Chapter Text
You remember the day monsters got to the surface.
It was a Tuesday, and you were exhausted after a long day of college classes and a shift at your part-time job. You were slumped on your couch, watching whatever was on TV—or rather, you were staring at the screen, zoned out—when out of nowhere the channel changed, showing urgent news. Your eyes focused on the images being shown, then they widened, and you sat up straighter.
Through the screen you could see a very bouncy and excited skeleton, who was greeting everyone cheerfully, accompanied by a... fish-looking person(?), a yellow reptile one, two big goat people, a regular kid and a smaller skeleton, who was practically staring at the sun. You briefly (and stupidly) wondered if that would hurt their eyes(??).
In the background, you could see other monsters approaching.
You read the words "MONSTERS RESURFACE AFTER CENTURIES! ARE THEY PEACEFUL OR-" You stop there, your eyes closing shut. You were tired enough to think you fell asleep while watching TV and were having a really strange dream.
Of course, you later learned that it was, in fact, not a dream.
And honestly, it was really cool that magic and monsters existed, and their integration into human society was generally going well. Except for the racists, of course, because why wouldn't there be racists? It really pained your heart sometimes to know humanity was like this.
A few months later, monsters started entering human schools and colleges. And since the one you went to was close to Ebbot, a lot of them went there. You were assigned a monster roommate, a fox monster called Lucie. You and she clicked immediately, and you taught each other all about the other's species. For the years that followed, you were basically attached at the hip.
When you finally got your Bachelor's degree in physics, Lucie got hers in culinary. She moved out to start working, and you stayed, determined to get your PhD in astrophysics. You two kept in touch, of course. Friends for life.
And that's when you met Sans.
You were assigned a new roommate, one in the same field as you. You weren't surprised when you found out he was a monster, but you were when you saw it was the short skeleton from the news almost 4 years ago. Turns out he was just a regular dude, a really smart and funny regular dude.
His brother had convinced him to redo his PhD after years of insisting. You were nice to him, and he was surprised that you already knew pretty much everything about monsters. But when he met your friend Lucy, it was clearer to him.
Fun fact about Sans: he is very friendly, but it takes a lot for him to trust people enough to actually consider them friends.
Slowly over time (especially after you met his brother and you guys became besties), he started considering you a friend. Then his best friend. Then by year three, you two were practically the same person. Unfortunate for your friends.
You were in the level of friendship where you could simply just look at each other and explode in laughter, or just know exactly what the other was thinking without communicating at all. Which was really useful for game nights.
You would say you and Papyrus were on the same level, except he was way easier to befriend. You both loved hanging out together, and sometimes Sans tagged along. And by tagged along you meant Papyrus carried him over his shoulder while he peacefully slept.
And by the time you two graduated and started working, you knew everything about each other (yes, including the resets). And you knew very well that Sans didn't ask for actual help very often. Neither did you, to be honest. You both just didn't need it that much.
So you also knew that when he did, it was serious.
You answered his call.
"hey, uh..." He said, his voice nervous and strained. You could practically see his hands figdeting and the sweat on his skull on the other side of the phone. "can you come to the lab? i, uh, need some help. kinda urgent. please."
One would say you teleported from how quickly you got there.