"Go fish."

I glared at Sans. "You totally have a ten. I know you do."

Sans looked at me with wide eyes. "You think I would lie to you?" he asked melodramatically. "That's breaking the rules!"

I narrowed my eyes at him before pouncing forward, taking his cards from his hand.

He had two tens, in fact.

"You're the worst."

"No I'm not," he said with a grin, putting his arms around me and flipping me around so we were both lying on the bed, my hands pinned on either side of my head. "In fact, I've heard I'm a ten out of ten." He held up his two cards just in case I didn't catch the joke.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. You suck." I wrestled myself out of his grip and went to get a glass of water.

I was still getting used to the bigger place, but Alex insisted that if I was going to have lots of extra cash that we couldn't stay in such a small apartment.

I used most of the money I was now making from the blog on fixing up the Slums in Ebott, but I agreed that it might be nice to have a small house rather than an apartment.

Plus, it was cool to have all of us living in the same place.

Maybe being an adult didn't have to be as boring as I'd originally thought.

Sans and I still had separate rooms, since we hadn't been together all that long—barely more than a year, in the eyes of the group, since they thought we got together in May. In reality, it had been quite a bit longer than that, but I didn't mind having some boundaries.

Plus, I was totally fine with a messy room, but Sans' room smelled and that was the issue. Have the whole floor covered until the carpet can't be found and I really don't give a shit but if it starts getting stinky, I'm out.

He didn't really like his room either, honestly, so he was often in mine. We shared my bed enough that it was really only a formality to say we didn't share a bedroom.

Though there was another reason for the separate room. One we didn't like to talk about. Sometimes, Sans liked time alone. Now that we hadn't been living in a reset for more than a year, he was doing much better, but some days he got overwhelmed with anxiety he couldn't dampen, with hopelessness that was heavy as lead. And those days were not helped by seeing me. Once, just the mere sight of me had made him spiral into a panic, one night when he'd already had a nightmare and was on edge to start with. I was a fucking trigger for him, for god's sake. He had apologized a hundred times at how upset I'd gotten over it, like it was his fault. He'd felt so bad that he'd taken to avoiding me on those days just to ensure it never happened again. I told him it wasn't healthy, but he was Sans and he didn't listen. He was never into health of any kind anyway.

Whether or not daring Alex to touch that coffin was what started Chara's rampage, I had been the one to take her down there in the first place. That was on me, and I had to live with the consequences. And as I'd guessed so long ago, those consequences were in Sans. That even though he didn't blame me, that even though he loved me, that even though he wanted nothing more than to forget it ever happened, I had hurt him in a way that I couldn't take back. And he wouldn't forget, no matter how much we both wanted him to.

I didn't think about it much anymore. Sans didn't like when I did. He preferred to ignore tense topics most days, and the days that he got overcome were so infrequent that we could go months and feel like everything was okay.

And usually it was.

But sometimes…

My train of thought had gotten so dark so suddenly that I was almost praying for some kind of distraction. Thinking about the darkness in Sans, the one I had maybe not created but had definitely magnified, made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

But the distraction that grasped me made me want to die even more, it turned out.

"Wow, darling, I didn't know you could dress so slutty. I'm impressed."

I turned around quickly to see that Papyrus was sitting on the couch—with Mettaton.

After registering the shock of him speaking when he was the last person I expected to see in my house, I looked down at myself. I was wearing my comfy shorts and a tank top—AKA a lot less clothing than I usually wore. But it was the middle of summer and I had every right to be almost naked in my own house.

And I was close to telling him as much too, until I got a good look at Papyrus. He was wearing his Cool Dude shirt—he'd once told me it was his date shirt. He was looking kind of nervous, an orange tinge to his cheekbones.

Damn it. I couldn't be an asshole to Mettaton if he was on a date with Papyrus.

So I just said, "It's hot," with a shrug.

"Indeed it is." He winked.

I blinked. Was he… hitting on me? While on a date with Papyrus? The guy had no shame.

"By the way," he added. "Papy was telling me about you and Sans. I think it's sweet. You both have the same taste in clothes anyway, so you could, like, borrow from each other."

Okay. I couldn't keep this up much longer.

"Well you two have fun," I said, my voice obviously a little strained as I went to go grab the water I came out for in the first place. When I came back into the room, they had moved to the piano and Mettaton was about to start playing.

And Papyrus looked up at me with this smile—this little, subdued smile. He didn't remember this, but it always reminded me of the day Sans went to fight Chara. And he only started making this particular facial expression after the reset. I wasn't sure what it meant for sure, but I think it was moments when I was doing something for him but wasn't admitting it out loud. It was him showing me he knew I was doing it and thanking me without hurting my pride by saying it straight out.

Maybe, somewhere deep inside, he really did remember, if only just a little. Maybe I was grasping at straws, like Sans sometimes did. I wasn't really sure.

But I smiled in return before I retreated back into the hallway.

I walked back in the room and apparently, Mettaton wasn't the only one who noticed my less than modest clothing choice, because Sans' eyes roved me hungrily.

"What're you looking at?" I snapped, but the animosity was hard to keep up when I was smiling. In fact, if you tried to sound bitchy while smiling, it really just sounded like flirting.

"I was only thinking," Sans said, "that I'm taking this anatomy class for general ed next semester."

Okay, that wasn't going where I thought it was at all. "Alright…"

"And I feel like I could use a little bit of hands on experience, you know?"

I looked at him with my head tilted to the side. I knew full well that he didn't have sex the way humans did. We hadn't even tried Bonding yet—not out of discomfort towards each other but trepidation of trying something that had (as far as we knew) never been attempted before. I knew that lately he'd gotten an interesting fascination with my tits, which I sometimes caught him staring at when I was wearing one of my sluttier outfits on my way to or from the club, but I didn't think much of it.

Sans stood up and came over to me. But when he was standing in front of me, he didn't stop walking—he continued to move until he had pressed me against the door. He put his hands on either side of me so I was trapped.

"Where did this come from?" I asked. My voice was breathless and I knew he noticed, because he smirked.

"Well, I know how you react when I touch you," he said, leaning forward and running his hot, slick tongue from my clavicle to my ear. I whimpered a little—I was embarrassingly loud in the sack and even the smallest thing could make me moan and he thought it was hilarious.

Or maybe hilarious was the wrong word, considering the lustful look in his eyes.

"I just wonder what you'd do if I touch you somewhere a little more private."

My breathing was shaky just thinking about it. It'd never really occurred to me that this would be possible between us. I didn't think he would be interested, seeing as there was no way for me to reciprocate.

But here he was, looking at me with those eyes and crowding in close to me like he wanted nothing more than to touch me.

"Well," I said, my voice quiet, "I'm all yours. If you want to experiment."

"Really?" he asked in interest.

"You think I even want to say no?" I asked. Then, embarrassed at my obvious enthusiasm, I added, "I mean, it's for science."

He grinned and stepped in even closer to me, meaning he was pressed up against every part of me. His clothes were so thick that I couldn't feel what was underneath…

But I was starting to wonder if today I would figure it out.

Sans kissed me hard, letting his tongue slide into my mouth. It didn't feel anything like a human tongue—not just in texture, but also in the way it moved. It seemed to have more range of motion than my tongue would and it was possibly a bit longer. Kissing him was immediately overwhelming when he let his tongue do the work because it felt like he was filling every part of my mouth all at once.

He pressed forward just a little harder, so I was pancaked fully between him and the door, before putting his hands on my hips. His fingers barely grazed under the fabric of my tank top as he gripped me hard. Even just that made me grunt and I put my arms around his neck, desperate to pull him closer to me.

After a second, he put his hands behind my legs and surprised me by lifting me up so I could straddle his hips. I wasn't the lightest girl around, so I wasn't accustomed to someone even attempting to pick me up, let alone doing it with such ease. Who knew someone so lazy was secretly so strong? He didn't take his mouth from mine as he toted me over to the bed, dumping me down on it before looming over me with a cheeky grin.

God, it was unfair how quickly he could unravel me into a sputtering mess.

His legs were straddling either side of my hips as he stood on his knees over me. "If I'm too much for you to handle, I completely undersans," he told me.

I growled. "Kiss me, you moron."

He chuckled. "I'll do one better."

Out of nowhere, he put his hands back under my shirt and started yanking it off me. I lifted my shoulders a bit off the bed to help him along. I wasn't wearing a bra—why bother in my own house?—so within a second I was naked from the waist up for him to see. He stared at them and I wondered if it was his first time seeing human boobs—it's not like he watched porn, since he couldn't jack off.

He hummed happily and took one nipple between his fingers, pinching it. I gasped out a surprised breath.

"Oh. That's fun," he teased. Before I could say anything, he rubbed a finger against the other nub—his hands were harder than I was used to, which made for rougher contact. A touch as light as this one didn't feel quite as delicate as it might usually.

It was delicious.

"Alex told me that she once made you come just from playing with your nipples."

I almost rolled my eyes. What, Alex was telling him stories about me now? I'd have to punish her next time I was Dom. "It took like an hour," I said. "Not really a task for lazy people."

"I didn't say I was gonna try," Sans assured me. "I just like that they're so sensitive."

He tweaked at them both at once and I let out a quiet huff.

He bent over and I expected him to kiss me, but then he went for my nipple and ran his tongue slowly over it. I grabbed his forearm and he seemed to take it as encouragement, because he lavished it with more attention as he pressed the other one between his fingers.

"You make such funny noises," he told me, and I would've been embarrassed at how patronizing that sounded except that that his voice had gone deep with something like arousal.

I remembered then that Monsters could get turned on the same as humans. It was how they got to what they called 'Bonding state'. I think Alphys had once said they just touched each other a lot.

Well he had the touching thing down.

But what about me touching him?

"Hey, Sans," I said, trying to get words out even as he tormented my breasts.

"Hm?" he asked, not seeming to want to pause his ministrations.

"Is there any way I can ever see you with that shirt off?"

He stopped and looked up at me in surprise. "Gonna be honest, kid, I wasn't sure you wanted to see it. I don't exactly look like what you're used to. A little less fleshy."

His joke almost made me want to tease him, but there was this self-consciousness to what he said that I didn't like.

"Of course I want to see it." He licked his lips and there was just a slight blue tinge to his cheeks. "I mean, if that's okay," I added.

"No, yeah, it's fine," he said, his voice husky. "It's just been a while. Last person who saw me naked was Grillby—probably three hundred years ago."

"Grillby?" I asked, more dumbfounded by that detail than the part about it having been three hundred years since he Bonded.

"Sure. He's pretty fun."

I was starting to wonder if Monsters had any concept at all of gender. I mean, it didn't make a difference with Bonding, so maybe they didn't.

Humans had so much to learn from Monsters.

"I can be fun too," I told him.

He grinned. "I don't doubt it, kid."

I shifted myself so I was leaning on my elbows and started shoving off his blue sweater—and after a moment of what seemed like disbelief he helped, shrugging it off and throwing it to the side. His forearms were as I expected—two bones shaped relatively like a human radius and ulna would be shaped. I ran a finger down one of them, in between the two bones, and he watched me intently.

Then I moved to the bottom of his shirt and started to pull it upwards. This time, he didn't help other than to lift up his arms so I could tug it over his head and throw it on the floor.

And I stared at him.

This part was not so expected.

What I figured I would see was a spine and a ribcage. I knew there was something in there that pumped like a heart, since I'd felt it beat, but I kind of thought it would just look like a normal heart for some reason.

Not so much.

I mean, in a way it was what I was picturing. There was his spine, which was all that was there in terms of his belly, but it was his chest that was nothing like what I had imagined.

The last thing I expected was skin.

The skin was white and just barely transparent, pulled over the ribs tightly like plastic wrap. Through the skin I could see a blue glow in between the thick ribs, just like his tongue. Maybe he had more organs in there than I had thought.

I reached my hand out and pressed a finger to the skin. It wasn't soft like human skin—it, like the rest of him, was not as stiff as you expected bone to be but definitely not as pliable as human flesh.

I should have realized that if he had organs, he had to have something protecting those organs, but it just didn't connect.

I splayed my fingers out over him. He got warmer within seconds and his pupils were bigger than I'd ever seen them.

I had no idea how to touch him. Did Monsters have erogenous zones like humans, or was it all the same? Did they usually tend to wear so much clothing—except Papyrus, who was his own breed—because any little touch could set them off?

I let my hands run up his chest to his shoulders, which were made of dense, sturdy looking bones. All of him looked like that—stocky, strong. Definitely thicker than humans bones. There was nothing delicate about any of it and it gave me this strong desire not to be gentle with him.

I grabbed both of his shoulders and flipped us over so I was on top of him, straddling his lap. His easy grin teased me, asked me to experiment with him the way he had with me. Neither of us were virgins, but we were in brand new territory. This was past getting off—it was a learning experience.

One I didn't intend to waste.

First I tried tickling my fingers gently over his ribs, which made him shake a little. Then I ran my hand more firmly over his skin—he hummed in approval, but was more in control of his reaction.

Underneath his ribs, the skin made a little pocket that I could reach. I experimentally ran my hands under there and he grunted quietly.

Hm. Interesting.

I bent down and ran my tongue against the edge of his ribs, keeping my eyes on him, and I watched as his eyes rolled up into his head for a second. One of his hands was grazing the back of my head, as if requesting that I continue.

I continued to lick the general area and he started to grunt more often and his hums started to sound a little more like groans.

I wanted my hands on him too, so I ended up resting one against his arm, and then the other found his spine by accident.

"Fuck," he hissed, and for a second I thought I'd done something wrong. I backed up and looked at him and saw that he was panting hard. He looked down at me, exasperated, and I knew he was going to tell me not to stop.

Was it the spine that had that reaction?

Without looking away from his face, I ran my finger down his spine and his hand squeezed at the back of my head.

Experimentally, I bent down and ran my tongue against the bone and he let out a real moan, the first one I had coaxed out of him so far.

Jackpot.

I began to focus my attention here. I licked at it, I ran my hands against it. When I wrapped my hand around the base of his spine firmly, he said, "Jesus, yes, like that," and I grinned to myself.

It took a little experimentation to figure out what he actually liked. Any contact in the area worked well enough, but some things he reacted more strongly to than others. Jerking it off fast like you might a dick wasn't the best way to go. Keeping the grip firm but the movements slow worked best. He wanted to feel every bit of it, which he couldn't if I moved too quickly. He was actually pretty vocal, once I realized the right spot to mess with, and just listening to him react like that made my pussy clench with want.

I told it to shut up. We weren't going to be having sex.

Then Sans pushed at my shoulder. I looked up at him, confused. Had I done something wrong?

His eyes, like when he was drunk, were glowing vaguely blue around the edges. He was breathing hard.

He pushed me down onto the bed, restraining my wrists beside me.

"Jesus," he grunted hoarsely. "You're something else, Ri. You really are." He kissed me hard and then let go of my hands so he could roughly grab at my breast with one hand and run the other down my side before it rested on the elastic of my shorts.

I didn't have long enough to register what was happening before he hooked his fingers under them and shucked them off of me—and before I knew it one of his fingers had dipped down between my legs experimentally. I twitched as his finger just barely ran against my clit, which had been starving for contact for a good half hour by then.

"Damn, you're soaked," he said. Well, he knew more about human sex than I'd given him credit for, seeing as he understood the significance of me being wet. Maybe he and Alex had talked more extensively about sex than I'd figured. "All that just from touching me, huh?"

"You make some pretty hot noises," I explained breathily.

He chuckled quietly. "I do?" he asked. "You should hear yourself sometime." He ran his finger more deliberately over my clit this time and I moaned just like he'd been hoping I would. "I wish I had a dick just so I could fuck you," he said. "But I guess I got fingers and a tongue," he added, sticking his tongue out for me to see as he winked. "Though maybe we'll save the whips and chains for next time. Not sure that's a good idea for our first go."

He seemed more than happy to at least try to do it the human way.

But… "You know, I've been fucked a lot in my life. I wouldn't mind trying something new."

I wasn't sure at first if I was being too vague about what I meant, but I knew I wasn't when he started to look at me just a little more seriously. "You sure about that, Rye Bread? I don't know what'll happen—if it'll even work. Plus, it might not really take care of, you know, all this." He punctuated the word by slipping a finger just barely inside of me, which made me grip both his arms hard.

"You're thinking about it too much," I told him with a smile. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

After a moment, he nodded. "Alright. My way. I like getting my way anyway."

Before I could tell him to shut up, he kissed me again, and I had no intention of breaking our lips apart long enough to tease him.

He took his hand away from my crotch long enough to pull his sweats off, but then he was right back at it. His hands were timid, gentle—surely out of not knowing what to do more than anything, but he was driving me crazy. It felt good, but wasn't enough to get me anywhere. It was goddamn torture.

Then again, the way he was smirking at me every time we separated, maybe he knew what he was doing to me and thought it was funny.

Then he took his hand away. He readjusted himself so that one of his legs was in between mine and lie on top of me so that we were completely flat against one another. He held my wrists down on either side of my head again and then he started to grind.

This was it. This was what it looked like when Undyne and Alphys Bonded.

And I wasn't sure if he meant for it to happen or not, but he'd rested his leg square on my clit, which meant that when he started moving, it rubbed up against me just right. It sent sparks of pleasure up my body and I threw my head back and just let myself feel it for a while.

The grind was slow, like when I had been stroking his spine. I could feel all of him against me, and it felt better than I expected, even if you didn't consider the convenient placement of his leg. He was so warm, and he was so happy that his chest was doing that purring thing it did more than I'd ever felt it, which made my skin sensitive and tingly. Eventually, he let go of my hands and I opened my eyes to look at him. His eyes were closed and there was sweat dotting his head. His mouth was still smiling, but it was open so that he could get more air in. He looked focused—he looked happy.

I liked to see him like this.

Then I had an idea. I reached my arms around his back and firmly grabbed his spine.

His eyes flashed open, both of them bright blue.

And then everything went white.

When I could see again, I couldn't really register where I was anymore. I couldn't feel the bed underneath me and I couldn't see the ceiling above me. I knew something had to have been there, but it was impossible to focus on anything—

Anything but Sans, that is.

He was still against me. We weren't moving anymore. He was just looking at me, his eyes still blue, and he was grinning so wide. I was too—I could feel it.

"Hey, Rye Bread," he said to me. His voice sounded like he was whispering right in my ear—I could feel his breath on the soft flesh even though he definitely hadn't been anywhere near my earlobe.

"Hey," I replied breathlessly.

"What I need you to do is close your eyes," he told me. The words still tingled against my ears, making me shiver with pleasure.

"Okay," I agreed, letting them shut.

"And just feel it."

"Feel it," I agreed.

"Maybe don't open them this time around," he added. "It'll be a little… disorienting."

I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded ominous and it didn't feel like the right time to ask.

For a moment, I didn't feel anything. He started to kiss me and I kissed him back, all the urgency of before vanishing as we lazily lapped at each other's mouths.

And then it started. It started in the middle of my chest—a tightening feeling not so different than what you felt when you were going to have an orgasm. It started to branch out slowly, seeming to filter into my organs.

Sans' tongue was in my mouth and his body was against me and I could feel it, feel all of it, like he was inside me. He had crawled into my skin and made a home there and I was inside him too.

The tendrils of pleasure were reaching out farther every second. My whole torso was overtaken and it was crawling into my shoulders. Once it reached my crotch it all intensified. I moaned into his mouth and it multiplied once more. I didn't know where my limbs were, what they were doing, but I knew that Sans was a part of me and that if we just stayed like this forever, I was totally cool with it.

Finally, the tensing found the tips of my toes, of my fingers, of every strand of hair. I wasn't convinced that I could open my eyes even if I had wanted to, seeing as I didn't think I could move at all.

My body felt wound up, ready to pop. I was covered in Sans, and I could hear him moaning loudly in my ear—

And then it started to get warm. The warmth spread the opposite direction that the tension had—it started in my feet and hands and crept inwards. Everywhere it touched there was a pulsating feeling.

"God, Ri, you feel good."

Somehow, it hadn't really occurred to me that we could speak. I tried to, but my mouth felt heavy, full of cotton. I was fine with it. Everything was fine.

Somehow, in the midst of all the physicality, I was mostly just glad that Sans was there, against me. I could feel how glad he was to have me there too and there was nothing I needed more than that.

The warmth spread faster than the tension had. It was already part of my entire body—thrumming, pounding, begging for a release I didn't know how to get.

"God," I muttered.

"Not quite," Sans whispered, and I let out a quiet chuckle that turned into a moan. It was hard to explain what about it even felt good. Not being able to pinpoint the pleasure was disorienting—it was everywhere and it was dissimilar to anything I had felt before.

Then, for a moment, everything stopped. Like all the nerves in my body turned off for a moment and I couldn't feel anything at all.

"I love you," I found myself murmuring—unsure if Sans was even there anymore.

But then he chuckled, a bass chord thrumming in my chest, and he said, "I love you too."

And then it happened.

Something inside of me exploded, like fireworks in my soul, burning through my synapses like fire, white hot and uncontainable.

"Fuck," I heard Sans hiss, and I tightened my arms around him, suddenly sure of where he had been against me all along.

The feeling began to die down. My limbs grew a little cooler and my muscles all unwound, feeling better than they ever had.

I opened my eyes again and was jarred by the fact that we were back in my room. Sans' face was in my shoulder and his breathing was thundering in my ears. He didn't seem like he really felt like moving and I felt the same.

I draped my arms over him and just lie there, eyes closed. I felt tired now. Content. My nethers were no longer pulsing with need, so it seemed that the Bonding had taken care of that.

"Hey, Sans," I said.

He groggily lifted up his head. "What is it, Rye Bread?"

"Could we get under the covers?" After having been so hot before, I was feeling the absence of that heat more than you would expect in mid-July.

He slowly but surely pried himself off of me and we crawled to the other end of the bed. My limbs felt heavy and lazy as I pulled the sheets over us. He then nuzzled into my side.

"That was nice," I said.

"Yeah?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah."

"And next time, we can try it your way," he said. "Maybe at the club."

"I'd like that," I replied, pulling him closer to me as I let myself fall asleep.