULINARY RECONNAISSANCE, BROTHER!"

Red was signing something at him.  Sans squinted his sockets.  "what?"

"SANS, OBVIOUSLY I'M TALKING ABOUT YOUR INVITATION TO THE STARQUAKE SALOON."

"what!?' Sans repeated.  How the hell did Papyrus know about that?

From the macrobar, Red signed with an emphaticness that reminded Sans of his brother: "Do you want? 1(One)!  Breakfast!  Cocktail!?"

"sure," Sans mumbled.

"YOU REALLY DON'T CHECK YOUR NOTIFICATIONS AT ALL, DO YOU?  YOU KNOW THAT PUTS A LOT OF STRAIN ON YOUR PHONE."

Sans glanced down at the phone resting on his sternum.  It had been a while since he'd even been able to see the ever-increasing notification numbers under the sedimentary layer of clinging emojis.

"I'M SENDING YOU THE VIDEO AGAIN.  ON AUTOPROJECT."

Sans's phone feebly sputtered its incoming hologram chime and a translucent image jerkily spread open in front of Sans's face.  Dubstep music throbbed in the air.

The regrettably familiar form of Pawl Seraph, in all his emo glory, was lounging back against a tight cluster of tourists.  "You're not gonna want to miss this one folxks," he was telling the camera.  One of the humans behind him was trying to give him a folded piece of paper.  Pawl grabbed it in his teeth and rapidly ate it before anyone could stop him.  "Thursday night at the ultra-excludive Starquake Saloon, yours truly is gonna be having the first ever streamed get together with some very good friends: Redl and Coimec, your favourite skeleton newlyweds!"  The gathered tourists cheered.  Sans stopped the playback when "Continuous Shot Cam" appeared on the holo and Pawl started breaking into a vending machine.

"wow, his fans're gonna be super disappointed when we don't show up," Red commented.

"DON'T BE RIDICULOUS, CHERRY, YOU HAVE TO GO.  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG THE WAIT LIST IS FOR RESERVATIONS AT THE STARQUAKE SALOON?  A YEAR, CHERRY.  A CERES YEAR!"

"paps, i don't think it's a good idea for us to spend any more time with that seraph guy than we have to," Sans pointed out.  "it hasn't exactly gone super well so far?"

"OH, PISH TOSH.  I'VE ALREADY TAKEN THE LIBERTY OF ADDING HIM TO THE BOOK OF GRUDGES AND THEREFORE I SEE NO REASON WHATSOEVER YOU CAN'T STILL HAVE A LOVELY EVENING.  BESIDES, YOU OWE ME FOR ALL THE WORK I'VE DONE PLANNING YOUR SURPRISE ELOPEMENT PARTY.  NOW, LET'S TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO ORDER AND HOW YOU'RE GOING TO SECRETLY PHOTOGRAPH IT SO THAT I CAN OUTMANOEUVRE MY RESTAURANT RIVAL."

Red had been opening and closing maintenance hatches on the macrobar for a while.  "damn thing's fresh outta clam juice," he muttered.  "be right back, sansy, i gotta go get a new ampule from the resupply shack."  He wandered off, Robbie trundling after him.

"-PARTICULARLY CRUCIAL THAT YOU TRY THE VENUSIAN TUBE WORM CALAMARI; I HAVE ONLY BEEN ABLE TO GET A CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF THREE OF THE EIGHT DIPPING SAUCES.  YOU HAVE YOUR MOLECULAR SAMPLING KIT WITH YOU, RIGHT?"

Sans waited until he couldn't hear Red's sandals slapping on the front walk anymore.

"paps," he interrupted urgently.  "i think i fucked up."

"-DON'T KNOW HOW THEY'RE STABILISING THE ELEMENTAL SODIUM LONG ENOUGH TO- I KNEW IT!  I KNEW YOU WEREN'T FINE, YOU'VE HARDLY PUNNED AT ALL IN THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION!"

"heh, yeah."  Sans kept an eyelight pinned to the front door, ear-holes primed for any sound of Red's return.

"WHAT DID YOU DO, SANS, AND HOW CAN I, AS THE MORE RESPONSIBLE BROTHER, OFFER YOU SAGE ADVICE TO MITIGATE YOUR MISHAP?"

'it's red.  i did something i shouldn't have."

"DID YOU TELL HIM 'I WHALE LOVE YOU FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE' WHILE YOU WERE WHALE WATCHING? NO, NO, CHERRY WOULD HAVE LIKED THAT."

"i wish," said Sans despondently.   He could have passed that off as a joke.  "i uh…" okay there wasn't actually any way he could explain this to Papyrus, was there?  Not without explaining at least three other things he didn't really want to get into, not the least of which was that his secret marriage to his best friend was fake.  And that he was boning his fake husband/best friend.  And that he was maybe double backwards for real in love with his fake husband/fuck buddy/best friend.  "so, without giving you a lot of information we both know you don't want-"

"THANK YOU SANS, I APPRECIATE YOUR CONTINUED SHELTERING OF MY VIRGIN MEATUSES."

"let's just say i did something i hadn't done before, that pushed a boundary i shouldn't have pushed.  crossed a line, even."  Sans curled in on himself on the couch.  He felt like a total heel.

"RIGHT…" Papyrus hmmed.  "AND HOW DID HE REACT?"

The glassy-smooth faces of his teeth, buzzing with living magic, pressing softly into Red's mouth while the temperate water of the swim bubble cradled them both, strong, scarred bones going pliant as a lazy cat in his arms…

Sans cleared magic in his skull.

"RIGHT.  SO I ASSUME WE CAN TAKE "TALKING TO RED" RIGHT OFF THE TABLE," Sans could practically see his brother pinching his nasal bone.  "I GUESS YOU COULD DO SOMETHING NICE FOR HIM?  ESPECIALLY IF IT IS SOMETHING THEMATICALLY NICE THAT SHOWS YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THE THINGS THAT HE TELLS YOU.  FOR EXAMPLE, BY TAKING HIM OUT TO THE STARQUAKE SALOON FOR AUTHENTIC VENUSIAN TUBEWORM CALAMARI WHICH AS HIS LIFE PARTNER YOU DEFINITELY KNOW IS HIS FAVOURITE CULINARY ANNELID."

"paps, no-one likes culinary annelids.  they're all… segmentedy."

"BUT OF ALL THE ANNELIDS, THIS IS CLEARLY HIS FAVOURITE, MAKING MY STATEMENT TECHNICALLY CORRECT."

"the best kind of correct," Sans parroted automatically.  "nah, you're right paps.  i gotta do something for him.  maybe not the starquake saloon, but…."  The problem with making it up to Red was that, despite all of his grumbling and general misanthropy, Red was actually a pretty content monster.  He had a great life, they both did - working at their dream job, living well on Luna, brothers successful as hell, and they even had their semi-annual weekend in Space Vegas to blow off a little steam.  What more could a skeleton ask for?

Red stepped out of the bot-imprisoning closet.  "bro still tryin' ta get you to spy on rival chefs for him?"  He slammed the door shut before Robbie could follow him out.  Sans hadn't even heard him shortcut.

"HELLO AGAIN CHERRY!  LOOKS LIKE THAT'S MY SIGNAL TO LEAVE YOU TO YOUR INAPPROPRIATE EARLY LIBATIONS AND CANOODLING.  THE LIBATIONS ARE INAPPROPRIATE, NOT THE CANOODLING.  AS A LAWFULLY WEDDED COUPLE YOUR RIGHT TO CANOODLE IS OF COURSE PROTECTED BY PLANETARY AND SYSTEMIC STATUTE."

"well thanks for checking in on us, bro," Sans was trying to find the end call button.  "you're the greatest, paps."

"I ABSOLUTELY AM AND IN RECOGNITION OF MY YEARS OF EXCELLENT BROTHERSMANSHIP YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY GOING TO GO RECONNOITRE MY ANNELIDS!"

"oh no, i seem to not be hanging up…" Sans's phone wasn't responding to gestures, and he couldn't get the context menu to open. "uh, lil help?"

"SIGH.  YOU'RE VERY LUCKY TO HAVE ME, YOU KNOW.  CHERRY TOO."  Papyrus mercifully ended the call.

"well that was suspicious as fuck, and it's not even my birthday."  Red was calibrating something on the Macrobar.  Sans had mostly left its operation to Red.  While Sans happily kept them plausibly loaded with fraudulent credits, Red was much better at "optimizing" household machinery.  He was unbelievably good at it; Sans'd seen him get creme brulee out of a coffee dispenser before.  Watching his steady phalanges manipulate delicate machinery was as much of a treat as the dessert had been.

"we should go out," Sans suggested.

Red looked confused.  "right now?  but, i just got the clam juice."

The macrobar played its jingle and the mantle slid open to reveal the promised cocktails.

"oh, no, i meant after that," Sans stammered.

Red ferried the drinks back to the seating area, He hesitated a moment before placing one in front of Sans and reclaiming his seat in the egg chair.  "so, whadderya in the mood for?  there's a couples yoga for bipeds class that's supposed to be pretty fun."

Well that sounded like a nightmare.  Sans licked some celery salt off the edge of the glass.  "i don't think i'm up to something that athletic. we could go get our nails did?"

Red examined one clawed hand.  "nah, we can do that at home.  'sides, i just got 'em all sharpened up the way i like."

Sans sipped his drink.  It was at least 50% tomato juice, thick on his tongue, savoury and so spicy it made his whole ribcage flush with magic.  Or maybe that was the shot of overproof rum Red had talked the macrobar into dispensing.

"i dunno what i want," Sans complained.

Red scoffed, eyelights flaring as he lifted his chin to reply… and was abruptly interrupted by Robbie smashing his way out of the closet.

—

Most of the resort properties around Palm Craters catered toward tourists in search of a tropical escape.  Nearly all of the nearby inhabited moons of Jupiter and Saturn ranged in temperature from arctic to cool temperate, and Mars was mostly cold desert outside of the most heavily modified regions.  Sans understood the desire for novelty, but he also got sweaty and anxious if he spent too much time away from an appropriate amount of snow.  Fortunately, Robbie had been happy to tell them all about "Cold Daze Coldera," a large crater close to the dwarf planet's south pole that had been left in its natural, wintry state.  So, after their post-breakfast nap, they suited up in cold weather gear (they added winter jackets to their cargo shorts and floral-print shirts) and headed out.

It wasn't quite like home (no trees, for one thing, and the regolith smelled different) but it was certainly refreshing.  A lev-tram from the resort brought them to a quaint little village just inside the nearest rim of the crater.  Some of the original buildings from pioneer days were still around, sleek, upright lemon shapes intended to combat the accumulation of snow and ice.  This area wasn't quite as "historic" as the old mining town, but Sans spotted a few small plaques highlighting areas of interest for a curious visitor.  For example, one indicated that several hundred years ago, Ceres had boasted the largest ice farm in the inner asteroid belt for a period of three and a half metric years.

Most of the winter sports were pretty activity-based.  There were a number of outdoor skating rinks, trails for snowshoeing, and hills groomed for both down- and uphill skiing. Sans was pleased to locate and suggest the laziest option he could think of - Dog sledding.

Dog Monster sledding, to be precise.  A trio of white-furred dog monsters with harnesses over their sleek and stylish matching parkas bundled the skeletons up in an old fashioned sled and dragged them out across the snowy crater.

The Dogs turned out to be pleasant chauffeurs.  Their setup was a modified version of an old Earth design that had originally been intended for non-sentient, four-legged dogs.  It seemed to work just fine for bipeds too, though.  The long traces let them jog comfortably, drifting in and out of each others' space while the sled glided along sedately behind them over the fresh, powdery snow.  The sled was long and narrow, meant for passengers to sit in single file, backs between each others' knees, but Sans and Red were just small enough to fit in beside each other if they pulled their ambient magic in tight.

Red was a warm presence at Sans's side, the familiar angles of his bones softened by his massive, puffy coat, and the sled glided softly over the deep, powdery snow.

"this ain't half-bad," Red commented.  "i thought the ride was gonna be rougher."

Sans twisted awkwardly to look at him.  "you think so?  i mean, i figured it would be pretty chill, but i guess Dog monsters can be pretty energetic…"  Sans watched Red's face slowly go wooden.

"rougher?" Red prompted, hopefully, stressing the f sound.

"heh, sorry, buddy.  i, um…"

It was silent except for the panting of the sled pullers and the muffled pounding of Dog feet over cold regolith.  That, and the creaking of Red's massive coat.

Against his best judgement, Sans wondered aloud, "where did you even get that thing?"

Red puffed up.  Literally - the coat's fur trim was light enough to interact with his ambient magic.  "great, innit? i got it at savings station when we were visitin' papyrus on mercury."

"really?  i've never seen you wear it.  and that was two years ago!"

Sans felt Red shrug. "i paid like half a credit for it."

"huh, seriously?  i guess mercury is the place to find hot deals."

"nah, they just don't know cool fashion when they see it."

Sans almost choked trying not to chuckle.  Red craned his skull to watch him, sockets crinkling, and his smile got wider.  Red's puns weren't usually funny in the way that a person would laugh at them.  It was more about watching the dawning horror cross someone's face when they realized that he really had just made such an egregious Dad joke. But, Sans couldn't help himself.  He must be stressed or something.

He forced himself to relax, just a little.  When he squeezed into the sled, he'd pulled his ambient magic in tight, like drawing in a cloak.  It wasn't comfortable.  He let it go a little, now, the tight bunches smoothing, feathery edges curling outward like gills.  Pulling his magic in like this dulled his sense of the world around him, particularly of other monsters.  It made him feel muffled, a little unreal, like earmuffs on his soul.  It was a relief to feel the world regain its reality.

And then Sans realized that he was the only one who had pulled his magic in tight.

The first thing the cautious unfurling of his little magical feelers detected was Red's magic.  In every direction, brushing against the edges of his own stress-tightened bubble like currents meeting in the ocean.  He tried to withdraw again, but his cramped magic rebelled, pushing insistently into the immaterial cloud that quietly embraced it.

"hm?" Red must have felt that.

Ambient magic awareness was something that varied from monster to monster, but for Sans (and as far as he knew, Red) it was something like breathing.  Always there, always doing stuff, but not something he was really consciously in charge of unless he thought about it.  And much like breathing, once his attention was drawn to it, it was difficult to stop being aware of it.

"sorry, lemme just," Red shifted, pulling his arm out from where it was crammed between them in the narrow sled.  He eased his ambient magic back a little, though not enough to stop the tingly, ticklish boundary overlap.  He also slung his freed arm around Sans's shoulders.

Sans took a deep breath of the cold air and let himself snuggle into Red's side.  His coat squeaked.

"what is this thing even made of?" Sans complained, poking the rubbery exterior.

"gore-tex," Red announced proudly.

"gore-tex? wasn't that banned like, centuries ago?"

"yeah…" Red hummed happily.  "it's an antique.  must have been in a dimensional box or something. isn't it great?"

Sans prodded the jacket again.

Unexpectedly, the Dog monsters pulling the sled had something to say about that.  "Hey, did you know?(Fun fact!)  Humans used to use that stuff for medical grafts?  (Back before they had access to healing magic.)"

"no," Red sounded intrigued, "i did not know that."

"like… skin grafts?" Sans couldn't picture that, but he knew humans had gotten up to some really weird stuff during the long dark age of monster imprisonment.

"No, (no,) for the internal stuff.  Veins, (tendons,) or…."

"ligaments?" Sans suggested.

One Dog shrugged her powerful shoulders, making the harness creak. "Yeah, probably.  (That sounds right.)"

"huh."  Sans always forgot how much weird stuff there was inside non-magical lifeforms.  Red was a lot more comfortable with the biological side of spacecraft engineering than he was.

Red started: "ligaments, more like ligma-"

Sans lightly bonked their skulls together to cut that off, and Red subsided without any real serious complaint.

The Dogs seemed happy to continue the conversation. "We were so excited to see you show up at the sled shop, lovebones!  (You're even cuter in person!)"

Red smirked.  "heh, i understand the temptation but i gotta warn ya if yer planning on barking up this particular tree.  sansy here gets all territorial-like.  right, sweet'eart?"

"oh, yeah."  Sans engaged auto-bullshit mode.  "you'd be in for a ruff time,"

Red, inexplicably, looked hurt at that, but the Dogs spoke up before Sans could figure out what he did wrong.  "Oh, no, (we're happily packed) we just like your social media.  (We've all been following the Daily Lunar Lovebones Y account!).  How do you like the Coldera?"

"well, the name's a bit misleading."

"Not cold enough? (Not dera enough?)" The Dogs had a habit of talking all on top of each other, so that at least two of them were speaking at any given time.

"i mean it's pretty obviously an impact crater."  Red waved his newly freed arm at the towering scarp, turned blue by the distance.

"not a result of volcanism," Sans clarified.

The dogs were silent for a moment.  Then, "You know, you'd be surprised how rarely people point that out."

Red chuckled, and when he put his arm around Sans's shoulders again his phalanges toyed aimlessly with the wooly trim on Sans's hood.  The sharp tips of his distals kept catching in the synthetic fluff.

Sans wanted to lean his cheekbone into that hand.

"It's good to see monsters keeping the old traditions alive.  (Marriage traditions.)"

"heh, well, 'parently i'm a romantic at heart."

The collar.  It really was pretty romantic, wasn't it?  A collar made sense for a joke wedding; not everyone used collars these days, but they were still the most recognisable symbol of married monsters.  But, there was real Intent and emotion in it.  He could feel it even now: like rays of the sun warming his bones after a long day in his chilly workshop.  If anything, it had grown more distinct since that first morning; comfort, admiration, affection, acceptance…. And if he wanted to, he could shrug his shoulder just a little to bring Red's fingertips into contact with the shiny metal spikes.  He wondered what would happen if he did that.  Would it be like the gentle hum he'd felt during the photoshoot, or the damn supernova he'd experienced when they were making-

Sans heard a weird noise.  It sounded like ice cracking.  Which would have been pretty alarming given their surroundings except that it was clearly coming from his own inventory.  He fished out his phone.

Red cut off his conversation with the Dogi.  "what's up?" he wondered.

"not sure…"  Sans tilted the phone.  There was a small crack on the screen.  On the inside of the screen.  As he watched, it expanded further in little ticking jumps until it reached across the entire screen.

"well that don't look too good," Red noted.

The phone chimed.  It was Sans's priority chime; which mostly likely meant a message from Papyrus.  Only three monsters merited that chime, and the other two were either sitting next to him or in deep space outside of texting range.  He brushed aside the lesser text bubbles and emojis until he could unearth this latest message.

Oh.

Not his brother, then.

From: Scowly Tightpants

(send date: error 1x337: relativity)

TELL MY BROTHER WE WILL SPEAK ABOUT THIS AT LENGTH

"it's, uh, for you, starshine," It probably wasn't a good idea to keep Edge waiting, so Sans hit the reply button.  This was, unfortunately, the final breaking point for his phone.

The algiplast casing shuddered violently in Sans's phalanges.  Cracks spread like a spider web across the shatterproof dcreen.  And then it… just kind of collapsed in on itself until disappeared from Sans's vision.

"fuck!" swore Red.

"aaaahh!" Sans shoved the singularity into his inventory.

"You okay back there?"

"yeah, but we should probably go back and… deal with this."

Red nodded sweatily.

They shortcutted back to the main resort in a series of hops.  Fortunately, the dwarf planet was only about a third the size of Luna, so it wasn't really possible to get all the way out of teleportation range of their suite.  Sans was a bit winded when they finally stepped out of the void and into their kitchen, though.

"i'll get my phone.  we can put your socials on it and message the boss back. how mad did he seem?"

"he didn't use any punctuation."

"fuck.  guess we're boned then."

Red blipped out again - presumably going to get his deactivated phone from upstairs.  Sans immediately started assembling a snack.  Quietly - Robbie was in sleep mode on the counter and didn't seem to have noticed their return yet.

Someone chimed their front door while he was pulling jars out of the thermostasis pod.  He ignored it, of course.

Sans was just crunching his way through his second pickle when someone knocked on the kitchen window.  Sighing, he leaned over the cereal dispenser to tilt open the slatted shade.

"Hello, Coimec, I think you're going to want to invite me inside."

It was Pawl Seraph's reptilian monster agent.  Standing in their hedge.

"i kinda doubt that."

Red appeared again with the miasma of void magic clinging to him like smoke.  He was still wearing his puffy coat.

"Reld, baby!  I'm so glad you two lovebones are both here, that's gonna make this so much faster - not that I expected any different what with you two being joined at the iliac crest and all!  Your husband was just inviting me in."

"no i wasn't," said Sans.

"also, that's not my name," said Red.

Robbie suddenly blinked on its indicator lights.  "Intruder detected?" it warbled.

"Is that a mining drone!?  You know what, nevermind.  I've got important business to conduct with you and I think we'd all prefer I conduct it in private."  The agent wiggled his scaly eyebrows on that last word.

"you're just gonna keep standing at our window if we don't let you in, aren't you?"

"not if I jam a couple o' dozen bone constructs through it," Red commented idly, examining his immaculately sharpened claws.

"That may be true, but this cabana has a lot of windows!"

"he's got a lot of bones," Sans countered.

"hell yeah i do," Red grinned like a laser saw.

"You know, funny thing, that's actually part of what I wanted to talk to you about."

Sans crunched another pickle.  "fine, if it'll make you go away."  He stepped through the void to put his hand on the monster's shoulder, then blipped them both back into the kitchen.  To his credit, the agent only went a little pale and barely dry heaved at all.

"if this is about pawl's stupid dinner, we're not going."  Red leaned across the counter to stick his bony fingers into Sans's pickle jar.  Sans let him, but he did glare a little for appearances sake.

"Of course that's what it's about, and of course you're going!"  The agent slapped a tablet down on the kitchen island.  "Look, I've got the compensation package all laid out here.  Just think of how much exposure you'll get being on a network streaming channel.  A pair of cute, witty skeletons like you are gonna make bank, and all I'm asking for is a little piece of the pie.  Haven't you always wanted to be Influencers?  Everyone wants to be an Influencer!  Think of the romance, working with your husband every day to bring the joy of couples streaming to people all across the system."

"i've always wanted to be a starship architect," Sans said mildly.  "and i am one.  i work with my husband every day to bring the joy of space travel to people all across the system.  it's romantic as all hell."

"aw, sansy," Red simpered.  "and here i thought i was the soft one."  He made a kissy mwah! noise inside his skull.

The agent groaned.  "Ugh, you two.  You just do that stuff and there aren't even any cameras on you!  This is such wasted potential."

"Factual error!  There are not no cameras on them," Robbie added.

The agent ignored the adbot.  "If you're worried you don't have enough content to fill a whole show segment, don't be!  Reality streaming is incredibly mundane.  People will log on just to see you feed your engine fungus or whatever it is that makes ships go.  Hell, they'd log on to see you sitting around in your undercrackers watching the moongrass grow."

"nah," Red was uncharacteristically kind.  "we just don't wanna.  there's nothing you can offer us; we're already livin' the dream."  He stole another pickle from Sans's jar, then held it in front of Sans's teeth for him to chomp on.

"Well then.  When you think back on this meeting, I want you to remember that I tried to be nice to you first."

"thef hmuck?"  Sans's voice was garbled around the pickle.

The agent gestured at the tablet on their counter.  A holo bloomed up from the surface, hanging in the air.  The still was a little low res, like it was a piece of a larger image that had been cropped and expanded.  The spectacular sunset of Ceres framed an all too clear image of his own blunt incisors delicately closing over Red's bare shoulder, both of them cradled in the warm water of last night's swim bubble.

Red went tense.  Sans could feel it quivering in his ambient magic.  He hoped that the Agent was perceptive enough to feel it too.  Red's eyelights were out, and Sans was pretty sure his own matched.

"robbie," he said quickly, "flag_intruder:true.  that guy." he pointed at the Agent.

Robbie's round indicator lights shifted into down-angled slashes as it trundled down from the counter.  "Intruder! As per corporate regulations you are required to leave this rental property immediately or you may be found legally responsible for any personal injuries that result."

The Agent looked incredulous.  "Did your robot just tell me if I don't leave I'll have no-one to sue but myself!?"

"good boy, robbie," Sans encouraged.

Red glared with sockets as dark as deep space while Robbie started pushing the agent toward their door.  "it told you if ya don't get the fuck outta here i'm gonna lose my birkenstock in your pelvic inlet."

"Alright, alright, I'm going.  But just so you know, I've got a whole folder of these.  And if you want to keep what's private, private, you'll show up for Pawl's stupid dinner.  This doesn't have to be a problem unless you make it a problem, capiche?"

Sans followed them to the door, opening it to let them out and slamming it shut as soon as they were both through.

"well that escalated quickly."

Sans turned to find Red poking at the tablet the Agent had left on the table.  It was smoking as it rapidly decomposed into a puddle of glittery sludge.  "i mean the tablet," he clarified.  "it self-destructed as soon as i tried to connect to it from the house network."

"i mean, that kinda applies to the conversation too."

Both skeletons looked despondently at the mess on the counter.

"we gotta go to pawl's stupid dinner," Sans grumbled.

"what, seriously?  i didn't think you'd give in to extortion that easy."

"nah, it's not that. i need to get close to them if i'm going to tap into their system and get rid of those pictures."

Red looked like he was gonna complain, but just shrugged.  "yeah, that's probably a better first step than me ganking him."

"you never know, maybe it'll be fun?  i mean, you had fun screwing up pawl's card trick the last time."

"yeah… i guess he's not that bad other'n all the misgendering and attempted collar touching."

It occurred to Sans that there might be a thing or two he could do from inside the Witsgeek system besides just looking for pictures.

"don't forget the general cringe."

"how could i forget the cringe?"  Red blinked like a cat in the sun.  "paps'll be happy."

"definitely a plus, that."

Another plume of smoke soured the air, this time the result of Robbie beginning to melt a hole in their front door with its mining laser.  Neither skeleton made any move to stop it.

"so… what are you gonna do with that singularity in your inventory?"

"i think that's a problem for tomorrow-sans."

Chapter Text

SC 1810.9.3(FRI) - 22 years ago

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, RED!  QUIT STRUGGLING!"

Red wasn't struggling; he was squirming.  If he had been struggling there would have been dust involved.  "it's fine, edge, lemme go!"

"FINE?  FINE!?  MY ELDEST BROTHER IS TRYING TO GO OUT LOOKING LIKE WE FISHED HIS COLLAR OUT OF THE MATTER RECLAMATION MATRIX AND POLISHED IT WITH A POTATO PEELER, SO NO!  RED UNDERFELL!  IT IS NOT FINE!"

Edge shouted the name a little awkwardly, like he wasn't quite used to haranguing Red with it yet.  Which was fair enough; the metaphorical ink was barely dry on their fraudulent birth certificates.  Maybe it was a little bold, taking the name of their fallen city for themselves, but boldness had gotten them out of that hellscape.  Red Underfell knew a winning strategy when he stumbled ass backwards into one.

Less than a month since they escaped.  Eight years to scrounge together the parts to make their shuttlepod, and the damn thing couldn't even manage to fly all the way to Earth after the beating it took climbing out of the Venusian atmosphere.  Which turned out to be a stroke of luck, because Earth's weirdly gigantic moon was the shipyard capital of the solar system and building spacecraft was Red's only marketable skill.

"bro, cool your tits!  you're gonna smudge my socketliner."

"I WOULD NEVER!  AND IF EVEN IF I DID YOU KNOW I WOULD DRAW YOU A SMOKEY ORBIT SUCH AS WOULD MAKE METTATON HIMSELF WEEP TEARS OF GLITTER."

"fine."  Red stopped squirming, that was definitely true.  Edge was a beast with a liner pencil.

Edge's angry tirade subsided to a low simmer as he ran his phalanges along the broad, unadorned band of oxblood leather snugged around Red's cervical vertebrae.  It wasn't actually scuffed or anything.  Red was a slob, but he wasn't careless with his collar.

Edge applied intent to his collar with the intensity and control of an industrial welding robot, sharp-tipped distals rubbing over edges burnished smooth by years of this treatment.  MINE.  A warning for anyone who would dare interfere with Red that there was someone scarier willing to shed dust in his name.  A declaration to Red that even if everything else in that piss soaked hell hole went to shit, his brother would be at his side screaming defiance.  A defense against all threats, whether from the outside world or Red's own wretched self-doubts.

It felt a little extra on Luna, where the most aggression he had seen from anyone so far was a cashier at the hypermart sternly reminding someone that the express line was for twelve items or less, please and thank you, have a nice day.

That said, he hadn't really checked out the nightlife yet; he'd been too busy looking for work and a place to live for him and his brother.  With that finally taken care of, it was time to figure out if these soft moon people knew how to have a good time.

"HMM, I SUPPOSE THAT IS ADEQUATE."  Edge gave his collar a little tap with the back of a sickle-sharp claw.

"yeah?  think i can impress 'em with m' shabby charm?"

"SHABBY?  YOU'RE GOING TO KNOCK THEM DEAD, YOU MELON-FACED GREMLIN.  ANYTHING LESS WOULD BE UNACCEPTABLE FOR A BROTHER OF MINE."

An hour later at the local watering hole, Red wasn't really sure if his brother's assessment was correct or not.  He was getting a lot of attention.  Weird attention.  People kept looking right at him, even making direct eye contact.  Someone had tried to buy him a drink at one point, which had spooked him enough that he almost left.  Couldn't they see his collar?  He obviously had a family to take care of him, like fuck was he going to take an open beverage from a stranger!

But after an hour, no-one had bantered with him, not even the fire monster managing the mixology robots.  No-one had tried to impress him with a show of competence.  There hadn't been any fights.

This place was weird.

"hey buddy, are you carrying around a strong magnetic field source?"

Red snapped his eyelights up from his drink.  A skeleton monster was leaning against the wall beside him, one hand in the pocket of his plush blue hoodie.  About the same height and size as Red, but, well.  This guy was all smooth ivory, from the soft curve of his zygoma to the delicate, blunt distals on the bony hand holding a pint glass of bloody caesar at his side.  Gorgeous.

"huh? no, not that i'm aware of?" Red replied cautiously.

"oh, my mistake.  it's just you induced a flow in me."  The other skeleton winked a socket at him.  His eyes were silvery-white, the colour of a well cared-for soul.

Red knew those words, but that sentence made no sense.  "what the hell are ya talkin' about?" 

"i'm saying, i wish i was your derivative so i could lay tangent to your curves."

Oh, was that a joke?  "heh, right.  what're you supposed ta be, some kinda rocket surgeon?"

The other skeleton's confident grin flattened a little.  "well… yeah?"

present day

Sans wasn't squirming, but he didn't seem particularly comfortable with the situation.  Maybe that was fair - Red was kind of boxing him in on the floating egg chair, hands on on either side of the curving frame.  Sans had his feet awkwardly pulled up onto the seat in front of him, so that Red had to lean over the fluff of his borrowed petticoats to reach.  It would be easier if Sans would just come sit on the couch with him.  Maybe let his head rest on Red's lap so Red could fit his palm to the curve of Sans's skull and gently scritch at the complex squiggles of his cranial sutures…

A lot of things would be easier if Sans hadn't gone all… introverted over the past couple of days.

Red leaned back, hands awkwardly thrust into his shorts pockets.  Gruffly, he said, "hey, y'know we can just not do this, right?"

They had about an hour until they were expected to show up at the Starquake Saloon.  According to the ugh info packet The Agent had DMed Sans, they weren't going to get any kind of orientation or wardrobe before they went live; Pawl wanted their reactions to be as genuine as possible.  Which left Red and Sans with the responsibility of providing their own wardrobe.

And look.  Red might dress like a high school physics teacher with unlimited access to a satanic church's rummage bin, but that was on purpose, okay?  Which was why, as a contrarian by nature, Red insisted that they switch outfits for the livestream.  He was wearing Sans's uncomfortably slim-cut powder blue suit jacket over his skulls-and-roses Hawaiian shirt, and Sans was pairing Red's lacy petticoats with a sexy radiology pun tee.  He would have looked even sexier with a little socket liner, but judging by the way that he reacted when Red offered to gussy up his collar...

"it's fine, buddy."  Sans's smile was flat at the corners.  "i know it's important to you."  Red could feel the tension in the way Sans's intangible, ambient magic fidgeted against his own, like the static on an electron-differential array.

"i don't want people to think i'm not takin' care of you, precious," Red winked.  "and that seraph jackass is prolly gonna try 'n touch you again.  but like, y'know it's yours, right?  y'don't have to let me touch it either if ya don't wanna.  even if this weren't a fake marriage, it's still…"  Red trailed off, looking helplessly at Sans.

Sans unclenched a little to fiddle with the Soul charm dangling from the front of his collar.  He did that a lot, Red had noticed.  He didn't really think Sans was aware of it, but whenever they were together and it was quiet, Red took note of the little clicks of phalange against metal as Sans toyed with the charm or ran his fingers across the spikes.

The thing was, Red knew exactly what he'd done wrong - but knowing that didn't make fixing his mistake any easier.  Like Icarus, aloft on wings of horny hubris, he had simply flown too close to the Sans.  At least he got to enjoy a real nice view before he crashed and burned.

"i know, it's just, uh, it's just kind of…" Sans let his words drift away like spent magic dissipating in the breeze. There was the faint staticky crackle of magic cleared in his skull, and then he spoke again.  "what does this… do, exactly?"  He tapped the collar, deliberately this time.

 "whaddya mean, what do it do?  it's a wedding collar.  it does being a wedding collar?"

"i mean the magic.  the enchantment on it.  what is it doing?"

Red involuntarily cocked his head.  Maybe Sans would make more sense at a forty-five degree angle.  Then it hit him like a micrometeor at orbital velocity.  "do you not know how a wedding collar works?"

Sans blushed, the softly curving bones of his face lighting up like a fusion reactor gone prompt critical.  "we didn't really have good sex education in the commune.  or any at all.  i thought baby monsters came from a special setting on the lab-grown meat machine until i was sixteen."

"sans," Red was flabbergasted, "buddy, you had a masters degree when you were sixteen."

"well yeah, but it was in physics."

Red meandered back to the couch and flopped over in protest.  At least Sans had the decency to look embarrassed.  "well, that tracks.  fine, i guess i gotta give you the talk then.  when two or more monsters love each other very much-"

"red.  i know how sex works."

"heh, yeah you do."  Sans's hands on his skull, pressing Red's face down into his lap while hot, hard ectoflesh filled his mouth and throat and overstimulated tears welled up in his sockets-

Red buried his face in the couch cushions.  Sans threw a pillow at him, but he also laughed.  So that was probably a positive sign.

"it's the same magic as a family collar, but stronger.  i know, i know, you didn't have those either.  collars really don't do a whole lot.  they connect and combine duplicate wave forms, where they occur in your basal vibration.  wedding collars just do it more stronger is all."

Red risked a peek at his scam-husband.

Sans was as blue as a lunar pine.  "so, what i feel in it is what you're feeling?"

"if i'm touching your collar and we're feeling the same thing, yeah."  Like soul resonance, he wasn't quite brave enough to say. "otherwise, nah. might be a bit of a residue left in it sometimes, 'specially if it was a real strong resonance, but 's not a feelings radio or anything."

"it go both ways?"

"what would be the point of a one-sided connection?"

"hmm."

See, Red wasn't dumb, despite his rugged good looks.  He knew what was going on here.  For such an outwardly chill guy, Sans could be surprisingly moody, and Red had gotten pretty good at reading him over the years.  It was clear as the nasal tubercle on his face that Sans was feeling guilty: the way he kept avoiding eye contact, the anxious way he fiddled with his collar, the tightness of his eyelights - it was all right there.  Sans felt guilty.  He felt guilty, and Red had a pretty good idea of why.

"you're just gonna renew the enchantment?"

"well, I was gonna rub some wax into it too, shine it up a little."

Sans cleared his skull again.  "we got what, forty minutes before we gotta go to dinner?  alright, go ahead."

"no need to sound so thrilled about it," Red grumbled.  He kinda was, actually.  Thrilled.

There was suede wax in his inventory; he figured he must have gotten it from wherever he got Sans's collar.  There was a non-zero chance Sans had shoplifted it for him.

So, Red lumbered back up to his feet and shambled over to Sans's chair.  Sans looked up at him, blinking his sockets.  His hands drifted down, softly as pine needles in .166g.

Sans's eyes were locked on Red's own when Red put his index distals on the spikes, one on each side of Sans's neck.

Worry, unease, worry.  Guilt.

Red took a deep breath, drawing in the natural background magic of the universe.  He focused on the subtle fizzle it made as it became part of him; the faint resistance as it was subsumed by the semi-real matter of his being.  If he let himself ruminate right now, it was just going to create feedback with Sans's guilt and end up putting them both in an even worse funk.  So he breathed deep and thought of pleasant things.

The uneasy feelings dimmed, resonance fading as the collar found less to mirror between the two of them.

And Red ran his fingers over the collar.  Its enchantment recognised Red's magic as its source, siphoned off little bits of his self the same way he breathed in the magic in the air.  After a while, he added the wax to his hands and used the smooth, curved backs of his claws to work it into the collar's rich suede.

"how often do you have to do this?"

"hmm.." Red considered.  "don't really have to do it at all, it'll probably absorb enough of my magic to keep working just from us cuddling up at night."  He winked.

Sans chuckled, the sound echoed by the quiet amusement vibrating through their connection.  "no i mean, long term.  like once we go home.  or, uh, how often did edge have to do this when you were wearing his collar?"

Red grumbled.  "edge insisted on toppin' it up whenever i was about to do something dangerous."

"so, every day then?"

"just about.  see the whole point of wearing a family collar like that, it's so's anyone what sees you knows there's someone bigger and badder gonna come for your dust if it gets back to 'em that you fucked with their kin.  but if ya saw someone in a raggedy old collar with barely enough magic to feed a whimsum?  well, you could be forgiven for thinkin' whoever put it there don't care so much about what happened to 'em, y'know?"

Sans nodded.  The movement made his mandible bump into the sides of Red's metacarpals.

They lapsed into a more comfortable silence after that.  The magic humming between them deepened, its melody becoming gentler and more true.  Ease, relaxation, comfort.  Lazy weekends, a comfortable place to rest his bones, welcome and happy he was there and…

"How is late different from a latte?" Robbie warbled, about ten centimetres away from Red's left acoustic meatus.

"motherfucker!" Red swore, a hard jolt of startled!! vibrating his fingertips before he let Sans go.  The bot had crawled, cat-like, right up the back of the chair, where It craned its sensory cluster around the edge to peer at them.

Sans chuckled.  Red shook out his hand and asked, "how is late different from a latte, robbie?"

"Because when you're late, you don't have time for t!"  The bot played its simshot noise.  "Unless it's MineCo Brand Rapidly Ready Self-Boiling Tea Capsules!"

"thanks, buddy."  Sans sounded winded.

"Incidentally, you have exactly enough time to enjoy a MineCo Brand Rapidly Ready Self-Boiling Tea Capsule before your scheduled appointment at the Stardust Saloon," the drone warbled.  "Would you like me to fetch you some-"

"no thanks, buddy," Sans interrupted.  Robbie whistled sadly.

"time to go to dinner?" Red wondered.

Sans glanced at the chronometer on his borrowed phone. "guess so."

Red whistled sadly, too.

–

The Starquake Saloon was not, by any means, the first fine dining establishment Red had been in.  Papyrus's work brought him into contact with celebrity chefs from all over the Solar system.  There were some pretty solid benefits to having a stellar-class puzzle chef in the family.

The restaurant's interior was decorated like an old planetary outpost from before the age of stable gas envelopes.  The arcing glass dome of the ceiling was tinted almost completely opaque and speckled with a holographic starscape. They even had the original cargo airlock overhead, though Red couldn't tell if the iris of tempered glass plates was purely decorative or just decommissioned.  Everything was anodized aluminum and brightly coloured synthetic leather upholstery, with drill cores and mineral samples in shadowboxes decorating the walls.

When they arrived, the place was in a liminal state between real and staged: on one half of the restaurant, carefully curated "normal" folk filled the tables.  On the other, professional capture equipment operators were finishing their setup.  Between the two, at the centre of attention, lay their table.

Pawl Seraph's scummy manager was there too, speaking quietly to the production staff.  He had the nerve to raise a scaly purple brow at them then they walked in.  Sans didn't quite keep his growl in the subvocal range.  Red headed to his chair before he had an inappropriate reaction.

They weren't the only ones dining with Pawl tonight.  Their table was also occupied by four people dressed in the same kind of faux-historic emo-wear Pawl was draped in.  And, okay, so Red was the only 40-something he knew who still shopped at Hot Tangent, but he had standards, okay?  If you were going to wear old fashioned canvas shoes, they were supposed to be made out of canvas, not extruded polyurethane.  They weren't supposed to be shiny.

Sans eeled his way into the chair that was closer to Pawl's just before Red managed to sit down.  Red nearly sat in his lap.

"i don't want you biting anyone," Sans said seriously.

Red pouted to the best of his mandibular ability.  "aw, sansy, c'mon.  it's an important part of my culture."

Sans scoffed.  "like hell it is.  edge never bites anyone."

Red also scoffed.  "shows what you know."  At least 15% of Red's scars were courtesy of his brother's mighty chompers.  Of course, most of those were from when Edge was just a babybones.  Most.

"alright, well, edge only bites people he knows," Sans clarified.

Red muttered darkly, "then i'm about to get to know that scaly fucker real-"

"Okay, quick briefing before the show!"  One of the production assistants interrupted.  He was wearing eyeliner and a ballcap with the witsgeek "S" symbol on it.  "All you gotta know is that one's the hard cam."  He pointed to the recording equipment directly across from them. "We're always recording from that side.  Try not to look right into the capture device, it creeps people out."

Sans asked, "what about the other recorders?"

"The other operators move around and get whatever shot seems interesting.  Don't worry about them, if they want to see your faces they'll move so that they can."

"okay so… are we gonna get any instructions about what to do for the show, or…"

"Nope!" chirped the handler, and moved on.

Their table was clearly meant to evoke near space equipment, maybe one of those old lagrange point satellites.  Red though it looked like a salvaged deflector dish with the organic components ripped out and replaced by pleather upholstery.  They'd left the ion-dispersal spine in place, though, which seemed like an odd decision.  There probably weren't a lot of magnetic storms inside the restaurant, and a half-metre metal shaft in the middle of the table seemed like a hazard.

A pair of monsters slinked into the seats on the other side of Pawl Seraph's baroque throne-chair; a violet cat monster and a blonde reptilian with the long, narrow snout of a gharial.  Red ignored them both.

Or he tried to.

"Oh my god, Catty, they're like really here!" gushed the crocodilian.

"We had to trade so many shifts to get here tonight!"

"So many!"

"But like, it's totally worth it, wasn't it Bratty?"

"So worth it!"

The cat leaned across the table, holding out her hand.  Sans leaned a bit in front of Red, like he thought he was protecting him.  That was cute, actually.

"We probably shouldn't have taken the night off-"

"-cause we're supposed to be finding that rogue mining ROVer-"

"-but that's like, so boring."

"I know, right?"

"Totally!"

Between one word and the next, the lights died.  Someone screamed.  Reflex had Red half out of his chair with fans of bone attacks layered around him and Sans before the dubstep kicked in and he remembered he was being recorded for this stupid livestream.

"Witsgeek!  Witsgeek!" chanted various bystanders.  Sans fitted his hand to the small of Red's back and Red let him nudge him back into his seat.

Skeleton eyelights didn't work exactly the same way as the eyeballs of a human or a fleshy monster.  There weren't any physical structures to adjust to greater or lower levels of incoming light, which meant that their vision didn't need time to acclimate to sudden changes.  They had an absolute range of conditions (and wavelengths) that they could perceive, and they could see all of it, all the time.  Red guessed that the drop in lighting must have been too sudden for most of the other humans and monsters in the room from the way they were blinking, but there was more than enough light between the stars projected on the tinted overhead dome and the indicator lights on the recording equipment for Red to see Pawl Seraph being led to his chair.  By a ghostie, who likely had about the same visual capabilities as a skeleton monster.

Sans leaned in close, leaning into (nuzzling) his mandible so Red could hear him speak over the thrumming of the music.

"dude, chill."

"i am chill," Red subvocalized back.  "i'm as chill as charon.  i'm so chill they could use me as a heat exchanger for a solid state quantum mainframe."

Sans chuckled into his jawbone.  "your bones, dude."

"what about my bones?"  Red automatically patted the front of his Hawaiian shirt.  Had he missed a button…?

"no, red.  unsummon your bones."

The lights came back up, revealing Pawl Seraph lounging there in all his emo glory.  Red wasn't sure how deep a v-neck could get before a shirt was just declared "frontless" but this one was definitely an edge case.  Pawl's eyes went a bit wide when they passed by Red as he glanced around the table.  Red smiled his pointiest grin and let his summoned bones smoke out.

The dubstep finally died.  Sans, regrettably, settled back into his own chair.

"Welcome to Witsgeek!" Pawl drawled into the hard cam.  "I'm Pawl Seraph, in residence at the Luxor Palm Craters resort.  One of the best things about doing my little magic shows at Palm Creators is that I get to eat some of the best food in the solar system every night, right here at the Starquake Saloon!"  Some people in the background cheered.  "Tonight I'm sharing my table with some interesting folkxs from all over the solar system."  He picked up one of the forks from his place setting, spun it through his fingers, and held it up to the crocodile monster like a microphone.  "Isn't that right…?"

"Brateline!" she bubbled.  "And she's Catricia," she indicated her friend.  "We're from Ceres!"

"We're like, totally roboticists!"

Pawl went around the table, introducing the other diners. They were mostly young and conventionally attractive, though there was also one very average looking middle aged human who introduced himself as Pawl's uncle, Burt.

Finally, he made it around the table to the skeletons.  "And of course, these two need no introductions.  Allow me to introduce Comec Sains and Red Underfe!"

There was a brief dubstep flourish.

"Look into my eyes," he droned, staring intently at Sans.  Sans blinked his sockets.  Red noted he kept his hands to himself this time.

"I see," he intoned, "regolith, grey regolith, far as the eye can see.  This huge crater, the darkness of space above sprinkled with stars, and blue pines stretching to the horizon.  You must come from the dark side of the moon, yeah?"

That was… weirdly specific.

"there is no dark side of the moon," Sans replied, unperturbed, "matter of fact is, it's all dark.  the only thing that makes it look light is the sun."

"Ooo," breathed Uncle Burt.  "Cool tunes, monster dude."

Pawl looked at Red, next.  "And you, I see-"

Red let his fiery eyelights flare.

"Never mind," said Pawl. "So, uh, my friends, what brings you two all the way to the Starquake Saloon?"

"your producer threatened us with blackmail if we didn't come," Sans answered seriously.

A production assistant gestured sharply from behind the hard cam and Pawl laughed awkwardly.  The other dinner guests all joined in.

"So I hear you two build rocket ships on Luna."

"yep, with my own two hands," Sans wiggled his fingers.  He liked to imply that he worked down in the assembly hangars riveting hull plating together or something.  Red figured he was trying to be humble.

"Nifty," Pawl seemed to be searching for a follow-up question.  "You ever worked on a racing ship?"

"heh, you could say that."  Red wrapped his arm around Sans's shoulders..  "he was the lead designer on the mark iv high performance engine."  Sans looked a little exasperated, but Red was still being plenty humble even pointing that out.  Sans was more like the sole designer on the Mark IV project.  No-one could combine gravity magic and particle physics and mechorganic engineering like Sans.  Giving him a team just slowed him down.

"No way!"  Pawl seemed genuinely excited.  "I've got a suborbital hoverbike with a Mark IV.  Maybe you can help me tune it up some time."

"nah, you want red for that," Sans gave Red some kind of look.  "he wants people to think he's some kind of meathead riveting hull plating together, but he's the guy that's in charge of all the optimization and troubleshooting for the new engine designs."

"Get outta here, is that right?  Can you make it louder?"

"can I," Red repeated.  "make it… louder."  

"Yeah, you know like," he made a weird human throat noise, "Rrrr, rrrrmm!"

Red stared.  The Mark IV engine didn't make noise.  Like, at all - it was an organism-moderated quark drive.  There wasn't anything in it that could even make sounds, unless there was something life-threateningly wrong with it.  Did he… did he think it was a combustion engine?

Pawl helpfully elaborated, "You know, like zerrrroooooom.  New bikes are so quiet!  I want people to hear me go by and say 'Woah, that's a really loud bike!'"

"well they're uh, the pressure domes are soundproof?  so they're gonna be louder for people on the ground than for the pilot," Sans offered.  He looked like someone had asked him to grill some lettuce for their ice cream sandwich.

"you could… maybe do something with the fuselage to create more air turbulence?"

"Sounds cool!  Would that work when I'm flying my bike through the vacuum of space?" Pawl wondered.

"not… really."

"usually our job is more about making the spacecraft quieter," Sans pointed out.

Papyrus - Sans's brother - was the sweetest soul Red had ever met in the body of a monster.  Wise, too.  He had a lot of pithy sayings about seeing good in everybody's hearts.  One of them was "NEVER CONDEMN AS MALICE WHAT CAN BE BETTER EXPLAINED BY STUPIDITY."  Red had never really thought there was much sense to that line of thought; in his experience, people were often both malicious and stupid.

But… he was kind of starting to think that he needed to mentally downgrade Pawl Seraph from "jackass" to "dumbass."

Pawl looked disappointed.

"Oh, okay.  I guess loud bikes are just a guy thing."

Never mind.

"uh-huh, probably," Sans agreed, distracted.  Red could feel him manipulating his borrowed phone under the table.

"Well, you two got a pretty good fashion sense for eggheads."

Sans's hand went up to fiddle with his collar charm.

Pawl pointed at Red's hand.  "Does your ring have any special sin-gificance?"

"i got it from my late father before he died.  it represents my skellington heritage," Red lied.

The ring in question was a human skull with red crystal marijuana leaves for eyes.  Sans'd found it for him in a gutter on Mars when they were 25.  Red loved it.

"It sounds very important to you.  Can I see it?"

"uh…sure, why not."  He slipped the ring off his phalange.  It left a green band behind on the bone.

Pawl took the ring, folded it up in his hand.

"There's a lot of energy in this ring.  I can tell you care about it a lot."  He wiggled his other fingers at, closed his eyes, and made a strained noise.  "Hnngg."

The dubstep throbbed.

Waiters dressed in old fashioned environmental suits descended upon them with a startling variety of food.  Ramen and tteokbokki for the two roboticists, tempeh tacos for Uncle Burt, and a well done steak for Pawl.  For some reason they dropped a huge platter of venusian tubeworms in front of Red and Sans.

"Hnngggg," Pawl groaned.

The dubstep cut out, and Pawl opened his hand.  His empty hand.  Red's ring was gone.

"what the hell kind of trick was that?" Red griped, annoyed.

"Haha, give it a minute.  It's gonna be a real witsgeek," Pawl promised.

Red looked at the tube worms, disappointed.

"is this because i'm venusian?"

"no, i ordered them," Sans whispered.

"oh, well that's fine then."  Red picked up one of the long, blackened tubes and gave it a sharp crack to get at its juicy innards.

There was a metallic clink as his ring fell out onto the plate.

"Witsgeek!!" shouted the crowd, as the dubstep throbbed and rolled. 

When Pawl was about half-way through his charred beef, the magician abruptly stood, his ornate throne-chair squeaking over the high-traffic synthetic flooring.

"Alright, I wanna try something."  He stepped up onto the seat of the chair, then onto the table.  His feet were bare, and Red had to admit that he had a pretty good pedicure - looked like french tips, but with black polish.  He wondered idly if those were Pawl's real toenails - he thought he remembered something about humans wearing false nails.

"Pick me up," Pawl instructed.  Bratty awkwardly reached for his feet, while Uncle Bert grabbed his shoulders, struggling to lift him.  The waiter rushed to awkwardly help.  Red stood up too, but he just kind of put his hands on Pawl's shins instead of actually lifting.  He wasn't about to throw his back out picking up magicians.

It'd probably screw up whatever trick he had planned if Red used gravity magic.  So really, he was being considerate.  Sans hastily keyed something in on his borrowed phone and put his hands on Pawl's arm.

"Good, good, okay, now put me in the middle of the table." Pawl instructed.

"But… there's an ion disperser," the waiter worried.

"Yeah, yeah," Pawl agreed.  "Put me on the spike."

"I don't know if that's a good-"

The diners cheered.  Dubstep rolled through the crowded restaurant.  Behind the hard cam, the Agent gave the waiter a double thumbs up.  The waiter shrugged and helped them position Pawl Seraph over the spike in the centre of the table.

"Alright, now, hnngghh!!"  Pawl grunted, flexing his abs mightily.  "On the count of three, I want you to all let go."  He huffed a breath in and out.  "One, two, rrraaa, three!'

Red let go.  So, surprisingly, did everyone else.  Improbably, Pawl Seraph somehow remained balanced like a meaty human plank on top of the slender spire.  It was… kind of impressive, actually.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?  Get Pawl Seraph down from there!"  A second waiter, this one wearing a bow-tie along with his environmental suit, rushed over.  "You're gonna make a shishka-pawl!"

"I tried to tell him not to but he made me do it," the first waiter complained.

"It's okay," Pawl grunted through clenched teeth,  "I'm a professional.  Don't try this at home."

"I don't think our insurance covers this," said the second, presumably more senior waiter.

Pawl's Agent leaned out from behind the hard cam and beckoned the waiters to come over.  Sans took advantage of the distraction to tap furiously at his phone.

Pawl took a deep breath and hissed it out through his teeth.  "Alright, now, I want you to take my feet and spin me."

Red caught Catty's eyes across the table.  The cat monster shrugged and gave Pawl's a lazy shove.  The human began to groan throatily as he slowly rotated atop the metal rod.

Red did his part and shoved his shoulder when Pawl's head came his way.  They spun him a few times, slowly speeding up.

"hey red? your phone's giving me a weird notification."

"that don't sound right."  Pawl's legs came Red's way again, and he passed them on.  They swung past Sans without the other skeleton touching them, but Bratty grabbed them and continued the momentum.  "there ain't any notifications on that phone, I deleted my socials."

"i mean it's definitely doing something.  it keeps vibrating rhythmically and making a noise."

Red furrowed his brow.  "did you install something? I mean, the only thing left on there would be the proximity alarm."

Pawl's head spun by them again.  "Wheeeee," he wheezed.  His dangling feet knocked over a plate of hover dumplings.

"here, listen," Sans pressed the phone into his hand.  Red strained to hear the faint sound over the background din: restaurant noise, Pawl grunting, buzzing dubstep music and an increasingly animated argument between the Agent and the two waiters.

The phone buzzed against his phalanges.  He heard a sound.  Tapping.  Not from his phone, though.

Red looked up just in time to watch the iris of the overhead airlock explode into a million pea-sized shards of tempered glass.

"son of a-" Red wrapped his arms around Sans and rolled them both under the table with all the schlubby grace he possessed.

"jinkies," Sans swore.

Glass fell around them like snow.  People screamed; there was a sharp thud against the tabletop.

"is that-?"

"it can't be," Red whispered.  He was all the way in the Oort Cloud, there was no way-

"HUMAN CITIZEN!  I DEMAND YOU STOP WHAT THE FUCK EVER YOU ARE DOING IMMEDIATELY AND TELL ME WHERE MY BROTHER IS??"

Pawl Seraph said "waaaahh" and fell off the other side of the table, taking most of the remaining dishes with him.

"jinkies," Red swore.

"do you think he's mad?" Sans whispered, the words puffing ticklishly against Red's vertebrae.  "he doesn't sound mad."

"SURELY ONE OF YOU SLACK JAWED REPROBATES MUST HAVE SEEN HIM - HE'S ABOUT YAY SHORT, A SNAGGLETOOTHED GREMLIN WITH DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY.  MOST LIKELY IN THE COMPANY OF A SILVER TONGUED SACK OF CRAP OF ROUGHLY THE SAME UNIMPRESSIVE PROPORTIONS."

Red realized he hadn't let go of Sans yet.

He didn't want to.

Kind of pathetic, huh?  He really had a problem.

The problem was, Red had talked Sans into something he wouldn't ever have pursued on his own.  Sans hadn't gotten into a lot of relationships over the decades Red had known him, not sexual and certainly not romantic.  As far as Red knew he even pretty much stopped cruising when they were in their twenties.  He'd probably gone along with Red's request to fool around out of curiosity; he was a curious guy.  It was one of the (many) things Red loved about him.  But it hadn't taken him long, Red figured, to realize that he wasn't all that interested in a physical relationship.  And now, clearly, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place: keep having sex he didn't really want to be having with Red, or admit he'd had enough and risk hurting Red's feelings, maybe even endangering their friendship.

There was no chance of that. Red was going to treasure his memory of their brief couple of nights together until he was as old and grey as the Lunar regolith, but if Sans wanted things to go back to the way they were before this vacation, well, that's what was going to happen.  If Sans wanted them to be just two guys who worked together, and enjoyed vintage edutainment together, and watched the sun set together, and went on a biannual bender together, well, that was what they were going to be.

Didn't change how good Sans felt in his arms, unfortunately.  So he gave Sans a pat on the back and started to disentangle himself.

"nah, he sounds chill," Red said, sweatily.

When he went to clamber out from under the table, Sans grabbed onto his hand.

They emerged into a scene of mild chaos.  Overhead, a few blades of unbroken glass hung precariously in the airlock's frame.  Most of the diners had scattered.  Bratty and Catty peered out from under a neighbouring table.  The production crew appeared to be in shock.  The spike from the middle of the table seemed to have broken off somehow, presumably when Edge landed on Pawl Seraph mid-spin.  Uncle Bert was placidly finishing his tacos.  (Red hoped he didn't eat too much broken glass, he seemed cool.)  And there was his brother: Edge was pacing in a tight loop atop the table, straight-backed in his skin-tight space navy uniform.  Glass crunched beneath his stiletto heels.

"hiya, boss," Red mumbled.

His (giant) little brother whirled around to face him, eyelights as hard as garnets.  Sans waved.

"RED!  SANS!" Edge shrieked.  "YOU'RE ALIVE!!"

"um, yeah?  shouldn't we be?"

"WELL BROTHER, YOU HAVEN'T SO MUCH AS EMAILED ME SINCE YOU AND SANS GOT MARRIED SO OBVIOUSLY I ASSUMED THAT YOU HAD BOTH DIED AND ALSO NOT INVITED ME TO YOUR FUNERAL."

Red winced.  "well when you put it like that.."

"we can explain," Sans explained, "red deleted his socials."

"and sansy's phone collapsed into a neutronium atom."

Cold red eyes glared down at them from roughly 2 metres above.  On the other side of the table, Pawl Seraph surreptitiously climbed to his feet.  The ion dispersal spike looked to be firmly stuck to the centre of his back.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU ASSHOLES FINALLY GOT MARRIED AND YOU HAD THE ABSOLUTE GAUL TO ELOPE.  AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!!"  The red leather of his gloves went white under the tension in his clenched fists.

"buddy, edge, we didn't… we uh…" Sans trailed off under the power of his brother-in-law's glare. 

Edge walked right up to the edge of the table.  "I'M JUST SO…" his voice cracked, and the tall skeleton cleared magic in his skull.  "I'M SO-" he tried again.

"bro?" Red asked, worried.

Bright red tears welled up in Edge's sharply angled sockets.

"bro!?"

"I'M JUST SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!" He blubbered.

"bro."  Red felt his eyelights shrink down to pinpricks.

Edge jumped off the table and swept both of the smaller skeletons up into a crushing hug.

"Hey, mazeltoff," Pawl said woozily from the other side of the table.

Edge turned to glare at the human.

"EXCUSE YOU?  WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU, AND WHO INVITED YOU TO MY TEARFUL REUNION WITH MY NON-DEAD IDIOT BROTHER AND HIS ATTRACTIVE NEW HUSBAND?"

"I'm Pawl Seraph," he said shakily, "and this has been a… a real witsgeek."  The spring-loaded false tip of the table spike suddenly sproinged out through the front of Pawl's shirt.

Dubstep throbbed.

Chapter Text

Sans was warm.  Not hot, not sweaty; just wrapped up in the perfectly neutral warmth of velvety darkness like afternoon in the Lunar fortnight.  Like the edges of his being diffused evenly into the world; no borders, just himself and the substance of the universe.  Fresh water in the ocean.

A light breeze, full of the scent of growing plants, tickled its way into the various openings of his skull.  The air was thick with magic, tingling in his sinuses and warming his joints.  His face was cradled by something firm, yet yielding; crisp against his bones.  He opened his sockets.

He was all wrapped up in leaves that were so deeply green as to be nearly purple, their gilded edges shimmering in the ruddy light of old, cold stars.  He hung suspended in the middle of a dense shrub, supported by the interlaced tips of its branches.  Scarlet blossoms peeked out shyly here and there, defended by thorns as long as his metacarpals.

Sans snuggled into the foliage.  It snuggled back, wrapping more tightly around him, leaves rustling.  Here and there some thorns scraped against his bones, but they didn't hurt him.  Only the softest petals caressed him; the sharp tips of the thorns faced out.

Sans closed his eyes again, pulled down into a deeper sleep.

***

Sans came back to consciousness the way a turtle falls off a log. The important facts of his reality came into focus only gradually: a thick duvet, soft as a cloud.  Pillows.  Birdsong.  His arm, curled around Red's spine, his head cradled in Red's lap, Red's magic blanketing him like sun-warmed water.  The gentle vibration of two skeletons purring in harmony.

Red was awake, sitting up against the headboard. One hand cupped the curve of Sans's parietal bones, the tips of Red's claws scritching at his coronal suture sent a lovely wave of tingling static all down the liquid magic in his spine.

Red must have felt him shiver, because the hand on his cranium stilled.  "mornin', sweetheart," he rumbled.  His voice vibrated with an echo of his earlier purr.  Sans wanted to buy a wallet so he could fold that sound up and tuck it inside and carry it around in his back pocket for the rest of his life.

"morning."  Sans yawned, and then extended it into a stretch.  The cabana's bedroom was pretty well sound-proofed, it seemed, because he could barely even hear Edge shrieking atonally in the kitchen.

"yer handsy in your sleep," Red commented.  "ya kinda glommed right onto me about half an hour ago."  He was stroking Sans's skull again, the ventral processes of his metacarpals rasping.

"sorry, sugar beet," Sans indulged in a final squeeze before he disentangled himself.

"s'fine," Red said, softly.  Sans wasn't sure what that tone was called, but it made him roll onto his back so he could look up at his best friend's face.

Red's was illuminated by a low-angled sunbeam sneaking in between the window slats.  His eyes were closed, the curiously malleable bone of his socketlids casting blue-grey arcs of shadow over his zygoma.  His saw-toothed grin was as soft as it ever got, golden fang glimmering.  Sans was fascinated by the way the sunlight seemed to sink into his bones and illuminate them from within, translucent like fine china except where his scars scattered the light.

Stars, Sans had it bad.  What the hell had happened to him?  He was pretty sure he used to be able to make it five minutes from waking up without thinking soft focus thoughts about his best friend.  It was like there was petroleum jelly on the lens of his mind.

There was no convenient distraction from below to offer Sans a way out, so he made one himself.  "d'ya think we should go check on edge?"

Red didn't open his eyes.  "nah, he's fine.  robbie's there to keep 'im company."

There was a nonspecific clatter from below.

"do you think we go should check on robbie?"

Red sucked his teeth.  "yeah, probably."

Thus began the slow and not remotely linear process of getting out of bed.  It was touch and go for a while whether or not Red just went right back to sleep, and Sans wasn't much use as a motivator given that he didn't have anywhere he needed to be until late morning.

Sans was back in bed for the second time after retrieving his favourite fluffy bathrobe.  Red was no more vertical but was lying at a ninety degree angle from where he had started off, with his skull hanging over one edge of the bed. 

That was how Edge found them when he abruptly stormed the loft.

"YOU'RE AWAKE!  IT'S AN ARBOUR-DAY MIRACLE.  I ASSUMED YOU FUCKERS WOULD BE EITHER ASLEEP, CLACKING FACE, OR FALLEN ASLEEP WHILE CLACKING FACE."

"hey, buddy," Sans greeted.  "you sleep okay on the sofa?"

"DON'T BE RIDICULOUS, OF COURSE I DIDN'T."

Edge always towered (even though he was five centimetres shorter than Papyrus in flats) but Sans felt positively loomed over when Red's brother stalked right up to the side of the bed.  Their slightly stolen pet robot was perched comfortably on the broad pauldron of his space navy uniform.

"warp lag?" Red wondered.

"INDEED.  BUT I HAVE A MUCH MORE IMPORTANT COMPLAINT."  He slammed a tall, creamy-pale cocktail down on the nearest bedside table.  "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY'RE CALLING THIS?"

Red answered confidently.  "oh, yeah.  that's a ñebula colada."

"A ÑEBULA COLADA!!" Edge rolled the tilde like he wanted its shoes.  He had a talent for that.  "THEY CAN'T JUST THROW AROUND DIACRITIC MARKS WILLY-NILLY, THEY HAVE MEANINGS!"

"think it's supposed to be pronounced nebula, like in space?  'cause of the space theme," Sans explained.  "and the ñ is from piña colada.  it's like a joke."

"I KNOW THAT, SANS."  Edge glared down at the offending drink.  "JOKES ARE ONLY ACCEPTABLE WHEN THEY MAKE SENSE.  I'VE BEEN TRYING TO EXPLAIN THIS TO YOUR ROBOT ALL NIGHT."

From his shoulder, Robbie said: "Why did the skeleton not finish his bowl of MineCo Brand Flattened Breakfast Globules?"

"why not, robbie?" 

The ad-bot's indicator lights rotated.  "Because he… flaked out."

Sans snorted.  Red said, "heh."  Edge glared awkwardly in the direction of his own shoulder.  

"SHE HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR HOURS," Edge said, despondent.  "THAT WAS ONE OF THE BETTER ONES.  AROUND DAWN SHE STARTED ASKING ME IF I WANTED TO SPOON."

Robbie rotated his sensory apparatus on its long stalk.  Edge's bad eye wobbled as he focused on it.  The rover warbled, "Do you want to get Lucky (Charms) today, handsome?"

Sans had to muffle Red's laughter with a pillow.  Edge helped.

***

It was their last day in Palm Craters; their shuttle back to Luna was booked for early evening.  The shipyard would be glad to have them back at work.  Management had been a little annoyed at first when their weekend getaway turned into a weeklong honeymoon, but really what were they going to do about it?  Red was capital-I Irreplaceable; no amount of schooling could replicate what his hellish upbringing had taught him about troubleshooting and improvising, and he had a way of nursing sick engine components back to life that bordered on the mystic.  And Sans was pretty crucial to the whole engine design thing too, apparently.  Honestly, the day they both retired the company was probably going to lose ten percent of its market value.

Edge was a lot of help in getting Red up and ready to go. He was also visibly suspicious, which was probably deserved.

"it's just the last day we're gonna be here-"

"THE ONLY DAY I SPEND IN THIS DECADENT CATHOUSE," Edge corrected.

Sans continued, "-and i figured we'd wanna make the most of it.  walk the beach one last time while the sun is out. maybe go ostrich riding along the shore, get some snacks that are the same as what we could get on luna, but four times the price and served on a stick…"

"WELL, I DO ENJOY IMPALED SNACK-FOODS."

"great!  by the way, for no particular reason you should bring your swimsuit."

Edge raised one elegant brow bone, watching Sans over the rim of his third ñebula colada.  "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I BROUGHT SWIMMING ATTIRE WITH ME ON MY HECTIC SPRINT ACROSS THE SOLAR SYSTEM TO CONFRONT MY IDIOT BROTHER AND HIS IDIOT HUSBAND ABOUT THEIR IDIOTICALLY ROMANTIC ELOPEMENT?"

Red stared back, wordless.

"I DID BRING MY SWIMMING ATTIRE, OF COURSE.  I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT MADE YOU ASSUME THAT FACT."

"i mean, you're just such a cool and adaptable guy who's always ready for anything," Sans said.

 "and it's not like you didn't know you were on course for palm fucking craters," Red added.

Edge nyehed, mollified.

A little later, when they had made their meandering way out into the palm-shaded walkways (Red and Sans meandered, Edge walked briskly in short, impatient bursts and then waited for them to catch up), Red unsubtly herded Sans into the shade of a cluster of fluffy, pastel reeds.

Arm slung around Sans's shoulders, Red muttered, "y'know you've been sketchy as all fuck this morning, right?"

Sans plastered his best look of wide-eyed innocence over his face.  "what?  me? i have no idea what you're talking about."

"right…"  Red drew the word out into a long growl.

"really!  i swear i don't have a single legitimately sketchy thing planned for today.  less than 25% sketchiness."  It wasn't even a lie.

"ARE WE ACTUALLY GOING SOMEWHERE OR IS THIS JUST A FLIMSY PRETENSE FOR YOU TWO TO CANOODLE IN THE OPEN AIR?"

"heh. you saw right through me." Red took the opportunity to plant an ostentatious kiss on Sans's mandible for verisimilitude.  He said mwah and everything.

"on account of how he got no skin," Sans elaborated.

"YES, THANK YOU.  I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PARSE YOUR WITTY REPARTEE ON MY OWN."  Edge's tone was as dry as the Sea of Rains.  Sans's grin was fond; it was always so much fun to have Edge back in their neck of the solar system.

Sans led them on an extended meander around the resort: the beach, the bandstands, the boardwalk arcade.  Red cheated outrageously at skee-ball and avoided detection; Edge obeyed the rules scrupulously but got thrown out for suspicious competence.  On the beach, two different humans asked Edge to take a picture of themselves with "the cute skeleton newlyweds," which made Edge shift all the way to a category 4 scowl.  At least the traditional Ionian sulphur dancers were fun for everyone.

Eventually they ambled their way back to the same staging area where they caught the shuttle to Cold Daze Coldera two days ago. Red was oddly unbothered about being herded into a vehicle with no a stated destination. Which was probably just because he knew how to teleport, but it was nice to think that he just trusted Sans to bring him somewhere he would want to be. Edge gave the steward a sternly professional nod and took a seat in the emergency exit row; he still had to fold himself up like a brass instrument even with the extra leg room. Sans dragged Red to the back and corralled him into the window seat.

"Preparing for Takeoff! Please fasten your 5-Point-Harnesses and set any cybernetic devices to Space-Travel Mode. This shuttle service is operated by Vegas Air, a jointly held subsidiary of The Vegas Belt Casino Operators Guild. Thank you for visiting Palm Craters Resort!"

Red competently fastened his various buckles while the engines revved up and the Steward went over the safety information. Sans ran into a bit of trouble when he checked on what had once been his phone in his inventory. It was currently listed as "telecommunications singularity" and was surrounded by a worrying band of empty slots; a conspicuous dearth of both rambutans and moderately-used socks. It was like Papyrus had somehow gotten into his inventory. He gingerly dumped the glitching item into his quarantine sub-folder as a precaution.

Red leaned over and strapped Sans in while he was busy with his inventory. "you gonna tell me where we're goin', sansy-pie?"

Sans's eyelights were stuck on Red's hands, clicking the various buckles and pulling the straps snug. Red's hands looked a lot like his own: metacarpals, phalanges, the small nuggets of bone in his wrists articulating together like puzzle pieces. He thought of those strong, stubby phalanges coaxing tangled wiring into order. Thought about scarred hands gliding over sweat-slicked bones.

Sans could have fastened his own straps.

Instead, he said. "nah."

"heh. you're cute when yer up to something."

Sans flashed his widest, least sincere smile and tried not to deconstruct the way it made him feel when Red called him cute. all cats must return to their bags for the duration of the takeoff procedure.

"like a shrub," Sans auto-bullshitted.

"heh," Red said again. He patted Sans on the harness anchor-point, where it rested on the cushion of ambient magic over his sternum. His ring clicked against the metal. Then he settled back into his own seat.

Sans leaned over and tugged one of Red's straps tighter, denting the fabric of his today's historically accurate heavy metal t-shirt. "you'll find out soon enough," he teased.

Red perked up. "so-"

"Attention passengers! This suborbital shuttle is equipped with several important safety features! Please open the in-flight concierge app on your smart device once we have entered the safe cruising altitude and familiarize yourself with all of the safety features and liability limitation waivers to which you are legally entitled and/or beholden!"

Red stayed quiet through the rest of the safety lecture and the noisiest part of the takeoff, but he started back up when they levelled out into a gentle climb.

"bet i can guess it. suborbital skydiving?"

Sans snorted. "in this gravity? no chance."

"no chance i can guess it, or no chance we're going skydiving?"

"both, but i meant the skydiving."

"hm, guess that's for the best. y'know the boss's gotta be careful about jumping off a' stuff on account of that big-ass crack in his face."

Sans nodded. He did know that. He hadn't really planned for Red's little brother to come on this excursion, which he acknowledged was really on him – he ought to have predicted Edge was going to come smashing through that glass ceiling just from the sheer drama of it. Fortunately his disreputable wrangling had been flexible enough for him to include Edge on the fly.

Red kept pestering as the small shuttle ascended into the upper atmosphere. Ceres was only about a quarter the size of Luna, and therefore it was smaller than most of the inhabited moons in the solar system. They needed a ton of gravitation infrastructure to make the planet inhabitable at all, even besides all the terraforming. Their craft ascended up through an intermittent shell of satellites and orbital platforms that maintained the comfortable climate and human-safe atmosphere. Each time the shuttle stopped to let passengers on or off, Red cast a curious look his way. Sans remained comfortably slumped in his seat until they had flown right up into the heavy cloud reservoir around the southern tropics.

"Atmospheric Factory 04S Habitat Ring! If this is your destination, please remove all of your belonging and bodily residues when you exit the vehicle."

Sans pulled the quick-release on Red's harness.

"well, you heard the steward. gather up your slime and let's get moving, this is our stop."

Sans saluted Edge when he stood up to make sure he understood that this was their stop. Edge gave him the finger in a friendly kind of way.

The platform was shrouded in dense, salmon-coloured fog. Only a few other passengers disembarked, and they quickly dispersed.

"you know i could just check my phone history to figure out what you signed us up for?" Red pointed out, conversationally.

"YOU AREN'T GOING TO DO THAT, RUNT. YOU'D RATHER PESTER HIM." There was a hollow thonk when he smacked Red affectionately on the back of the head. Red growled under his breath.

"why's it so pink up here?" he wondered.

"i'm pretty sure they dye it, so it looks more tropical."

"THEY DO. WITH ATOMIZED BEETLE SHELLS."

Red looked disturbed. "what? bro. that shit's for hot dogs, not storm systems."

"i'll hot your dog," muttered Sans. He expected Red to reply with one of their typical snarks.

Instead, Red grinned beatifically and said, "you always do, sweetheart."

Edge made a disgusted rasping sound in his skull. "UGH." He gesticulated wildly as he stalked into the haze. "WHY? DID I BOTHER? TO ENTERTAIN THIS VAIN HOPE THAT YOUR MATRIMONY WOULD FINALLY PUT AN END TO YOUR RIDICULOUS COURTSHIP DANCE. IF ONLY I WERE A PESSIMIST, I WOULD NEVER BE DISAPPOINTED."

Red raised his browbone. Sans shrugged. They hadn't told Edge that the marriage was a sham, for obvious reasons – because of the whole scamming the resort thing, and more importantly because if they told him and not Papyrus this would almost certainly spawn an Incident. They hadn't really done anything to confirm the reality of their marriage to him either, though. It was possible he had just seen right though them immediately and was now playing the whole thing up as some kind of Edge-specific performance art.

"over here, edgelord," Sans called before he got too far away. He grabbed Red and led him the other way off the platform, sandals slipping a little on the damp metal deck. Carmine fog hissed up through gaps in the floor and condensed on the cold metal; it wasn't the most comfortable thing to walk on. Sans was a little concerned about Edge's stiletto boots, but Red's brother clanged back out of the mist like an unusually glamorous hunting cat and followed them off the platform.

Their destination wasn't very far away; Sans had checked the map three times before giving Red his phone back last night and the navigation markers up here were pretty good. They took a set of spiralling metal stairs up a few levels from the shuttle platform, and walked then out onto a long, unsupported catwalk. The clouds were thick enough to obscure both ends of the walkway once they were in the middle of it, and the gravity was so low it was impossible not to skip. It felt like the world consisted of only three skeleton monsters and the oddly-muffled, oddly-spaced sounds of their footsteps.

And then a sonorous bellow rang out, so deep it vibrated the metal plating below their feet, echoing and directionless.

"that's a-!" Red yelled, excited.

"SPACE WHALE!" Edge pointed over the walkway's railing. Red scurried over to the barrier just in time for the mustachioed rostrum of a massive leviathan to crest the edge as it swam vertically through the clouds. Its maw gaped open as fathomless as a deep-sea trench as it sucked up a bellyful of the swirling clouds, the great pleats of its underbelly rippling. Its gentle climb slowed, until it was hanging almost motionless above them. And then the whale let out another melodic bellow and executed a graceful backwards arc to disappear below them again. Red leaned over the railing to watch it fade back into the clouds.

"aw, sansy, did you bring us up here for whale watching?" He grinned, delighted.

"nope." Sans popped the p. "now, c'mon you. we're gonna be late."

He had to actually physically grab onto Red to pull him away from the railing. Well, for a certain value of "had to," but he wasn't interested in interrogating that any further.

At the other end of the walkway, the clouds had only thinned a little before the skeletons abruptly crossed the threshold of a barometric pillow. On one side of an invisible line in the air, the clouds reeled and rolled, opaque. On the other it was abruptly, completely clear, the demarcation as distinct as a window pane. It was nice magitech; a combination of huge fans and magic orbs making a bubble of totally clear space in the middle of the cloud bank.

It looked like they had come to an old zeppelin dock, a heavy, recycled wood structure extending out into the sky. There were a few small shacks built on it; a ticket office, a storage shed, changing rooms. And a huge, gaudy holographic sign proclaiming that this was the best place in the solar system to swim with the space whales.

Sans felt Red become an anchor at his side. He let go and turned to look at his friend.

"sansy," Red said, slowly. "they said swimming with space whales wasn't included in our all inclusive vacation."

"i know," said Sans.

"it's also booked solid except for resort functions for the next two months." Red's words came faster and faster. "i checked."

"i know," said Sans again, his grin widening. "i got them to squeeze us in."

"it's expensive as fuck?" Red asked, almost desperately.

"i know," said Sans. Behind them, Edge raised a brow. "don't worry, i didn't use real money."

"I WILL PRETEND I DIDN'T HEAR THAT."

Red took a step forward, almost involuntarily. Toward the whales, and consequently toward Sans. "how did you...?"

"so, you know last night when I broke into the witsgeek network to look for that sex tape or whatever?"

Red nodded.

"THE WHAT EXACTLY?" asked Edge, appalled.

Sans waved him off. "don't worry about it, it's just streamer drama. anyway, i didn't find the files but i did get access to their calendar and scheduling protocol. so, i uh, kinda booked them in for an emergency team-building activity with the space whales. and added us to the guest list."

Edge made an exasperated NYEH and stalked over toward the ticket booth.

"sweetheart. sans." Red was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. "you set this up for me?"

"well, yeah." Sans's smug grin gave way to a blush. He glanced away for a moment, and looked back in time to catch Red making an odd gesture like he wanted to put his hand on Sans's shoulder but had stopped himself short. "red, look, you know i-" He voice caught and he stopped himself, considered his words. Red looked at him with wide, round sockets.

"i want you to have a good time, okay?" Sans finished, lamely.

"i always have a good time when i'm with you," Red almost growled, his voice rough.

"it's just, i know i kinda crossed a line the other day, and-"

"sansy, i got no idea what line you think you crossed but. but you gotta know-"

Dubstep throbbed.

Though it was hard for sound to carry in the fog, not even the artificially generated thunderhead could fully muffle the synthetic bass, the aggressive drumbeat, and the obnoxious, mechanical roar weaving through it all.

"oh, no."

The fog parted in a crescendo of triumphant saw-waves as Pawl Seraph, mounted in all his Hot Tangent glory on an open cockpit atmospheric hoverchopper, roared into view overhead.

Several crew members on lesser, quieter vehicles followed behind, along with an entire swarm of camera drones.A crowd of Miscellaneous Dudes with alternative fashion sense materialized out of the fog, clogging the airdock.

"Witsgeek!" They shouted. "Witsgeek!!"

"i didn't send the invitations!" Sans said, desperately. "i didn't think they would come on such short notice."

"I am the witsgeek!" sang-shouted the crowd. "I'm an a-nom-a-ly."

"THIS TRULY IS HELL," said Edge, serious as a heart attack.

Red was half laughing when he said, "ya know what, fair enough."

Pawl Seraph looped back and forth above his adoring fans/paid actors. The technical crew rapidly set up lighting and recording equipment.

"Sains, Rled, how're my favourite lovebones today?" The Agent didn't seem to be a slime monster, but he could ooze with the best of them. "Y'know, I was kinda surprised to see your names on the guest list for today's taping, gonna make a guy think you've been playing hard to get."

"taping?" Sans asked, faintly.

"Well of course! I admit it was kinda a surprise to see we had the whales booked today, but we aren't gonna waste a golden opportunity like that, now are we? Gotta give the people what they want, which is an honest and intimate view of Pawl's luxury lifestyle! Now c'mon, lets get you two into costume. You brought your own eyeliner, right?"

Mild chaos followed. Sans considered bailing, but not in a serious way. This special surprise was kind of going tits up on him, but not enough for him to cry uncle. It seemed like Red could put up with the Witsgeek if it meant he got to see his whales up close, and Sans could put up with the Witsgeek if it made Red happy. Edge almost immediately got swept up by a tangle of production staff gushing about his "costume," so he was probably fine too.

Pawl finally landed and the Miscellaneous Dudes formed a solid backdrop while he posed on the saddle of his hoverbike. The production staff whisked the rest of them through the ticket booth and into the holding area in front of the changing shacks. There was a bit of a mild kerfuffle as Sans was efficiently bustled through, directed to change into his trunks and hot dog print rash guard, fitted with a hover-harness, and funnelled briefly through an improvised make-up station. Then he was told "to go have fun with the whales or whatever" while they "set up the stunt."

Sans found Red sitting on the very edge of the airdock in his Speedo, with his stubby fibulae dangling into the swirling clouds. A muscular horse/eel monster in a professional looking wetsuit was hovering a few feet out into the open air in front of him. Sans went over and sat down beside Red, though he kept his feet up on the dock. Red headbutted him lightly, like a cat.

"Yo!" greeted the floating monster. They had a deep, slow voice and a thick, laid back Titanean accent. "I'm the space whale specialist. Once all the dudes assemble, I'm gonna give you the safety briefing and then I can tell you some super gnarly space whale facts."

"who's this guy?" Sans asked Red.

"the space whale specialist, apparently?" Red replied. He put an arm around Sans's waist and leaned heavily against him.

"no, I mean." Sans cleared magic in his skull, then raised his voice. "uh, space whale specialist? do you have a name?"

"Oh well we're not supposed to give our names to the resort visitors for liability reasons or whatever but you guys can call me Aa- Steve, he/him."

Sans gave a thumbs up. "Asteve, got it."

A small crowd assembled rapidly around them. Edge, of course, showed up in his space navy aquatic excursion attire. Quite a few of the Miscellaneous Dudes, too, most of the production staff, and surprisingly Pawl Seraph himself also gathered for the briefing. The Agent, blessedly, was not among their number.

"Alright, my dudes! You're about to join the select few who have ever interacted with wild space whales in pretty much the wild! Space whales naturally migrate between the thicc worlds with heavy atmospheres, especially Venus and Titan. They started making a pit-stop here after the resort was opened: turns out they really like filter feeding on the artificial clouds. So, this is gonna be like, awesome! But first the safety briefing. You're gonna be hover-swimming with the help of your hover-harnesses. This whole orbital platform's an isolated augmented gravity zone, though, so if anything goes wrong you'll only drift down as far as the lower edge of the station's gas envelope. And you can just hang ten down there until I come get you, alright?"

The crowd murmured in agreement.

"Sweet sandwich. How many of you have been hover-swimming before?"

Red and Sans both raised their hands. So did Edge, Pawl, and about a third of the Dudes. It was a fairly popular activity on Luna, which still had huge swathes of lightly-terraformed weirdlands.

"Alright, and how experienced would you say you are? Gone once or twice?"

Mostly Dudes raised their hands.

"Big favourite hobby?"

Pawl and a few more of the Dudes and production staff raised their hands.

"Anyone got expert level experience or pro training?"

Edge raised his hand politely. Red raised Sans's hand, and then his own too as an afterthought.

"Lemme guess," said Asteve, "Space Navy?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, GUESS? I'M LITERALLY WEARING MY UNIFORM RIGHT NOW?"

"Just a figure of speech, big guy. And what about you, little dudes?" He looked at Sans and Red.

"oh, we're just from luna."

"we got gravity magic, and he's from the spa," Red volunteered.

"Guh?" Asteve eloquently inquired.

Sans sighed. "the south-pole-aiken basin."

"For real? I thought that was all hillbillies and weird isolationists?"

"we call them 'craterchrissys,'" Sans said, flatly.

"So which one are you?" the whale specialist pressed.

"i'm a secret third thing."

"Right on, sure you are," Asteve nodded amicably. "So, uh, Space Navy Guy-"

"EDGE."

"That is such a cool name," piped up Pawl Seraph.

"Edge," continued the biologist. "You seem pretty professional. Do you think you could teach some of the noobs the basics?"

"I WOULD BE AMENABLE TO THAT," said Edge, nodding crisply.

"Sweet, we can record it for the outro," Pawl enthused.

Asteve explained some of the basics of hover swimming – conserving angular momentum, finding external anchors, adjusting the fit of ones swimming harness, all the usual stuff. One by one the guests all took their turns to drop down into the cloud-surface with varying degrees of gracefulness from Edge's jackknife dive to Sans's own walrus flop. Everyone naturally split up into smaller groups; Edge, true to his word, gathered up a cluster of the least experienced folk to whip into shape. The production crew declared this to be "sick b-roll" and tethered some camera drones into their orbit.

Off in the distance, the dark, hazy forms of space whales could be seen through the cloudy barrier, occasionally breaching out into the open air. Red was watching them avidly, his eyelights literally sparkling. Sans undulated along at his side, happy to watch his friend-husband enjoy himself.

Unfortunately, after only a moment or two of comfortable silence, they were joined by the Witsgeek.

"I've been thinking about the two of you."

Pawl was drifting along in the microgravity like a natural, floating on his back and adjusting his course with small but visible ripples of his bulgy human abs. He was dressed for swimming exactly the same way he dressed for dinner at a fancy restaurant: distressed jeans, wallet chain, open fronted shirt, and several kilograms of silver jewellery. He even still had his top hat on.

"izzat so," Red said, not at all threateningly.  He wasn't even really paying attention, Sans thought, too enraptured with the leviathans passing by in the haze.

"Yeah!  So, you're married."

"that's what big elvo said."

"And your name is Comick Sans, right?"

"more or less," Sans said, cautiously.

"Is that backwards? Like Japanese style?"

"nah, that's the right order," Red interjected.

"So Comick is your first name and Sans is your last name?  You call your husband by his family name?"

Red finally looked up from the whales, keying in on the opportunity to embarrass Sans like a hound spotting a bird.  "nah, 's his middle name.  the whole thing is 'comic sans serif,' on account a' his parents were science hippies from the dark side of the moon."

"Woah wait, what?"  The magician skilfully corkscrewed himself into a sitting position.  "You're a Seraph too?  Are we cousins?"

"what!?" Sans yelped.

"no," said Red, disbelieving.  Definitely not his "no, you're wrong" no.  This was Red's "no way, I can't believe something this funny is happening in real life" no.  Sans, unfortunately, knew the difference.

"Well yeah, it's not like it's a common name.  I never met a Seraph I'm not related to."

c'mon, sansy.  you're defended a thesis, you can talk your way out of this.

"i'm a monster, though."

Pawl shrugged.  "Humans and monsters can be cousins.  Like by marriage or adoption."

"my uncle clarence is a human," Red lied.

"Or if someone converts," Pawl continued.

"uh," Red didn't seem to know what to do with that one.

Sans tried a desperation move.  The misspelled names thing had been pretty fun, but he was willing to sacrifice the bit in an emergency.  "mine's spelled differently.  it's ser i f, not ser a p h."

This seemed to work.  Pawl looked disappointed.  "Oh… well then I guess you're a different kind of Seraph.  Huh."

With the straightest face Sans had ever seen on him, Red said, "it probably got misspelled when his family immigrated to the moon."

"Oh yeah, you're right!" Pawl brightened. "Yeah that used to happen all the time, right!"

"i guess," said Sans, miserably.

"Well hey, y'know what, I gotta get the production team to talk to you. If you ever need work or like, y'know want some money or whatever, Witsgeek is a family business and any cousin of mine is welcome to share in the wealth."

Sans tried to deflect. "oh no, no, we wouldn't want to uh, impose-"

"Nah nah nah," Pawl waved him off. "I mean it! You see this production team? They're almost all my cousins, or niblings or something. The head camera operator is my aunt Knellie. My brother Jeff is the script supervisor. You'd fit right in!"

"We already have jobs," Sans tried to explain.

"Yeah, nerd jobs. You could be the like, nerd stuff consultants."

Red was shaking with suppressed laughter. Pawl added, "You can come work here too, Rled. A cousin-in-law is a cousin in my books."

Red choked on his tongue.

They were saved from further offers of employment by Asteve shouting and waving to get everyone's attention.

"Yoooo everyone gather 'round!"

Sans twisted like a falling cat onto his belly and glided over to the whale specialist. Red followed, using his gravity magic to fall horizontally. Pawl kept up with them both without issue.

"Okay so it looks like everyone has got the hang of hover-swimming. Sooo... are you ready to space whale?"

Everyone cheered.

"So, we're gonna turn off some of the atmoSpheres and drop some feed in here. Hey, do you know how the whales get so thicc?"

"Tell me how," Pawl drawled.

"By not watching what they eat!" The whale specialist paused for a dubstep hook. "So stay away from them until they're done chowing down or you might get noshed!"

There was a mild whirring noise as a deeper pinkish vapour than the surrounding clouds started billowing in, out in the middle of the clear area, accompanied by yet more dubstep. Is that being broadcast somehow, or does it just hang around Pawl like an aura?

Sans looked around. There weren't any obvious speakers, though there were some production staff tapping away on tablets. He spotted the Agent standing on the airdock, holding a polystarch takeout container. Sans found yet another reason to not like the sleazy bastard; imagine going to get lunch when you had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually swim with a space whale? What a square. The Agent waved, and Pawl swam back over to speak to him.

"what do you use as bait?" Red wondered.

"Whale food," Asteve drawled. "Which is about 70% hot dogs by volume. The big guys love it."

Sure enough, a long cetacean bellow rippled through the air as a space whale dove out of the overhead clouds, mouth open, dropping through the whale bait and the cloud floor below like a stone. Another followed, and then a third, spiralling gracefully around one another without ever so much as brushing fins.

"Looks like we got Gracie, Mittens and Scarf here today!" Asteve announced.

"SCARF?" Edge wondered. He was still pretty surrounded by a knot of inexpert swimmers, but they all seemed to be wise enough to stay out of his personal bubble.

"Yeah, my dude. We call him that because of that dark mantle marking behind his blow hole. Mittens is called Mittens because of his bifurcated front flippers. That's a natural variation some whales have! And Gracie is the big one with the moustache. Scarf and Mittens are her two boyfriends." He made a kissy noise. "Space whales usually travel in small groups with a dominant female and two to five males. Usually it's the females that have those nifty moustache tendrils on their noses, and we think they act as some kind of display. It seems like the gnarlier their moustaches, the more mates they have."

Gracie swam up into a brief vertical climb before flipping onto her back and passing by overhead, singing a long, low note. The tendrils spiralling around her long beak and trailing flippers shifted slowly from pinkish to blue and back again.

"Woah, atta girl! She loves showing off for us. Whales only vocalize when they're in atmosphere," Asteve explained. "When they're out in deep space, we think they communicate by colour-changing displays on their tendrils. But no-one has ever really cracked the code, so we don't know what they're saying."

"Do you ever get to see the babies here?" One of the Dudes wondered.

"Never," said Asteve. "No-one's ever seen their young. The smallest ones we ever see at Titan or Venus are young adults. We think they might be calving somewhere in the Oort cloud, or outside the system all together. Then again, they're not really biological animals; they have more in common with monsters like me than with ocean whales. So we can't even say for sure they even have a juvenile stage."

Sans wondered if looking for baby space whales was part of Edge's exploration mission. Probably; he'd met Captain Dreemurr a couple of times and the guy was a total softie.

The whales consumed the snack cloud quickly, though politely, taking their turns to gulp the vapour one after another. Once done, they swam back around to settle contentedly, half-sunken into the cloud floor.

"After they’ve eaten they usually like to take a nap before they phase out and head off to Titan or Venus. So, this is a great opportunity for us to do important whale research."

"what kind of research," asked Red, flatly.

"Oh like." Asteve seemed to be at a bit of a loss. "I guess mostly we just count how many space barnacles they have and try to keep track of which ones are headed which way? And we name the ones that show up here a lot."

Red seemed satisfied. "how can ya tell which way they're going?"

The whale biologist seemed happy that Red hadn't asked him about the space barnacles. "We can kind of tell by their coloration - it changes a bit depending on which atmosphere they just came from. See the reddish-golden sparkles around their tendrils? That's usually from visiting Venus."

"and when they're heading the other way?" Red wondered.

"Then it's more of a blue-silver colour."

Red nodded. The whales looked comfy; Scarf had his tail crossed over Gracie's, while Mittens drifted a short distance away, fanning his thumbed flippers to keep himself in place in the air.

"Alright cool kids, they're settling down so now is the time to approach them! Remember the four rules of space whales! One: Don't touch the whales unless they touch you first! Two: Palm Craters Resort is in no way responsible for any element of your personal physical safety or mental well-being! Three: If anything goes wrong, try to go limp and drift to the bottom of the cloud envelope. And of course, the most important rule: don't forget to have fun and stay radical!"

The Witsgeek Dudes seemed to take that as immediate permission to flood over toward the space whales. The whales, for their part, were completely unbothered by the approach of tiny, awkward land creatures. Red and Sans paddled toward Mittens, the smallest of the space whales, but maintained a respectful flippers-length away.

The huge beast's dark, glassy eye was the size of Red's whole skull, surrounded by deeply incised furrows. This close up, they could see the lights of the camera drones reflecting off its watery cornea; they could have counted the barnacles clustered on its face if they wanted to.

Edge extricated himself from his flock of noobs before their momentum dragged him away with them, and did a graceful breast stroke over to join his brother and Sans.

"THIS SEEMS ALMOST UNBELIEVABLY IRRESPONSIBLE?" He noted. "DID YOU SIGN A WAIVER WHEN YOU SIGNED INTO THE RESORT? BECAUSE I VERY MUCH DID NOT DO THAT WHEN I LANDED ON THE MISLEADINGLY AIRLOCK-SHAPED ROOF OF THAT RESTAURANT."

"mighta been a verbal agreement when we accepted the vacation prize package?" Sans posited. He didn't remember there really being any forms to fill out, unless... "or... i guess we probably signed something when we got married."

"OF COURSE YOU DON'T REMEMBER," Edge sighed. "WELL IRREGARDLESS OF ANY UNSPOKEN VERBAL CONTRACTS, OR WAIVERS CONCEALED IN YOUR MARRIAGE LICENSE, I DON'T THINK YOU SHOULD APPROACH THOSE LEVIATHANS."

"yer not the boss a' me, boss," muttered Red.

Edge glanced at Red, then glanced at Sans. His crimson eyelights didn't quite level with Sans's, and he realized Edge was looking down at the wedding collar snug around his cervical vertebrae. Sans looked away, toyed nervously with the soul-shaped charm. There was just the faintest echo of... of passion, Sans realized, of how it had felt when Red grabbed his collar while he rode his lap, and heat flooded his face.

Red reached over and hooked his wrist, careful to keep his own phalanges away from metal and leather, and pulled Sans's hand down between them so he could lace their fingers together. To Edge, he said, "don' hassle 'im. he's soft."

"i'll show you who's soft," Sans muttered darkly.

"oh," singsonged Red. "i bet you will."

"BLECH!" Said Edge, disgusted. "IT'S LIKE YOU'RE NEWLYWEDS OR SOMETHING. CAN YOU JUST TRY TO KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS?"

"i'm not wearin' any-" Red started to point out.

The ever-present dubstep intensified. A heavy bass note cut through the chatter like a saw-wave knife. One of the whales sang a high, nervous note. And when the beat dropped, Pawl Seraph was standing up on the dark mantle of the smallest of the three Space Whales. His necklaces jangled; his open shirt fluttered in the breeze. Held before him in both hands was an egregiously large hot dog.

"I've been working as a professional magician for almost two decades," he explained. Camera drones zipped around to capture him. "In all that time, I've had one mission: to prove to the world that I, Pawl Seraph, am simply built different. You've seen me jump valles marineris on a wheelercycle. You've seen me get run over by a Europan Zamboni, and go toe to toe with a heavy gravity sumo wrestler. Just this week, you watched me spend four hours in the unforgiving vacuum of space, clinging to the skin of a cluster craft with my bare hands."

He stalked up the centre-line of the whale's back. The animal seemed to pay him almost no mind, even when he stopped and stood with his bare feet on either side of its blowhole. It puffed out a cloud of snow-white steam.

"Today I'm gonna do something truly unique, a challenge no human has ever done before. You might have heard the old story of Jonah spending three days in the belly of a whale."

"HE'S NOT? GOING TO?"

"i'm sure he knows what he's doin'," Red lied.

Pawl stepped out onto the animal's narrow rostrum, picking his way carefully between the loops of tendril wrapped loosely around the creature's snout. "Today you're gonna witness the start of Pawl Seraph's three day journey in the belly of a space whale."

He held the hot dog aloft. At first, nothing happened. But then one of the drifting tendrils brushed against the cured meat treat. The whale made an inquisitive noise, rolling a little in the clouds to try to angle its massive eye toward the magician. Pawl swayed and keep upright, holding the snack out at arms length so the whale could focus on it better.

Finally, he seemed to win the creature over and the massive cavern of it's baleen-draped maw gaped open. Pawl Seraph took on an expression of beatific serenity as he stood at the very tip of the whale's long beak, arms spread out cruciform. He spun on one bare heel, back to the camera drone as he looked down over the vast length of Scarf's streamlined body. Then he let himself fall in hover-belt assisted slow-mo, off the whale's face. As he went, he hooked one foot into a cluster of space barnacles and executed a graceful backflip right into the animal's mouth.

The gathered Dudes chanted "Witsgeek! Witsgeek!" with unbridled enthusiasm.

And, when Scarf felt the weight of an adult human land on its tongue instead of the much slighter mass of a salty, meaty treat, the whale finally reacted. Its long body bucked, the rolling movement ending with a slap of its tail against Gracie. Gracie's eyes snapped open and she let out a warning bellow. Mittens responded with a querying whistle; Scarf made a muffled warble back. From inside the leviathan's mouth, Pawl Seraph held up his hands in a triumphant "rock on," gesture, having finally dropped the hot dog down the whale's gullet.

Dubstep throbbed, louder than before, and Gracie sang a ringing, urgent note.

There was a loud "clomp" as Scarf finally snapped his mouth shut, hiding Pawl from view. And then all three whales flickered and phased out of reality.

Slowly as a fallen leaf, Pawl's top hat drifted down into the roiling clouds and disappeared from sight.

"Witsgeek! Witsgeek! Witsgeek!" Chanted the crowd.

The camera drones zoomed around, swiping in close to get reaction shots of the Dudes. One zipped by the skeletons and Red gave it the finger, probably as a matter of principal.

Asteve, hovering nearby, opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again, looking shell shocked.

"uh." Said Sans.

"Uh," replied Asteve.

"i guess i gotta be the one to say it. did he just die?" wondered Red.

"I... don't know," Asteve said, faintly. He was sweating visibly. "The whales throat openings are only about the size of a grapefruit so it's not going to actually be able to eat him. I just... hope it doesn't spit him out when it's on the other side of where-ever they go when they phase out?"

"probably the void," Sans said, trying to reassure... someone. "it's not so bad, i use it to teleport. speaking of which, good luck i guess." He grabbed Red and Edge and shortcutted the three of them back to the airdock. Seemed like it was about time to hit the old dusty trail.

They almost got away before shit hit any of the many fans. By the time they retrieved their belongings, returned their harnesses to the supply shack, and Edge had gotten over his shortcut nausea, the Various Dudes were mostly back on the dock. When Asteve got to the ladder, the Agent offered him a hand.

"Great show, baby," he congratulated. "This stream is gonna do so many numbers! Love the disappearing effect with the whale hologram, very dramatic, very cliff hanger! By the way, you can feel free to go fish Pawl out of the gas net now, we're done filming."

"Uh, my dude?" Asteve said, worried. "Pawl's not in the gas envelope. He's not even on Ceres anymore. That whale phased out with him?"

"Yeah, but it was a holo-whale, right? You wouldn't let a bunch of tourists pet real space whales."

Asteve stared at the Agent. The Agent stared at Asteve.

"Those were real whales, bro."

"What!?" shrieked the Agent. "Then where is my client!?"

"He's uh, probably half-way to Titan, my guy."

The Agent's complexion went from eggplant to lavender as all the intrinsic magic drained out of his face. He whipped a phone out of his pocket and screamed into it. "I need a flight to Titan! Right now! Get me on the next hyper-shuttle! No, get me a relativistic craft! A light-speed craft, I don't care how much time dilation I experience!!"

Sans sighed. He glanced toward the exit, unguarded, and the route back to their luxury cabana. He looked at Red, who was looking at Edge, and Edge, who was looking toward the Agent.

"yeah, i know. we ought to at least offer, huh?"

"IT WOULD BE THE MAGNANIMOUS THING TO DO."

"not to mention maybe they'll help ya with your parking ticket," Red pointed out.

"THAT IS ALSO A MAJOR FACTOR IN MY DECISION, YES."

The skeletons glumly made their way back to the Agent.

"EXCUSE ME," Edge volunteered.

"we couldn't help overhearin' that you need a fast ride to Titan, and my bro here's a certified pilot with a shuttle pod that can do relativistic speeds-"

"You!" hissed the Agent. "You're behind this, aren't you! You set this whole thing up!"

"i didn't tell pawl seraph to get inside a whale's mouth," Sans pointed out. "in fact if he told me he was gonna, i would have told him to not do that."

"No, no, this is just some kind of 6-D chess, isn't it? You wanted to get rid of Pawl so you could be the new stars of the show, right? You wouldn't sign the forms until you were sure you could be top dogs at the boneyard, right?"

"we're not signing the fucking forms," Red snapped. "we don't wanna work for you."

The Agent might have had some snake monster in his background from the way his jaw unhinged, revealing rows of needle-like teeth.

"No. No! If you're all I have left, you're gonna sign my fucking forms or I'm going to ruin you."

Sans looked at his sham-husband, watched his expression lock down from reluctant sympathy to protective rage. He opened his mouth, drew in a breath, and-

"we don't care, actually," said Sans, cool as a cucumber.

"What?" The Agent seemed actually taken aback.

"we don't care." He shrugged. "you took creepy telephoto lens pictures of us boning. so what? we're married and this is our honeymoon. everyone knows we're boning."

"MUCH TO MY CONTINUING REGRET," added Edge.

"we don't care if you leak the photos. right moonbeam?" he looked at Red, saw the agreement in his eyelights. "we're just lawfully wedded husbonses expressing our l-love. it's not like out employer is going to hold us responsible for revenge porn. you're the creep that takes non-consensual photos of couples riding in the fuck bubble."

The Agent laughed, a manic edge to it. "Do you think I'm gonna stop there? I've got more stuff. I've got loads of stuff on you. I got stuff on you that you can't even imagine."

Red looked up sharply. Edge scoffed. "THAT'S RIDICULOUS. IT'S LIKE YOU'VE NEVER EVEN MET THEM."

"don't worry about it, edge," Sans said. This was... there probably wasn't anything too bad, though he did steal a lot of drink tokens. And there was the whole thing where their marriage was a weird unfunny joke and they were scamming the resort for a free vacation. It wasn't like nudes were going to hurt his reputation; he wasn't a public figure and the shipyard didn't care what he did with his free time. But he didn't want it getting back to Papyrus (and Edge) that this marriage thing was a scam.

There was only one recourse.

"'kay, you've convinced me. i'll sign the forms," he said. "mail 'em over."

"sansy, what the fuck? it's not worth-"

Sans held his hand out. "red, give me your phone." Red gave him a searching look, then nodded and handed the phone over.

"Ha! I guess you know where your bread is buttered after all," gloated the Agent. He pulled out his tablet and swiped furiously. A moment later, there was a ping in Red's mostly bare inbox.

Sans opened it, glanced over the attachments, his bony thumb tip tapping against the screen as he quickly and efficiently drafted a reply. Opened the attachment to see it had all of his and Red's legal info already filled in. Made no effort to sign or initial any of the many dozens of blanks.

Instead, he dipped into his own inventory, to the quarantine folder that had once been full of junk mail and religious pamphlets, and dumped the only item still remaining there into the attachments of the email. Then he hit reply.

There was a ping from the Agent's tablet that hung oddly long in the air before warbling into a glitch-tone.

"when you think back on this day," Sans said. "i want you to remember that we tried to be nice to you first."

The dubstep, finally, blessedly, cut out.  Camera drones abruptly fell out of the sky. The Agent's tablet emitted an ominous creaking noise.

"What the hell did you do?" He tapped frantically at his tablet. "What the fuck is a telecommunications singularity?"

"oof," said Red. "y'know it's real bad for your inbox to let notifications pile up like that."

"electron mass builds up, something something, whelp, we gotta see a dog-man about a man-dog."

"You sons of bitches, I'll-"

"YOU DO REALIZE THAT YOU'VE BEEN UTTERING THREATS OF SOCIAL DEVASTATION IN THE PRESENCE OF A COMMISSIONED OFFICER OF THE SPACE NAVY?" Edge said, sounding bored. He stripped off one of his gauntlets so he could theatrically fiddle with his razor-sharp, crimson-lacquered claws. "BECAUSE IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE ABOUT TO CROSS THE LINE INTO THREATENING BODILY HARM. AND IT'S POSSIBLE THAT YOU ARE SOMEHOW NOT AWARE THAT I AM AUTHORIZED TO USE FORCE IN THE EVENT THAT A PHYSICAL THREAT IS MADE UPON MY PERSON OR PERSONS?"

The agent stepped back, hands and groaning tablet raised. "Fine. Fine! Whatever. I'm not threatening anyone. But this isn't over!"

"yes it is," said Sans. And then he looped his elbow through Red's, put his other hand on Edge's humerus, and blipped them all back to the shuttle platform.

***

They parted ways with Edge when the shuttle brought them back to the main campus of Palm Craters. Fortunately, the Agent hadn't caught up with them during the awkward 18 minutes they had to wait for a shuttle going in the right direction, so it seemed like they had gotten away for now. When they got back to the resort, Edge pointed out that now would be a great time to go uncouple his spacecraft from the fine dining establishment and get it ready for the trip to Luna.

"PAPYRUS HAS INDICATED THAT HE REQUIRES MY IMMEDIATE PRESENCE FOR REASONS – WHICH HE WAS ABLE TO DO BECAUSE I AM A CONSCIENTIOUS MONSTER WHO HAS NEVER LET HIS NOTIFICATIONS PILE UP TO THE POINT OF COLLAPSING INTO A SINGULARITY EVEN ONCE."

"heh, well, then what'll you do if you need to crash a closed network?" Sans wondered.

"ARSON, MOST LIKELY," said Edge, seriously.

"atta boy, just like i taught you. you know i worry about you out there with all those navy boy scouts without me to keep you on the straight and narrow."

"BROTHER, I AM SO MISERABLE WITHOUT YOU IT'S ALMOST LIKE YOU ARE THERE."

Both brothers burst into laughter, Red's low guffaw harmonizing with Edge's slightly maniacal NYEH-HEH-HEH.

Red thumped his much taller, younger brother on the small of the back. "you'll come by the cabana before you take off? i'll make you a ñebula colada for the road," he asked, gruffly.

"IF MY PREFLIGHT PROCEDURE ALLOWS IT."

They lapsed into silence but just kept kind of looking at one each other. Sans took matters into his own hands. "are you two done making out yet? i wanna go clean the whale vapours out of my crevices."

"EURGH. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE PRESENTABLE ONE."

"well, he can't be all that presentable, seeing as he married me," Red added.

"AND YOU'RE LUCKY HE DID, YOU VICIOUS LITTLE POTATO MAN, NO-ONE ELSE WOULD HAVE YOU."

For some reason, that sent hot magic to Sans's zygoma, no doubt lighting him up in a cerulean blush. It was just Red and his brother's habitual ribbing, not some kind of declaration. It wasn't like they were even really married. Not to mention that Red was, in Sans's expert opinion, the hottest piece of coccyx in Tranquility City. Sans was not the one out of the two of them who would have been settling.

This was finally enough to send Edge stalking off toward the historic ghost colony and the Starquake Saloon, and Sans and Red ambled the short way through the pastel-coloured martian palms to their cabana.

Robbie was milling around aimlessly in the kitchen when they got back, but he perked up with a peppy chirp when he detected their presence. Red patted it on the back of the sensory cluster while Sans went over to the food dispenser to order them some snacks.

"Query: Would you like to hear a joke?" warbled the bot.

"lay it on me, little buddy," said Red.

"What is the MineCo Brand PhosphorOs' favourite movie genre?"

The dispenser's shortcut menu had been completely repopulated with prepackaged breakfasts. Sans shrugged and dialed up a bunch cereal bars.

"i dunno robbie, what is it?"

Robbie paused, rotating its indicator lights for dramatic effect. "A rom-comflake."

Sans sucked his teeth. That was a rough one, even by his standards.

"nah, that one sounds like shit in your font, buddy," Red said, tactfully. "try again."

"Why don't physicists trust atoms?"

"don't they?" wondered Red.

"why not?" Sans asked.

"Because they make up everything." Robbie played his synthetic rimshot.

Sans put the freshly 3-D printed granola bars on the counter between Red and the robot. "heh, robbie, you're branching out! that one didn't even have anything to so with cereal."

"Error. That is factually incorrect."

"oh? howzat?" Red chomped into one of the granola bars, showering himself and the counter with crumbs.

"Cereal is everything." The robot blinked its lights smugly.

Red snickered, reached over to pat the drone on its solar panel.

When the knock came on their kitchen window, Sans's first thought was that it was Edge, perhaps having developed a taste for entering through non-standard doors. He reached up to tilt the shade open.

The Agent was standing in their hedge again.

Red dropped his granola bar and summoned a curved, sharpened bone attack. He didn't growl, but hostile magic audibly crackled around his skull and his eyelights blazed like cigarette cherries. It was distractingly hot, actually.

Sans cleared magic in his skull. "the fuck? shouldn't you be on your way to saturn by now?"

The Agent had become remarkably dishevelled in the brief time since they had last seen him, his eyeliner smudged and running into the cracks between the heavy scales on his cheeks. There was an algiplast drinking straw stuck in his hair.

"Howdy, lovebones!" The Agent's flytrap grin didn't reach his unblinking eyes. "There's always time to pay a visit to an old friend."

"you can't possibly think we're gonna invite you in?" Red asked, incredulous.

"Oh I'm not here to visit you, Mister Lunderfel."

Sans raised a hand. "i also don't like you," he added. "just to be clear."

The Agent giggled, pupils narrowing to slits. "You don't have to like me to work for me."

"fuck, still?" Red hissed.

"You see, I'm not here to see either of you. I'm actually here to collect my property." He made a whistling noise between his teeth. "R.0bb-E! Override code: Asterspresso!"

Robbie's sensory apparatus whirled around to face the Agent. It emitted a grating, glitchy noise.

"hey! stay away from our robot!" Red levelled his bone attack in front of the window, between the rover and the Agent.

"Your robot? Red, baby, who do you think sent it to you in the first place?"

"uh, the resort? on account of red opting us out of the targeted ads program."

"Guess again, nerd! I stole this thing from the mining museum and sent it here to record you. Isn't that right, R.0bb-E?"

The bot said, "Error."

"What? What do you mean, error? Get over here and give me your surveillance files."

"Error," said the bot. "Error: no files of type_surveillance found."

"What?" The Agent snapped. "Look again. Give me all video and audio files you have recorded over the past seven days."

The bot warbled and rotated its indicator lights. "Searching. Results found."

Sans felt his soul sinking. Red looked torn.

The bot continued. "Search results = null. 0 fucks found."

The Agent squawked in outrage. "You can't give me lip, you're just a shitty ROVer model I stole from the mining museum and jammed full of spam modules!"

"looks like he just did, pal."

"But I used its override code! It has to obey me!"

"Error." Robbie said, again. "Error: U+1F59 – I don't like you."

The Agent made an incoherent noise of rage and tried to jam his fingers in through the window slats. Red smacked the shade next to his fingers with the back of his bone attack.

"look, buddy," Sans said. "we've put up with a lot from you but you're about to cross a line. and if you keep going the way you are, you're gonna have a bad time."

Robbie made a rising, electrical noise as his laser charged. "Warning! My intruder protocol has been triggered. Deadly force is authorized to protect MineCo assets. Please cease and/or desist immediately."

"You can't-!"

Robbie's laser fired a split second pulse, melting a smoking hole through the synthetic wood of the window shutter. It melted about two centimetres off the end of the drinking straw stuck in the Agent's hair, too.

"Wah!" yelped the Agent, flailing backwards. There was a crunch of beleaguered martian palms as he fell out of Sans's eyeline. A moment later he popped back up, pastel leaves and twigs sticking to his clothes.

"are you done?"

"Wah!" The Agent said again. He stared at them for a solid thirty seconds, breathing hard. Finally, he raised both of his middle fingers, turned on his heel, and stalked away.

A few moments passed. Red dismissed his bone falcata and picked the remainder of his granola bar up off the floor to finish it. Robbie powered down his laser and rolled up onto the counter where his charging tray rested.

"so that was, uh-" Red said, between bites of toasted cereal.

"-really something," finished Sans.

The little ROVer rotated its superstructure a few times before relaxing its suspension and settling down in its tray. Unprompted, it said, "Would you like to hear a joke?"

"shoot," Red said.

"How does a robot know it is in love?"

"how?"

"It feels a spark." A little jolt of electricity arced between its antennae.

"heh, good robot." Red patted it on the solar panel, and it emitted a pleased chiptune flourish.

"so, uh, that guy stole you, huh? that sucks, buddy."

"Condition: favourable. I like you."

"well d'ya want us to being you back to the museum?" Sans wondered.

"Objective = unsure. I will process this decision during my scheduled shutdown time."

"well, alright."

The ad-bot's indicator lights switched to its sleep mode animation.

Sans shrugged. "well i guess that's that."

"that." said Red. "sure is that."

They stood there in uncommonly awkward silence beside the peacefully sleeping robot and the slightly perforated window until Red said, awkwardly, "sansy, i dunno how i can thank you enough for today."

Sans looked out the window. Fiddled with the sash, closed the slats. The hole melted by Robbie's laser changed shape but didn't quite close.

"you don't gotta thank me, this was already- i was-" he breathed in magic, sinuses filling with the scent of singed synthetic wood and the warm, savoury spice of Red's ambient magic. "i just wanted to show you i..."

Red's hand came to settle on Sans's shoulder, light as a bird. His thumb circled over the synthetic fabric cloaking the head of his humerus. Sans was suddenly acutely aware of his marriage collar, sitting a centimetre from Red's phalange tip. He felt that gap like it was limned in neon. Wanted Red to cross it, to share himself with Sans. Every bone in his body vibrated with how badly he wanted Red to touch his collar when he felt this way, but he didn't ask for him to.

"if you want, you can-" Red started to say.

"yeah," Sans said. "i guess i can."

Red let his hand slide down Sans's back, along the broad flank of his rib cage.

"last day in paradise, huh?"

"hmm." Sans agreed. He kinda thought he'd be sick of this place by now, but he found he wasn't really looking forward to going back to his normal life on Luna.

"so uh, since we just got this one afternoon left, what d'you wanna do?" Red asked. His eyelights were fiery discs, looking down almost shyly.

"well i really do wanna take that shower," Sans started. There was atomized beetle shell crystallizing in his synovial capsules. He watched Red's expressive face start to fall. He shouldn't, he really shouldn't-

fuck it. yolo, bitches.

"you uh... wanna do our part for the various environments and conserve water?"

Red's grin quirked wide, sharp and crooked and gorgeous. "sweetheart, you know i'm always onboard to save the whales."

***

The Galactic Emperor suite had two bathrooms – one on the ground floor that was simple and elegant, and one in the bedroom loft that was luxurious almost to the point of parody. It was all gleaming tile and recycled teak, with only slightly dated brushed bronze hardware. All of the fixtures except the shower were on pedestals of varying heights.

The shower enclosure was a glassy behemoth taking up almost a third of the room. Red clicked his way over to the control panel while Sans tried not to be too awkward about stripping off his swimsuit. It wasn't like Red hadn't seen him naked before. It wasn't like Red hadn't seen him come before, for that matter. Felt him come, with his soft, wet throat snug around Sans's-

Sans was snapped out of his reverie when Red fired his Speedo into Sans's face like a rubber band.

"c'mon, sansy, water's a'wastin'," he singsonged.

Red wasn't that much more naked with his Speedo off than with it on. Stretched over the open lattice of his bones, Red's swimsuit hadn't left much of anything to the imagination. The inner plane of his sacrum, the big foramina in his ischia, and the flaring wings of his hipbones were all fully visible. Not to mention his stout, strong femurs, the graceful s-curve of his spine, the sweeping arch of ribs. The only real difference between Speedo and no Speedo was that now Sans could get an eyeful of the dense, pearlescent magic binding the tight joint at the front of Red's pelvis together. And... and that was just a pubic symphysis, he had one too. He shouldn't stare.

Sans stared.

Red winked at him and stepped into the shower's spray.

Sans peeled off his trunks, dropped his hot-dog-print shirt to the ground. And then he hesitated. His index phalange traced the lower curves of the soul-shaped charm on his collar. He wasn't worried about getting it wet; collars were made sturdy enough to withstand normal exposure to moisture, snow, and unfiltered solar radiation. He was worried because, well. He made some kind of invitation when he asked Red into the shower with him. He didn't think he wanted it to be the kind of invitation that involved inundating your best friend/fake husband with all of your unacceptably mushy feelings about him. He didn't think Red would have accepted if he knew that was what it was.

On the other hand, the collar was a warm and comforting weight resting against his throat. Like a hug that was limited in scope to his cervical spine. Sans left his collar on and followed Red into the steam.

The ceiling and walls of the shower were a maze of nozzles and spouts from waist-height on Sans all the way up to several metres above his head. The info-package for their visit boasted that their bathroom could "accommodate monsters of any shape and size, from moldsmal to moldbygg," and that the tiled floor was "hoof and claw friendly." Red attested that it was, indeed, quite friendly to his toeclaws and walking on it sharpened them slightly. Sans was just relieved that it was non-slip; toe bones and wet porcelain were usually a remarkably bad combination.

Red had put the shower in rain mode, so water poured down in straight streams from the entire ceiling. The temperature felt close to boiling. Regular water couldn't really get hot enough to harm bone, and setting the temp this high produced clouds of steam to seep pleasantly into their various nooks and crannies. Sans tilted his head back, sockets squinched shut, to feel the hot water on his face. Quite a bit of it poured into his nasal aperture, which he had to sneeze out a moment later.

"whatdya do that for, dumbass?" Red wondered.

"oh, you know, just in case you thought i was trying to look sexy over here."

Sans struck a pose, one hand on his hip.

"heh," said Red. "you always look sexy."

Most of the cleansing products weren't optimized for skeletons; Sans turned to the multi-tiered rack of soap dispensers to hide his face. There were various shampoos, scale exfoliators, moisturizing oils, and more. He picked up a broad, soft-bristled brush and doused it with soap labelled "Ganymede Springs (human-safe)."

Red was craning his neck from side to side in the warm water, working tension out of his shoulders with a series of salacious cracks and pops.

Sans held up the brush. "i wash your back, you wash mine?" he offered.

Red inclined his head, then turned slowly to give Sans his back.

Sans brought the sudsy bristles up between Red's scapulae to the long, sharply angled processes of his thoracic spine. His were a lot more prominent than Sans's. On a monster with more flesh, they would have acted as anchors to powerful shoulder muscles. On Red they were just nice decorations, like serifs.

He was careful. Soft bristles scrubbed into the places where bone met bone and dirt or the crumbly residue of shedding magic could linger. Red relaxed, let his head fall forward to rest on the glass door of the shower as Sans washed him. Sans ignored the down-angled slats of his ribs for now, just following Red's spine down to the broad, load-bearing discs of lower back.

He stayed there for a while, not brave enough to lay bristle to Red's sacrum.

"so, we're going home tonight," Red rumbled.

"ayup." This brush was a little large for doing the facet joints, but he lathered Red to the best of his ability.

"what're we gonna do when we get back?" Red wondered.

"i mean, the usual i guess? consume vintage edutainment, build rocket ships, watch the sun go down?"

Red hummed. "oh yeah, the fortday's ending... tomorrow, right? we oughta go up to mount boscovich while edge and pap are in town."

Sans chickened out and scrubbed in the opposite direction, back up to Red's neck. It was the spiniest part of him, a segmented puzzle of interlocking joints made more complex by the scars that crisscrossed it. "that'd be nice."

"i meant about this whole wedding scam thing," Red clarified.

"oh," Sans sighed. "yeah i guess we probably gotta go down to the records office and get it annulled, huh?"

"guess so," agreed Red. "what're we gonna tell our bros?"

"I'm sure..." Sans trailed off. Finished lathering Red's neck, he set the brush aside and retrieved a soft washcloth from the dispenser. He soaped Red's ribs next, wrapping the cloth around the bones as much as he could without just jamming his distals inside Red's chest cavity. "i mean i'm sure they already figured it out. they're usually pretty good at seeing through our shit."

"heh, yeah. they are that," Red chuckled. He leaned his elbows on the glass, really arching his back to give Sans better access to his ribs.

"and... and i guess you won't need to rely on this whole friends with benefits arrangement anymore."

Red was silent for a long beat before he said, "guess not."

Sooner than he would have liked, Sans ran out of ribs to strop and found himself staring at Red's shapely sacrum again. This was probably the last time he was going to have this privileged view. Well, he had said he was going to wash Red's back. But for a certain value of back...

He picked up the brush again. "lemme know if this is too sensitive."

With the same delicacy he would use to approximate the shielding around a reactor core, Sans glided the bristles over the big hiatus at the top of Red's sacrum.

Red hummed, a deeply pleased sound. There was a little bit of hazy magic settling in the bowl of his pelvis, but he seemed calm and relaxed.

So Sans scrubbed again, harder this time.

Red's breath caught.

"that okay?" Sans asked.

"yeah."

"okay." Sans ran the brush over his sacrum a third, unnecessary time. Let the soft bristles catch a bit on the rows of little shoelace holes.

Red groaned.

Sans wanted to rinse the soap off of Red's bones and follow it up with his tongue.

He could do it; he could drop down onto his knees and just have his way with Red. Red would let him. Red would love it.

But then at some point, it would be over. And he'd have to get out of the shower and get dressed and go back to the rest of his life where he didn't get to put his tongue in any of Red's apertures, and he would have to do it remembering what Red sounded like while Sans sucked his soul out through his tailbone.

Yet again, Sans chickened out. He grabbed the cloth, soaped up the wings of Red's pelvis and the broad blades of his shoulders.

"alright. i think you're done." Sans stepped back. There was room for a boss monster in here, no need to crowd Red against the glass.

Red turned, the suds washing away under the spray. "alright, your turn."

Sans turned around, found a place to rest his forearms on the opposite wall. He heard Red futzing around with the dispensers, smelled cinnamon. He closed his sockets.

Red complained about his hands sometimes, about his stubby phalanges or the difficulty of operating precision instruments intended for squishier, unclawed fingers. Sans thought that was bullshit – Red's hands were great.

He skipped the brush, just soaped up his metacarpals and started lathering Sans's shoulder blades. The fine tips of his claws felt incredible as they lightly scratched over Sans's bones. He hummed in approval and tried not to melt.

Hazy and relaxed, Sans drifted as Red worked his way down. Rib, vertebra, ribs, vertebra, until his distals were resting on the lowest part of Sans's lumbar spine. He gently circled the broad bone with both hands, fingertips meeting. Sans breathed out, and the breath carried a little noise out of him.

Red's breath puffed against Sans's parietal bone, closer than Sans would have expected. "you wan' me to keep goin'?"

It wasn't fair of him to want this. He knew Red, knew he wasn't interested in a romantic relationship. Red was his best friend; tomorrow he was going to go back to being best friends with Red and it wasn't fair. He made the decision decades ago that he was happy to just be friends without ever knowing what it was like to have Red as a lover, but now that Pandora’s box was open and it wasn't fair.

Red let go, stepped away a bit to let the hot water sheet down Sans's back and wash away the evidence of his touch.

Sans turned around.

Red hadn't gone far, just enough to soap up his metacarpals again. He went to work on Sans's front, smoothing over his clavicles and down the length of his sternum like that was what he planned to do all along.

"no is a complete answer, sansy," Red said, blinking shower water out of his eye sockets. "don't worry about it. what happens in space vegas stays in space vegas, right?"

Sans kissed him.

It wasn't a peck, it wasn't light, it wasn't chaste. Sans put his whole body into it, pressing their teeth together, pressing sternum-to-sternum and hips to hips, walking Red back until his spine pressed against the sliding glass door. And Red absolutely melted for him, hands coming to rest on Sans's hips, jagged teeth opening to let his freshly summoned tongue in.

Red tasted like heat, like sunshine and chili peppers and fresh solder, and he whined when Sans pressed his tongue into his mouth, shaky breath huffing out through his nasal aperture. A deep thrum of intense want, of admiration and affection and gratitude pulsed through Sans, captured and magnified where the collar was caught between them.

Sans kissed him until he felt light headed from the shower steam, pulled back far enough to look into his eyelights. "last time, okay?" he panted, and something like regret flashed through the connection.

"sansy?" Red asked, sharply. Worried.

"we can do this one last time, and then we'll go back to normal," Sans vowed. He dropped to his knees, breaking the collar's connection. The feeling that shot through him, sorrow, sweet and sharp as a knife, was his alone.

"you sure?"

"yeah," Sans drawled, eyes drawn to the dense cloud of fiery red magic pooling in Red's pelvis. "yeah i really, really am. you good with this?"

"i'm copa-fucking-cetic."

"heh," Sans said. "more like copa-feel."

"that doesn't even w-ohhh," Red couldn't finish his snark, because Sans got to work. He gripped the trochanters of Red's left femur with one hand, let his other hand glide firmly over the dense magic of Red's pubic symphysis. The tight little seam looked as delicious as it had all night, so Sans gave into his urge to taste it.

Red's hips canted, angling himself for Sans to better devour him. Sans wrapped his tongue around the bone and sucked until Red groaned, "you gonna do like last time?"

this is the last time i'm gonna do this.

"nah, y'can make something for me this time," Sans offered, magnanimous. "what ever y'want." He hooked his fingers, curling them up behind Red's pubis, stirring his magic up. "surprise me."

"yeah?" Red sounded delighted. "alright. you gotta gimme some space, though."

Sans slipped his hand out of Red's pelvic outlet, hooked his fingers through the obturator foramen instead.

"more than that," Red said, winking.

Sans sat back on his heels, intrigued, put his hands on Red's femurs instead. Red nodded, apparently satisfied. Sans wasn't sure what he was gonna do if Red just summoned up a cartoonishly massive schlonger and slapped it on his shoulder like a sack of pepperoni. Lick it, he guessed?

Red closed his eyes in concentration or maybe just to keep the water out of them. Scarlet magic roiled down his spine. When it condensed, Sans felt the pressure change as a ripple in his intangible, ambient magic, and in the shivering of the steam-laden air.

Red didn't summon a comically large dongle. He didn't really summon anything that Sans would have been comfortable categorizing as a dong, actually. Instead, he had dressed his pelvis in five fat, shortish tentacles. Smooth, plump and glistening, they peeked out from his pelvic outlet in a surprisingly symmetrical star formation.

"neat," said Sans, fascinated.

"this alright?" Red asked. His tentacles squirmed, perky and active.

"dude, i already said neat." Experimentally, he stroked one of the fat tendrils. It coiled around his fingertip. Sans returned the favour, wrapping his fingers around the muscular appendage and squeezing a little. It was almost too thick to get his hand around at the base, and surprisingly bouncy.

When he pulled on it, jacking it like he would a dick, the tentacle stretched out long and thin.

Red groaned. "ah, yeah, that's it."

Sweet. Sans leaned in and gave it a lick. It tasted just like the rest of Red's magic; not quite as rich as when Sans had sucked it raw out of his sacral hiatus, but stronger than his tongue. It was also as dexterous as a tongue, so Sans made out with it for a while. Its siblings took this as an opportunity to caress the bones of his skull and shoulders.

Sans pulled back, gave the tendril a chaste little kiss and let it go. The newly freed tendril coiled itself around the hinge of his mandible. "you got a name for this thing?" Sans wondered. "i kinda like it."

"nah, i'm kinda flying by the seat of my pelvis here."

"hmm." Sans gently unwove the two lowest tentacles from his collar bones, took one in each hand. "we'll have to work on that i guess."

He left the ones that were caressing his temporal bones alone, and let the topmost tentacle delve back into his mouth. It pressed against his tongue, wanting to squirm more than it wanted to penetrate. Or maybe Red was just being polite and keeping his junk out of Sans's throat.

Red put a hand on his shoulder, away from the spikes of Sans's collar. Sans closed his eyes and just let himself feel.

Red's tendrils were about as long as Sans’s hand in their chubby, relaxed state, and stretched out to at least double that when Sans pulled on them. They fit snugly into Red's pelvic outlet, but the seam between their bases stretched into a gap when Sans pulled. And that little gap gave him an idea.

He let go with his dominant hand. In time with the next pull of his other hand, he pressed a finger against the place where the slick flesh came together. His distal phalange slipped in, sliding into the slick aperture.

"oh, fuck," groaned Red. "oh, yeah that's good, sansy."

"hnngf," Sans speculated, inarticulate around the tentacle filling up his mouth. He curled his finger into a hook, thrust a little the next time he jacked the other tentacle. His finger sank in a little deeper, liquid vermilion magic slicking the way. He let go of the tentacle he was making out with so he could speak clearly. "y'gonna let me in?"

Sans ducked his head to lick beside where his finger barely penetrated Red's pelvis. He felt so surrounded, embraced, with summoned flesh wrapped around his face and Red's sharp fingers scraping over his scapula. He didn't even have his junk summoned and he felt hot, desperate, the magic in his bones yearning to commune with Red's. And then it got even better, when some part of Red came momentarily into contact with Sans's collar. Maybe it was the hand on his shoulder, or one of his clever tendrils, or maybe he was just too close to Red's pelvis, because a spike of pleasure speared though him, through them both, that left Sans shaking. A single-second flash of pleasure and something like the feeling of being held, the feeling of being kept and cared for.

"ahh," he panted. Abruptly the magic simmering in his pelvis could not be contained and it snapped into shape. Overwhelmed, he rocked back a little on his heels, his newly summoned construct bobbing with the movement and pulling on his sensitive symphysis.

"how 'bout octopussy?" he opened his sockets, blinking the falling water out of them.

"what? why?"

Sans chuckled. The tendrils clinging onto him were stretched out thin, easing the pressure on the finger that was still inside Red. "well, mostly 'cause," he thrust that finger, crooked it, and added another while Red moaned. "cause i can finger it? and also because of the tentacles."

"there's only five of 'em though." Red flexed them, politely requesting Sans's attention. Sans was happy to give each a thorough tongue bath, sucking the tips into his mouth and licking up and down the length of each of them. "and they- mmmm they're not real octopus-like? no suckers. more l-like a nau-ah!-nautilus, if anything."

Sans took advantage of the openness of Red's seam. He inserted another finger, felt it slip deeper into the pulsing warmth inside. "i'll take your word for it, sweet cheeks."

The little pocket between Red's tendrils didn't quite feel like any other bodily orifice Sans had ever put his fingers into. The tentacles didn't quite pulse in unison; he could feel each one contracting and relaxing separately as they writhed. The surface was smoother, more taut than the inside of a mouth or the more typical kind of pussy. And it was uniformly tight, maybe even tighter the further in he pressed. When Sans peered over the top rim of Red's pelvis, it wasn't clear how much inside there was to this particular construct; he couldn't tell how much of the luminous crimson magic might be concealing a cavity. Or how stretchable it might turn out to be. Curious, Sans separated his first three metacarpals and pressed his fingers in as deep as they would go, until they bumped something firm deep, deep inside Red's magic construct.

Red keened, head thrown back.

"yeah?" Sans watched him contort himself against the glass, and felt his grin widen.

"oh shit, keep doing that!"

Sans was happy to oblige, thrusting his fingers in and tickling that turgid little nub. Well, not that little; it felt like it was about as wide as the distal phalange of his thumb was long. Red arched his hips, grinding hard against Sans's hand. Sans's felt his own magic, formed into an unremarkable dick, twitch. When he looked up, Red was looking down at him, eyelights hazy embers.

"pentapussy, maybe?" Red panted. "pentacloaca? whatever. you wanna fuck it?"

It was probably a mistake when Sans said, "stars, yes." He said it anyway, and then he was on his feet so fast it might have been a shortcut.

Their teeth clicked when he pressed his mouth to Red's, then to his mandible, then nibbled his way along Red's cervical spine, all while Red's tentacles wrapped his pelvis and lower back.

Sans bucked his hips, pressing them even closer together. Red was just a little bit taller than him - he said five centimetres; Sans's sonic caliper said four. Either way, it was enough of a difference that when his dick bumped into the nest of tendrils, he could feel the place where they came together pressing against the middle of his shaft. One of the tentacles, or maybe more than one, wrapped around him and tightened exquisitely. Another penetrated his obturator foramen, thick enough to fill the whole opening with red ecto, and hooked onto it like a handle.

"you sure? you want me-" Sans gasped.

"yeah, c'mon, fuck me. this is the last time we're gonna do this right?" Red said, desperately. "what happens in space vegas? so fuck me, sans."

"red-" Sans breathed, shaky, reverent. Red hardly ever just called him by his actual name. Sansy, yes, or sweetheart, or some other pet name. Hearing it now made him feel strangely seen, more naked than could be accounted for by the simple fact of his nudity.

He got a hand down between where their summoned flesh squelched together with every jerky little thrust of their hips and tried to line himself up. He had to pull back, bend his knees and crouch down a little to get the tip lined up with Red's opening.

"c'mon," Red panted. Red didn't want to let him get away, tentacles stretching out thin and anchoring themselves into whatever gaps they could find. The slender tip of one probed into one of the little holes in his sacrum, and Sans lost track of himself for a second.

"Ahn!" he keened, hips jerking. With that thrust, and with Red's tentacles stretched out to their thinnest, Sans's dick finally plunged in. Slid through the crushing grip of plump pseudo-flesh into the secret core of Red's magic.

"yeah, yeah, fuck yeah." Red grabbed him by the lumbar spine, sharp claws still so careful even as he writhed. He helped Sans find his rhythm, guiding him to thrust in time with his pulsing.

With each thrust into Red, his pocket squeezed hot and tight around Sans, and every time he pulled back his tendrils tightened on San's bones. Both of them were grunting and moaning, little half-nonsense bits of words slipping between Sans's teeth. Praise for Red's body, and his mouth, and things less acceptable to be spoken between friends.

Red was usually the one with the expansive ambient magic. He was a lot more chill these days then that first time Sans laid eyes on him in a Tranquility City watering hole, but Red's upbringing on Fell had never really left him. With his presence and with his ambient magic, Red filled up every space he was in, huger than the surprisingly delicate framework of his warm and lovely bones. But right now, Sans was the handsy one; his ambient magic pressed into Red's, surrounding him, holding him against the shower glass. Penetrating the gaps between his ribs. Sans could see it by the blue haze in the air, the sparks of magic potential arcing and burning out into smoky streamers.

Sans never wanted this to end. He wanted to plant his flag on this unclaimed world and live here forever. Hot water poured down on his skull, his back. Red's hands roamed all over him, fingertips sliding between his ribs and rasping over the seldom-touched bone between. And Red's summoned magic was hot and tight around him, singing to him in the language of light and heat.

And then, improbably, it became tighter.

No, not tighter exactly. Shorter? It was harder to thrust in, something stopping him from bottoming out.

"oh shit," Red gasped. "something's, oh fuck i- i think i'm gonna cum?"

"keep going or stop?" Sans stilled his hips, femurs shaking.

Red writhed against the shower door, bones squealing on glass. "don't stop!"

Sans tried to thrust back in, found Red's passage even wetter but smaller still than it had been. Red whined, a shudder travelling down his spine. Sans couldn't hear the lovely clacking that should have made over the pounding of the water, but he could see the way Red's shoulders rolled, the way his back arched, felt the restless shifting of his hips. "harder," Red pleaded, "just a little more."

Sans took a deep breath. Set his feet on the non-slip tiles, braced himself with one hand on the glass and one on Red's hip, and absolutely put his entire ass into it. He pulled back a little, lamenting the loss of that perfect grip on even a centimetre of his dick, before he slammed back in. And this time when he did, he felt something give, felt himself sink in just a little more than he ever had.

"Aaahhh!" Red roared.

And then the pressure redoubled, inexorable, and the intense contraction pushed Sans right out of Red's pelvis. He almost fell ass over teakettle in his surprise, had to take a half-step back to keep his equilibrium.

"uh?" Sans questioned. Red's tentacles were still squirming all over him, and something firm pressed against Sans's dick. His magic throbbed, hummed with the magic it had absorbed from Red, trying to resonate. "wha- did you-"

Red laughed, deep and honest, and let go of Sans's spine to palm himself. "i think i just everted?"

Sans looked down. "holy shit," he swore, fascinated. "pentacloaca is right."

Instead of ringing a tight little opening, Red's tentacles now surrounded a rigid, slightly bulging shaft, curving invitingly up from his pubis. Red's creamy phalanges were wrapped around it, and he gave it a testing squeeze.

"agreed," Red groaned. There was a noticeable bulge just short of the tip; Red's eyelights hazed out when he dragged his hand up over it.

Sans wanted in on that. He was careful, just laying the tips of his fingers against the head of Red's piece. It was kind of corrugated; complex and furled, a maze of tightly packed wrinkles. The surface of it slipped a little under Sans's fingers, like a foreskin. He pressed a little harder, trying to stretch it, and Red groaned, but the skin didn't slip any further back.

"c'mere," Red growled. His other hand came up to grip Sans's hip. Sans stepped in too fast, bumping their sternums together, and a shuddering throb of hunger went through him when the collar touched Red's clavicle.

And then Red's hand and Red's tentacles were wrapped around him, a slippery-tight embrace of hard bone and soft magic. It shouldn't have felt so good, not when he had just been rudely expelled from Red's secret garden, but it did. Because it was still Red, and he could feel that familiar, beloved essence thrumming through the magic in his knuckles and every one of the ruby-red tentacles wrapped around him. So he put his hand on top of Red's, interlacing their fingers, and stroked.

"Mm," Red hummed. "y'really went full mammalian, huh sansy?"

Hehad no idea what Red was talking about, until on the next downstroke, Red curled his thumb down under the base of Sans's junk. Except not under, exactly, because Sans's magic had provided him with a rather perky little ballsack to swing below his shaft.

Red cupped it in his palm, rolling Sans's balls teasingly, distal claws tickling the bone behind it. Sans locked their hips together. Couldn't get close enough, so he went up on his tiptoes and hooked one leg over Red's hips, shoulders pulled back so he wouldn't bump him with the collar again.

Sans's pelvis was full of Red's tentacles, and he had the hard line of his phallus pressing against his dick in the circle of their hands. Had Red's ambient magic in his sinuses and it wasn't enough. He wanted more of this. Sans's magic was only marginally under his own control at this point, but he forced yet more of it into his pelvis, into the space behind where Red's claws tickled him, and let it coalesce.

Red felt it, with his magical senses or maybe just his fingers, because the curved back of one of his claws immediately brushed over the newly formed, puckered flesh.

"fuck, stars, I can't be this lucky," Red swore fervently. "you want it?"

"i want you," Sans vowed, more truthful than he would have liked.

Red growled, a fricative rumble from deep within his bones. Sans whined in disappointment when he moved that exploratory hand away from his junk and to his femur, then gasped when Red picked him right up off the ground.

"aahh!" He grabbed reflexively onto Red's ribs. Skeletons weren't exactly heavy, and Sans only weighted about twenty-five kilograms. That made it no less thrilling to be handled like this, something primal in him purring in satisfaction. Red just took a couple of big strides across the shower and pressed him up against the opposite wall. Sans got one foot onto a low nozzle to half-support himself, the other wrapped around Red's lumbar spine in a death grip. And then Red was rocking their hips together as the slender tips of two of his tendrils began to circle Sans’s freshly summoned butthole.

Sans was drenched in sweat, his and Red's, mingling violet on both of their bones. The shower water didn't really interact very well with freshly shed magic, couldn't wash it off of them without the help of a brush. Sans's asshole had come into being already slick, dripping with the liquid magic that was pouring off of his pelvic bones. The tips of Red's tendrils, all stretched out, were as slender as a pinkie phalange, and they slipped in easily.

"ohhh," Sans moaned. The tips of the tentacles were slender, but their taper was steep. "red, red, please."

Red kissed him, a messy grind of teeth to steal his words. Red's hand was hardly even moving, just gripping their dicks and squeezing occasionally, all his concentration on stuffing Sans full.

It wasn't enough.

"red," Sans groaned. "c'mon, i'm good, y'can fuck me now."

Red scoffed. "sansy, sweetheart. i'm not gonna send you back to luna with a jacked up asshole."

He let go of Sans's dick, reached his fingers down between Sans's legs. Pressed a folded knuckle in between his tentacles, claws safely tucked into his palm. His knobby joint sank in, stretching Sans further.

"red, please," Sans wasn't too proud to beg.

Red played with him for an eternity before he deigned give in to Sans's pleading. Then he slipped most of his appendages out, leaving just one tentacle behind to pull on Sans's entrance.

The bulge below the head of Red's piece seemed bigger now. A little swollen? Red jacked his own junk again, thoughtfully. "you sure? i don't actually know what this thing's gonna do when it goes off."

"yes!" Sans snapped. "it's the last time we're ever going to do this and i fucking want you, okay?"

Sans couldn't tell if the melancholy was from the intermittent collar bumping, or just his own soul.

"okay," said Red.

He shifted Sans a bit, lined himself up better. Sans put more of his weight on his foot on the nozzle to take the strain off Red's back. And then there was blunt pressure pushing sweetly against his hole. He sagged down into it as Red pressed upward.

At first, nothing happened; his body couldn't quite process what he, what they wanted from it. The slender tip of Red's tentacle pulled, trying to make room inside him for its turgid sibling. And then Sans felt his opening twitch, flutter, and the furled head of Red's phallus popped inside.

"ngg," Red grunted.

"yeah," Sans breathed. He barely had any leverage, but he shifted, lifted himself away from Red, and then forced his hips back down, harder. Red's dick slipped in a little further.

Red groaned. Sans swore.

He did it again, and another time, the thick place below the head of Red's piece resisting entry until finally something in Sans relaxed and Red could thrust all the way into him. The bases of his tentacles pressed firmly to his pelvis, stunned to stillness for a moment before they abruptly roiled and gripped him. He felt himself shudder.

Red rumbled something between a hum and growl, and gave his hips a real roll. Sans keened when the hard magic inside of him squeezed against something sensitive.

Holding Sans up against the shower wall like this, Red couldn't really get much of a back-swing in. Sans didn't care. Even these short, jerky thrusts dragged the thick part of Red's piece over the sensitive interior face of Sans's sacrum, and the tip of that one tendril never stopped stimulating his rim.

"red, red!" A burst of something tore through Sans, hot and searing as the sun. When Red thrust, when he ground in deep, Sans's collar bumped into his sternum, his bones. There were round, pink marks on his clavicles from the spikes; the charm jingled. perfect/good/WANT. He wanted this, he wanted Red, and Red wanted this too. And this had to be the last time because there was no way Sans could ever go back to just being friends when he knew what this felt like, but he did, and he had to, and he was going to-

Growling like an aroused thunderhead, Red pulled Sans away from the wall, holding him up in the air. Jerkily, he took a clattery knee on the shower tiles, hot water streaming off his bones, and laid Sans on the ground. He never let his piece slip even a centimetre out of Sans's body.

Sans twined his arms around Red's thick neck, hooked his tarsals over Red's flaring hips, and arched his whole body into him. Water pooled around them, their bodies a minor obstacle on its way to the drain. Red kissed him once, sweetly, on the zygoma. Then he finally pulled almost all the way out of Sans, until the thick part of his dick pressed against Sans's sensitive rim, and slammed back in.

Sans shouted. Red thrust again; the non-slip tiles earned their keep once more by keeping him from sliding across the shower floor. The thin sheet of water rippled; more rained down on him, only slightly thwarted by Red's bones.

Red found his rhythm, looking down into Sans's eyes, face contorted. "can you- ah, can you come like this?" he panted.

Sans could. He really, really could, and he said as much. His dick was trapped between them but it was far from neglected. Two of Red's tentacles writhed over it, squeezing. The other two had threaded their way into Sans's obturator foramina for leverage, pulling his pelvis up into each one of Red's thrusts.

"yeah," Sans cried out, "yeah, i can, i can, i'm gonna-"

Something winched tight inside him, something in his magic sang high and plaintive, wanting, needing. Red thrust into him, breath heaving.

"sans, sans i-" And Sans felt him lock up, shaking from head to toe, kneecaps ratting against the tiles as he came.

It wasn't the blurt of hot warmth Sans expected. He could only feel the hard, hot pressure inside him; didn't understand what had happened until Red hissed out a breath and Sans felt his dick retract and slip out of him, but that pressure still remained. A piece of Red, left inside his body.

"y-you," he started, shaking.

Whatever metaphysical barrier there had been between Red's magic and Sans collapsed, and the solid thing inside him abruptly dissolved.

Into him.

Not just inside him, but into him, becoming him. A part of Red's essence, broken away from his own corporeal body and given to Sans, to become a part of him now.

His magic vibrated, seeking to match the lower, slower tone of Red's. And just this once, because this was the final time, Sans let it happen. For a single, perfect moment, suspended in time between them, Sans felt his fundamental essence sing in perfect harmony with Red's.

Sans screamed when he came, blurting the regular sort of cum all over them both.

Red was saying something to him that he couldn't really understand over the singing of his soul, but Red kept stroking his bones until Sans came down again. Only then did he let himself clatter over to lie down beside Sans, considerate enough not to crush him into the hoof-and-claw-friendly tile.

And that was it, wasn't it? There was a lot Sans wanted to say. To tell. To show to Red. And he couldn't speak any of it, but he could show it to him, couldn't he? Wasn't that what Red had explained to him? He could know if Red felt the same way about him as he did about Red, all he had to do was-

Sans laced his fingers through Red's and bent his elbow to pull Red's hand to his throat and the collar that encircled it.

Stopped.

Let their hands fall instead.

He left his feelings unspoken; unspeakable. Red had been very clear about what he wanted. A friend; a best friend. Maybe some benefits. Not a lover. Not a husband.

They laid there side-by-side in the shower for a long time; fingers touching, water spraying uncomfortably into their skulls.

And after a while, they got up. Cancelled the spray. Dried off with fluffy towels and a startling variety of blow-drier attachments.

Got dressed.

Packed up.

Stuffed their inventories with anything that wasn't laser-welded down.

And then they went home.

Chapter Text

The sun was just beginning to set when Sans woke up in his own bed in Tranquility City.

Sans yawned, stretched, and hugged his disappointingly inanimate pillow. It felt strange to wake up alone, in the cool quiet of his bedroom. The old-fashioned bubble dome overhead was set to heavy tint for the fortday, the two weeks of daylight Luna experienced each month. Sans had missed about half of this one between Ceres and the Vegas Belt. But, now that the sun was finally beginning to set, the transparency was slowly increasing and gold-tinged clouds showed through the smoky, unidirectional glass.

It was quiet in his room, just the background hum of the environmental hardware recirculating air, and the occasional soft rustling of the bed linens. No purring, and no slightly-threatening ad robot to wake him up with a knock knock joke.

Yesterday, when he and Red finally made their way downstairs after their shower, the ROVer's recharging cradle was empty. Red had been pretty bummed out about it. Hopefully the little guy was living his best robotic life where-ever his knobbly all-terrain tires carried him. Sans was gonna give it a week or two and then quietly get in touch with those roboticists from Pawls Stupid Dinner to see if Robbie ever showed back up at the mining museum.

As for now, well, there wasn't really any compelling reason for Sans to stay in bed, and he could detect the aroma of his favourite brand of baycon (the fancy kind that was made with 100% virgin kelp oil) slow-grilling in the kitchen. So, he slurmed his way out of bed and gently bounced down the low-G tube to the main dome.

The house wasn't exactly a historic property. There were plenty of upgrades that brought it up to modern living standards; but it was one of the older homes in the neighbourhood and they'd gotten a steal on it when they bought it as a fixer-upper in the mid 1810s. The bedrooms were all individual stalked pods connected to the main structure by gravity tubes; you were supposed to jump up and kick off the walls to get to the top when you wanted to go up and let the minuscule gravity carry you gently to the bottom when you wanted to come down. They had been pretty common about eighty years ago when this sub-division first got built; these days people usually had tube elevators in their homes. Sans thought the old fashioned ones had more charm. And as a teleporter, he could just skip the trip up all together. Papyrus travelled more than he was home these days, but he lauded the tubes as the "LEAST LAZY THING IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT."

The house wasn't actually old enough that it would have ever needed to be atmospherically sealed, but it did have that modular look of the old days, all tubes and round pods like a glassy mushroom. Sans immediately missed the open concept layout of the Galactic Emperor suite when he made his way through the various iris doors and tube corridors into the dining area.

"mornin', starshine," Red said, standing in front of Papyrus's fancy magnetic induction stove in his thread-bare housecoat. He prodded impatiently at the sizzling baycon. "took you long enough."

"ah, well, you know how it it." Sans shuffled in the direction of the flask dispenser. "the way to my heart is through my mouth."

"on account a how stuff what falls through your mandible ends up in your rib cage." Red nodded sagely. "sit your ass down, there's orange juice at the table."

Sans snagged a flask of juice off the table, but didn't sit down. Instead he rocked up on his tippy-toes to try to look over Red's shoulder. "whatcha cookin', good lookin'?"

Red elbowed him companionably. "baycon, obviously?"

"just baycon?"

Red shook the pan, and some rendered kelp fat spattered out onto the cooking surface. "we finished off the eggs before the vacation, remember? i could print you a granola bar if you're still hungry."

"mm, nah. wouldn't be the same without the ad read."

Red grunted.

The round iris door to the front ramp opened, and Papyrus ducked into the kitchen.

"CHERRY! SANS! IT'S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU AWAKE AT THIS ALMOST REASONABLE HOUR AND USING MY KITCHEN UNSUPERVISED."

"i'm not gonna mess with the settings," Red said, a little defensively.

"YES, YOU KNOW THE RULES."

"and so do I." Sans furrowed his browbone. Red looked back at him over his shoulder and almost dumped the baycon into the magnetic inducer. Papyrus twitched like he wanted to do something about that, but ultimately decided it would be more trouble than it was worth and sat down at the table.

Sans dispensed a flask of juice for his brother and joined him. A minute later, Red dished up the food and sat down too.

"fancy meating you here." Red snagged a strip of cured imitation meat off of Sans's plate.

Sans fluttered his sockets at him. "no need to ham it up, buddy, you already got my breakfast."

Papyrus took a sip of his juice, teeth clinking against the glass lip of the flask. "YOUR JOKES ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD."

Red snickered.

"TELLING TERRIBLE PUNS AND THEN LAUGHING AT HOW NO-ONE IS LAUGHING ISN'T META-HUMOUR, IT'S JUST WEIRD."

"i never meta humour, maybe you can introduce us," Sans said in cold blood.

Papyrus squawked indignantly. Red almost spit out his orange juice.

It was a normal morning and a good breakfast. Good to be home again with his brother and his best friend.

Sans's soul hardly hurt at all.

This probably would have been a good time to talk to their brothers about the whole grand deception thing, but...

"you seen edge around?"

The other tall skeleton hadn't been there when Sans and Red got home the previous night, and if Red's brother were anywhere in the house at present they'd have heard him by now.

"YES."

Sans exchanged a look with Red. Red shrugged.

"HE'S OUT SEEING TO NON-SUSPICIOUS BUSINESS," Papyrus 'explained.'

"sounds sus," Sans noted.

"SUSPEND YOUR SUSPICION. I AM NOT SUSCEPTIBLE TO YOUR SUSURRUS." Instead of eating his breakfast, Papyrus had painstakingly interwoven his baycon strips into a heart-shape and now he was changing his gloves out for a non-greasy pair. "INCIDENTALLY, DON'T YOU TWO HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE? OTHER THAN BLOCKING MY LIGHT."

"ye-ah... did he say when he was gonna be back?"

"CERTAINLY NOT ANY TIME UNTIL AT LEAST EARLY AFTERNOON." Papyrus pointedly took a holorecording of his breakfast heart.

They managed to annoy Papyrus for another twenty-five minutes before he successfully banished them from the house.

xxx

Like most cities, Tranquility City grew more tranquil the farther one got from the city centre. Their neighbourhood was half-way to the outskirts; a convenient trip on the loop train from the shipyard or the downtown core. It had been a hip and happening place about 80 years ago, and the architecture reflected that: offset cube apartment buildings and tube-and-pod houses shaded by mature lunar pines.

They walked to the end of their street at awkward arm's length, bumping hips occasionally as they navigated the needle-strewn sidewalk. Sans kept his hands to himself until they had to press tight together to let a group of human children run past. Then Red growled something under his breath and laced his fingers into Sans's.

Sans made an ambiguous throat noise.

Red squeezed his hand. "it's just easier than bumping into you."

"yeah, i guess it is, isn't it?" Sans didn't squeeze back.

It wasn't like they had been particularly shy of touch before this whole thing. Even out here on the sidewalk in the open air Sans could feel the edges of Red's ambient magic, curling demandingly around his ankles like a hungry cat. Their lives were intertwined, socially, habitually, even legally - Red's name was on the house deed. Compared to all of that, what were a couple of phalanges?

On the other hand (heh), there was the distinct and visceral sense memory of walking hand-in-hand along a Ceres beach, and the way Red's bones felt under his fingertips while they floated over the salmon-pink phosphate flats...

"sorry," Red said, too casually, and let go.

"nah," said Sans. He caught Red's hand and hooked it over his elbow, froggy went a' courtin' style. Back to normal.

what even is normal?

Red's sockets crinkled. "and i don't even got my parasol."

"i'm sure your delicate complexion will be fine, sugar beet. sun's on the way down, anyway."

The walk to the station was brief. The ride downtown was longer, but equally uneventful. They stood together in the middle of the car, confident in their gravity magic to keep them balanced, and Red never let go of Sans's elbow.

Sans heard the shutter sound of someone taking their picture at one point, but no-one bothered them directly. Possibly because they weren't standing near any of the safety handles, and none of the other passengers wanted to wobble their way over to them.

Red was fiddling with something on his phone. Texting his brother? Sans stared into the middle distance to give him privacy.

"heh, look at this."

Red put the phone in front of his face. It was open to a post on Y from an account called "Daily Lovebones." The Yne was a holophoto of a plate of baycon strips woven into a heart shape with the caption, "HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS."

"wow."

"yeah."

"he's not real subtle."

"no," Sans chuckled. "no, he is not." He tapped like and reYne.

The train continued along through the lava tubes, winding its way under Tranquility City.

"we probably gotta stop holding hands before we get to the records office," Red said, after a while.

"that'd give 'em a mixed message about the whole annulment thing," Sans agreed.

Red's grip tightened on Sans's humerus. Sans patted his knuckles.

He didn't let go until they disembarked.

Since it was Saturday and a Sunset Day besides, the office was only open until 2 PM. It was exactly what Sans pictured when he thought of a county records office: rows of identical chairs, magic-starved houseplants, and a big, awkwardly angled display screen opposite the door proclaiming the current wait time.

Sans plunked himself down into one of the hard, synthetic wood seats. Red took a number from the machine and flopped down beside him. Sans watched him take his phone out of his inventory, look at it, and put it away again. Sans got it; he didn't much feel like tooling around on the extranet either.

They waited.

The screen occasionally switched from the wait-time information to various records-office PSAs. After the one about using the telephone self-service queue for legal name changes, Sans leaned over and stage whispered, "what number are we?"

They were the only ones in the waiting room.

Red showed him the starchy wafer the take-a-number machine had squirted out. It had a "2" embossed on it.

The display flickered, indicating that the current estimated wait time had increased by 5 minutes.

They waited some more.

"so... are we getting divorced or annulled?" Red asked, after a while.

Sans blinked. "is there a difference? i mean, i guess there must be."

"i think divorce just ends a marriage, and annulment means it was never valid in the first place."

Sans nodded. "so annulment is probably easier. like that time the city declared everyone who had been cohabitating for more than five years common-law married, and then had to walk it back when people complained."

Red laughed. "heh, edge was so annoyed he got his status legally updated to 'married to the stars.'"

Across the room, the display shifted to a full-colour poster warning against "marriage fraud." In the top half, a human woman and a fire elemental were exchanging a wedding collar. In the bottom, someone was holding a tracking anklet. The text read "If you get married for the wrong reason, you might find yourself wearing this instead."

Sans felt sweat break out on his frontal bone. "shit, what if they think we got married for citizenship purposes?"

"i mean, i don't know how we could have. I've been a citizen of luna for like 15 years?"

Sans whispered furiously, "yeah, but i'm not!"

Red coughed. "what? weren't you born here? well, on luna at least."

Sans let his head drop back onto the hard plastic seat-back, staring up at the popcorn ceiling. This was one of those things that he always forgot to do anything about except when it was about to be a huge problem. "so, you know my family, from the weird science hippie commune in the s.p.a.?"

"yeah, well, some of them. I've met like, three of your moms."

Sans nodded seriously. "you are an expert mother befriender."

On the other side of the room, the display screen pinged and announced that they were now serving number one.

"hell yeah i am," Red said, proudly. "i send them cards on mothers' day and their birthdays."

Sans sat up straight and turned to look at his soon-to-be-ex-husband. "wait, what? you send cards to my mothers? i don't even send cards to my mothers."

Red scoffed. "yeah, i noticed. so did they."

Sans groaned. "so what, you just adopted my parents?"

"yep." Red popped the p. "sometimes they mail me anti-consumerist tracts and homemade edibles."

Huh. Sans had been wondering where Red was getting those. He decided that this was not the time to address the whole division of emotional labour thing. "anyway, my parents," he redirected, "so, they're free monsters on the land."

"no shot, they're sovereign citizens? i guess that explains why they never put their postal code on any of the mail."

Sans rolled his eyelights so hard his colour vision inverted. "they don't contract with the lunar post office. or any other branch of planetary or local government. so they don't register any of the commune kids for birth certificates."

"so... what, you and paps are stateless?"

"i mean, probably? i've never really looked into it. i got into university as an interplanetary scholar, and it hasn't really come up since then?" Papyrus, of course, was an artist who got by on his vision.

"sans," Red glanced around the office, then leaned in close to whisper. "sweetheart, you know i know how to forge documentation, right?"

"it's fine," Sans hedged, "don't worry about it, i don't think this is really the time to address this—"

Across the room, the display beeped again, and the 1 changed into a 2.

"oh sweet, that was fast." They had about five minutes until closing time, so Sans put his hand on Red's shoulder and shortcutted them both across the office, to where the singular occupied kiosk was manned by the human personification of a glasses chain.

"Do you have a number?" she asked.

Red held up his number two cracker. When she nodded her approval, he popped it into his mouth.

"You do know those aren't food grade?"

Red shrugged.

Sans cleared magic in his skull. "uh, we're here about our marriage?" He noted the way the clerk's eyes flicked down to rest on his collar.

"Congratulations," she said dryly. "What seems to be the problem?"

"so if someone wanted to get an annulment..." Sans started.

"They would need to declare the marriage was invalid. Either in practice, or as a result of violating marriage law."

Sans could almost hear the paragraph numbers.

"how would it violate marriage law?" Red wondered.

"Are you brothers?"

The corners of Red's grin went completely round. "excuse me?"

"That's one of the ways a marriage can be invalid. That, or you could be impotent."

Red's grin almost vanished. "excuse me!?"

"Well, you did ask."

"why did you ask if we were brothers first?" Sans pressed.

"Well, I don't know. Someone gets switched at birth or raised by adopted parents. It happens more often than you would think!" She leaned forward, conspiratorially. "I heard there was a town down south where the stasis array at the sperm donor clinic broke, so the staff just started replacing the stock with their own samples. They say the head tech fathered sixty-five children before anyone figured out what was happening!"

"so it wasn't because we look alike?" Red deadpanned.

The clerk looked scandalized. "What, like I think all skeleton monsters look alike?"

"okay," said Sans, "so we're not brothers, and neither of us are impotent. is there any other reason...?"

"Was the marriage consummated?"

Red paused. "no."

The clerk sighed. "Are you sure about that?"

Sweat broke out on Red's forehead. "uh... so we're here because our names are spelled wrong on our marriage license?"

xxx

When they walked back out of the records office, the sky was the usual lunar blue-black but low-angle sunlight painted the dark grey regolith brilliantly orange.

"i bet it's going to be a nice one." Sans looked up into the sky. There were a few fluffy clouds streaming off to the horizon, and when the sun finally got around to setting all the way in a few hours it would probably be quite a show.

"mm," Red hummed thoughtfully. "it's short notice, but do you think we can get paps and the boss out for a picnic? it'd probably cool their various tits like, at least 25%."

"i wish you wouldn't bring up my brother's tits," Sans sighed. "they're gonna need multiple coolings, aren't they? i guess it's probably for the best that we leave the legal proceedings until after we get a chance to talk to them."

When they boarded the loop shuttle, their car was mostly empty. Not many people were heading out in the direction of the shipyard at 2 PM on a Saturday, so they managed to snag the public transportation jackpot this time: two seats side-by-side facing in the direction of travel.

"hmm, or..." Red trailed off.

"or what?"

"or we could just... not talk to them."

"i like this plan so far," Sans prompted.

"i mean we could just, keep up our clever facade. for a couple of months or something? i dunno, long enough for us to figure out your citizenship situation." By figure out, Red probably meant 'commit fraud about.'

Sans looked over at Red, found his friend was already looking back at him. Their eyelights met across the narrow gap between the seats, and Sans didn't think Red looked very happy about this.

"well, i guess we wouldn't need to pretend that much," he offered. "it's not like either of our bros are home often."

Red looked away. "yeah. they'll probably only be here for a day or two."

Sans felt the shifting edges of Red's ambient magic curl away from him, too. "i guess i can be okay with letting this be a problem for tomorrow-sans, as long as tomorrow-red is okay with it too."

"heh," Red said, so dryly it desiccated Sans's soul a little. "i'll manage."

They were quiet for the rest of the ride home, but they barely made it out of the station before it got loud.

There was music playing. Upbeat, cheerful music, the kind of music that had been in the public domain for a century before either of them were born. The kind of music that might play at a neighbourhood barbeque or on the set of a low budget livestream. Or, just as an example, at an outdoor wedding.

"welp." Red said. "that was fast."

"he's very efficient," Sans sighed.

"'Ey!" There was a pedestrian plaza around the transit station, shopping kiosks alternating with sculpted regolith and topiary shrubs. The old human man who ran the mao tofu stand was waving enthusiastically at them from across the fused silicate pavement. "Congratulations, lads!"

The moon elemental at the rapid recharge station joined in, as did the two human women selling bead-work jewellery out of a suitcase. "You walk through here every day and you don't even tell us you're going off to get married?" One of the women stood up to scold them.

"oh yeah, uh," Sans mumbled, "was kind of a—"

Red interrupted, lying fluently. "hey, we weren't gettin' any younger. you know the game."

"and we're gonna play it," Sans muttered, browbone furrowing. Where was that from?

The mao tofu guy waved them over to his shack. "Ah, leave 'em alone, Ronnie. The important thing is, congrats!" He fished a couple of deep-fried nuggets out of his anti-fridge and pressed the paper-wrapped packets into their hands. "Here, take these, on the house. Consider it your wedding present."

Sans took the food and slipped it into his sparsely-populated inventory. "hey, thanks buddy, but we probably gotta run, it sounds like the party is starting without us."

The vendors only got as far as another congra— before Sans hooked Red's arm and dragged them through a shortcut.

They phased back into reality on the sidewalk at the edge of their front yard. Edge must have come back while they were gone, because his relativistic craft was docked on the landing armature beside Papyrus's cherry-red hover-car.

Also, because he was looming over them from the second-floor balcony.

An entire galaxy of red and blue microgravity balloons orbited their house. There was a colourful floral arch erected over the path to the backyard, and colourful banners draping the railings. The front yard regolith was skilfully raked into a series of interlocking heart shapes.

Edge was attired in his fanciest dress uniform, leaning against the garlanded railing with a snifter of something blue in hand.

"OF COURSE YOU WOULD BE LATE TO YOUR OWN POST-WEDDING RECEPTION," he scoffed, "GIVEN THAT YOU MADE US WAIT DECADES TO SEE YOU MARRIED."

"sorry, boss," said Red. It was a reflex.

"OF COURSE YOU ARE."

There was a chiptune flourish, and a familiar cat-sized rover trundled up onto Edge's gold-fringed pauldron.

"robbie!" Sans exclaimed. "we thought you stayed on ceres!"

The rover hummed. "I considered remaining at Palm Craters. I was offered a job flipping pancakes." It paddled its sampling arm to demonstrate. "Would you like to know why I decided not to accept the position?"

"why's that, robbie?"

"Because of the high turn-over rate."

"DESPITE THE JOKES, I COULD NOT VERY WELL LEAVE HER BEHIND, BROTHER. IT WAS CLEAR YOU HAD GROWN ATTACHED. I AM NOT MADE OF STONE, DESPITE THE STONE-LIKE HARDNESS OF MY ROCK-HARD ABS."

"you're the best, bro," said Red, sounding choked up. Sans patted him on the scapula.

"WELL, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING STANDING AROUND ON THE SIDEWALK, MANDIBLING AT ME, YOU SLACKERS?" He waved extravagantly toward the back yard. "THE PARTY'S THAT WAY. GET PARTYING!"

Robbie played a celebratory .midi file.

Sans hooked his arm through Red's and pulled him toward the arch. "you're the boss, edgelord."

Their backyard had been transformed from it's usual sedate mixture of hammocks and whatever equipment Papyrus needed for his current outdoor hobby into the wedding party of Papyrus's dreams. There was a projection screen set up in the shade of the lunar pine, a variety of booths and games, and tables covered in snack-foods. There was also a huge Object-of-Mystery on a small stage, ominously shrouded by a lacy tarp. There was even a small cluster of actual musicians on the yard-facing side of the house's wraparound balcony.

At least fifty people milled around the yard, fiddling with the puzzles and sipping cocktails. Sans recognized friends, co-workers, neighbours, the guys from Red's curling club, several members of Sans and Papyrus's extended family in attired in formal lab coats...

Alphys ambushed them as soon as they walked under the arch, bursting out from behind a floral arrangement to hug first Sans, then Red, then both of them at the same time, awkwardly wrapping her stubby arm around Sans's lumbar spine and refusing to let go.

"Eeeeee," she squealed, glowing pink between her facial scales.

"hey al." Sans braced himself for the onslaught. It was immediate.

"F-friends to lovers, it's perfect! What kind of romantic fluff did you g-get up to on your honeymoon? Did you go on a swan-glider ride through the canyon of love? Couples yoga? Go horseback riding along the surf line and thenmakeloveinthewavesunderthegoldenlightofthesettingsun—"

"hokay buddy, take a breath," Sans coaxed, trying to pry her clawed hand out of his shorts pocket.

"Ehehehe," she giggled. "Papyrus asked me to m-make a slideshow of your love and it's so cute! I've been combing Y for days!"

"that's great alph, y'wanna let go?"

"You know I was a bit surprised when I-I heard you actually got hitched," she continued, "My money was on your love being simply too pure to be spoken aloud." She stared into the middle distance and sighed lustily.

"yeah, that's us," said Sans. "pure. now, you wanna let me go there or—"

Red made a glitch-tone noise and lurched out of her grip. "did you just goose me?" he squeaked.

She just giggled. Then she pinched Sans's rump, also.

"alphys!" he yelped, "stop that. what would your wife think?"

"Undyne would think you don't work out enough. How do you manage to be so flabby when y-you're made of b-bones?"

"IT TRULY IS ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE! MY BROTHER WORKS SO HARD AT SLACKING OFF HE COULD BE THE EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH AT THE MID-MORNING NAP FACTORY."

Papyrus stormed into the conversation with gale-force aplomb. "FORGIVE ME FOR INTERRUPTING YOU, DOCTOR ALPHYS, BUT I NEED THESE TWO!"

He whipped something lacy and dark out of his inventory and pressed it into Red's hands. A second later, he was wrestling Sans out of Alphys's grip and into the starchy blue suit jacket that photographic evidence indicated he had been married in.

"BEHOLD!" Papyrus declaimed. He struck a dramatic pose to allow his booming shout time to cut through the general chatter of the assembled guests. Papyrus's regular voice was already pretty impressive, so when he was actually trying to be loud he could just about knock a satellite out of low lunar orbit. "THE GROOMS HAVE BEEN WRANGLED!" He grappled the newly petticoated Red with one arm, and scooped Sans up on the other side. "LET US BEGIN THE FESTIVITIES OFFICIALLY!"

The assembled partyers cheered. Papyrus jogged a circuit of the yard, letting the guests high-five the captured groomfolk. Eventually he pirouetted up onto the stage and deposited them back on their feet. Sans leaned dizzily against Red, his cheek against the familiar, fluffy collar of Red's jacket.

"IT IS FINALLY TIME TO CELEBRATE THIS NO-LONGER-AN-OPEN-SECRET RELATIONSHIP!"

There was a resounding cheer.

"AS THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS, ALLOW ME TO CONGRATULATE THE WINNER OF THE SKELETON WEDDING PREDICTION POOL: GRILLBY, WHO PREDICTED 'AT LEAST TWO DECADES AND DURING A BENDER.'"

There was some good natured muttering, as well as some congratulatory back pats to the fire elemental in question. Grillby gave a smug thumbs up.

"were you making bets on—" Red started.

"I WOULD NEVER," Papyrus said shortly. "NOW, ACCORDING TO THE WEDDING RECEPTION HANDBOOK THE NEXT STAGE OF THE FESTIVITIES SHOULD BE THE TOSSING OF THE BRIDAL BOUQUET!"

"might have to skip that one pap, neither of us are a bride and we don't have a bouquet."

"ARE YOU A LUNARITE OR A LUNAREN'TITE? NO EXCUSES, SANS."

"yeah sansy, no excuses. you get to throw the bouquet 'cause you're the cute one."

Sans blushed. Red thought he was the cute one? Maybe if the choices were between cute and gorgeous. "i still don't have any flowers?"

Red looked at the ground, and when he looked back up he looked a little flushed too. "i gotcha, sweetheart," he said, and pulled a single, long-stemmed rose out of his inventory.

The petals were a bright, warm red, closer to the familiar scarlet of Red's eyes than the usual deep crimson of roses. Sans recognized it, remembered seeing Red tuck it away into the extra-dimensional space of his inventory on a balmy Ceres evening. There were still a few dewdrops preserved on the velvety petals.

"always got my back, huh?"

Red laughed, a single heh. "you know i take my sans-husbandry seriously. you wouldn't get this from any other guy."

Sans took the rose, trailed the soft petals along his maxilla and breathed in deeply. The alkaline scent of an artificial sea at dusk tickled his nasal aperture.

Sans turned his back to the guests and made a show of winding up to throw the flower. But when his hand reached the apex of its arc, he deftly tucked the rose away into his own inventory instead. "y'know, i'm not real big on traditions."

"I SUPPOSE I SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED SOMETHING LIKE THAT. AND AS A MATTER OF FACT, I DID. IN LIEU OF AN OFFICIAL BOUQUET, YOU CAN THROW THIS." He summoned a large, ribbon-wrapped bone attack and pressed it into Sans's hands. The ribbon had "NUPTIAL BONE" printed on it.

Sans shrugged and tossed it over his shoulder. There was a shout from the crowd, followed by general scattering noises. When he turned around, Edge was triumphantly holding the nuptial bone to his chest. Alphys and one of Sans's moms stood beside him, looking disgruntled and a little bruised respectively.

"YOU SHOULD ALL FEEL PROUD THAT YOU COMPETED VALIANTLY," Edge, "BUT I DO NOT LOSE."

Papyrus nodded. "I HAD LITTLE DOUBT THIS WOULD BE THE OUTCOME."

Edge quirked an elegant brow. He still had his snifter of blue liquor in hand. "LITTLE? SO YOU DID HAVE SOME DOUBT?"

Papyrus shrugged. "WELL, ONE NEVER DOES KNOW. YOU COULD HAVE BEEN HIT BY A FREAK METEORITE."

Edge sipped his drink. "PERHAPS A LESSER MONSTER WOULD FIND THAT TO BE A HINDRANCE, BUT I AM CERTAIN THAT I COULD PERSEVERE."

"BE THAT AS IT MAY, NOW THAT THE BONEQUET HAS BEEN TOSSED, IT IS TIME FOR THE TRUE STAR OF THE SHOW (OTHER THAN THE NEWLY WEDDED COUPLE, OF COURSE)."

Papyrus pointed to the musicians on the balcony. "BEHOLD!" The percussionist started a slow, dramatic kettle drum beat. "IN HONOUR OF MY BROTHER'S MATRIMONY I PRESENT TO YOU THE CULMINATION OF ALL MY YEARS STUDYING THE SCIENCE AND ART OF THE CULINARY PUZZLE!"

A low murmur went through the guests.

Papyrus swept the tarp off of the Object and tossed it out into the crowd.

"LET'S GET READY TO RUBIK!"

The dessert creation he revealed was a massive cube, a metre tall and floating unsupported on a field of blue magic. Each side had nine woven pastry cells full of fluffy looking cake, one bright colour per side. Papyrus lifted a square off the top layer, orange on top and bright blue on the front, to show the assembled guests that it contained a full layer cake in its own right.

"NYEH-HEH-HEH-HEH! BEHOLD THE RUBIK’S CAKE! IT WILL ONLY YIELD ITS SWEET TREASURE WHEN IT'S CORRECTLY COMPORTED!" Papyrus placed the cake cube back in its place, and the gave the top layer a spin. It rotated smoothly on some internal axis, and Papyrus followed that up with a series of vertical and horizontal layer spins until the Rubik's cake was completely scrambled.

"wow," said Red. "that's fancy as fuck, paps."

Papyrus preened.

"so, we have to solve it?" Sans wondered.

"GOOD HEAVENS NO, YOU'LL JUST CHEAT. YOU CAN HAVE YOUR INJUDICIOUS WAY WITH MY CAKE AFTER EVERYONE ELSE HAS HAD A TURN. GO MINGLE."

Sans didn't need telling twice. He grabbed Red's hand and shortcutted them both off of the stage and out into the festivities.

It turned out to be a pretty fun party. Sans hadn't really doubted that Papyrus could put together a great shindig, but he would have thought a fake wedding party with all their closest friends and family would be at best awkward and at worst an international incident.

While the more puzzle-savvy among the guests got up on the stage to attempt the cake, others crowded up around Sans and Red to offer congratulations, and a few wandered off to partake in the various foodstuffs. Edge mingled aggressively.

Red dragged him in the direction of the bar, where a rabbit monster was dishing out bright cocktails. Red picked a blue one, of course, so Sans played along and picked a red one. It tasted like cinnamon candy.

He wanted to check out the make-your-own poutine station, but one of his moms was standing by the french fries so Sans diverted them over to the salad bar where Grillby was meticulously re-toasting croutons.

"so, uh, congratulations on winning the pool i guess?"

The fire elemental exploded into mirthful sparks. "....never seen a meet cute that awkward in my life, and I'm a bar tender. I figured you'd either be in bed together within the week or else take twenty years to get married."

"oh, come on, it wasn't that bad." complained Sans. "it's not like i could have known red was from venus and didn't understand pickup lines."

"... strong breeze could have blown you away," Grillby crackled.

"you asked me if i was carrying around a strong magnetic field source, sweetheart," Red noted.

"i was being witty!"

Red's squint extended to his entire face.

Sans rolled his eyes and took a deep swallow from his cocktail. When he looked at Red again, his husband was watching Sans's mouth.

"what?" demanded Sans.

"nothing at all," said Red, licking his teeth.

"EXCUSE ME," Edge interrupted, materializing out of the general crowd with the predatory silence of a hunting cat. "I REQUIRE YOU TO TELL ME A PLURAL NOUN."

"balls," said Red.

"I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU. GRILLBY, PLURAL NOUN."

"...Spectacles?" Grillby crackled.

Edge had traded his snifter for an old fashioned clipboard with actual paper and a graphite pencil, and he took a note.

"ADEQUATE. BROTHER, YOU MAY SUPPLY A TYPE OF MATERIAL."

Red didn't hesitate. "gore-tex."

"AND YOU," Edge pointed his pencil at Sans. "WILL NAME A COLOUR."

"red?" said Sans.

"THAT'S ADORABLE." Edge took a note and melted back into the crowd.

"...the hell was that about?" Grillby wondered.

"with edge? who knows."

"...Indeed. excuse me, it looks like they just refilled the cinder-cone ranch."

Sans stepped aside to get out of his way, and almost walked into a tall skeleton monster in a lab coat.

"Comic Sans Serif," she said briskly. "You are looking malnourished. Are you keeping up with your quantum macros?"

"hello mother." Sans shouldn't have taken his eyelights off the prizelights. His mother had sneaked right up on him while he was thinking about salad dressing.

"lovely to see you again, garamond," Red charmed. "is copperplate here? i didn't see her in the crowd."

"Hello Red! No, it's just Arial Narrow and I today. Copperplate couldn't leave the compound, she was in the middle of an experiment that couldn't be left unattended. If all goes well, the results could shave almost a quarter of a percentage point off of her error bars!"

"what kind of experiment?" Sans asked, against his better judgment.

"Oh, don't concern yourself with it, it's one of her biochemistry hobby projects. Something about earth dirt I think?"

"mom missed our wedding to play with dirt?" Sans asked.

"Well, it's not like it's a real wedding," Garamond waved a bony hand. "Only marrying one couple at a time. You know we always wanted you to be properly mass-married like population science intended, son."

"guess we can't always get what we want." Like a way out of this conversation. "welp, i won't keep you-"

"Comic!" Sans's other mother, a slice of bright green cake in hand, stepped out of the void at Garamond's elbow. "And Red!" She leaned down to click her teeth to the top of Red's cranium. "I hope our son is taking good care of you?"

"only the best, mrs. narrow."

Garamond narrowed her already pinched sockets. "Look at them, Arial! They're absolutely riddled with flipped bits." She turned back to Sans and Red. "Where are your Faraday crystals? You look like you've been sleeping in the Van Allen belts."

"Gara, be nice! It's their wedding day." Garamond looked a little chastened. Arial carefully smoothed down the ruffled fluff on Red's jacket collar. "Are you getting enough dietary leptons. sweetie? Do you want me to make you some more gummies?"

Sans cleared magic in his skull and looked around for an avenue of escape. He managed to catch his brother's eye where the lanky skeleton was overseeing the cake puzzling, and Papyrus gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up.

"-they were lovely," Red was saying, "i really enjoyed your new gelatin formula-"

"ATTENTION, CELEBRANTS!" Papyrus bellowed from the stage. Arial yelped and dropped her cake fork. "LET US CELEBRATE TOGETHERNESS WITH A SINCERE ROUND OF COMPETITION! YOU MAY NOW OPEN THE POST-WEDDING RECEPTION FAVOUR BAG YOU WERE GIVEN UPON ARRIVAL. WITHIN, YOU WILL FIND A BAG OF ONLY THE BEST, ETHICALLY SOURCED DRIED PASTA NOODLES."

Papyrus waited while there was a general rustle of guests shifting cocktail glasses and accessing their inventories. Arial handed her cake to Red, who held onto it dutifully.

"YOUR TASK IS SIMPLE! YOU ARE TO CONSTRUCT A STRUCTURE, ANY STRUCTURE, USING ONLY THE CONTENTS OF YOUR BAGS AND ANY SUPPLEMENTAL INGREDIENTS YOU CAN SOURCE FROM THIS YARD! YOU MAY FORM AS LARGE A GROUP AS YOUR INTERPERSONAL SKILLS ALLOW. THE ONES WITH THE TALLEST STRUCTURE AT THE END OF FIFTEEN MINUTES WIN!"

There was an excited murmur from the engineer-heavy crowd.

Papyrus made a show of projecting his phone's chronometer onto the large screen. "AND... BUILD!"

Garamond immediately started sorting spaghettini noodles by length. "Sans," she ordered, "Go get us some cheese curds from the poutine station. Red, find something we can use as a pile cap. Go go go!"

Sans shortcutted to the poutine stand and shovelled handfuls of cheese curds into his pockets. A snowdrake (one of the guys from Red's curling club?) on the other side of the table looked appalled.

"don't worry," said Sans. "my jacket's clean."

When he got back to his mothers, Arial was pressing a bundle of long noodles into the regolith while Garamond was measuring and precisely snapping the remaining noodles into equal segments. Red trotted up and offered them a selection of lemon and lime wheels from the cocktail station.

"Good work," said Garamond. She handed them each a bundle of precisely trimmed noodle pieces. "Now you can help me assemble these into base units."

"equilateral triangles?" Sans wondered.

"Of course," said Arial.

"it's nature's strongest shape," said Red.

Arial pinched his cheek. Red bore it with sweaty dignity.

In the end, they didn't win; the prize went to a rickety tower of noodles supported by a couple of captured microgravity balloons. Papyrus declared it to be a valid entry under the Air Bud principle.

They were, however, the only team to complete a geodesic sphere in the time allotted.

"You know, Sans, if you and Red ever get tired of selling your labour to the corporate oligarchs, there's a very cozy yurt in the SPA with your name on it."

Sans breathed out through his nasal aperture. His mothers were always at their most tolerable when they had a concrete project to work on that distracted them from their various ideologies and/or conspiracy theories.

"maybe some day, after we retire." The we was easy and automatic. Fake wedding or not, Sans and Red's lives had been twining together like two vines in a pot for decades.

"we kind of like having personal property," Red said, not unkindly.

Arial wrung her hands. "At least tell us you've been shoplifting?"

"of course we have, mom."

"and sansy counterfeits credits all the time," Red pointed out.

Garamond looked relieved, and Arial gave Red another peck on the cranium.

"That's my boys," Arial said, a little wetly.

Garamond surprised Sans with a sudden hug. "We're acceptably proud of you, son," she said, her voice gruff.

"aw, jeez." Sans fought his ingrained habit to struggle out of his mother's bony grip and let her scritch his sagittal suture.

Red came to his rescue. "well, mothers, we gotta go take a crack at the puzzle cake before all the good pieces get solved. c'mon, sansy."

With his husband's assistance, Sans managed to extricate himself and then they took a quick jaunt through the void to come out on the cake stage.

A few pieces had been successfully freed from their pastry prison; some of the green pieces were gone. Probably a single-side solve.

It would have been trivial for Red to teleport a slice out of the puzzle for them; Red was much better than Sans at site-to-site object teleportation. Sans couldn't really get the hang of the landing unless he was the one doing the moving, but Red could intuit it no problem. Probably because he was a genius.

Red gave the top level a spin, and Sans followed his lead by rotating the front face to bring a red square that was marooned at the bottom of the cake down to meet its fellows at the top.

"we could get the blue side pretty easy," Sans commented. There were only two squares out of sequence.

"nah," said Red. "we're goin' all out. let's just solve the whole thing."

"gonna let the people eat cake?"

"heh," said Red. "that'd be sweet."

They had to disassemble the already-completed green side to get the rest of the cake in order. A few guests wandered over, probably hoping for a chance at a non-depleted cake face.

Papyrus, meanwhile, was continuing his hosting duties with typical vim and vigour.

"ASSORTED GUEST-FOLK!" Papyrus tapped smartly on a champagne flute to gather attention. The ringing noise was quieter than his speaking voice. "IT IS MY HONOUR AND DUTY TO ONCE AGAIN REMIND YOU TO REMEMBER THE SOURCE OF OUR CELEBRATION: THE LOVE STORY OF SANS AND RED! AND TO THAT END, I HAVE COMMISSIONED SANS'S OLDEST FRIEND TO COMPILE A SLIDESHOW!"

There was some shuffling from the crowd before Alphys sidled out in front of the projection screen.

"T-thanks, Papyrus." She twiddled her claws nervously. "I hope you all l-like it. I've been taking pictures of them for years for just this kind of e-event."

The first slide was an old 2D shot of a lecture hall, filled with monsters and humans. The front projection surfaces were covered in softly glowing formulae, and there was a very young skeleton monster in the lecturer's position at the front of the room. From the angle, it was pretty clear that he was standing on a stack of textbooks to see over the lectern.

"I-I've known Sans longer than Red. I met him when we were both graduate students. O-of course, he was fifteen at the time." The young Sans on the screen was still wearing his stripes.

The slide changed, to one of a slightly older Sans, having traded his stripes for a lab coat and hardhat. He was standing in front of an old-fashioned pontoon engine, the chassis peeled back to expose its intricate mechorganic inner workings.

"We both ended up w-working at the shipyard. Which is where I met Red, too. But it's not where Red and Sans met - they met on free fries Friday at the shadiest dive bar within walking distance of the engineering district."

They got the top layer of the cake aligned – all of the empty, green cells facing upward, which also brought with it the top row of each side.

The slide clicked over again. This time it was a young Red, looking up from a KVM with his face all illuminated in reflected blue light. He was giving the camera the finger with his non-dominant hand, and he looked all of 20 years old.

"As you can see, he was quite a catch." Alphys sighed lustily. "Half the R&D department tried to ask him to join their teams, and the other half tried to ask him on a date. But the only one he had time for was our Sansy."

Sans's sockets narrowed while he cycled a tricky cube down to the bottom of the cake. Alphys was remembering that through rose tinted safety goggles. It wasn't that Red took some kind of special shine to him, it was just that their work coincided a lot. And Red was new to the shipyard, and Luna, and he needed someone to show off his skills to.

The slideshow continued. Alphys waxed poetic about their 'young love,' including such milestones as formally teaming up on the Mark-XI Valsalva Compensator and buying this house together, while Sans and Red slowly but surely solved the cake.

They were about two minutes into the show when the slide changed again. This time, instead of a holostill, it was a drawing.

A quite competent drawing, in an old fashioned 2D art style, of Red and Sans standing with their hands clasped and their foreheads resting together. They were dressed in identical short plaid skirts and tall stockings that unrealistically clung to their femurs. The artist had drawn the shape of a plump, inverted heart as the background, the two monsters fitting neatly into the frame of one single soul.

"N-next sl-sl-slide please!!" Alphys squeaked.

The ghostie who was running the projection equipment gave their tablet a few pokes, but nothing happened. "Sorry Alphys, the slides are on a timer. I can't advance them."

"S-s-sorry, that wasn't s-supposed to be in there." Alphys had her clawed hands over her eyes. "M-m-must be bad AI or s-s-something."

There was a signature at the bottom of the image, and the year indicated it was about 15 years old.

Alphys peered through her claws. "I-is it gone yet?"

It was not.

"Sorry," said the ghost again. "I think the projector's frozen......"

Alphys said, "hhhhhhhhhhhhhh—"

"I don't know what's going on with the projector. I turned it off and on again but it's still frozen on that one image......"

Alphys trailed off into a gurgling noise.

"THE ESTEEMED DOCTOR ALPHYS, EVERYONE!" Boomed Papyrus. He kindly tried to nudge her out of the spotlight while Edge took her place in front of the projection surface.

"GREETINGS, CELEBRANTS. I'M SURE YOU WERE WONDERING WHY I HAVE BEEN SUBTLY INTERROGATING YOU ALL EVENING." He took a long sip from his drink. "NYEH-HEH-HEH, IT'S A MAD-LIB! I HAVE USED YOUR INPUT TO ASSEMBLE A SHORT BUT TOPICAL PARAGRAPH OF ADVICE FOR THE LONELY HEARTS AMONG US."

There was a sound of muffled swearing as Alphys got tangled in the lilac hedge and had to turn around and walk by behind Edge again.

He flipped the page on his clipboard with a dramatic flick of the wrist, said "AH HEM," and read, "Are you the sweaty type? Always getting waxy when it comes to meeting a datemate? My guide will help you loosen your Gor-tex and man up!

"Sometimes you gotta tell a red lie to make yourself look monopolistic. Tell them they're looking cogent tonight. Maybe offer to carry their spectacles. Ask them if they would like to go researching sometime, but always collate. This sends a quantum vibe."

He flipped through the pages on his clipboard, looking increasingly disturbed. "ANGEL, YOU PEOPLE REALLY ARE ALL NERDS AREN'T YOU? I CAN'T WORK UNDER THESE CONDITIONS. PAPYRUS, IS IT TIME FOR THE DANCING YET?"

"I CAN'T THINK OF A SINGLE REASON WHY NOT!" Papyrus replied, cheerily, abandoning the projector ghost who was helplessly waving their noodly arm through the projector beam to absolutely no effect.

Papyrus took a flying leap over the heads of the crowd and scrambled up onto the yard-facing side of the second floor balcony. The musicians scattered, cautiously regrouped, and then rescattered when Edge vaulted up beside him. He didn't even spill his drink. "AHEM!  AS IS TRADITIONAL FOR BROTHERS IN LAW, COMMANDER EDGE AND I HAVE COLLABORATED ON A SENTIMENTAL MESSAGE OF LOVE AND AFFECTION FOR THE GROOMBRIDES ON THE OCCASION OF THEIR HASTILY-ARRANGED, POST-ELOPEMENT SURPRISE WEDDING PARTY!"

Edge stood at his shoulder, looking grave and dapper with a snifter of something suggestively magenta in hand.  "AS WE WERE NEITHER INFORMED OF NOR INVITED TO THE EVENT IN QUESTION, WE SHALL ALL HAVE TO MAKE DO WITH THIS HASTILY RECONSTITUTED FIRST DANCE."

Sans manipulated the gravity of the cake layers in perfect concert with Red. He wasn't using his hands, and neither of them spoke. Sans read the subtle shifts in Red's ambient magic and moved his to compliment it at every turn. The middle row was aligned all around the cake, and only a few cubes of the bottom most layer were still out of place.

On the balcony, Edge inclined his head gravely.  "I WOULD LIKE TO STRESS THAT MY RECENT IRE HAS BEEN DIRECTED AT THEIR HALF-ASSED ATTEMPT TO ELOPE.  THEIR UNION IS WHOLE-ASSED, AND I SUPPORT IT WHOLE-HEARTEDLY."

Papyrus spread his arms. "MERE WORDS ALONE, EVEN ONES OF MY ELOQUENCE, COULD NOT POSSIBLY HOPE TO SUFFICE TO EXPRESS HOW OVERJOYED WE BOTH ARE.  BUT, AFTER MANY TENSE HOURS OF INTENSE RESEARCH IN COLLABORATION, WE HAVE SETTLED ON A CLASSIC LOVE BALLAD FROM EARTH'S HISTORY THAT COMES AS CLOSE AS ANY TO ADEQUATELY CELEBRATING THIS CHERISHED MOMENT.  WE WILL NOW PERFORM IT FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT.  PLEASE PREPARE YOURSELVES TO ENJOY THIS FIRST FRATERNALLY SANCTIONED DANCE AS HUSBANDS, BROTHERS."

Edge sniffled.  His socketliner was starting to run.

Red flipped the whole left side of the cake down, temporarily scrambling it again. Sans rotated the bottom layer, and Red turned the side back up to the top. Sans turned the bottom layer back the way it had come, while Red rotated his part once more.

He met his husband's eyes over the cake, grinning, as they both used their magic to make one final rotation and the cake slotted into complete alignment.

An aggressive, old fashioned synth beat blasted from the speakers. Papyrus started dancing, wiggling his shoulders extravagantly while his boots stayed still on the glassy floor.

"hey," Red stepped around the cake, into Sans's personal space. Where he belonged, if Sans was going to be honest about it. "do we know this song from somewhere…?"

Sans put his hands on Red's shoulders, felt Red's phalanges come to rest on the stiff fabric of his blazer where it flared over his broad iliac crests. Red's petticoats crinkled as he leaned in close.

"ye-ah," Sans drawled. "i know this from somewhere." It was kinda up tempo for a traditional couples dance, but Sans didn't care to imitate Papyrus's controlled flailings. So he just gripped onto the shoulders of Red's leather jacket and kind of bopped gently to the beat.

The intro quickly gave way to the first verse, the vocalist serenading them through time in an old fashioned earth accent:

We're no strangers to love
You know the rules and so do I

The music cut out. "I HOPE YOU WILL FORGIVE THE TRADITIONAL PRANK!  REST ASSURED WE HAVE SELECTED AN ACTUALLY HEARTFELT SONG TO CELEBRATE THE LEGAL JOINING OF—"

"no, keep going," Red said, at the same time as Sans barked, urgent: "papyrus, keep playing that song!"

Papyrus must have given them some kind of look, but all Sans could see was the hellfire glow of Red's eyelights staring his own down.

The music resumed. A microgravity balloon bumped gently into his skull. Red batted it away.

Sans remembered.

What was the point of a bender if you didn't get at least a little bit bent?  Sans had pretty much grown out of the urge to get shitfaced by his age, but he made an exception for his and Red's yearly trip to the Vegas Belt.  And bent, they certainly were.  They'd been drinking Long Asteroid iced teas for something in the vicinity of twelve hours, and Sans wasn't entirely sure how they had ended up in the historic recreation of a rock-and-roll new year's eve dance, but there they were.  It was at least semi-intentional, because they both were wearing half-assed attempts at period appropriate attire in the form of Sans's powder blue suit jacket and Red's layered petticoats.  Sans had his hands draped loosely around Red's shoulders, and Red's clawed phalanges were bunched in the stiff fabric of Sans's jacket. The music didn't seem quite right for the period (hey, what did Sans know?  He was a physicist, not a musicist) but it had a pretty good, up-tempo beat to bop around to.

One of the microgravity balloons bumped into Sans's skull and orbited there until Red reached up to bat it away, snickering.  They were both lightly dusted with bits of iridescent polystarch from the intermittent rains of confetti.  Red's hand kinda half-slid, half-stroked down from Sans's temporal bone, along the side of his jaw, down to his shoulder.  Dusted ineffectually at the confetti and then returned to its place at his hip.  Fuck, but Red was cute when he was trying not to seem cuddly.  Always trying to find an excuse – sharing a blanket on a cold night or fixing Sans's ever-askew clothes or something.  Fiery eyelights looked down at him like distant cigarette cherries burning in the night from the dark voids of Red's sockets.  And Sans thought, not for the first time, that he wanted to wrap this moment up in a silk scarf and keep it in his inventory forever: sketchy annual benders to the Vegas belt until they were both too old to work a slot machine.  He wanted to keep Red for the rest of their lives.

Sans had known that he loved Red for years.  Red was his best friend, so of course he did.  It was only from behind his defensive bulwark of miscellaneous liquor that he could admit that he was in love with Red.

Red blinked, a long, lazy bat of his sockets like a cat in a sunbeam.  His teeth moved as he sang along with the ancient pop chorus playing in the background, the vibration of it tickling against Sans's ambient magic.

"isn't this that song they play to troll people?" Sans wondered.

"uh, i guess so? appropriate, tho'."

"well, we have known each other for so long," Sans agreed.

"heh, did ya notice it's our anniversary?  22 years since we met.  that was a friday too."

"you remember the exact date we met?" Sans did remember, that was kind of why he'd planned their semi-annual bender for this particular weekend, but he hadn't realized Red did. He probably should have, Red was sharp as a molecular scalpel. But he hadn't really thought Red was paying that much attention way back then.

"well yeah, i mean who wouldn't remember something like that?  the prettiest piece of sacrum in collins county rocking up to me in a dive bar and dropping the world's least competent pick-up line."

Sans blushed.  "it wasn't that bad, was it?"

"sansy, you made a joke about integral calculus."

Well.  His smarts had been pretty much the only thing he had going for him back then, fresh out of the commune as he was.

"you turned me down," Sans said, blushing.

"nah, i didn't even figure out you were trying to flirt with me until we'd been living together for three months. but, that ain't what i meant, about the song."

"what, then, because you wanna tell me how you're feeling?"  Sans tried to make it sound like a joke.  He didn't think he succeeded.

"well, yeah."  Red didn't really sound like he was joking either.

Sans could feel his magic thrumming, agitated, in the complex joints of his neck, gathering in his skull like a storm. "and if i were to ask you how you're feeling?"

Red paused, waited for the music to catch up to them, and sang along.  "don't tell me you're too blind to see."

"i love you." Sans blurted.

"i love you too, buddy."  Red was looking at him, eyelights broad and soft in his sockets.

"no, red.  i love you."

'yeah, i know.  i mean, i love you too."

Sans realized that his friend's eyelights had subtly morphed into hearts.  Which was fascinating - he'd never actually seen a skeleton's eyelights do that in real life.

"no, red, listen to me."  Now that he had finally started, he couldn't stop spilling out his feelings.  Like a pot that had been on a slow boil for twenty years.  "i wanna go on trips out to the crater rims to watch the sunsets with you.  i wanna spend afternoons building starships together and evenings watching vintage edutainment on our couch.  i don't want to just be your best friend, i want your grumpy mug to be the first thing i see every morning, i—"

"let's get married."

"what?"

"fuck it all to hell.  marry me, sans.  it's the vegas belt, there's a chapel somewhere.  i'll get you a collar.  i'll even pay for it with real money.  or not, it don't matter.  but there's nothing i want more than to be with you until luna spins into the sun."

Sans gaped at him. "you're… you're not fucking with me, are you?  i'm serious, red."

"you've never been serious in your life."  Red was grinning, teeth sharp and gleaming.  Then he shortcutted away.

He was only gone for a moment, and when he returned he sank down to one knee like the world's most romantic potato, a slightly tasteless spiked collar cradled in his metacarpals.

"comic sans serif, will you marry me?"  Sweat had broken out all across the roughened surface of his frontal bone, and his eyes were wide and serious.

"yeah," Sans whispered.  "yes, red, yes, of course i'll marry you!"

The song reached its chorus. Sans barely even heard it.

"you love me." He breathed.  It wasn't a question.

"you love me, too," Red replied.

Impulsive, Sans leaned in and clicked their teeth together. Then he did it again, and again, because he could. Because he loved Red. Really, really loved him, and he needed Red to know that, to feel what he felt – and now he could share that. It was allowed. It was wanted.

"i love you, you jackass," he mumbled into Red's teeth.

Red was laughing with glistening sockets. "i love you too. fuck, i love you so much."

Red pressed their teeth together then, leaning so hard into him that they were pressed together all along the length of their sternums. Sans forgot all about the party, the music, their friends and family surrounding them. He felt Red's hands tightening on his back, felt the sweet warmth of Red's ambient magic cocooning him and breathed in the smoky scent of him, felt the delicate pressure of Red's summoned tongue against his sensitive teeth.  Sans opened for him, but Red didn't press inside. Just teased the edges of Sans's teeth and shared breath with him.

There were tears caught in the corners of Red's sockets, gleaming like brilliant jewels in the light of the slowly setting sun.

"red," Sans gasped. "pl—"

And then the party and everyone around them vanished as Red dragged them both away into a shortcut.

They came into the world again in a bedroom – Red's, from the angle of the golden light slanting in through the dome overhead. Sans only had a moment to appreciate the feral engine components growing up the wall struts before Red was leaning into him, fingers skating over his skull as he clicked his teeth to Sans's cheekbones, his jaw, as he brought their mouths together in a perfect union of tooth and summoned magic.

Sans threaded his hands into the open front of Red's jacket, kneading into the knit fabric of his turtleneck and the plushness of Red's ambient magic beneath. Red let go of him long enough for Sans to push the jacket off his shoulders.

"it wasn't a joke," Sans said, a bubble of laughter shivering its way through his skull. "it was never a joke."

Red stroked a thumb along his cheekbone, and from the wet glide of it Sans knew he must be crying too.

"thank fuck," Red growled. "angel, i didn't know how i was supposed to just go back to living my life after i had a taste of you, but i thought you—"

"i thought i was making you uncomfortable!" Sans caught Red's hands and brought them up to his mouth so he could kiss his chipped knuckles.

Sans couldn't hear the music anymore; maybe Papyrus had finally stopped the prank track after they teleported away. Only a distant, non-specific bass beat vibrated up through the floor to remind them of the world outside their embrace. But Sans imagined that somewhere out there, a long-dead human was still singing about the things he was never gonna do.

"red," Sans said, serious as a radiation burn. "i just wanna tell you how i'm feeling."

Then he brought Red's hands to his collar.

What he felt, when his husband's fingers touched the leather, was too huge to explain. Too deep and too broad for any language of human or monster to classify and codify and define. It seemed too big to exist in the same world as working a day job and going to the store and— but that was the point, wasn't it?

Love.

Sans felt love, his own and Red's, matched and doubled and amplified until it sang through his bones and Red's in a single, glorious note.

Their love wasn't some divine gift bestowed upon them by the Angel. It was made out of all the cherished pieces of their lives: Sans keeping individual mustard packets in his desk so Red had something to snack on when he visited his office. Red waiting for him with Cosmos and hot cats on the couch after a rough day with the funding committee. The precision of Red's hands and the way Sans laughed when he was almost asleep. A million tiny moments of a life lived in company. A life shared.

Sans wanted to share everything with Red, always. He wanted them to be a them for the rest of their lives.

And in that moment of collar-moderated simpatico, Sans knew with absolute surety that Red wanted that, too.

Red's hand came off the collar and Sans realized he was on his back on the bed with his best friend, with his husband; slight bones pressing him down into the dishevelled covers and heavy ambient magic pressing into every aperture of his being.

Sans let Red's hands go so he could ruck up the bottom of his sweater and expose his false ribs. The ivory arches were already flushed with vital magic, shivering lightly under Sans's fingertips.

"let me look at you," he rumbled.

Red rose up on his knees over Sans, shrugged out of his coat and let it fall. Sans threaded his phalanges through Red's lowest ribs and held on, unwilling to let Red put space between them even for a moment.

"more," Sans begged. "i want to see every centimetre of you, red."

Red stripped off his turtleneck and tossed it aside. Sans plucked petulantly at the waistband of his shorts peeking up above his lacy skirts and Red shuffled between his knees to pull those off too. He got his shorts tangled around his sneakers and had to roll onto his back like a sexy turtle before he could get them off, socks and all.

Sans took advantage of the brief pause to shrug out of his own shirt and jacket, but before he had time to get to his shorts Red was on him again, a weighted blanket of bone buzzing with invitation and pleasurable intent.

Red's hands were gentle, claws tucked safely away, when he stroked down Sans's collarbones to where clavicle met sternum. He rubbed the ball of his thumb distal into that sensitive little notch and Sans writhed against the blankets.

"you're beautiful," Red growled, and leaned down to tongue at the confluence of bone and cartilage. "fancy sansy the rocket surgeon, i've wanted you since the night we met."

Sans wrapped his arms around Red and rolled them. Red went easy, sprawling as languid as a cat beneath him. "you never flirted back," he complained. He stroked his distals, feather light, down Red's splayed femurs.

Red moaned, pressing up into Sans's hand. "c'mon sansy, why d'ya think i kept offering to show you my 1:20 scale models?"

Sans mulled that over while he bent to run his teeth over those strong bones, relishing the way Red shivered and rattled beneath him. Thought back to the day he'd explained to Red how much of the 'weird behaviour' from patrons at the bar was actually pretty standard Lunar flirting. And the day, much later, when Red had clarified how a monster from his fallen city-ship might express their romantic interest for another.

Banter, shows of competence, strength of arms.

A couple of things suddenly came into clearer focus.

Red swore when Sans put his hand on the wide arching wing of his hipbone, and Sans abruptly decided he didn't care about what he might have missed out on twenty years ago. He had Red here now, spread out under his hands and wanting, everything he wanted and more than he could have hoped for.

Red's magic was already formed. Maybe it had manifested during that hectic moment of resonance; Sans hadn't really been paying attention. His own shorts had been stretched tight over the bulge of his summoned dick ever since, so it stood to reason.

Sans ran his fingers along Red's luminous pseudoflesh, down the underside of his shaft to where plump lips filled up the space between his ischia. He knew without checking that his own magic had manifested into much the same form from the clenching warmth he could feel throbbing inside his own pelvis.

Red hooked his claws into Sans's waistband. "c'mon, sweetheart," he panted. "i wanna see you too."

And Sans knew he could deny him nothing, so loathe as he was to let Red out from under his hands he struggled upright long enough to strip off his shorts and shoes and socks as well.

When he was bareboned except for the spiked collar at his throat, Red pulled him back into bed and they writhed together, all sweat and magic and deep-voiced cries. Curled up together on their sides, legs entwined, sternums grinding, they traded open-mouthed nuzzles and nibbling little skeleton kisses until they were both breathless.

Sans's fingers found Red's dick again, gave it a testing pump. Red hissed out a breath and clung more tightly, weaving his fingers into the back of Sans's rib cage. When he kissed the underside of Sans's jaw, some part of him touched Sans's collar and they both lost a few minutes in the blinding intensity of shared emotion.

Red rocked beneath him, trying to angle his hips more sharply into Sans's hands. "sansy, ah, sweetheart," he begged, "c'mon, i want you inside me. i want you in me when i come."

And how could he ignore such a gorgeous plea? Sans probed Red's pelvic outlet where his entrance fluttered against Sans's fingertips, and he didn't make him wait. First one finger, effortlessly sliding in to the accompaniment of Red's desperate cries, then immediately a second and a third, thrusting in and curling in search of Red's most sensitive places.

It was just as Sans had imagined, in his unspoken dreams. Wet silk heat fluttering around his fingers. Red, groaning nonsense praises into his acoustic meatus, kissing him, and Red's hand forced into the scant gap between their bodies to tease at the head of Sans's cock. Red's body shivering in time to the beating of his soul, or Sans's, or maybe they were one and the same.

"more?" Sans asked.

"you," Red gasped. "i want you inside me."

And Sans wanted that too. Wanted to turn to mist and feed himself into the porous places of Red's bones, but he settled for withdrawing his fingers and lining up his dick instead to press inside of his manifested flesh.

He thrust in as deep as the awkward angle would allow, and Red keened. They each had an arm trapped under the other's body, but Sans got his free hand down between them to wrap around Red's twitching dick.

He could barely move, barely wanted to move, just grinding his hips because he didn't want to pull away from that glorious clutching heat even if only to thrust back in. And then Red wrapped his arm around Sans's spine, groped over the sensitive plane of his sacrum until he found the matching entrance that had been dripping hot magic down Sans's femurs ever since Red laid hands on him, and pressed his own fingers inside.

It was Red who came first, clenching hard around Sans and soaking his pelvis with hot magic. Sans was right behind him, tripped over into his own orgasm when Red tucked his skull into the hollow of Sans's throat and the resonance of their pleasure reflected and magnified between them like a rogue wave.

And then Red was rolling him over into the sheets, Sans's dick sliding out of him with the movement only for Red to throw Sans's leg over and thrust inside him instead, still hard and desperate.

"that's it," Sans choked out, "fuck me in half, sweetheart."

Red's grin gleamed.

Much later, when they had finally had their fill of each others' bodies for the time being, they lay there in the sticky ruin of Red's bed sharing breath and the humid silence that blanketed them. Overhead, a riot of brilliant magenta fire blazed as the sun finally completed its long descent below the cratered horizon, a mirror to the shared violet glow in their joints like the sky itself were celebrating their union with a cosmic spectacle for all to see.

Sans sighed, snuggled closer to his husband. Felt the gentle resonance of his integral magic singing in harmony with Red's. Breathed in the familiar scent of him and closed his eyes, content with what their life had finally become.

"we really are idiots, aren't we?"

Chapter Text

I would like you to imagine, if you would, the Solar System.  At its centre is the sun: an orb of nuclear fury, warping spacetime with its bulk and dragging all of the planets and moons and asteroids and all the billions of people inhabiting them along in its wake.

Mercury whips around the sun at breakneck speed.  It's blasted by solar radiation on one side and freezing cold on the other, but there's a thriving band of habitation crawling along at the day-night line like an ever revolving bracelet.  Shining Venus is next, deceptively placid clouds cloaking the hellish reality of its surface.  Wandering cityships are visible as points of light on its night side, but on its day-side the sun renders them invisible against the snow-white clouds.

Then comes the Earth, the root-world of them all, decadent with its vast, natural oceans of liquid water.  Spacecraft and space stations cluster around it like rush hour traffic.  Mars is far less oceaned, but only slightly less populated.

Further out, the asteroid belt glitters like scattered gemstones, and the gas giants shepherd their many moons through the endless void.  The ice giants are more distant still, guarding the coldest reaches of inhabited space.  Finally there are the dwarf planets, and the Kuiper Belt, and the mysterious reaches of the Oort Cloud.

Imagine that we set out from Luna, leaving behind a sprawling city on the basaltic plain of the Sea of Tranquillity.  We aim our craft away from the safety of the inner solar system and head out toward the distant frontier.  Past Mars, past Ceres, past titanic Jupiter, into the neighbourhood of Saturn.

We would fly over the vast ring-fields, past the eternal storm of the gas giant's north pole, flashes of pink and purple aurora light illuminating the belly of our craft.   Beyond the giant planet, we might find a moon not unlike Venus with its heavy cloud-cover, though much smaller and colder.  Titan lives up to its name: the largest moon of Saturn is significantly more massive than Luna, large enough to be considered a rocky planet if only it orbited the sun rather than a gas giant.

Imagine that our craft descends through Titan's hazy skies.  Atmosphere control platforms have carved holes into the cloud cover, allowing the unobstructed light of the sun and to reach the moon's surface for the first time in billions of years.  Huge, shallow seas cover much of the surface, creeping back and forth across the hollows of the moon's skin with the changing of the seasons.  There are habitations here, small cities and towns built on the colles, but this is not a hub of urban sophistication like Mercury or a technological nexus like Luna.

The rock is khaki coloured, mostly, smoothed into strange arches and knobs by the constant creep of the oceans.  It shines in some places, almost mirror-bright, and in others it absorbs the light like spilled ink.  And there is abundant life here: forests of strange soft-bodied plants held aloft by floating gas bladders, red grasslands undulating gently in the breeze, seas teeming with genetically engineered fish.

People don't come to Titan because they want to make it big in show business or they're looking for the next great innovation, though some come here looking to surf the mighty Flumina.  Most come here for peace and quiet; they come here to find themselves.

Imagine that our craft races over the planitiae of the Northern Hemisphere, low enough to ruffle the tops of the float-ferns and spook winged frogs into flight.  We pass flooded craters and bank around the skirts of steep-sloped mountains.  Our craft slows as we come to a coastal town.  The buildings are all built on lotuswood platforms so they can sink and float with the changes of water level.  There's a long pier stretching out into the shallow sea with a fleet of fanboats tied up alongside, and when our craft passes overhead, a woman in an aquamarine sun dress waves. 

Perhaps we leave the town and follow the coast of the mare. We could bank west over the water and speed up again, until the shoreline vanishes and there's nothing beneath the belly of the craft but endlessly rippling water.  Overhead, the be-ringed majesty of Saturn is momentarily obscured by the dark silhouette of a passing space whale.

Finally, something breaks the featureless horizon.  Not the opposite shoreline; it's an island.  A tiny one, barely more than a single large, flat rock.  

Our craft comes to a stop, hovering over the shallow sea.  With the craft stationary, the water smooths out once again into a vast, shining mirror.  The boarding door irises open, and we splash down into ankle-deep water.

On the island, there is a man; a human.  He's sitting on the ground, legs folded.  Although he has his back to us, he is not difficult to recognize.  Dark jeans, black t-shirt tight over his muscular shoulders.  From this angle, we can't see the layered necklaces, but we know they are there.  He's not wearing his top hat.

"Pawl!" someone shouts.  "You're alive!"

The man turns to look at us without rising from his spot.  The ghost of guyliner still clings to the rims of his eyes.  "Yeah," he says, "I really am."

"Thank the stars we found you!"

Pawl says nothing.

"Well, c'mon!  We'll bring you home!"

A soft smile spreads across Pawl's face, and his eyes reflect the light of Saturn's rings.  He says, "Nah."

Maybe your companion sputters in bewildered ire.  Maybe someone shouts, "Nah!?  What do you mean, nah!?"

The sonorous bellow of a space whale echoes, and Pawl tilts his head to watch the massive beast swim past overhead.

"I mean, nah.  You know, magic's not as much fun when it's real."