#castle.

Presents have, occasionally, been a problem. He loves to give them. She loves to give them. It’s on the receiving end that things can get tricky. Or could get tricky? That’s part of the problem: He’s not quite sure how to identify tricky. He's not quite sure of the rules about frequency, opulence, price point, conceptual complexity, MPAA rating. 

Actually, that last one is certainly not true: There are no rules about MPAA rating, as evidenced by the fact that from very early on she has been completely unabashed about gifts, big and small, that would make a lesser man bashful. And since his birthday, the penultimate gloves are off, as well. He has laptop files and notebooks and smart boards requiring Little-Miss-Nosy-defeating two-factor-authentication, and they're all just full of his nascent Rube Goldbergian plans to outdo her in revenge  for his birthday. But the other aspects have been a problem—are still a problem. 

He had run into frequency problems almost right away—and initiation-of-gift-giving problems, come to think of it. Right after that first night, she’d made an offhand remark about the prevailing temperature in the loft, and he’d immediately had a brand new smart thermostat installed, one that supported an app compatible with her absolute dinosaur of a phone, that still supported the kind of security where not all users could see all other users with access. 

In retrospect, that one might’ve ticked all the problem boxes and invented some new ones, but in his heart of hearts, he still thinks he deserves a little credit for not replacing her phone outright and adding her to the long-term friends and family plan. And in the darkest corner of his mind, he wonders if it hurt her that he took such measures to keep them in the closet with his mother and Alexis. He worries that she was somehow unaware that he absolutely wanted to shout it from the rooftops that they were together, starting with a rooftop very close to home indeed. 

And from there it was orchids—orchids enough to fill her apartment, rotated out and then back in again every few days. And then it was pure self-preservation to sprinkle in a reasonable, grown-up person’s coffee maker, sheets that had never seen a queen-sized futon or the inside of a dorm room, towels that wouldn’t chafe away all his favorite bits of her magnificent skin. 

So initiation, frequency, opulence and price point—he has often stood guilty as charged. And he certainly learned his conceptual complexity lesson on Valentine’s Day. (As for MPAA rating, a gentleman never tells, but she is certainly less concerned about infractions across the board for gifts in this category.) But he has gotten his share of heavy looks for all his many sins. Worse still, he has weathered those moments when what he just had to make a gift of has been too much or too soon or both and she shrinks into herself. He hates himself when that happens.

For her part, she has a gift for gifts that was apparent from early on. And he’s not speaking of gifts of the no-one-under-eighteen-admitted variety. He’s not solely speaking of those. 

Before he’d even thought of the coffee maker for her place, she’d presented him, in bed and with great fanfare, with an oversized mug with with Writer stenciled in the same font as his vest all the way around the bowl. She had filled to the brim with coffee from fancier beans than she’d apparently  been in the habit of bothering with at home. In retaliation for the towels, she’d gotten him an As Seen on TV TurbiTwist, and her enough-with-the-orchids move had been a squirt to the face from a joke flower from Drake’s Magic Shop that she had then presented him with.

From there, it’s been a steady—and masterfully irregular—stream of thoughtful, charming things that have showed up at at the loft, her place, even the precinct, tucked away in her desk drawer, and it touches him. He is not used to—has never had occasion to become used to—a partner as thoughtful as she turns out to be. 

Meredith had her grand gestures, Gina her well-coordinated spectacles, and both had a tendency toward public display. Kyra was thoughtful with him, he was thoughtful with Kyra, but it had all the awkward tension of her old money and his new, wrapped up in the general stupidity endemic to the barely twenty crowd.

But he’s never before had the lovely intimacy of the kinds of gifts she gives, whether they're sincere or funny or both at the same time. And it turns out that he's not especially good at being on the receiving end. 

He’s touched every time, by every gift, to such an extent that even he, legendary softie that he is, blushes at it. He blurts out You shouldn’t have, You don’t have to or he overplays the competition angle. He does any of a dozen other wrong, ungrateful-sounding things, and it's so stupid, because he loves everything about getting gifts from her. 

He’s getting better with practice. 

She gave him a bookmark just a few days ago. A really good bookmark. It's wood, etched and dyed to look like the hilt of a light saber, and he didn’t tell her she wasn't allowed to get him anything so close to his birthday. He didn’t blurt out that she must feel really guilty about not getting him a real one for Valentine’s Day. He did blurt that it was the coolest, and then he ran around fencing with it, complete with appropriate sound effects. And she had smiled that all-over smile that’s a little dorky and definitely in his top five favorites. So he's getting better. 

Or he was getting better. But now they're in bed and she's just snatched the Bigfoot book out of his hands, the one she's been needling him over. She's snatched it out of his hands, and even so—even though she’s a scandalous dog-earer of pages who doesn’t see the point in bookmarks—she slips that light saber bookmark out from where he’s tucked it against the back cover. She carefully slips it between the pages so he won't lose his place, and he honestly might cry at the sweetness of the gesture. 

He loves it so much, he honestly might cry, but thank God, she kisses him just in the nick of time. 

A/N: Does it count if I, in all likelihood, hallucinated the bookmark? Hmmm

It’s not even his, a thing built for those of stature, of grace and nobility, of worth and the ability to lead. Not for a broken, tired creature like him, with bones that creak under the stress of a decision he made far too quickly. But does that mean he regrets it? No, not most nights.

But it’s in those few nights between that he spends here, in a garden of flowers he tends to like a promise, that he hates it, just so. His back bows, his phalanges crack, his smile slack. This is not where he belongs, and he knows it, having left that decrepit crown he stole sit on the arm of that mighty seat, wanting nothing more than to let it rot.

Or for familiar hands, large and furred, to reach and take it, settling it between curling, ivory horns.

… Wishful thinking. It’ll get him nowhere.

He's been told it fits him, but he'd damn near beg to differ.

Sans does his best to focus on other things, instead.

The watering can in his hands is a thin metal that could bend so easily under his touch, a can the late king once held, and he more watches than waters, droplets shaking from petals to the ground below. Watching, waiting - getting lost in his thoughts.

The earth is soaked, the smell reminding him of a place far on the other end of this kingdom of his. It always surprises him, the way sunlight can stretch through the barrier like a tender touch, creeping through the long hall between him and the world outside.

There are few, precious hours in which these flowers get light. Sunrise to just past noon, where the sun reaches past the peak far above and makes the rest of its trip, leaving the throne room in shadow.

And yet, they grow beautifully all the same, reaching upwards, as if they care not for the temptation. Resilient blossoms, a look alike to the poisonous buttercups that grow in swathes elsewhere.

He hates it.

Sometimes he expects to see Asgore standing there tending to the flowers beside him, picking out the snails that threaten their care, to hear his voice chiding how the jokester is overwatering his plants, but never with malice. To be fair, he can hardly recall the amount of times he's been here, cup after cup of tea.

Rumbling laughter at his jokes, a guiding paw to his shoulder blades when they sag, a gentle word to his addled mind.

Sans falters.

Would Asgore have wanted this?

Would he have approved of the way Sans had done what he thought best? Or was he no better from the grieving king, misjudged and misguided, letting his fear and anger guide him?

Did he scream the way sans had, when he lost it all?

Did he find no solace in these flowers, despite how desperately he tried?

What would he do if he were here, and not dead by his own hand?

The sound of shrieking metal stops him.

Blinking, Sans finds the metal handle of the watering can bent and being ripped under his phalanges, his teeth baring into a frustrated smile. Then, a low sigh, and he eases his grip, standing straight.

Wishful thinking.

It breaks things, monsters and others alike.

It doesn't matter if Asgore could have seen this coming or not, a broken judge turned executioner in his place, jokes robbed and left with nothing but a kingdom at his back. He’s dead, and all that remains are the pieces he left behind to be picked up one by one.

He makes for the throne and sets the watering can at the foot of such an ornate thing, phalanges trailing, hesitating. It takes a moment, two, before he finally touches that cold crown, frozen upon his skull. He has no warmth, no fur, to keep it any other way.

The jewels glisten menacingly as he picks it up, light in his hands. Bendable, breakable, just like the watering can.

It fits, but sans hates it.

He's not sure he can sleep now, but he'll never get anything done with these bags under his eyes, deepening by the day. Someone will get him a new watering can, or they won't.

He hopes they won't.

 The next day is a harrowing affair.

He has far too many meetings he doesn't care for first thing in the morning, far too many disputes to settle, and more than enough urgent reports that turn out to be nothing more than the “kingdom crisis” equivalent of a stubbed toe.

He's really over this king thing.

It's after those slew of meetings he's offered something to eat, but more often than not he doesn't have the appetite nor focus to even keep sipping at a bottle of ketchup as he works over paper after paper just begging for his signature or approval.

And while sans is exhausted, and the once self-proclaimed lazybones everyone had once known, he does not skirt his work. Not this, not when one misread or skimmed paper drafted by his advisors would mean less food supply over power, or vice versa.

He has to be careful, and he weighs everything he's given as a judge should.

Fairly.

Most of his early afternoons are spent this way, but it's thankfully the evenings that belong more or less to himself. He's only recently gotten those pesky guards of his to stop following him, loyalists beyond all else. It’s fair to say with the death of Asgore the public had concerns, worries, and more than enough contentions to abide the matter. And while Sans is grateful for their worry of losing yet another, he’s more than capable, and yet it took a demonstration just to be sure he wouldn’t have to worry about a panic whenever he snuck off.

He can’t blame them. As far as the Underground knows, Asgore disappeared, and it’s more than widely accepted it was the human who killed him.

Sans has done nothing to help these rumors. And why should he?

It’s another day he finds himself disappearing the moment his detail’s back is turned, from one archway to the next, stepping through the world from place to place. Seamless, the transition from stone walls and stained glass lit by artificial sunlight, to a world of ice and snow.

It may not be New Home, but it’s his home.

His feet crunch through the snow, and while he feels the cold against his bare tarsals, it doesn’t upset him. Sans can feel the temperature, but isn’t miffed by it, making slow headway past a sentry station that’s been re-polished and now homes a gently snoozing Doggo. Normally, Sans would say something.

But he only steps through the world again, and finds himself yards away, beyond a familiar, broken bridge.

It’s snowing as it always is. Gentle, lazy snowfall that never ceases to make him feel at ease, even if just so. It’s the place he grew up, had a family, a home. The once-prankster can’t even help the way his teeth curve, a smile on that skull of his.

It isn’t long until he sees the door.

The Delta Rune that’s become his life is stamped on the masonry, carved in as permanently as it’s stitched on his clothes. Idly, he wonders if she’ll answer. Sans also wonders if she’s dead, too, if her silence means anything.

Maybe she thinks he’s dead, for all his silence means anything.

And yet he can’t help himself. When he finds himself before those stone doors, he reaches out a hand, as he’s done, day by day, for weeks, months. But he doesn’t rap his knuckles, no. Instead the flat of his palm finds the stone, strangely warm in this cold, freezing world, and he sighs, a sound whittled between his smiling teeth.

Not today.

He’ll find himself laying with his back against the door soon enough, waiting. Listening.

Not a sound.

 Eventually, he’ll have to go back. Dinner, and then another restless night pacing the halls.