wordbending:

for nagginggargoyle! from the acts of intimacy meme – “reading a book together”!

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Carefully,
as if afraid it’d decide to slam shut right in her face, Alphys
pushed open the door to the library – not the librarby,
it was worth noting. The
monsters
had made sure to get that right this
time.

She
breathed a sigh of relief when she poked her snout into the doorframe
and the entire library didn’t turn around and annihilate her in a
single shared stare of disdain. 

In fact, nobody seemed to notice her at all.

Even Undyne, who wasn’t
behind the front desk like usual but seated on a rickety wooden chair
in front of the entrance, hadn’t noticed her. She hadn’t as much as
glanced up from the over a dozen children, seating cross-legged or
many-legged or hanging from the ceiling or too tiny to see more than
the pillows they were seated on, all staring rapturously up (or down) at
her.

So
Alphys stood awkwardly in the doorway, refusing to even let the
chilly winter air outside move her forward. She just stood there and
quietly admired how Undyne looked with her bright red hair tied back
into a bun, even though she looked almost as silly wearing reading
glasses over her eyepatch. She didn’t even have vision problems,
outside of the obvious one.

But
eventually, Undyne’s eye, that surprisingly soft, gentle yellow eye,
turned up just long enough to meet hers. Undyne stopped whatever she
had been saying, her eye widening, and Alphys couldn’t keep herself
from swallowing back a breath as she stared back at her.

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