Asriel's College Gains- Part 2 (Patreon)

Here's part 2! Watch for part 3 next week, and thanks for the support!

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If Asriel ever made it to king, one of his first actions, he thought, would be re-classifying baking as an acceptable means of torture. How did his mother make it look so easy? This was his third attempt, and judging by the smoke billowing out of the stove, a fourth attempt wasn’t far behind. He cringed as he pulled out the blackened husk in a tin pan that, in another life, may have been a butterscotch pie. He glanced between the ruined, charred pie in one hand, and his mother’s well-worn cook book in the other. He had followed every step to the letter, measured every ingredient to the nearest decimal, how did this keep going wrong? He glanced at the note Toriel had left in the pages. “Don’t forget to add lots of love!” Ugh. Asriel rolled his eyes. What did that even mean?

His lips twisted as he glanced down at the pie again, and he tossed it out. He moved to his fridge, and grabbed an actual butterscotch pie, made to perfection. Toriel had sent a generous amount to serve as inspiration- but Asriel had a sneaking suspicion she just didn’t want him to forget how good her cooking was. He grunted slightly as he hiked up his sweatpants; his mother’s cooking was too good. To move on from other, more destructive habits, Asriel had developed a tendency to stress eat, and with his mother’s sweet and decadent desserts sent in by the baker’s dozen, his formerly firm, tapered torso had ballooned. He tried not to think about the beachball-sized belly hanging off of him; for now, he had passed it off as bulking. The rest of his body still maintained strong, firm muscle, but the truth is, he hadn’t been to the gym in some time. After two slices of pie, he was starting to feel better- a taste of home always helped. By his third slice, Asriel hefted himself up, and was ready to try again. He stopped only once as he was gathering his ingredients, when he caught his reflection. Breathing in sharply, he grimaced as he realized he did look a lot like his dad. But it wasn’t so bad, the Prince reassured himself; when he got one pie ready for his home-ec course, he’d hit the gym as hard as he ever had. He looked down at his ingredients, and then back at the half-eaten pie on his table. One more slice, to make sure the flavor was just right.