Gus was awoken around seven hours later by shouting from across the street. Like all the time, it was completely unintelligible. But it carried that kind of unpleasantness to it that let you know it was one of untethered rage. It was so violent and crazed that it terrified him, and he felt he had to investigate. He raced down the stairs as fast as he could and he barely had anything on other than his boxers that he slept in, just a blanket slung over his shoulders..

By the time he opened the door, the purple girl was already halfway across her yard. The open door of the house behind her was quickly slammed shut by a gangly pink arm. She was marching at a steady pace in the shade of the forest’s long shadows cast by the sunrise. Her eyes were hidden by the brunette mop on her head, but her mouth was twisted in a deep scowl as she stared down at the ground before her. When she reached her side of the road, Gus shouted after her.

“Hey!”

She froze, but didn't even look in his direction. Instead gazing up at the clear morning sky, breathing deeply, as though he was another distraction and nuisance she really, really did not want to deal with.

“...Are you alright?”

“What do you care?” her voice creaked, like she was choking back something. She focused her gaze back to the ground, and continued marching off toward town.

“A lot…” Gus said under his breath, watching her walk off.

The rest of the day up until he went to the house on North Street was miserable. It was just… lingering in regret. He thought of all the time he had spent right across the road. It was just a straight year of him hearing screaming and hollering and shouting, and he simply sat by and listened to it, caught up in his own bullshit. Now he knows what it is, what the screaming is about, and the most he could bring himself to do was just stand and watch that poor girl walk away.

He should have done something. Called the police, asked her what was really going on at her home, but she probably wouldn't like that, and his involvement would likely only make things worse. Painful memories lingered in the back of Gus’s mind.

He was wallowing in these waves of self-pity and pangs of regret when the alarm on his phone went off. Five o’clock. He got his things ready, and as he got into the driver’s seat the screaming began again. He tried to drown it out with the sound of his pickup’s old engine. But he simply could not drown out how shit he was feeling. Not without drink. And he was not going to do that. Never again.

The house was quaint. A little two story. Wood siding painted beige, red curtains in the windows, and blue shutters. An insignia hung directly beneath the peak of the roof. A circle, two wings on the sides of it, and beneath it three triangles, two pointing down, and one in the middle pointing up.

In the driveway a red minivan sat, apparently having just pulled up. Out stepped a tall white goat monster, accompanied by a short teenage boy, a human. The same one Gus saw hanging out with the neighbor’s kid the other day. Right when he thought he had put the uncomfortable and familiar emotions behind him, they flared up again.

The goat woman waved at him, and he tried to compose himself. God… did this kid know about his neighbor? God, he just hoped she was telling somebody - at least someone with more gumption than he had.

He got out of his pickup and went to meet the woman.

“Hello! You must be Gus.” She greeted him warmly, with a soft smile.

Gus loomed over her by over a foot. She was quite tall though, almost seven feet.

“Yeah, that would be me.”

“My name is Toriel Dreemurr! And this is my son, Kris.” She gestured to the boy, and he waved back with a blank expression on his face. Well, it looked blank. Gus couldn’t tell, his hair covered his eyes.

“Are you alright?” She asked. He must’ve still been visibly shaken.

“Y-yeah. I’m good. Just didn’t sleep too well, is all.”

“Oh, you poor man, come on inside, I’ll make you some coffee.”

“Oh that’s fine, I’m all well and good.” he said.

Toriel shot him a glance that read a calm fury. “I insist,” she said firmly, but not with any real aggression backing it.

“Oh. Uh. Thank you. I’ll gladly have some.”

Toriel smiled and unlocked the door. Kris went in first. “Come on in, tell me, how do you take it?”

The house had no lights on. It was lit so well by the late afternoon sun that there was no need for it yet. The scent of butterscotch and cinnamon hung in the air. It soothed him, eased his nerves. His stomach began to settle and the upsetting feeling about what had happened earlier faded slightly.

"So, Dreemurr, huh?" Gus asked. "I take it you must be Asgore's wife? It's been a while since I talked with him."

Toriel scowled. "Ex-wife. The less said about it the better."

Holy shit she looked pissed. Gus assumed that'd mean Asgore most certainly wasn't home.

Gus told Toriel he liked his coffee as creamy and sugary as possible. She accordingly made a cup to these specifications, and made a cute little heart shape on the surface with the last bit of creamer.

"Wow, this is - this is cute. Nice. Thank you."

Toriel gestured to the kitchen table. "Sit."

Gus sat down where she pointed, and she took a seat one chair away from him. Kris came up beside them and rummaged through the fridge. He pulled out a slice of pie from a ziploc bag and put it on a plate in the microwave. He pulled out a chair at the table and sat a respectable distance from Gus just like his mother did, one empty seat in between them.

Toriel gestured to the cabinets and sink. "So, I originally wanted you to fix my sink first, but while you're enjoying your coffee, I figure it may be best we talk about the cabinets, hmm?"

"That seems fair to me." Gus took a sip of his coffee, lamentably destroying the delicate heart Toriel had so carefully drawn on the surface of his hot beverage.

The microwave beeped and Kris got up from his seat. Toriel pointed at the cabinets. They were a light color, but faded by time. Old. In need of a replacement. Gus thought about how nice it would be to build something from scratch like this.

"So, I like the light color" she started, "but I want to try something else, too. Maybe an inlay?"

As Toriel was speaking, Kris put the plate with the slice of pie down in the middle of the table and cut off a chunk with his fork, laying it on a second plate he placed in front of Gus.

Gus smelled the pie. The butterscotch and cinnamon scent was coming from it, now. Even reheated in a microwave, it looked absurdly good. He looked back to Kris. The boy smiled and handed Gus a fork.

Gus took a bite and was immediately swept away by the flavor.

"Ma'am." He interrupted Toriel, who was mid-gesture, knee-deep in going over what her idea for the cabinets were. "This is the finest pie I've ever had."

Toriel remained frozen in her awkward pose. "Thank you." She smiled.

The source of Toriel's leaky pipes had been a clogged P trap. The simplest thing in the world to clear. He flatly refused to charge for it. Besides, the cabinets would be something special, and they would make him a decent amount of money.

The frame and doors would be white oak. There were only two cabinets to be made, and both would have walnut inlays of the unique insignia that he saw under her roof, centered on the door of each cabinet. The only issue was he had neither white oak, nor walnut. So that meant he had to take a trip to the lumber yard just outside the hardwood store.

The sun was just peeking above the trees at the end of the yard when he pulled in, and a rusty old sedan cut him off out of nowhere and nearly made him wreck.

Gus slammed on the breaks and grabbed for his chest, his fingers digging into his fur and flesh, his heart pounding. The sedan crookedly found its way in one of the lot's poorly-maintained parking spots, oil dribbling on the grass that shot out from one of the many cracks in the asphalt beneath the car. When the door opened, he saw a ginger, bushy-mopped reptilian woman with pink scales. Tall and gangly, she hobbled her way out of her shitbox and slammed the door behind her. She tightly held a bottle of liquor in a brown paper bag in her left hand. She took a swig before belching and screaming at the top of her lungs at some poor teenage kid on break.

"Hey, sugar! Y'all got-- hic --cleaners in there???"

Gus immediately realized her hoarse voice as the one he heard coming from across the street on a near-daily basis. Something overtook him, and he immediately felt sick to his stomach, quickly driving toward the lumber yard.

He was only a few hundred feet away from the parking lot when he couldn't hold the feeling in anymore. He pulled aside, narrowly missing some poor yard worker. The worker was about to launch into a tidal wave of screams and curses directed toward Gus when he saw that Gus was very much not well. The driver's door erupted and Gus nearly collapsed to the ground.

Gus's knees were bent, his palms stabbing into them so that he could keep from falling over.

"Yo. You alright man?" the worker asked.

Gus couldn't answer. Instead he vomited.

"Oh God. Oh my God, are you sick? Do you need a doctor?"

Gus raised a hand, and with the other he wiped his mouth.

"No." he was finally able to answer. "No, no. I'm fine. Just... something I ate."

The drive home was drowned out by music from the radio. Gus didn't want to think, he just wanted to get home. The woman getting out of her car, the embarrassment of nearly killing a man and losing his lunch in front of him from the anxiety… but it became impossible to take his mind off all those things the moment he looked toward the house across the road again.

She was out there. The girl. Sitting in front of a firepit, warming her hands in between a few shivers brought on by the cold night.

But for some reason, Gus didn't feel uncomfortable now that the other end of the situation was right in front of him. Seeing her alone like that tempted him to speak up again. And hopefully this time get something more than being brushed off. He opened his creaky door and straightened his overalls as he got out.

"Hey." he called out into the night.

She looked up at him.

"What now old-timer?" she asked in a frustrated huff, just wanting him to go away. Gus could feel her eyes roll from here.

He chuckled. Wow. Not at all what he wanted to hear but he supposed it'd be the best he'd get from a moody girl.

"I uh... met your mom at the hardware store earlier."

"Oh yeah? What of it?"

Gus paused a moment.

"Not much, just... thought she seemed like kind of a bitch."

Her eyes widened at that. She sat erect. And she laughed a little. "What's your deal, old man?" she asked, but this time without hostility in her voice. A breakthrough.

"Nothing, I just see you sitting out in front of a fire all alone in the twilight of a cold autumn evening, wondering why you're there and not in a nice warm house, figured I'd at the very least try to start a conversation or somethin'."

"Yeah... I got my reasons for being out here."

"Well," he picked up the small block of walnut he'd be using for the inlays and went to put it in his workshop, "don't catch cold out here, okay?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever..."

As he finished putting up the last of the white oak, he heard the rustbucket pull up into the driveway. He felt his chest tighten and his heart start pumping, but this time he remained composed.

He saw the girl standing up on his way to his front door. Her mother got out of the car, and with her back turned to Gus, she approached her daughter. She was about a foot taller, though much more thin.

Gus listened closely for whatever they had to say to one another. It was hardly above a whisper, but his ears were good, and they could pick the discussion up.

"Have you had time to think?" The woman's voice was haggard and hoarse, severe, even at a speaking volume.

"Yes." The daughter's shoulders scrunched up against her neck and she held her arms close.

"...can I please come back inside tonight? I'm sorry for talking back."

There was no sincerity in the girl's voice, only fear. The woman nodded, and they went inside.

That night, as Gus lay in bed, he wept quietly.