Chapter Text
Green.
The color of grass, of leaves, of clovers…
What a stupid color.
You hated green.
It had ruled your life from the moment you were born in a small village of farmers: cats and dogs flocked around you, birds came to rest on your shoulders, horses calmed down and one time when you brought the sheep to pasture a freaking unicorn showed up to put his muzzle on your head. The dumb thing also tried to munch on your hair while you were busy freaking out. That had been disturbing.
Of course, animals weren’t the real problem; sure, they were obnoxious and you would have liked to be able to walk two minutes without tripping on something furry, but what screwed your life thoroughly was the magnet effect your green soul had on spirits, magical creatures, and monsters.
As it turned out, kindness was a soul trait that made the person who had it very pleasant to be around on normal conditions, and very yummy if the conditions weren’t so normal and the trait was in excess.
And ooooh boy, did you have it in excess.
Supposedly, your aura had a soothing and healing factor that explained why injured animals tended to gather around you like you were the furry rightful ruler, but you didn’t have control over it, it just radiated from you and made you a giant glowing target for monsters in search of a midnight snack.
No one could do anything about it, not your family, nor your friends of fellow villagers. The only reason why you were still alive was that…
Why were you still alive?
Oh, yes.
Tomatoes.
Apparently, tomatoes were the ultimate weapon against spirits and monsters, go figure.
Not garlic, not salt, not religious symbols, not chicken blood.
Tomatoes.
With that, your existence was officially a joke.
So, that was your current life: living alone in a meadow, in a small wooden house so overflowing with cats and small injured animals that it was difficult to move around, with monsters and nightmarish creatures moaning not too far away because they wanted to eat your soul but couldn’t get close because you kept tomatoes and tomato sauce everywhere.
You thought that you were at the lowest low of your existence and things couldn’t possibly get worse, until one morning you opened your front door and found a long huge blue snake-skeleton lamia thing snoozing at your feet without a care in the world.
Rock, meet bottom.
The creature lazily opened an eye-socket, revealing a white dot of light pointed at your face, then it opened its mouth and a forked blue tongue darted out in your direction.
“hey there, pal. my name’s sa-”
You slammed the door shut.
Things.
You had many things to do inside your house.
So many in fact, that you wouldn’t need to go outside for today.
That thing would surely go away if you simply ignored it, right?
Wrong.
You kept an eye on it through the windows all day long, but it didn’t do much aside from sleeping and changing position from time to time.
It… didn’t seem much aggressive.
To be honest, it didn’t seem much alive either, but that was beside the point.
Why did it talk to you?
Monsters never did that, they didn't seem smart enough to be sentient and anyway always skipped to the "trying to eat you" part, so the fact that this one was actually able of speech kinda freaked you out.
What did it want?
Was it still there?
You peeked from the window for the hundredth time and oh gods it was still there why wouldn’t it go away???
A little before sunset, while you were chopping vegetables for the soup doing your best impression of someone who didn’t have a giant problem in the shape of a naga outside of their door, you heard knocking.
“Go away,” you said angrily out loud.
Knock knock.
“I’m not opening!”
Knock knock.
“Not. Opening.”
Knock knock.
Oh for the love of…
Knife still in hand, you slowly approached the door, half expecting it to being blasted to pieces at any moment.
“What do you want?”
There was no answer.
Instead, it knocked again.
“Are you kidding me? I’m right here! Say what you want and stop pestering me!”
Knock knock.
This… this…
Out of sheer frustration, and feeling like your brain was slowly starting to drip out of your ears, you knocked back.
See if it liked its own medicine.
“who’s there?”
…
“You… what… That’s what I want to know! Who the heck are you?”
“you what that’s what I want to know who the heck are you who?”
Yes, that was definitely your brain leaking drop by drop out of your skull.
You could feel yourself getting dumber by the second.
“You have three seconds to explain why you are in front of my house,” you said slowly. “Then I will start throwing tomato sauce at you.”
“… that was not very funny.”
“It was not meant to be!”
“the first part, i mean. i’m totally onboard with the second one.”
You thumped your head against the wooden surface.
“You know what? Forget it. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you want. Go away. Leave me alone. Please.”
There was silence on the other side, then…
“nope.”
Damn it!
“relax, kid. i’m not here to hurt you. you could say that i’m what you humans would call your neighbor.”
“So what? You live around here in the forest?”
“precisely. now, considering that you are a human with a delicious kindness soul, i should technically eat you, because that’s what i’m supposed to do.”
You took a couple of steps backward, clenching your fists. You knew it!
“but frankly, that would be such a pain. i’m a lazy guy, and i don’t like fighting.”
“Good for you. Ehm, nice to meet you. Happy to know you’re not going to eat me. Now you can go.”
“well, not so fast, buddy. you see, i don’t wanna eat you but the hot season is ending and i’m going to be both hungry and cold very soon, so i thought that we could be pals and help each other out.”
“Yeah, right, no. Sucks to be you, but if you survived until now I’m sure you have plenty of tricks up your sleeve, so you don’t need anything from me. As I don’t need anything from you.”
“aren’t you supposed to be… ehm, kinder?”
“Kind doesn’t mean ‘stupid’. How can I know you’re not going to eat me the moment I open this door?”
“well, the fact that there is still a door is pretty much a dead giveaway of my sincerity.”
“Maybe you’re too lazy to destroy it.”
You heard soft laughter.
“you’re a smart kid.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m an adult. And I’m still not letting you in.”
“very well pal, i’ll let you think about it for the next few days. all i’m asking you is a warm place to sleep at night and some tomatoes to eat from time to time. as for what you need me for, i think you’ll see with your own eyes. see ya.”
Maybe you were weak, maybe you were lonely, maybe you were stupid (no, scratch that, you were definitely stupid), maybe your brain had indeed abandoned you to go have fun somewhere else, but you ended up accepting the naga’s offer.
Why?
Well, it turned out that the slithering son of a snake was able to scare away all the other monsters and hungry creatures, even though you didn’t know how.
You just knew that when he was around they left you alone. In fact, you didn’t see any of them at all.
How? Who knew. He didn’t tell you, and you were too grateful to insist on asking anyway.
So, that was how you ended up sharing a home with a naga named Sans, with the understanding that once the winter was over, he would go back where he’d come from, or at least outside of your small house.
He was… strange.
He mostly slept all day, stretching lazily in the sun and waking up only to eat tomato sauce and trade a few jokes. When the sun went down, he slithered inside and curled up in front of the fire, watching you and petting the small animals that had followed you home that day.
Sometimes you didn’t see him all day and then he came home with a dead deer for you to cook. You weren’t sure how eating worked with him, since his top half was a skeleton, but since he did put food inside his mouth, you considered it good enough and left it at that. Asking questions about his anatomy was often a way to, as he would say, “tickle his funny bone”, and the answer would be most of the time a joke.
Physical contact was a strict no-no at first.
You might be sharing a home, but personal space had to be respected.
The problem was the night, because the fire died out inevitably at some point and Sans had no way to warm himself up, so you made him a nest of pelts and quilts at the foot of your bed, hoping that would be enough.
It wasn’t enough.
The days became shorter and colder, and Sans shivered more and more, his bones and tail acquiring a dull and pasty color and the shadows under his eye-sockets becoming more pronounced.
At last, you saw no other solution and allowed him to sleep in your bed, sharing your body warmth. He wrapped himself around you, covering you in coils from head to toe and snoring before you could even count to three.
It was not very comfortable at first, but with time you managed to get used to it, and Sans learned to not squeeze your body too much and let a bit of freedom to your movements.
Living with him was… not bad. He was an easy guy to get along with, and even though he had his quirks, like being too fond of practical jokes, finding human physiological needs hilarious, and having trouble comprehending that sometimes you just needed your privacy, you realized that you were growing rather fond of his presence.
Then, roughly one month and a half after you accepted him in your home, he started acting strange.
Well, strange for his standards, anyway.
At first, you had dismissed it like something peculiar but not alarming: a pelt neatly folded on the ground with a pillow next to it, food hidden in every nook and cranny of the house, your bed pushed completely against the wall. Then as the days passed you realized that Sans was rearranging everything he could reach. Which meant… well, everything.
All furniture was pushed aside, leaving a big space in the center of the room, all the pelts and even some of your clothes were placed in front of the fireplace, with a ton of food hidden between the layers, and a big portion of the wood you had prepared for the winter was stockpiled around all of that mess.
When asked what the heck he was doing, Sans simply answered: “dunno, feel like it.”
With all of your covers sacrificed into Sans’ “feel like it” project, you’d thought that sleeping would be impossible, but he was suddenly so warm that his body alone was enough to keep you hot all night.
In fact, you would have thought he was feverish if not for his assurance that he wasn’t sick.
Still, you were worried.
Then, one day, after you had been away for hours collecting berries and mushrooms, you came home and saw Sans curled up in his new nest, panting and groaning like someone was torturing him.
You left the sack beside the door and hurried to kneel beside him, hesitating when he turned around and hissed at you.
What the…?
You didn’t even have the time to process what had just happened that Sans relaxed his posture, laughing nervously. “ah… sorry, you caught me a little by surprise there.”
“Sans, what the hell is happening? Are you sick?” you asked starting to panic.
He was sweating bullets and his expression was one of someone in a lot of pain.
“don’t worry, i’m alright, i think i just need… ah… what did you call it? a little privacy?”
“You don’t need privacy, you need a healer!”
“told you, i’m not sick… it’s going to end soon.”
“End what? Your life?”
“i’m not dying…”
“Then what is happening?”
He didn’t answer you, curling even more tightly around himself and using his tail to push you backward out of his nest.
“Oh, sure!”you said angrily after being knocked on your butt. “Sure, send away the only person who could help you and who also happens to have a healing aura! Very smart thinking there, snake boy! Sorry if I’m worried about you!”
You got on your knees and crawled right back into his nest, climbing over coils and placing your hands on his shouderblades when you got in the center.
You felt him tense under you, so you started rubbing soothingly your hands over him, trying to focus your energy on your palms as you did with injured animals.
“Tell me if I’m touching something wrong, okay?”
Finally, after some tense seconds, Sans nodded.
You kept massaging him for what felt like hours, watching him periodically tense up and then relax, feeling the incredible warmth of his bones and ending up with his head in your lap and his arms wrapped around your waist.
What was happening to him?
You felt so helpless, so useless, so…
Wait… what was happening down there?
There, just below where his snake body began.
Something was changing… it was, like… opening…
And then, before your stunned and incredulous eyes, something round and blue pushed itself out of the opening.
Sans sighed softly in satisfaction, then he curled the end of his tail around the round thing, bringing it on your lap beside his head and falling promptly asleep.
W… W…
What the fuck?!?