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Yeah, sure. [Sans sits up--if he's going to try to stay awake this time, he should probably be in a more upright position. At least he has sandwiches to keep him occupied. He's already finished the first one, though.] Wake me up if I fall asleep before you do. [But at least for now he'll manage to keep himself awake.]

I'll do my best to kick you awake! And not kick you in my sleep. [There's no dramatic pause or groan before he utters the word sleep, where there might normally have been. But then, he did volunteer. No sense over-acting it. Instead, he settles on a channel and leaves the remote on the table, tugs the snack and milk closer, and leans his back and head on the pillows propped to his side of the couch - the better to be in a sleep-enabling pose.] The science of pollinators, huh...

[Sans works his way through his second sandwich. Even if it's not quite hitting the spot, grilled cheese is still great.] Like bees and stuff? [Biology isn't really his thing, but maybe that could be interesting. Maybe it could bee interesting. Heh.] Too bad neither of us are beeologists. [That's a stretch to get to a pun, but Papyrus always made better ones anyway. Sans's talent lies in the terrible.]

[Papyrus makes a brief sound of amusement - it's terrible, but it's not an overdone bone pun, so he can continue to mildly encourage such things.] You could bee. You have enough part-time jobs, I'm sure you could fit one more in. [Somehow, in the hours that Sans isn't spending sleeping and eating and eating some more.

But the show reveals that it's not just bees, but emphasizing the broader range of 'stuff' - wasps and hornets, butterflies and moths, even bats and various other creatures who frequently visit flowers. Colorful shots of fields, offering enough interesting visuals to keep attention even when the voice is relatively dry. Papyrus eventually decides to close his eyesockets, the better to let his attention flicker out.]

[Flower fields still hold novelty value to Sans. Not a lot of flowers underground, and not a lot of fields in this canyon that aren't full of corn. Sans notices when Papyrus closes his eyes--hard not to, with all the eyes Sans has--but he's not exactly sure what he should be waiting for here. Papyrus probably isn't even asleep yet, let alone dreaming. It's not like he can ask. For now, he might as well keep listening to this guy talk about fruit bats.]

[It's soon clear Papyrus isn't asleep yet, when he briefly opens an eyesocket and reaches for the glass of milk. He sips from the straw and puts it back, before shrugging almost apologetically at Sans and settling back into his sleep-ready pose. The fruit bat monologue isn't quite a droning sound, but it's not the kind of thing he's very interested in, so it's a good start for drifting to unconsciousness.

Of course, even with Sans taking care not to talk, there's other obstacles. Papyrus reflexively starts to access his phone, before catching himself and deliberately setting it in airplane mode instead. There's still the various things stored on it, but... No, cancel that too, remove usb device. Limiting what his mind can wander onto to the sensations of lying on the couch, the sounds of the television, and any movements as either of them shift, and the various radiowave signals constantly going off around them... And, of course, memories.

The switch from nostalgia, to daydreaming, to outright dreaming is a gradation. He doesn't notice when thoughts of house renovations switch to yelling at Sans in the hivemind, or when somehow that skewed version of Hannibal joins the hivemind and begins offering cheerful suggestions. The positive of turning his attention from Sans to the memory thief is outweighed by... the next few minutes, if minutes are the right scale of time. But before it gets too awful, there's a television audience, holding up signs and applauding, and he's performing some kind of game instead. The MTT theme plays, and the dream drifts on, pieces of memories mixing in odd associations.]

[Sans is being delighted by the hilarious existence of hammer-headed fruit bats when he's startled by a flow of energy he can't attribute to his thought experiment on what a vampire who turned into one of those bats might looks like. He turns his head pointlessly toward Papyrus, which doesn't actually give him a better view than pointing it at the television did. After that first moment where whatever in him is reacting to this is gulping up whatever it can get regardless of what it is, he starts feeling kind of weird, like he ate something gross. Then that feeling goes away. Then it comes back, and lasts for a while, and Sans is on the verge of waking Papyrus up before it fades again. Whatever is happening, it's doing more to feed him than the sandwiches did. He keeps staring at Papyrus like he expects to be able to see whatever flow of energy is happening here, but that continues to not happen.]

[Papyrus shifts from time to time through his sleep, but doesn't grow notably restless or listless as Sans absorbs energy. Fortunately for them both it never becomes an outright nightmare. Occasional dips into unpleasantness, as his dreams tend to do, but mostly it's weird - a fluctuating of associations without coherency. It's in the middle of sparring with Undyne on a skyscraper that he jolts awake, about forty minutes later.]

Wh-- huh? [The dreams, it turns out, don't quite store as vividly. He blinks at the screen, then his brother, before recognizing where and when he is - and what's going on.] Did... I did fall asleep?

[Sans blinks back at Papyrus. He's had time to get used to the sensation--forty minutes of time--but it was still a roller coaster of shifting energy. It was still weird.] Yeah. And you were dreaming, right? [Not that Sans really needs that confirmation, but he asks for it anyway. His eyelights are brighter than they were before Papyrus fell asleep.]

Yyyyyes. I think. I don't remember it all... [Which is something of a surprise to him, and would mean more if he admitted to how much he's remembering of everything else. But maybe Sans has forgotten that slip of his before. He has no intention of bringing it up on purpose, at any rate. Instead he shakes his head and pushes himself up to a sitting position, putting a little space between his chest and the cushions. Something in there is running hot, probably from being pressed into all that warm soft material. Best he cool down as he looks sidelong at Sans, taking in the change to his eyelights.] Could you... tell?

Yeah. I think that's what it was, anyway. It wasn't like "Papyrus is dreaming right now", it was sort of like a flow of magic. [Sort of because things don't work the same way as at home. But it's good enough to explain the feeling. Luckily for Papyrus, it seems like Sans is busy working out what's up with his own body and is going to let any confusion about not remembering his dream slide.]

Like magic, flowing from me...? [He has to pause, check his own sense of stores. Despite not charging during this conversation, despite the overheating of pressing into the couch cushions, he's still close to full. No sign that this somehow drained from him, directly.] Huh. I still... I feel fine. [Whatever it is Sans is apparently feeding from, it doesn't seem to do any harm. Unexpectedly, in a good way.]

[Sans makes a thoughtful noise. That's good, though Sans is left to wonder what kind of energy he's taking, then. He didn't even actually eat the dream, if Papyrus remembers he had one.] So I guess I just have to--start lurking outside people's houses while they're sleeping. [No that's still a bad idea. But at least he knows he wouldn't be hurting them.]

Is outside even close enough for this...? If you're going to creep on people, don't stop halfway. [He means this as a joke, mostly, but doesn't think to add a joking tone to it. Instead, he follows up with:] Or maybe, something less creepy. I wonder, are there any jobs... where, uh, people visit sleeping people...?

[He trails off half-sentence because he reflexively reaches for the internet, for information, only to find his phone unresponsive. And not connected? No, wait, it's there, but it needs a manual reset on the cable... He leans back, reaches into his shirt to fix it.]

Yeah, I could get a part-time job as the monster that hides under kids' beds. [See, it's funny because he's a double monster. Sans notices the lack of tone in Papyrus's joke, but honestly that's not the first time Papyrus has said something like that completely straight-faced.] There's sleep studies, but you've gotta be a doctor for that. [And not even the physics kind of doctor. Not that Sans finished his doctorate, but Papyrus can't pull that joke on him here, he doesn't fit in two different ways.]

Not qualified, huh? [There, now his phone is reconnecting. The flow of information starts up again - the weather app's forecast hasn't noticeably changed, no new texts, only a couple spam email notifications...] Well, I'm sure you can find somewhere people like to snooze. And an excuse to lurk around there. I'm...

[He considers, remembering his earlier inklings of guilt and wanting to help, and how he'd hoped not to be central to this beyond things like advice or shopping.] I am... probably not about to sleep more than I do! But. I can let you know, when that will be.

I'll figure it out. [Sans wouldn't want Papyrus to frustrate himself on Sans's behalf like that anyway; he'd been a little concerned Papyrus might offer out of some sense of fraternal obligation, but agreeing with Papyrus is a lot easier than convincing him, so this works out.] Hey, maybe I could sign up for a bunch of sleep studies. Or just one, and then keep showing up with different disguises. One of those fake mustaches. A bunch of sunglasses for all my eye sockets. [Sans is not actually going to submit himself to medical science over this, of course. The idea is still funny, though.]

[Papyrus considers his brother with some skepticism. There's a well-established pattern of Sans offering a reassurance (that later proves baseless) and then tangenting into jokes. He's not accounting for all possible variables, but even just the odds of their history aren't good. Well... Maybe he'll subtly sleep a little more often. In the meantime, it's normal for him to join in the joking tangent.] You should have sunglasses for all of them, anyway. It'd look cooler!

Painted with flames? [He knows Papyrus's style.] Or would copying you just make it uncool when I did it? [And that's just teasing based on how Papyrus acted as a teenager. What kind of brother doesn't never let stupid teenage behavior go in the name of jokes?]

Copying good taste isn't as cool, but it's still cool... Although. [He puts a hand to his mouth and leans back, considering San's whole appearance. They don't talk about the angel associations often. It's awkward, between old monsters and legends, or the weirdness he found at a temple, or the whole business of void gods.] ...Then again. A ring of fire around your head... Firewalls like that, aren't really cool. Maybe you should lean into the space thing. Make it look like planet rings. Get a hat that looks like Saturn. [He doesn't even stumble to remember which planet is which, but then he did reconnect his phone and its network access.]

You're brilliant, bro. [If Sans is going to be anything, it's space-themed. Of course, if he got a hat he'd have to cut holes in it so he could see or pick one that fits under his halo, but this suggestion is still being taken into account.] Really out of this world.

A real star, right? [Papyrus laughs, and it's not all forced or feigned. The weirdness isn't stopping him from having good ideas or sharing them. His brother's reacting to them as he could hope, correctly identifying them as great and embracing them with good cheer... It's a good moment. He's glad to be memorizing things like this.]

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