Chapter Text
The internet was pretty small.
Well, the Undernet was, the one they have access to.
Sure, the Underground itself was vast and monsterkind similarly big, inhabiting every part of the cave system, but it never felt actually… crowded. Not all of them have access to the web. Not everyone cares about it. So it wasn’t small per see, but with the limited amount of people and their knowledge, it also wasn’t impossible to run out of information or content on a certain topic.
Still, it was a technological miracle. Courtesy of all the smart minds of monsterkind, important and brilliant monsters, some of them having also worked on projects like the Core itself.
The ability to bother people and mess with them, any and all the time, right at his fingertips?
Fun.
After Sans ate himself through all the information he found interesting and all the new human things monsters rescued from the dump and uploaded, he settled on just scrolling through people’s posts. Random and everyday things, the occasional movie review, debate on new products, recipes, theories. He’d comment on some, or post his own jokes sometimes, if just for the virtual groans under them.
It was more than enough for a while.
But time continues passing.
He wasn’t actually trying. He was just messing around with a few things in Alphys’ lab. She asked him to help out and double check something for her, and while he was reluctant at first, in a bored evening he relented. Just check a couple numbers, recount things, run a few tests for the hundredth time. She was smart, whatever this little project of hers was didn’t actually need Sans’ help.
He wasn’t gonna cause trouble, not really. Just a harmless prank as pay for his efforts.
It didn’t mean to turn out with him sweating bullets, standing over a few broken electronics, split cables sizzling for seconds before the fuses get blown. He wasn’t a tech guy, but messing up this bad was way out of the possibilities.
His phone getting damaged in the process was the least of his problems.
He cleaned up well, did his best to fix what he could, and awkwardly left Alphys an explanation.
The admittedly old phone had its problems. For a while now. But getting a new one wasn't worth the effort when it functioned just alright. After his incident though, he was almost ready to change.
Almost. It would have been a safer bet to ask his friend to fix it, but considering the little disaster he left her, he decided against asking for favours for a bit.
Now, was it smart of him to tinker with something like this? No. Was it a responsible choice after seeing the results of his earlier meeting with electronics? Also no.
Was he shocked and frozen for a long few minutes when he hooked it up to his laptop to check the damages to the software, and —while there were some of those— instead found his connection to the Undernet messed up?
Messed up, in the way that he was connected to something else. Slow and barely working, but connected nonetheless.
At least his theory of human’s having something similar was proved right.
Just… way bigger than ever imagined.
The first few things he looked up admittedly weren’t that important. But who knows how long would this fragile connection last? Maybe it wouldn’t be available for long enough to actually do some important and meaningful research. So just as a test, he looked for that old sci-fi series he found a DVD of months ago.
He found plenty of details about it. Airing date, the actors, the history of its shooting. Everything neatly packaged into a site, with a plethora of links leading to other pages for explanation. One thing led to another, and instead of whatever plans he had for that night —sleep— he spent it all down in a rabbit hole of a wiki of unrelated subjects.
Time slowly passed, hours becoming days and days turning to weeks. It became obvious that it wasn’t just a lucky few hours.
On some days the internet would be faster. He could attempt to watch videos uploaded onto websites. On others, it wouldn’t even connect.
Among his discoveries, was the fact that being in a virtual room with millions of people… gives one way more anonymity than you could get in a smaller community where everyone knows each other.
It was reassuring. Exciting.
Some people were dumb. Some completely insane. Others smart or very funny.
His jokes and puns were mostly received the same. Some found them unoriginal. Some were annoyed. Others delighted. He relished in the few occasions he’d gone back and forth with someone else. It also provided a wonderful learning experience, and if he stole some of the jokes to tell to the lady on the other side of the door, or slip in during his comedy shows, well… It's more important to pay respect than royalties.
The little green circle that is usually next to the profile pictures was missing. It has been for a few days now.
It isn’t a big deal. People have lives. They are busy. He knows that. And it isn’t like he can’t talk to anyone else. He has his brother, his friends, neighbours, people at Grillby's.
If that didn’t do it, and he so wanted to, he could post something and there surely would be people reacting, maybe some of the usual usernames would pop up. Hell, if he was really desperate, he could just message someone out of the blue, see how that’d go.
But it isn’t really about the need for socializing, as much as he’d like to convince himself.
The missing green dot is bothering him. The lack of posts is bothering him. The absence of that username in his notifications is bothering him.
You usually didn’t disappear for so long, not without a heads-up, or at least without a reference to anything upcoming.
He started talking to you a month or so ago. Scrolling through posts, for a few seconds his attention was grabbed by a drawing, quickly recognizing the character it depicted. He knows that game. A short one, he played through it in one or two hours. It was nice, not perfect, but he did enjoy it.
On the picture was the protagonist, and her dog, happy and playing together, unlike the actual ending of the game.
Under the picture, in the comments, the words ‘shame this ending is not paw-sible cus they look fetching’ were left.
Initially he didn’t think much about it. Then, over time, he was met with similar posts. Drawings. Short opinions. Theories. Probably the algorithm showing him stuff based on posts he once liked.
He isn’t sure when he decided to just follow you. Unsure when you first addressed his comments. When he typed the pun into the private message section instead of the comments.
You were fun. Although at first there was an attempt made for awkward pleasantries, after a few more times that got chucked out the window. The messages were filled with shared posts, pictures, memes, banter and swearing. Keysmashes. Those were fun, it was almost as if he could feel the laughter sometimes.
It wasn’t a huge secret that you had your own share of problems. You politely kept yourself from ever loading it on him. Or even just actually talking about it. You eluded, but never gave exact details.
He never pushed, a boundary is a boundary, and personal life is personal life.
He felt weird, if only because you were alright with sharing literally anything else, were alright with going along with his jokes, were alright with it when the conversation slipped into questionable territory for the sake of a bit.
Blame it on his curiosity. But hey, it’s not like it’s his responsibility. You can take care of yourself just fine.
It’s in no way or form his responsibility how a stranger he never even met is doing.
The green dot doesn’t come back that night.
But when the next evening he sees it alongside with your reaction to the last picture he sent you, Sans is grinning in the dim light of the screen.
Unusually restless, sitting on the edge of the old and crappy mattress, Sans is bouncing one of his legs. It is completely unlike him to act like this. He knows that of course, and that is somehow what’s bothering him. That he shouldn’t be this worked up over a call. He shouldn’t be annoyed over his nerves. For stars’ sake, he doesn’t have nerves, so how does this look?
The idea of an actual call was casually thrown in during chatting, then quickly forgotten. Promptly buried between memes and texts.
But just because it’s out of sight, it doesn’t automatically mean out of mind.
For that suggestion to happen, things had to line up. And well. They did not do that often.
Your schedules had to be taken into consideration. Judging by your usual reaction time and the hours you two are usually awake, you were in a different timezone. That was a concept Sans had to wrap his head around. The Underground didn’t have anything even remotely similar to that.
Then there is this other problem. The thing itself that made this possible in the first place. Because his connection to the internet was simply just unreliable at best and nonexistent at worst. In other words, less than ideal for a call.
This evening though, seemingly the stars took pity on him for once and lined up. Somewhere out on that dark sky he can only dream of seeing in person. Talk about cosmic joke.
‘Give me a minute, gotta take care of smth, can talk after’
The message was sent 10 minutes ago. There is a thumbs up emoji under the text bubble that he reacted with.
You said ‘a minute’. Just quickly taking care of something.
The message was sent 15 minutes ago.
Surely that ‘minute’ has already passed.
Bone clicks against plastic. Rhythmically drumming on the side of the phone case, he wills his leg to stop bouncing, unaware of the nervous habit having been substituted with another.
The seconds tick by, turning to minutes, yet there is no incoming call.
Maybe the connection is poor again.
It always is, but it worked earlier today, surprisingly running smoothly all things considered. A thumb is pressed to the top of the screen, slowly pulling down until the arrow curling into itself appears. He lets up, and the page refreshes in seconds without problem.
His mouth tastes weird.
For a second he almost believed it would work, but just his luck, of course he gets his hopes up for nothing, like a cruel joke—
Sans doesn’t mean to press the button. His thumb has been hovering over it for a few minutes now, but he did not mean to accidentally let his finger brush against the screen.
There goes the fiddling and drumming. Suddenly frozen like a statue, straightened up, eyelights gone. He is acutely aware of the sweat-beads on his skull rolling down agonizingly slowly.
The call rings out, once, twice—
It is picked up surprisingly quickly. So quickly that it makes one wonder how far was the person from the phone to begin with.
The phone beeps when the call connects. The screen shows the number, under it in smaller letters a counter starting, digits slowly climbing with the silent moments drawing out.
When Sans stopped his otherwise unnecessary imitation of breathing is a mystery.
“… sooo… is this the time when you reveal this has been a setup and you’re actually not who you pretended to be?”
His voice is tighter than he planned for it to come out as, and therefore probably missing the mark on coming off as casual.
His mind unhelpfully supplies him with the plan to deal with the consequences. He’ll have to stop with the messages, and it’d probably be a good idea to just stay out of your notifications in general—
There is laughter coming from the other end of the line, a sound that kickstarts his breathing again with a hitch. It has a note of exhaustion to it, but it is very much a possibility that he’s just making things up at this point. A little awkward, a little caught off guard. The noise is somewhat garbled and scratched up by the unsteady channel that connects him to you. Not that it matters much, because it is snickering. In the dark of his messy room, it bounces off the walls not dissimilar to the way it does in his head, repeating over and over again until it’s unrecognisably distorted and faint.
“H-how did you guess?”
Oh.
Oh. So that’s how you actually sound.
The awkward and cold sweat he was suffocating in is melted away by the heat of magic rushing through his bones. And back are his eyelights, white lights pinned to the phone. As if there’s anything to see on the screen.
“I hate to disappoint you, but yes, I might need to admit something… I am… just two dogs in a trenchcoat.”
The line crackles a little bit, and he almost instinctively tries moving the phone around, lying down on his mattress in case the reception is better somewhere. Moving the phone gives him an excuse to buy a few seconds of time to actually start his brain again and formulate an answer.
“heh, could have fooled me, thought you were three dogs. but just two? i dunno, might be a deal-breaker not gonna lie pal…”
It’s easy to get you snickering. There is an audible exhale of air, followed by what he assumes are attempts to muffle the noises.
He grins, this one way easier than the one he was trying to keep up earlier.
Already lying on the mess that is his bed, he shifts around to get more comfortable, back pressed against the wall.
“dogs huh… what breed?”
“H-huh?” comes through the confused reply, before you try again. “Oh. Uhm… No clue, I wasn't—”
The rustling and similar noises that come from the speaker probably mean you decided to move as well. Where are you moving? Your room maybe, like he is? Or maybe you’re out somewhere. He tries focusing more on the sounds, but is unable to make out anything that would be background noise. So maybe you’re alone?
“Deciding which dog breed represents me is a pretty big task. ”It’s not his fault he’s trying to stifle his own laughter. “It needs to be… thoroughly… A lot of thought… put…”
By the end you trail off, distracted.
“S-sorry— You’re messing with me dude, you do not sound like that without a voice changer.”
The exasperation and bafflement in your voice breaks the dam. Solid ribcage expands for unneeded air, shoulders shaking with mirth, and he’s chuckling like he has just heard the best joke in his life.
“nope, sorry to disappoint buddy, no funny business here,” he gets out between two breaths.
“That— No, you're kidding—”
He adjusts himself for the umpteenth time, one leg bent and pulled up as he rests an elbow on his knee, the phone still gripped in his hands like something fragile and precious.
“Uhm… Pfff, sorry, just—” The line cuts off with a weird electronic crunching noise, the edges of his smile tightening in displeasure.
“hold on, i, uhhh… didn’t catch that.”
Judging from the garbled and muffled sounds he can pick up, you’re attempting to either repeat yourself, or fix the problem. It takes a couple of seconds before the line clears again with an awkward hum of curiosity from you.
“Didn’t…? Oh. Oh, it's nothing, I just said I didn’t imagine you to sound like this.”
‘Like this’.
Echoing around in his skull, the words throw him off guard slightly, but your light tone thankfully makes it so he cannot overthink the connotations behind them. That was surprise in your voice. Mixed with — dare he admit — something pleased.
What does he sound like to you?
Sans huffs as if to shoo the thoughts away, already having something else in mind.
“what? did you maybe expect the LegendaryFartmaster69 to sound something more like…” trails off the word then is followed by sound of blowing raspberries into his palm.
He barely even lifts the hand away from his mouth before his brain catches up in the next few mortifying seconds.
What did he just do.
Why.
It hasn’t been longer than 10 minutes since the call is going. With a stranger. A human. A funny and sweet and nice person.
And with every moment drawing out torturously long, the temptation to start bashing his skull into the wall grows greater.
Barely audible over his mental self-berating, is a muffled mix of a snort and a groan.
“Incredible. You’re awful. Just… horrible.” Your cheeks hurt from the effort to keep your smile back.
While he feels like burying his face into his pillows and wallowing in his shame for the next week.
“i knew i should have used the whoopee cushion…”
Oh yeah, because that would have been so much better. He winces at even just the idea.
But you haven’t hung up yet, moreover, you’re making noises of amusement and exasperation.
“Noo, you don't— You have one? Seriously? And I thought this bit was just part of your online persona or something! But in real life as well? Wait, wait, have you actually used that one somebody, or you're pulling my leg?”
Maybe he’ll have to reschedule his burial.
“uh, buddy, what’s the point of a whoopee cushion if you don’t use it?”
“God... Okay, fair.”
And there you go again with your muffled exhales of air.
“Wow. You must be very nice company.” You pause for a few seconds as you move, or at least he thinks that’s what you’re doing from the limited things he catches over the phone. “So. How long have you been waiting to make that joke?”
“hard to say. since i had that username.”
“How did you even snag that one? It's awful. Talk about childish. I would have thought it was already taken…”
“yeah, so the guy who had it before me? we compared sound bites and he had to admit being unworthy of the title, bestowing it to its rightful bearer instead.”
He has to stop talking before thinking. Like, right about now.
On the other side of the call, you're rubbing your temples as you groan in exasperation.
“Why do I even ask, god, I cannot bear this much longer…”
The words, no matter how low or mumbled, reach him before you can attempt cover them up.
In the following few but long seconds of silence, you pray he either did not catch that, or he didn’t pick up on it. That was his thing. You can count on one hand how many jokes or puns you made ever since first talking to him.
The calm before the storm, supplies your mind. And when low cackling starts coming through the call, you know you weren’t that far off.
“I’m hanging up…”
He is now certain and convinced that this call was a great idea.
“heh, oh come on we bear-ly even started.”