Sans ambled down the street wearily, but happy. He held his trademark blue jacket over his shoulder, fingers looped into the hood. His combat boots clomped familiarly against the ground as he walked.

Voices were all around him, the residents of Hotland greeted him, cheered for him, welcomed him. Sans' grin widened. It was good to be home again.

He neared his house, the closest to the Lab, and his grin widened even farther. Two figures were standing in front of the two-floor building, one short, the other tall. The shorter was holding a sign with the words "WELCOME HOME SANS" painted on it in a child's hand with bright paints.

When the small monster spotted Sans, however, the sign was abandoned. He ran forward, shouting and laughing. "Sans!"

Sans knelt down and accepted his little brother's hug. "heya, pap." He laughed, holding Papyrus tightly.

Sans looked up, but did not relinquish his grip on his brother, as the taller monster joined them.

"hi, dad."

Gaster's scarred face split into a warm smile. "Sans. I am glad to see you home safely."

"heh. y'know? so am i." Sans stood, still holding Papyrus, who gave a happy squeak at being carried by his older brother. Sans allowed himself to be led to the house by Gaster.

He sighed as he stepped over the door threshold.

It was good to be home.

The first thing Sans did was excuse himself for a minute, and shortcut to his room. There, just as there always was when he returned, was a pair of freshly-laundered clothes sitting on his bed. A white teeshirt and a pair of gym shorts.

He undid the laces on his combat boots and started pulling off his clothes. Sure, the army fatigues worn by the Pure Army were just about the best you could want when you were on the warfront, what with being the same camouflaging, mottled purple-blue of Waterfall, having a multitude of pockets for carrying just about anything the commander of the Pure Army could ever want to carry in his pockets, and being Corrupt-Magic resistant (not to mention having a cool, purple, stylized Delta Rune on the shoulder, the insignia of the Pure Army), but when he was home, he much preferred his nearly-pajama-like clothes.

After pulling on the casual clothing and slipping on his jacket, he found a clean pair of socks in the top drawer of his dresser, and his fluffy pink slippers under the bed.

After donning his most casual of footwear, Sans slipped out the door, leaving his dirty clothes in a heap on the floor, where they would most likely remain until needed again.

Sans walked down the hallway, returning to the living room, where Papyrus was waiting. (Gaster had moved into the kitchen, preparing dinner.)

Sans flopped onto the couch, and grinned when Papyrus was nearly immediately snuggled lovingly against his side. He wrapped an arm around the small skeleton's shoulders. "so then," he began, smiling down at his brother, "i got your letter a couple days ago. you're already learnin' blue magic?"

Papyrus practically vibrated with excitement. "Yes! I can already turn Dad's Soul Blue! Soon, Sans, I will be able to go with you to Waterfall and help you fight!"

Sans' Soul gave a twinge at the thought of his little brother on the frontlines of the War, but he didn't show it. Instead he said, "but pap, if you leave to go fight in the war, who'll take care of dad, and me too when i come home?"

Papyrus frowned, one hand rising to his jaw. "Hmm. That is true. You would both be hopeless without me. Did you know that yesterday, Dad was working in his lab, and he would have forgotten lunch and dinner if I hadn't reminded him?"

Sans gave his brother's shoulder a squeeze, laughing. "yeah, y'see, bro? tibia honest, i'm just war-ried 'bout what would happen, what with dad and me workin' ourselves to the bone all the time. if you went to the war, who would take care a' us?"

Papyrus glared up at Sans. "That wasn't funny, Sans." He said.

"oh, i dunno. i thought it was-"

"Sans, don't."

"-pretty humerus."

"Sans, no!"

Before Sans could respond with one of the numerous puns he had ready, however, Gaster called them from the kitchen. "Boys! Dinner!"

Together, they scrambled off the couch and to the kitchen. Dinner, they found was, in celebration of Sans safe return home, hotdogs. The trio sat around a circular table, more or less evenly spaced around it. (If anyone noticed how Papyrus subtly scooted his chair just a little closer to Sans', no one mentioned it.)

Sans' first bite was taken amid a groan of pure bliss. Sure, after losing his bar in the Corrupt takeover of Snowdin, Grillby had endeavored to provide the Pure Army with the best food possible, but nothing beat a home-cooked meal, even if it was hotdogs. Or, rather, especially if it was hotdogs, considering that was Sans' favorite food.

As they ate, Gaster was the first to speak. "So then, how are things in Waterfall?"

"well," Sans paused a moment to take another bite of his hotdog, "we lost the artifact room, but that's okay, because no one could get in there anyway after the piano was destroyed. but we reclaimed the castle pass, so there's that. overall we're killing more of them than they are us. in the last two months, our average casualty rate hasn't risen past fifteen percent."

"That's good. What about your Magic?" It was a well-known fact that both of Gaster's sons had not been created by conventional means, and, in Sans' case, had not even been intended to be sentient. They were meant to be weapons, weapons to win the war. Upon learning of the war, Sans had readily taken to the experiments that had turned him into the fastest, strongest Pure Magic wielder around, but there were small... issues, on occasion, with his manufactured Magic. His visits home always served a dual purpose: rest from the war, and repair for his Magic.

"well," Sans took a moment to respond, "i'm either putting more force into my attack than i realize, or the blasters are leaking magic again."

"Hm. We can check on that tomorrow, once you've rested a bit."

Sans nodded. "yeah, alright." Then, "any progress on your end?"

Gaster shook his head. "No. Dust and Magic fragments aren't nearly enough to find a cure. I think I'll need a live test subject if I'm going to make any real progress."

Sans sighed. "heh. and i doubt any of 'em would make it easy for us."

"No."

"guess until you figure it out, we'll just have to stick to beatin' 'em up."

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Papyrus sprang from his seat, shouting, "I'll get it!" He ran from the kitchen into the hallway. From the kitchen, Sans could hear the door being thrown open, and Papyrus's enthusiastic "Hello!"

"H-hi, Papyrus." Alphys returned the greeting. "Y-your dad s-said Sans would be h-home today?"

"Yep! We were eating dinner." Papyrus walked back into the kitchen, guiding the reptilian monster by the hand.

"heya, al." Sans smiled at her.

"H-hello, Commander Sans-!"

"i'm not on duty right now, so just sans, please."

She gave a small nod, then seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"undyne's doin' great, if that's what you were gonna ask." Sans laughed. "absolutely fin-tastic."

Alphys relaxed visibly. "T-that's good!"

While they had been talking, Gaster had pulled a spare chair to the table from some corner of the house and gestured Alphys into it. "Please, have a seat."

Alphys nodded, doing as offered. "T-thank you, Sir." Gaster had long since given up on getting Alphys to address him more casually. They knew each other primarily from work, where Alphys was one of the scientists working under Dr. Gaster, and she always, always addressed him as "Sir".

"actually, alphys," Sans said as he started on his second hotdog, "i had a question i wanted to ask you. about undyne."

"O-oh?" Alphys blushed. "W-what's that?"

"i was thinking of promoting undyne to general. ever since gerson retired and i was promoted to commander, i've been looking for a good secondary command officer. d'you think she'd do well there?"

Alphys started to say yes, but Papyrus interrupted. "You mean Captain Undyne?!"

Despite the fish lady long since having been promoted to colonel, most monsters still knew her as Captain Undyne, the young warrior who had ruthlessly defended the entrance to Waterfall at the start of it's invasion, all by herself, while it's citizens evacuated. As she had been promoted to colonel while Sans was still a lieutenant, her name had been known for quite some time longer than Sans', and Papyrus, with just about any other monster child, admired her nearly as much as he admired Sans. (He also hadn't quite grasped it yet that Sans was not only Undyne's commander, but also her friend.)

Sans just laughed. "Minnow it!"

Papyrus just groaned and gave the skeletal equivalent of rolling his eyes.

As they finished their dinner, the conversation meandered off to what-have-you and whatnot. Things like how Mr. Flamesman had been 'defeated' a couple days ago, how a local group of kids had broken the window of some house, and payed for a new one. How Muffet had taken a half of her spider task-force from baking to helping make the fatigues worn by Army members, how Alphys's progress on her robot TV star-turned-warrior's new body was coming along. Eventually, as the Magic crystals in the Underground's ceiling began to dim, simulating nighttime, Alphys had to leave.

After cleaning up from dinner, the Gaster family collapsed together on the couch. Sans leaned happily against his father's side, his brother seated comfortably in his lap. Nearly an hour was filled with aimlessly browsing TV channels and contented, lighthearted, meaningless conversation.

Eventually, Gaster declared that it was way past Papyrus's bedtime. Papyrus pouted a little, but readily put on his pajamas when Sans promised to read him a bedtime story.

So Papyrus got ready for bed. Sans tucked him in, then walked over to the bookshelf against one wall, looking for the perfect bedtime story. He pulled one off the shelf and turned to walk back to Papyrus's bed, pausing a moment when he looked at his brother's face.

Papyrus was looking at him with wide eyesockets, his gaze filled with the quiet awe and worship a younger brother gives his older brother. The kind of look that told the elder that the younger thought the world of him, thought he was the biggest hero there was. The kind of look that told the elder he was looked up to.

The kind of look that made Sans feel like he could do anything, like he would do anything, all for the sake of the small skeleton in front of him.

Sans smiled and sat down on the side of the bed, lifting his right foot to rest on his left leg, balancing the book between them. He flashed Papyrus a quick grin, before opening the book.

"once upon a time," he began in a dramatic voice, "there was a fluffy bunny..."

~o0o~

Sans didn't finish the story. The combination of his voice tapering off and the jolt that went through the mattress as he fell sideways was enough to yank Papyrus out of his almost-asleep stupor.

The small skeleton sat up, rubbing his eyesockets, to find that Sans had fallen asleep and fallen over, book still clutched loosely in his hands. Quietly, Papyrus got out of bed and pulled the book from Sans' hands, and returned it to it's alphabetical place on the bookshelf. Then he climbed back onto his bed and, with no small amount of difficulty, pulled Sans all the way onto the mattress. Then he crawled back under the blankets, and snuggled against his softly snoring brother's side.

When Gaster came to see why Sans had spent two hours reading a story that normally took twenty minutes, he found his sons sleeping peacefully, cuddled together. Papyrus was pressed against Sans' side, skull resting on Sans' chest. Sans had an arm wrapped around Papyrus's shoulders. They both looked perfectly content with the sleeping arrangement, so Gaster elected to not move Sans to his room.

Instead, Gaster walked over to the bed. He tucked the pair in, gave them each a loving pat on the skull (as skeletons have some difficulty with kisses, what with having no lips,) and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.