In which Dr. Gaster has no people skills and Sans has no chill.

The door was open and the room seemed empty. Had he dismissed the last applicant? Where was the next one?

He'd done it again, hadn't he.

Gaster had a tendency to fall into deep thought and lose track of his surroundings. That would be fine as long as he only did it when sitting in his armchair, but he didn't. When uncomfortable, or simply distracted, he would retreat into his mind, losing the thread of a conversation or leaving a chore half-finished to play with equations.

This wasn't one of those times, he'd only been zoned out for a few seconds. Now that he'd gotten over the moment of disorientation, he remembered that yes, he'd dismissed the last applicant, and they had closed the door behind them. Gaster stared at the open door. Was his next applicant a ghost?

"Uh, hey." He looked down quickly, startled. It was another skeleton! A tiny, tiny skeleton?
"Oh my goodness. How old are you?"
Whoops. Bad Gaster. Bad. Now the tiny—the, the somewhat-shorter-than-average skeleton was giving him the stink eye, from about the level of the top of his desk. And now that he actually looked at it, it was definitely mature.
"It's on the paper," said the skeleton, gesturing left-handedly at the paper on the desk, which Gaster must have unconsciously pulled out in preparation for their meeting while still zoned out, because he didn't remember it. "Everything is on the paper. My whole fricking life is on the piece of paper. My food likes and dislikes are on the piece of paper. Even my HP is on the piece of paper, which I'm a bit sour about actually, it's embarrassing. None of the other jobs I've held made me write down my HP."
Wow. He was steamed. That wasn't the attitude he generally got from applicants. Was someone making him do this? Well, Gaster couldn't entirely blame him. Stupid, stupid. Bad Gaster. "Please sit down." The skeleton walked around the desk, hopped up onto the chair, and sort of melted into the backrest. He was wearing thick clothes, which made him look much rounder and more squishable than he could possibly have been as a skeleton, except for his thin white legs, which dangled from a pair of loose athletic shorts. Gaster, still rattled by his own faux pas, stalled for time by staring down at the short ske—at Sans's application. Then realizing that he wasn't actually reading it, just awkwardly staring at the paper so he wouldn't have to look at Sans's angry grin, which was quite scary. Then in desperation looking at the "HP: _ " section, if only for something to say, to break the tension of that terrible, awful beginning by reassuring the skeleton that his HP wouldn't be a problem and that they only had the section because they'd be working in dangerous conditions and they just had to be sure that they didn't hire anybody with ridiculously low HP, like—"…Is this a typo?"
"Where?" Sans said sulkily.
"It says you only have one HP!"
"Yeah."
"You only have one HP?! How is that even possible?"
"Is that your business?"
"What—ha—how?! It s-says you have combat training! Wh—hy would any…one—dbb." He lost track of his words midsentence, as he looked up from the impossible information on the paper and encountered Sans's abnormally wide grin. That grin could look easygoing and friendly, he was sure, but at the moment it was terrifying.
"Maybe because Crawlers don't stop to ask how high your HP is before they try to attack you. It's good to know how to defend yourself. Besides, I was keeping my brother company."
"Yes. Right. That's good. Combat training is good it's part of why I considered you. But one HP—"
"I'm good at dodging."
"I'm sure you are. But we can't just… send you out there, into the Hotlands, when… it's just not right, do you understand? It wouldn't be right to send someone who could be so easily killed into danger when I could find someone able to take more hits. This is going to be dangerous. Even without the location, the machines have a tendency to go haywire, because that's what happens when nobody bothers with physics, things don't work right—"
"Right, I'll just—"
He froze. Gaster froze.
A magic construct in the shape of a dragonish skull floated at Sans' left, resonating with magic energy. The rumble of magic rose in pitch to an audible whine.
"Shit," said Sans in a small voice, and twisted his left hand. The skull swiveled away from Gaster to face the wall, the whine rising to a barely-contained hum.
Gaster's mind came back online.
It looked like a cannon, and Sans was behaving like it was a cannon. He'd never seen a construct like that and didn't know what to expect, but from the resonance he guessed the blast would be powerful. What was the likelihood that there was someone in the room across the hall? High, there often was at this time of day. High enough that he couldn't risk the chance of letting a magic projectile blast of unknown power rip through two walls and take off an arm.
All these trains of thought snapped together simultaneously in a fraction of a second. Gaster lurched sideways out of his chain to get between the blaster and the wall. Halfway in front of it, he saw it split open with a BWAAAAAAAA of released energy. He flung up his shield at full strength, still off-balance, and the force of the blast knocked him over backwards. The back of his head hit the wall. He saw stars.

Sans, still frozen in his chair, stared at the immobile Head of the Physics Department on the floor.
Shit. Shit. Shiiiiiiiiit. He should have stayed in bed. He shouldn't have let Papyrus intentionally pep-talk and unintentionally guilt-trip him out the door. He shouldn't have told Papyrus he had an interview in the first place. Why had he listened to Papyrus? Papyrus thought everything was a good idea. This had not been a good idea. As soon as he'd woken up that morning Sans had felt that this was going to be a terrible, awful day where everything went wrong and for once he should have listened to that feeling wholeheartedly. Sometimes it was wrong, but sometimes it was right.
'Mr. Sans, explain to us what happened.' 'Dr. Gaster insulted my height and then I shot him in the face and he died of shock.' 'Mr. Dreemurr, I know your tendency is to give mercy, but in this case I would argue for maximum punishment.' 'Absolutely! To the Dark Caverns with him!'
No, Dr. Gaster was moving. Thank God. Sans would live another day. Probably in prison.

The energy had dissipated. He was alive. Gaster stood up slowly and touched the right shoulder of his coat, where the cloth was scorched. He looked at the wall. A faint crescent-shaped burn mark showed where the blast had glanced off his shield. He felt strangely lightheaded. Deep breaths. Focus on the present.
"I'm sorry," said a weak voice, and he looked over at Sans, who was cringing in his chair with blank eyesockets. "I'm… glad you had a shield. I, uh, didn't sleep very well last night and I just… I'm sorry, I've never done that before."
"Can you do it again?"
"What?"
Gaster braced his back against the wall and reformed his shield.
"Shoot me. That's a very interesting attack, I've never seen one like it."
Sans stared at him for a few moments, then shrugged, slid onto the floor and raised his arm. His left eyelight flared electric blue. A beam of energy hit the shield.
"Keep them coming. This is a good shield."
"OK."
Several rapid-fire blasts converged on the shield, then, as Sans saw that they hadn't broken through, he created a spiral pattern, one skull appearing right behind another so that there was a constant stream of light firing at the shield, erasing the features of the room in a flood of white. Gaster, even though he was already braced, had to fight to keep standing. Then, almost as soon as it had started, it stopped. He was blinded. Slowly the light dissipated and the room came back into focus. Sans looked like he might be out of breath.
"Impressive," said Gaster. He noticed, as if from a distance, that the room was a mess. The final attack had knocked nearly everything that wasn't already on the floor onto the floor. "Does that cut through Crawler tendrils?"
"Yeah, it does. I've had to use it for that before. It's pretty handy."
"And they're timed."
"Huh?"
"They all fired 1.5 seconds after appearing."
"Uh, yeah. I can't really change that, or I don't know how to. Which is why the first one went off after I accidentally summoned it, sorry."
"Are you good at dodging?"
A little of the grin came back.
"The best. How do you think I survive fights? Hey, try and hit me."
Gaster summoned the smallest bullets he could easily maintain. Try to hit a guy with only one HP? If Sans hadn't had a good breakfast, he could conceivably be on less than a full hitpoint. He didn't like this, but Sans seemed to know what he was doing, and each hit should only take off a small fraction of health.
"Alright, run around," said Gaster, throwing the first wave of bullets forwards.
Sans didn't run around. He stood watching the approaching bullets with a knowing grin, head slightly lowered.
He didn't so much dodge the bullets as step lazily around them. Gaster had never seen someone move that fast, and yet there was no wasted movement. He threw more bullets, and Sans just kept stepping around them. Now they were both grinning. "Good! Very good!" He sped up the bullets, bringing them in from the side, from the back, keeping Sans on his toes. Sans kept avoiding them, moving around more and more—in a less slouchy person it would have looked like dancing—finally vaulting over the corner of the desk, knocking down the last object which hadn't fallen to the floor. A framed, very faded chart of the stars.
"Oh gosh I'm sorry." Sans stopped, and Gaster accidentally pinged him in the back of the skull with one of his bullets. He quickly waved the rest of them away.
"Oh, don't worry about that. It's fine." Gaster stooped and replaced the chart in its place on his desk. It looked a little ridiculous, sitting at the edge of an empty surface. Sans, who was definitely out of breath now, looked around in growing alarm.
"Yeesh." He chuckled uncomfortably. "Looks like ah… wow sorry. Got carried away there."
"No no, you've convinced me. Don't do it again though please." Gaster stepped over his downed chair, around the desk, and extended his hand. "It is Sans, isn't it?"
Sans looked up at him, taking the offered hand with a firm grip. "Yep. Sorry for losing my sanses there. I'm happy to meet'cha." He was quite cute when he smiled. The terrifying kind of cute. Gaster reminded himself never again to mention height in his presence. Gaster reminded himself that he was a physicist, dammit, he wrote stuff about why things did the things, sometimes he even made things do things; he never said he could be a manager. That required social skills. They hadn't even got into the lava and people were trying to kill him. Well, Sans hadn't really tried to kill him, which was encouraging, because he was starting to like the little guy. No bad Gaster don't call him little! Bad!
"...O-oh…Doc… Are you… alright?..." He looked up to find a trembling Alphys and a heavily armed guard in the door, staring at them. He released Sans's hand.
"Oh. You heard that?"
"Everyone in the building heard it! What did you do? D-did you e-explode something?" her eyes swept the floor.
"Well, I wouldn't call it a real explosion. There was a lot of magic flying around. And you know this place isn't especially neat at the best of times." Alphys padded forwards, paws clasped in front of her.
"D-don't do that again. I was.. I was so frightened."
"I'm sorry, Alphys." He reached down, calling just enough magic back into his bones to make him pleasantly warm, and lifted Alphys, cradling her like a puppy. He couldn't remember exactly when he'd discovered that she didn't mind being lifted in this way, but it made conversations much easier on both of them. She was even smaller than Sans, who, now that Gaster had him standing still nearby, came about to Gaster's waist. "Alphys, this is Sans, the applicant you heard me.. talking to. Sans, Alphys is my personal assistant. Would you like to go get some noodles, Alphys? You've had a scare. Sans, I'd be happy if you would come as well."
Alphys squirmed and put her snout near Gaster's earhole. "Doctor he just tried to kill you."
"He did not try to kill me. I was doubtful about his combat abilities, so I asked him to spar with me." Sans gave Gaster a grateful, slightly shocked look. The guard slowly backed out of sight. "It was rather untoward, I know, but I hope you won't hold it against me. Or Sans."
"A-alright. Warn me next time! I thought you had died!"
"Alphys, we've been over this. I don't die easily. You should find other things to worry about." He was not encouraged by the way Alphys immediately looked at Sans. "Can't we get along and have noodles?"
Alphys sniffed. "I don't have money with me."
"I'm paying."
"No you're not."
"Yes I am. Sans, come along."

A/N: Cover image belongs to chaoticshero of DeviantArt and is from Hole-ding hands pt. 2, which is cute shipping if you care for that. Again, this story is not going to be a slashfic. Art used with permission.

Sans basically comes in with Megalovania playing and then switches to sans. Which is unusual. Then again, this is a younger, perhaps angstier Sans.

EDIT

5/28/17

Brushed up a few things, beginning and end are basically the same. If you feel like you're being gaslighted I'm sorry, I explain more in the note on Ch. 36. If you're here for the first time 1. welcome onboard, 2. JUST PRETEND YOU NEVER SAW THIS LALALA...