Sans AU One-Shots

Dust || silent hill.

Pairing: Dust/Murder Sans x Reader
Prompt: Dust has a secret nerdy obsession with video games and their lore, and late one night you wake up and crawl into bed with him to watch him play, not realizing how badly he needs you in his arms.
Type: video game spooks & nerdy facts, angst, comfort
Length: 3.4k words
Background: Your role in Nightmare's castle is unspecified, so you could be the cook, nurse, femme fatale, assassin, therapist, adopted human, or whatever you want since it plays no part in the story. I'm not paid to figure out those details - especially when I've got everything else to worry about instead.
Notes: I watched Jacksepticeye's Silent Hill 2 remake playthrough, and on my way home from my nighttime job, the whole town was blanketed by a thick fog that my car headlights couldn't pierce. So you can probably guess what video game Dust was conveniently in the mood to play and nerd out about 🤭 | Requested by a lovely reader. 

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I awoke to the sound of something heavy hitting the floor in the bedroom next to mine, and since my light sleep was already broken, I slid out of bed on quiet feet and wrapped my blanket around my shoulders before venturing out into the hall. I padded over to Dust's door and tapped my knuckle against it to a beat only he would recognize, as it mimicked Silent Hill 2's theme. But after waiting several seconds, he didn't come to open up. Growing concerned, I cracked the door so a thin strip of light led my eyes to where Dust sat on his bed.

His hood was back, hoodie loosely clinging to his shoulders like it too was exhausted from a poor night of sleep, and his eyelights were smoking and hazy. One sock had fallen off the bed while the other covered only his toes as he sat crisscross, and at the sudden bright light from the hall, his gaze snapped to me.

"Hey, Dust," I whispered, my voice thick with sleep as I trudged inside and shut the door behind me. The only light now was from his eyes and the TV, which he had on as he gripped a controller in one hand, and his gaze followed me all the way to his side. Wordlessly, he scooped me onto his bed with one arm, tucking me against his chest and resting his jaw on my head. I got comfortable in his lap, already feeling sleep call to me once more, but I was stopped by a noticeable tremor in Dust's bones.

I leaned to the side so I could look up at him, watching him pointedly stare over my head at the TV as he wrapped his arms around me to hold the controller in front of both of us as he played. "Is everything ok?" He didn't answer - he wasn't the type to open up, never had been, but he also wasn't the type to be so shaken up that he physically shook too. "Did the Boss assign you to a new mission?" My voice was quiet, soft, but it betrayed my anxiety all too easily.

"No." He used his arm to push me back to the center of his lap and rested his head on mine to keep me there, so I relented and watched him play the Silent Hill 2 remake for the seventh time. We both were sucked into the game's atmosphere, undeniably creepy with unhinged monsters awaiting us in the fog, and even after all this time, it still managed to scare us. I sometimes wondered how a mad killer like Dust was able to be spooked by a video game, even one as good as this one.

He controlled the protagonist with practiced ease, checking off every task required of him to advance to the next section, but I wasn't able to ignore his trembling bones even after they finally stilled. I thought about asking several times, the words prodding at the inside of my lips, but it never felt like the right time. Dust didn't voluntarily talk about it, and I didn't want to bring it up, not when he pulled me against his chest so quickly to avoid me seeing the look in his sockets. But he wasn't quite quick enough.

Those sapphire and crimson lights flickered with pain and grief of a caliber I hadn't seen from him for years. They told a story, one I only got a glimpse of before he tucked me against him like a human-sized stuffed animal, and while I knew I was helping just by being here, the desire to know what was bothering him picked at the back of my mind the longer I let it go unfulfilled. The eyes were the windows to the soul, one he didn't bare to me often, as his hood always draped perfectly over his skull so that his eyelights stayed shrouded in mystery.