“Fell, you’ll help me with my experiment, right?”

Fell had accompanied the younger skeleton to see his lab, now that they basically had the run of the multiverse, and they were in a small room that Sci apparently had all to himself. It was cluttered with notes and files and various instruments, only a few of which Fell could guess at the function of. He flipped through some loose papers on the desk but the handwriting was illegible.

“I didn’t come here to be your guinea pig,” he snorted.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Sci turned around and closed the door of the steel cabinet where he had been rummaging, holding a vial containing an ominous green liquid.

Fell looked at it and took a step backward toward the door.

“I’ll owe you one,” Sci wheedled, his perpetual grin extra wide.

Fell paused, still reaching behind him for the doorknob, as he considered what kinds of favors he could call in to fulfill that debt.

“Just drink this,” Sci continued.

“Is it safe?” Fell still hesitated.

“Well, no experiment is completely without risk! But it’s negligible, I promise.”

Fell narrowed his eye sockets skeptically but held out a hand to accept the vial.

“What does it do?” he asked, examining it more closely.

“You’ll find out, if it works!”

Fell did not like the way the other skeleton’s eyes were glowing bright with excitement.

“I hate surpr—” he started to say, when Sci suddenly rushed forward and shoved his arm so that the contents of the vial tipped into his mouth. He nearly swallowed the container as well. He spluttered and coughed, taking another step back and fetching up against the door, but it was too late. Sci watched expectantly.

“What the h—” Fell was cut off as the air rushed past him from below and stole the breath from his lungs—if he’d had lungs—and where was wind coming from in a place like this? Was there a hidden vent in the floor—

As he regained his balance, a look around the room quickly revealed what had happened. The floor tiles that he would have cleared easily in a stride a moment ago were now like dull gray fields. The nearby desk was a distant cliff face stretching up out of sight. Sci’s approaching shoes were like boulders falling from the sky. Fell suppressed the instinct to run just long enough to glance around for somewhere to hide.

He regretted that moment of inaction as Sci’s hands surrounded him and scooped him up. He managed to avoid being caught between the phalanges but the impact still knocked the breath out of him. No doubt Sci thought he was being gentle, but the slightest touch was enough to bowl him over at this size.

Sci set him down on the table and found a ruler.

“What the f—” Fell found his voice again, but it was hard to talk when a distal phalange as tall as himself was nudging him upright.

“I have to take measurements, Fell. That’s the point of an experiment.” Sci wrote something down in a notebook. Fell wasn’t sure if he’d heard him or was just guessing at his complaints.

“All right, you took your measurements, now change me back!” Fists balled in rage, Fell craned his neck back to look up at the other Sans.

“Patience, Fell. This is only the first step.”

“What?!”

Fell looked around, considering making a run for the edge of the desk. The fall would likely be fatal. That stack of papers would provide some cover—but Sci could lift them easily. Maybe over there behind the coffee mug full of pens—if there was enough clutter he could lose his pursuer—maybe—

He only made it a few steps before Sci plucked him up, pinching his jacket between his distal phalanges.

“Okay, fine, I won’t run! Just put me down!” Fell struggled. Maybe he could slip out of his jacket before he was too high off the desk.

“Calm down. This is part of the experiment.”

Sci lifted him high, and Fell switched from trying to fall to desperately trying to twist around to cling to the larger skeleton’s fingertips. Now he was looking down on Sci, held dangling above his face. At least if he fell now he would land on—

Sci opened his mouth wide, directly below him, faintly glowing tongue manifest and stretched out. For a moment Fell stared down at the magical blue maw, then redoubled his efforts to escape. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to climb up the bones that were holding him or squirm out of their grasp; he was just too terrified to dangle there and do nothing.

Suddenly the phalanges holding him parted and he fell onto the glistening surface of the tongue. He pulled his legs underneath him to jump off, but he slipped, only managing to fall over and lie on his back as the tongue retreated, carrying him with it, between Sci’s jaws, into the dark lit only by the faint glow of Sci’s magic.

“No! Oh stars, no!” Fell rolled over, trying to scrabble back toward the teeth again, but before he could get any traction the tongue lifted him up, pinning him between itself and the roof of the mouth. He struggled futilely to move.

“Hmm.” Sci’s voice echoed through the bone of his skull. He sounded thoughtful, and much fainter Fell caught the scratch of pencil on paper. Was he still taking measurements? Recording his impressions of Fell’s taste?

That was definitely just saliva dampening Fell’s face. He wouldn’t allow Sci the satisfaction of making him shed tears.

After an interminable few seconds, the tongue finally stopped crushing him against the palate. But it was tilting in the wrong direction, letting him fall deeper into the mouth. He tried to dig his claws into it but they just slid easily down the slick magic surface. He looked over his shoulder to see where he was headed. Thanks to the faint glow of all the magical flesh, he could see the waiting throat, its walls also glowing as they curved downward…

“Please, no! Sci!” Surely Sci could hear him from inside his own skull—right? He wouldn’t really do this—he couldn’t—

The tongue rose up, toppling him past the uvula and into the tube of magic beyond. Fell closed his eyes as the walls squeezed around him, pushing him further. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real.

He might have blacked out for a little, or maybe his mind just shut down with shock, but a change in his surroundings called him back. The magic wasn’t so tight around him anymore—so far as he could tell, he was sitting in a pocket of it, surrounded by darkness. By the glow of the magic he could make out some of Sci’s bones—there was his spine over there, out of reach beyond the wall of magic. And if he looked up, he could make out his lower ribs, and below, his pelvis. This must be Sci’s stomach… Although skeletons didn’t generally have stomachs, he still knew what they were for.

Fell curled up in a fetal position, weeping openly now. “How could you do this to me?” he muttered, too softly for Sci to have any chance of hearing. “I trusted you. I—I loved you. Oh stars.” He pressed his forehead against his knees and waited for the end.



***



“You okay in there, Fell?” Sci was a little worried that he couldn’t feel the tiny skeleton moving at all. “I guess that’s long enough.”

He pulled up his shirt and dispelled all his anatomical magic, catching Fell in one hand as he fell out. He lifted the tiny skeleton to face height in order to examine him.

Fell was motionless, curled up on his metacarpals where he’d landed. Sci started to worry he might be hurt somehow, but soon enough he sat up groggily before staring back at him in disbelief.

“Oh, good, you’re okay.” Sci smiled.

Fell frowned. “You—you—how dare you! I’ll dust you!” He got to his feet shakily and started to walk toward Sci’s face, undaunted by the fact that said face was tens of times taller than him.

Sci put his other hand in Fell’s path so he wouldn’t fall when he reached the edge of the hand he was on, and again as he reached the edge of that hand, constantly moving him back so that he never made any progress, picking up speed as Fell regained his balance and came at him faster.

Finally Fell tripped on a metacarpal and faceplanted onto Sci’s palm. “You bastard! I’ll kill you!”

“Fell, is that any way to talk to the monster who has the antidote to the shrinking serum? Now calm down and tell me all about it for my notes.”


There's a chapter 2, find it from these links:
AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/87.....pters/20079952
tumblr: http://nom-the-skel.tumblr.com/post.....65/for-science