Red Light District

Chapter 1: Into the boiling pot

The muggy air must have prompted someone to open the windows, he could understand that, but what he couldn’t understand was why some idiot had left the door wide open. There weren’t many monsters around here, but it wasn’t a good neighborhood. And the door was just one more opening for that all-pervading rotten egg smell to waft through.

The muggy air must have prompted someone to open the windows, he could understand that, but what he couldn’t understand was why some idiot had left the door wide open. There weren’t many monsters around here, but it wasn’t a good neighborhood. And the door was just one more opening for that all-pervading rotten egg smell to waft through.

A dark shape blocked the door. He knew it was something awful, something truly terrible. This was what you got when you left the doors open. These things came in for you.

He backed up against the wall and tripped, his legs sliding out from under him. The thing lurched in toward him. It had shiny mucous-covered skin and feelers instead of a face.

Maybe if he talked to it. It was just another monster, it couldn’t be completely alien, it had to have things in common with him. Maybe it had family. Maybe if it remembered that, it wouldn’t do terrible

it was squirming closer

     terrible things to him…

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t cry out, couldn’t whimper. The door was wide open behind it, but his legs were useless. The door was fucking open right behind it, he could just crawl over and he’d be free and nothing would have to

It was close enough to give off a chill air the way a heater would give off warmth. Its body completely blocked the light. He finally found his voice, but it came out as no more than whispered whines.

“no no please help me…Boss…d-dad…someone help me please, d-don’t let it—” The faceful of feelers grazed the wall over him and left a trail of mucous as it slipped downward. “please d-d-don’t let it do this again, not again please…”

The feelers were dangling just above his head, oozing slime onto his face.

Sans woke with a gasp for air. He was greeted by Lesser Dog’s face hanging over him, panting and dripping some drool on his forehead.

“Wakey wakey.”

The dog was carrying him bridal style through Waterfall. Sans didn’t know how he’d managed to stay asleep in his arms, but he wasn’t surprised he’d had nightmares.

How Sans got to this point was somewhat of a long story. Papyrus owed the king a lot of money, it was Sans’ fault, and Sans was paying a debt. That is, if paying a debt were something you were expected to do in perpetuum. At the same time and at the king’s behest, Sans was getting his useless self out of the Boss’ way to greatness. Not that Papyrus saw any of it from that angle. As far as the Boss knew, Sans was on his way to the capital to serve the king in the science department.

Sans had been given a week to go back with Papyrus to Snowdin before starting his new job. After one night of nightmares, Sans hadn’t wanted to be around Papryus any more, to let him see him this way. Besides, the longer he said goodbye, the more he would wish for impossible things, like someone forgetting to wind the clock on life itself and for everything to halt here where his brother was proud of him.

On day two of his last week of freedom, Sans told Papyrus he needed to go ahead and leave for New Home early, and he cut and run to sleep in the woods. Apparently Lesser Dog thought it would be amusing if on the last day of the week, he absconded with Sans in the night while he was still unconscious. Sans didn’t even get the chance to use the morning to change his mind and say goodbye to Papyrus again. Not that he was going to, but it had been nice to think about.

Lesser Dog walked them into one of Waterfall’s closed chambers and stopped inside, a ways from the edge of a quietly lapping pool. The chamber was as gloomy as Sans remembered. It was hard to tell if there was anyone home, the darkness of the corners so thick it was almost physical.

“We’re here.”

Lesser Dog lowered Sans to the ground to stand on his feet, but didn’t let go of him. He tugged Sans’ arms and folded them behind him, pressing his crotch against Sans’ back. At Sans’ height, his head barely reached the dog’s chest. Sans felt something long and hard press between his shoulder blades through the dog’s clothes.

“I’ll see you again soon, pup.” The dog bent his head down and his tongue almost touched Sans’ face. Sans drew his head as far away as he dared. “Real soon. I promise.”

A soft, threatening voice emanated out from the back of the dark pool.

“Hands off.”

The dog let go and Sans stumbled a few feet before straightening back up. Lesser Dog had his hands up in a mockery of surrender.

“Put it on my tab.” Then Lesser Dog looked like he’d just thought of a very funny joke. “Hey! I bet Grillby would love to pay you a visit at your new job, wouldn’t he Sansy? Bet you wouldn’t need to get paid to suck that hot cock. Should I tell him where to find you?”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

The dog shot an irritated look in the direction of the voice. “You’re no fun at all.”

Then he left, and Sans was alone with the dark shape at the back of the pool and its giant, glowing, cat-like eyes focused directly on him.

Okay. He could do this.

There was a point where Sans pleaded to be killed instead of being taken back to Onion, but that was before. Well. Suffice to say that Onion at least kept each session to a livable duration. Not so long ago, that slug had Sans completely at its mercy for an entire night. Although after the ordeal, Sans doubted the slug considered mercy an option. Now Sans knew what a step up looked like. The octopus didn’t even hurt him so long as he did what he was told. So Sans would do as he was told, and survive this, and get to step two.

Which was probably going to be a step back down towards the worst.

The octopus drifted to the edge of the pool, but no tentacles breached the water. The huge face simply stared at Sans with suffocating patience.

“Come over here, Sans.”

No no no he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready for this. He could still practically feel the slug monster’s slime on him, and if anything touched him now—

Sans’ legs locked firmly in place.

Onion hadn’t hurt him when he followed directions, but if he couldn’t manage to obey…amidst all the other material for his nightmares recently was the echo of the feeling Sans got when tentacles penetrated his soul with ill intent. Like a manufactured dread that was somehow worse than his natural fear, like slime being poured inside him to some place he couldn’t reach, could never clean.

“I…I. I can’t…move. Please don’t punish me. I’m not. I’m not doing it on…purpose.”

Tentacles reached for him. “I told you before that you don’t need to be afraid.” He was grabbed around the middle and pulled over the water. “Just be a good boy for me, and I won’t hurt you.”

Sans appeared to have lost the ability to be humiliated by Onion’s words, so that was a relief at least.

“I’m not—doing it on purpose, I can’t move sometimes and it just—just happens, I can’t help it—”

“It’s okay. I’m not going to punish you, Sans. You didn’t do anything bad. Last time you tried to attack that other monster, remember? We’re not going to do anything right now. Just relax.”

Tentacles tugged his shorts down. Sans couldn’t hold back a small hitch of his breath. That was about the fastest turn around from ‘we’re not going to do anything’ to stripping that he could have imagined, but Sans knew better than to ask him to stop. He shivered at the open air.

“Let’s see your pussy.”

Sans swallowed and concentrated his magic. It was the first time he’d made a cunt since it had been used to meld with the slug’s magic injection. It felt wrong. Sans didn’t want to even deal with its presence or the unnatural wetness near his bones. The octopus’ focused gaze between his legs made a lump form in Sans’ throat. Silent tears streamed down his face. He didn’t try to cross his legs or hide anything, he just let his legs dangle freely with his cunt fully exposed, crying openly like a child.

Onion gave an exasperated huff.

“That bunny…he undid all of my hard work. Muffet too. I never would have…well, never mind.”

The tentacles pulled Sans’ shorts back up around his waist.

“I’m not going to touch your pussy today. We’re just going to go over some verbal commands. But keep the magic there, I want you to get used to keeping it up for longer periods.”

***

Sans was told he had two weeks of training to get through with Onion, but it wasn’t so awful as he thought it might be. For one thing, there was the fact that he knew there was an end date, whereas the last time he’d been captive, he’d been in the dark about everything. For all he’d known he could have been kept there the rest of his natural life.

The other bonus was that Onion hadn’t touched Sans sexually since starting retraining. At some points Sans started to think, just for a second, that maybe he looked as disgusting as he felt after the slug had its way with him. Then Sans mentally kicked himself, because it didn’t matter if the octopus thought he was disgusting. Onion was disgusting too. Everything was disgusting.

But Onion did touch Sans in other ways. He rubbed his neck, massaged his shoulders, stroked his face. He did it constantly—while he was talking to Sans, when they were done for the day—varying up the touches so they were always stimulating and noticeable. At first the attentions made Sans tremble, made him struggle not to beg because he knew it would get him in trouble, but after a time and as the touches never gave way to anything more, it started to relax him.

Sans wondered if this was how frogs felt as they were slowly boiled alive. He’d heard that they didn’t even notice it was happening. Maybe they felt like they were in a steamy bath up until one moment they weren’t, and by then they were already goners.

“Sometimes clients will tell you to call them something that makes them feel good. Sometimes the names they choose are…silly. I’m going to drill you until you can say them with a straight face.”

“Heh…drill. Good one.”

“This isn’t a promising start, Sans.”

There was a point where things shifted a little, some time around when he was being given poses and positions to practice, which reminded Sans in an oddly nostalgic way of how he used to joke with Grillby—how they would tease each other by striking Mettaton poses. It even felt just as chaste; Onion still didn’t touch Sans, only directed him verbally while Sans stayed on the platform over the pool. Every once in a while a tentacle would move one of his legs to correct his position, would push his shoulders back to make him look more calculatedly undone, but somehow Sans had made it this far into training without getting fucked or punished. Boiling water didn’t seem like the worst fate.

“Now, these are all real things that clients have asked our workers to call them over the years. I want you to repeat them without laughing.”

“Right. Okay.”

“Commander.”

“Commander.”

“World Champion.”

“World Champion?”

“The Plumber.”

“You made that up.”

“The Plumber.”

“The…Plumber.”

“Chubby Hubby.”

“Ha ha, WHAT.”

“Okay, let’s start over.”

And at that turning point, or some kind of breaking point, Sans temporarily forgot where he was. He ceased to be a captive, and the godawful tension lifted, and he wasn’t afraid of what was going to happen to him that day. The change may have been unconscious, but it suited Sans’ long held philosophy that just because things were hopeless didn’t mean they also had to be depressing. He let himself play around a bit.

“What next, Chubby Hubby?” Sans tried out the Birth of Venus pose.

“Very funny, Sans.”

Then he reclined for a Venus of Urbino. “What’s your command, Firebrand, Best in the Band?”

“Sans.”

And the classic spread eagle. “I’m yours to school, King Cool, Master of the Tool.”

“Sans oh my god stop.”

“You laughed, now you have to repeat them all.”

And some time after that he’d passed muster. Onion had him sent to New Home. The octopus parted with Sans with an affectionate tickle on the chin, and Muffet took Sans away. She’d wanted to pick him up in person for his first official day. What an honor.

On the way to the capital, Muffet told him all about daily schedules, dress code, the names of other workers in his part of the complex, but Sans wasn’t listening closely. As he passed sights of the Underground that he wasn’t quite sure he would see again, he considered asking how often the workers were allowed to go out, but was too afraid of the answer. The Underground was small enough. His whole world was about to get even smaller.

They reached the complex in New Home. It wasn’t much from the outside. The main entrance looked like a small restaurant surrounded by other nondescript buildings, but on the inside the buildings were actually all connected up. The kind of place you had to know you were looking for. Sans supposed the outward discretion was probably a good way to sift out the monsters with money from the shiftless bums drifting in, looking for a good time. Muffet showed Sans through the unassuming foyer. 

Before all this, Sans had heard of a brothel in New Home that everyone called Red City, but he’d never seen it for himself. Apparently, Muffet had wanted to call it something classier, something French. But the nickname stuck for a few reasons. By Underground standards, the place was huge. It took up several buildings at street level, and consisted of a network of cleared tunnels even further underground as well.

The so-called ‘Red City’ also lit all of the areas that were accessible to guests with red lights. There was a rumor that the lighting was meant to hide bloodstains. Perhaps it was innate, or maybe it was growing up with claustrophobia and the pressures of surviving in a hellhole, but either way a lot of monsters had developed a taste for pain to go with their pleasure. As they passed by a suspiciously dark spot in a red hallway, Muffet assured Sans that in deference to his 1 HP, he wouldn’t have any rough clients. Sans didn’t think the assurance was apropos of nothing, and he didn’t find it comforting.  

They left the red lit area and entered the living quarters. Muffet pointed out the cafeteria on the way to Sans’ room, said he could grab a snack before bed if he wanted. Said not to take food into his room or he’d attract bugs, and the other spiders didn’t like the crowding. Muffet opened the door to his room and waited for Sans to enter. Then she wished him good night and left him.

Sans took a look around the room. There was a small bed, a desk, a shallow closet, and a set of drawers. He opened one of the drawers. There were several sets of clean, folded clothes, all nicer than he was used to wearing. Button-up shirts and slacks and were those some ties in there? How did you even tie a tie?

It suddenly occurred to Sans that this was the first time he’d been by himself in weeks. He was in his own room, and no one was going to touch him all night. He didn’t have to say how close he was to orgasm, or be picked up by giant limbs that could snap his spine as easily as pleasure him, he didn’t have to be watched—

A tiny red light greeted him cheerily from the upper corner of the room. He wouldn’t have noticed the camera if he hadn’t looked up, but it wasn’t at all concealed. 

Sans pulled off his t-shirt, figuring he probably wouldn’t be expected to wear something so ratty again, and tossed it to drape over the camera’s lens. Then he sat on the bed, swung his feet up, laid his head back on the pillow, and cried himself to sleep.