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Chapter 2

The Lesson

This time Sans was prepared for the knock on the front door. By quarter to ten on Saturday morning he was reclining in artfully composed leisure on the living room couch, MAD magazine open in front of him. He'd tidied the kitchen (well, his brother had done that) and even laundered his hoodie (actually his brother had done that too). Papyrus was sitting at the dining table with an astronomical number of word and number puzzle books stacked in front of him; one, a book called "Easy Sudoku", Papyrus had open, and he was scribbling numbers in with a pencil and erasing other numbers at approximately the same rate. "Oh no," he was saying to himself, "that can't be right, I can't have two sevens in a row..."

"Need some help with that, bro?"

"No!" snapped Papyrus without looking up. "And even if I did need assistance I would far rather get it from Frisk. Your lethargic mind can't possibly be up to the challenge of such feats of logic as these!"

"Whatever you say, bro."

"Maybe I should start over," fretted Papyrus as he erased all his previous work. "Now this_has_ to be a four--"

When the soft rapping came Sans restrained a momentary urge to sprint for the door, and another urge equally momentary to run the other direction. "Mind gettin' it, bro?" Sans inquired from behind his magazine.

"I always do," Papyrus replied with a trace of asperity. He dropped his pencil and strode to answer the knock.

"Hello again, Papyrus," said Toriel in her rich contralto. Sans lowered his magazine, peering discreetly over it at the queen. Frisk was with her, grasping her left paw and looking around themself with dark brown eyes bright and alert. Cradled in her right arm were a number of paper grocery sacks. All of Sans's attention, however, was drawn to Toriel's_accoutrement._ Until now Sans had never seen Toriel in anything other than her customary long-sleeved violet robe--she must have a dozen of them in a closet, Sans had thought more than once--for a violet dress that left her arms bare and dipped modestly at the neckline, exposing the creamy white fur of her upper chest. A dark purple belt cinched the dress snugly about her broad waist and just brought out the curvature of her hips beneath.

Uh, thought Sans.

Toriel's gaze caught Sans's before he had the wit to hide his eye-sockets behind MAD again. Her face lit up with a radiant smile. "Ah, Sans! I am pleased to see you again."

Frisk waved happily and signed,"Hello again Sans!" Then it happened again: Frisk looked from Sans's face up to Toriel's and then back to Sans, smiling that enigmatic smile.

_What's up with that kid?_Sans asked himself. Sans had little enough experience of humans and even less of human children; even so he felt sure that Frisk's strange admixture of calm, mature perspicacity with their childlike playfulness and thirst for affection was many standard deviations away from the mean of twelve-year-old human behavior. But he'd never seen anything like this smile from them before.

"Hey there again, Frisk, Tori," Sans said, tossing his magazine onto the coffee-table and standing up, brushing some imaginary specks from his hoodie. He nodded toward Toriel's load of groceries. "Come bearing gifts, I see?"

"Oh! You could say that," Toriel replied, with a tentative giggle. "I brought along some of my ingredients from home, just to be on the safe side."

"Aw, Tori, you don't need to waste your supplies on me. I got my own stuff to bake with."

"My dear Sans, it's no waste. Consider them...school supplies, if you will." Toriel turned to Frisk. "Frisk, may I ask you and Papyrus to take your puzzle-solving efforts to his room? Tutoring Sans may require some concentration and attention to detail on my part. I'm sure you understand, my child."

Frisk smiled and nodded eagerly. Papyrus jumped from his chair, sweeping as many of the puzzle books up in his arms as he could, spilling many of them to the floor. Frisk assiduously gathered up the stray books into a neat stack. "Come, young human!" the skeleton announced. "We shall take our investigation of number puzzles to my place of refuge. And," he added with a wink of an eye-socket as he left the living room with Frisk bringing up the rear, "I have some new action figures to show you!"

Just before Frisk disappeared from sight down the corridor he signed a message to Sans, ending with a swiftly flashed_"ILU"_.

"Good luck," again,_Sans translated to himself. _With what? Pie crust?

"Shall we begin?" Toriel asked as she went to the kitchen, beckoning Sans to accompany her. "You'll have to tell me what equipment you have..." As he followed he couldn't help noticing that the closer fit of Toriel's dress revealed beneath the purple fabric the outline of her short tail, normally concealed beneath the folds of her customary robes. Nor had he ever before noticed the gentle sway of her hips as her feet softly padded over the floor...

"Sans?" Toriel looked back over her shoulder. "Did you hear what I said?"

"Huh? Um, sorry, Tori...uh, you were asking about equipment? Just the usual hand utensils, mixing bowls, some spatulas, spoons, a whisk...I haven't got an electric mixer or anything like that. Is that gonna be a problem?"

"Not at all! Everything you need to do in baking, you can do by hand." Once in the kitchen she deposited her grocery bags on the counter and began to unload their contents: flour, sugar, blocks of butter, a bottle of milk... "In fact I prefer to work by hand. There is something..." She paused to contemplate for a second. "...something uniquely_satisfying_ about just getting one's paws directly into one's work, putting muscle and sweat into it." She giggled again. "Oh, is there room in your refrigerator for the milk and butter?"

"Yeah, plenty," Sans replied. "I'll take care of it." Sans pushed some plastic containers of leftover ravioli and linguine aside to shelve the butter and milk while Toriel fussed about with her_mise en place,_arranging ingredients and looking for bowls and utensils.

"Where are the knives?" Toriel asked, peering into a drawer.

Sans stared. "_What_did you just ask?"

"Do you have any table knives or dinner knives? You know, the ones with rounded ends."

"Oh! Uh. I think there's a couple in that drawer you're looking at. Everything's mixed up together, sorry."

Toriel tut-tutted. "I should get you a drawer organizer as a gift." She rummaged around and eventually fished out a mismatched pair of table knives. "There. I believe that's all we will need. Now, if I remember correctly, in your message, you said that your crusts were coming out mealy?"

"Yeah," Sans admitted. "Nothing like yours. Your pie crusts come out so flaky! I tried to follow the recipe you gave me, but the crusts I bake end up crumbling and falling apart when I cut a slice."

Toriel stroked her muzzle. "There are a number of possible reasons for this. How are you cutting the butter into the flour?"

"Uh, well..." Sans rubbed the back of his skull. "I didn't actually get that direction too good. I tried looking it up and just got confused with all the different ways I found. So in the end I figured, if the point is just to get the butter mixed in with the flour, I waited for the butter to get soft and--"

Toriel bleated in dismay. "Oh, Sans! Not at all what you should have done!" Sans's face fell. "Please, don't blame yourself," she hastened to add, softening her voice and tentatively laying a paw on the skeleton's shoulder. Sans started at the gentle touch, but his smile returned. "It was my responsibility to provide you with clearer instructions, not merely a set of steps to follow by rote. Not memorization but understanding is the key to successful cooking and baking."

_How fascinating her eyes are!_Sans found himself thinking as he gazed up at the long, wise face of his teacher, and into the soft brown eyes with their unusual pupils.

"I shall endeavor to correct my mistake now, with a proper--" She covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her laughter. "--tu-Toriel on pie crust."

It didn't matter that he'd heard some variation on this pun from her at least a dozen times in the past five years or more; he grinned and chuckled every time he heard it. "Hehe! Nice one, Tori."

Toriel stood up straight, in her best schoolteacher's posture. "The secret to a delicious, flaky pie crust," she lectured, "is that the butter must remain as cold and solid as possible. You do not want to mix the butter smoothly in with the flour. Rather you want to cut the butter into small chunks. These chunks, when they are coated in flour and rolled out, are what become the 'flakes' when the crust is baked. Does that make sense?"

Sans rubbed a cheekbone. "I think so. So you have to make sure all these little pieces of butter don't get stuck or melted together."

"Right! That means working the butter as cold as possible, using ice-cold water to make the dough, and refrigerating the dough before rolling it out for the crust."

"Huh, okay. I sure didn't do any of those things did I?"

"But now you have_me_ to show you, in person." Toriel laid a paw on her breast and smiled. "Shall we start the lesson?"

---

Sans plopped himself down on the living room couch, dusting a bit of stray flour from the sleeves of his hoodie. Toriel seated herself next to him, resting one arm on the back of the couch. "You're coming along very well, Sans," she said. "You're picking up the techniques with commendable facility."

Toriel had insisted on walking him through three batches of pie dough, each time using a different method for cutting the butter into the flour: slicing it into chunks with the pair of table knives (effective if a little unnerving), using a large fork (less effective and slow), and using his fingers (rather fun, but cleaning flour and butter out of the crevices between his bones had been a hassle.) All three batches were now chilling in the refrigerator, giving Sans and Toriel the excuse for a break on the couch. From down the hall came the occasional sounds of Papyrus's declamations and Frisk's laughter as they played together.

Toriel's behavior during her lesson was starting to fluster Sans. Now this was far from the first time she'd visited his house in the months following their move to the Surface. Sans always welcomed her visits; she was affable and funny, as she had always been, but some reserve still lay between the two of them, as though they were still on opposite sides of a closed door. The degree of familiarity Toriel was showing today, though, was utterly new to him. She would stand close while working in the kitchen, leaning over his back to watch what he was he was doing, occasionally laying a friendly, guiding paw on an arm or his shoulder.

And Toriel was close to him now, her arm resting just behind his head, her head leaned towards him, her face alert and attentive. Her exertions in the warm kitchen had elicited from her body a subtle odor of musk. Sans wondered why he'd never noticed it before.

"I am so glad that I can help you like this, Sans," she said. "Often I fear that I have neglected to show you the gratitude you deserve for what you've done for me."

"Aw, hell, Tori, I didn't do anything," replied Sans. "Just told you some jokes, that's all."

"And you kept your promise." She leaned a little closer, her brown eyes full of emotion. "You saved my child. How can I possibly repay you?"

Sans shrugged. "You don't owe me anything. You laughed at my jokes. That's payment enough."

"So modest and undemanding you are, Sans," said Toriel. "Small wonder you are so well liked. Everyone sees you and your delightful smile, and they cannot help but smile in return. Sometimes, I admit, I have wondered..." Again the nervous giggle. "I wonder why you and Papyrus live alone, why there is no one else in your life."

Sans felt the intensity of Toriel's gaze. "I dunno. There's just never been anyone than Papyrus and me, as far back as I can remember."

"No mother, no father?"

--never forget--

Sans shook his head uncertainly. "Can't bring anyone to mind, sorry." He compelled himself to laugh. "I guess I must have had a_really_ boring childhood."

"You must have been lonely," she murmured.

"Lonely, me? Nah, I've always had my brother at my side."

"No one else?" The atmosphere of subdued musk about her grew heavier.

"Well, uh...Grillby's a pal I guess, and the regulars there all know me, if I feel like I need company..."

"I confess that I meant something a little more...personal with that question."

"What do you mean, Tori?" Sans shifted in his seat.

"Has there never been anyone close to you? For... companionship?" Toriel's deep voice sank lower, almost to a whisper, only for Sans to hear.

Uh.

Sans forced his best, disarming chuckle. "I dunno about_that,_ Tori, but I can always look to you for com-pun-ionship."

Toriel smiled a little but did not laugh. "I was lonely in the Ruins, Sans, after the seventh human left me... the last one before Frisk. As the years passed I felt my hold on life and reason slipping away from me. When I was awake my ears would strain to hear voices that were not there. When I was asleep I heard the voices in my dreams. Mocking me, accusing me...truly I believe that, had you not come to me, I would have gone mad." She lowered her head for a moment but then raised it again, her brown eyes aglow, looking straight into Sans's face. "But you_did_ come, with your jokes and your laughter and your stories of Snowdin and your beloved brother. And you kept coming back, all the way to the edge of your known world, day after day, to save me from my loneliness. Were you really only bored, as you would always say? Even with Papyrus at your side...were you not also lonely?"

The gentle, resonant voice filled Sans's head; the gentle, insistent eyes looked through him. He could not lie. "Maybe I was," he admitted.

"Sans," she said. Her paw slipped down from the back to the couch to rest on his shoulder. Her muzzle came within inches of his face. "I am here now. Nothing separates us any longer. If you should so desire it...you need never be lonely again."

Sans froze. He wanted to run far away, he wanted to hurl himself into the queen's embrace, he wanted to improvise some joke or witticism that would somehow defuse the unbearable attention and return Toriel to what she had been, a kindly safe old goatmom in a purple robe who baked pies and laughed at puns. But that was impossible now.

A louder than usual shriek from Papyrus caught Toriel's attention. She jerked her head in its direction and Sans leaped at the interruption. "I'd, uh, I'd better go check on him, Tori," he said, hastily pushing himself off the couch.

"But, Sans--" said Toriel, stretching out a paw toward the already retreating skeleton.

"This won't take a minute, Tori, I'm sure of it," said Sans as he walked out of the living room. "We'll finish our conversation, I promise."

"I--all right, Sans." Toriel's shoulders drooped. "If you say so."