Chillin in the Hotbox

The day was frigid. Snow swirls descended in lazy spirals through the still air. The sunlight catching the flakes like purest diamonds suspended drifting through a still and frozen world. Snow blanketing everything around the cabin. All rendered into a featureless ivory sea, devoid of any notable feature save its lack of feature. Frisk shivered as he stood there, his breath puffing out in a thick steam. Why the hell had Az dragged him all the way out here? To admire the fucking cold? The cabin was nice and all, rustic and spartan and well crafted, but aside from the aesthetic comfy there was little to do here aside from freeze to death waiting to leave.

He rubs his arms through his sweater, hoping the friction would generate some heat. His fingers were numb and his ears burned and his nose ran. He wished he had some fur. Then he immediately didn't, remembering that depraved story he'd read on the internet. He didn't know how to light the stone fireplace in the cabin and Asriel refused to use magic, saying that Frisk needed to develop some fundamental survival skills. Frisk scowled silently. It's the twenty-first century and they technically lived in the city. Why did he need to learn how to chop wood and light the fire when every monster he knew could set things ablaze with their minds? He stomps his feet and starts to pace, wondering exactly why Az had left him here alone. He ponders if he can just leave. Take the car and go. Asriel might cry.

The human grins devilishly at the idea but a voice calls him out of his malefic line of thought.

"Hey Frisk! Come check this out!"

He turns toward the voice and sees Asriel. The monster prince was stumbling through the open entrance, kicking snow from his bare feet. His jacket was gone and his bare fur radiated steam into the air. Frisk's brow wrinkles in confusion.

"Az where were you? Why are you steaming like a bowl of soup?"

"Aw man Frisk. There's a sauna here! It's amazing! Warm as heck!"

"Well don't just stand there you doof. Take me to it, I'm freezing my ass off here!"

The monster grabs Frisk's hand and all but pulls him out through the front door around the side of the house. There is a large wooden shed coated in snow. The walls are wet and steam billows through a few gaps in the planks. Frisk closes his eyes and sighs. How the fuck had he missed this? It even had a hand-written sign painted with the word "Sauna" in bright yellow lettering on dark wood. He immediately takes a step forward toward the hotbox, but stops mid-step, his foot inches above the bare snow.

This was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Images flashed through Frisk's mind of pure degeneracy. Of lewd acts that could only be described as obscene. This was just like that fiction he had read. Was his life going to become a self-fulfilling lewd prophecy? His heart begins to pound in his chest and it doesn't feel as cold as it was. Maybe he's better off in the cold.

No. He was overreacting. It's not like Asriel had read the fic, right?

Asriel tugs impatiently at his wrist and Frisk looks into his adoptive brother's eyes, seeing only the childish innocence and friendliness that Frisk had grown up with. Frisk grins back and follows the monster inside the small hotbox.

The wave of heat that buffets the human's face as his companion opens the door can only be described as luxurious. He closes his eyes in heat-induced ecstasy, all the cold frigid anxiety is washed away in an awesome wave. All his cares melt away instantly and before he knows it he is sitting on the smooth and slightly damp wooden bench, his clothes piled next to him and wearing a towel around his legs. Across him Asriel sits leaning against the wall, his eyes completely closed, his fur a darker shade and his face a mask of serenity.

Frisk's brain was hazy with the heat and he begins to phase out of reality to enjoy the heat.

"Hey Frisk."

Frisk forces his eyes open. Asriel is holding a large handful of snow in his hand over the the hot stones in the center of the sauna.

"Check this out."

He turns his hand and drops the snow onto the stones where they sizzle and evaporate, filling the air with a cloud of steam that washes over the two brothers. Frisk lets out a sigh. It's really nice.

Suddenly there is a knock at the door of the sauna. Before either person can move the door swings open and a figure in a dark blue sweater is standing there, obscured by the steam being pulled out into the cold. Asriel shivers, damp with sweat.

"Holy shit, close the door it's freezing!" Shouts the distraught monster prince.

"You shoulda told me this place had a sauna. But don't sweat it."

It was Sans. The miniscule skeleton enters and immediately strips to the bare bones, hopping up beside Frisk on the bench.

"Aw man this is nice."

"Sans you forgot to close the door."

"HUMAN. GOAT. WHAT IS THIS PLACE?"

It was Papyrus. He enters through the open door, the steam making the perpetual smell of spaghetti flood the nostrils of the sauna's patrons. He sits next to Sans.

"WOWIE. IS THIS A SAW NA? IT'S QUITE NICE."

"Child? Oh, I see you've found the sauna. I was just preparing to take some time there myself. I hope you don't mind."

Frisk's face becomes a neutral mask as his mind screams at this intrusion upon his chill time with Asriel. Too many people in the small shed of a sauna.

"Ah, Frisk. Skeletons. I see you've all found the sauna. It's quite nice, is it not?"

Frisk didn't even care anymore. Asgore, wearing a large purple pair of swimming trunks, hunches over and enters the sauna, nearly taking up a third of the space, the rest filled with the other monsters and Frisk. At least he closes the door. Soon they're all mute from the heat, drenched in the steam and sweating, purged of all their woes. Frisk eventually thinks that it's not so bad, just sitting like this with everyone. Relaxed and silent.