The Smell of Old Books (Sans/Reader)

Potluck (It's Nice to Meet You!)

The apartment smelt the way your old childhood house had before mom died. It smelt like something baking, something warm and fresh and tasty.
From just the smell alone, you were quite delighted about your pumpkin casserole. While you weren't the best cook you knew – not by a long shot, it wasn't easy to screw up something as easy as a casserole. Besides, mom's recipes were thorough. She knew how bad your family was at cooking. She always knew exactly what to do.

Days like these were the days you missed her the most. Although it had been a good few years since she passed, it still stung deeply. She had been the one person there for you since, well, birth. You guessed that everyone would leave you somehow or another.

You found yourself contemplating if you should even go to this potluck. You hardly knew Undyne and Alphys, much less anything about their friends. The only thing you really remembered was that they had a friend named Papyrus who really loved spaghetti and had trained with Undyne in the Underground. And you were more than certain there would be more than just him.

It wasn't easy, being this antisocial. It was hard enough coming out of your comfortable, safe, little bubble to talk to anyone in the store. You shuddered to think about how tonight would go.

...Maybe it'd go awful. Your casserole could turn out to be a fiasco, someone could be allergic, everyone would hate you and realize how much of a total mess of a person you were. Some days it was hard enough to even breathe for you. Normal people didn't ever feel like that.

You felt like you were defective. An item that needed to be recalled, something that needed to be fixed...
Or destroyed.

Not helping your mood, you remembered Sans last night and groaned. You probably embarrassed yourself silly. No sane person really laughed that much. He probably just kept talking to you because you followed him around the store for hours (did he follow you? ...It doesn't matter). You liked talking to him. It was easy to let your guard down around him, even if the way you broke the ice was spilling a bottle of goddamn ketchup everywhere.

You wanted to talk to him again, but you felt a sense of unease immediately following that thought. What if that was a fluke? What if you two met again and he absolutely despised you and your personality?

Sans seemed different. He seemed, well, really extraordinary.
You could never compare to someone like that – not being as simple and boring as you felt you were.

You really knew you should stop thinking like this. It wasn't going to do you any good, it never did. But like always, once it started it wasn't like you had much control of it anymore.

The casserole smells reminded you of autumn. It was that time of year too. Not late enough for pumpkin carvings, or really even anything that you enjoyed about this time of year. Too warm for hot cocoa, and too cold for t-shirts.

This time of year kind of sucked.

You decided to take a shower to stop thinking for a while. It was then, and only then, you realized that you had quite a bit of ketchup caked to your hair. You wondered if it looked like blood.

Even though you were meeting a whole group of people, you still didn't find yourself caring enough to wear something extremely fancy. You threw on a black, baggy, oversized sweater (A signature look for you. Mainly a sign of your laziness.) that had the wordsI LIKE CATS printed on it. You threw on a pair of light skinny jeans and put a pair of old combat boots by the door to put on later.
And as usual, you threw your wet hair into a bun. You never really cared much about hair products and styles – the only thing you really needed was hairbands.

While the casserole continued cooking, you noticed the time was getting close to five. You hurriedly texted Undyne, asking for her address.

She answered you quicker than you expected, telling you her address and calling you a punk. You sent her a quick thanks.