#prinxiety and intrulogical in previous chapters

[taxicabinmemphis]

Prince Charming Chapter 6 - Sword-ing Things Out

chapter one - chapter two - chapter three - chapter four - chapter five - chapter six

Word count - 2,019

Pairing - Moceit (Prinxiety and Intrulogical in previous chapters)

Warnings - sword fighting, kiss without consent (it’s fine in the story but please remember that consent is essential, kids, and always ask first!), food, tell me if there’s anything else I need to tag!

Janus woke up later than usual. A glance at the clock told him he had slept for a full eight hours and that it was a quarter before ten in the morning. Dinner had been very late, and he read for a couple hours while processing the day before he went to bed.

When Janus had finished getting ready for the day (around a quarter past ten), he sunk out of his room and into the kitchen. He glanced into the living room next to the kitchen, spotting Patton sipping from a coffee mug. The moral side had a plate of pancakes in front of him, covered in syrup, and seemed to be deep in thought. His glasses were slightly askew on his face, his hair wasn’t fully in place, and his cardigan was tied around his shoulders a bit messier than usual. Janus smiled; Patton looked like he’d just gotten up.

“Good morning, Patton,” Janus greeted smoothly. “I hope you slept terribly.”

Patton jumped in his seat; Janus had clearly surprised him. “Oh! Sorry, Janus, good morning! And, uh, I slept alright I suppose. You?”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “A full eight hours. However, it doesn’t seem it was the same for you; you look quite tired. How long have you been up?”

“Oh...maybe an hour or so? An hour and a half? I got at least six hours, so I’m alright.”

“That’s wonderful for your health.”

“It’s one night; I think I’ll be alright,” Patton replied, a small smile on his face. “Anyway, Janus, please don’t bother cooking or anything. I made enough pancakes for everyone, and there’s another mug of tea as I had extra, if tea is indeed your thing.”

“It is, Patton. Making breakfast for everyone is very considerate, and the tea is a very nice gesture, thank you.”

“It’s no trouble, Janus,” Patton replied tiredly.

Janus grabbed a plate, placed two pancakes on it, put blueberries on the pancakes, and grabbed the aforementioned mug of tea. He noticed that there was already syrup at the table where Patton was sitting and walked over to the moral side. He stopped in front of an empty seat, not wanting to invade his space.

“I’d hate to join you, Patton, if you’d allow me,” Janus requested.

“Oh, of course! This is a table for all of us sides, is it not?” Patton permitted with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Janus sat down, frowning. “Are you sure you’re alright, Patton?”

“Yeah!”

Janus gave him an unimpressed look, pouring syrup over his pancakes.

Patton sighed and took a long sip of his tea. “I’ve just been thinking about yesterday. It’s probably why I didn’t sleep as well as you.” Patton stared at his pancakes, stabbing his fork into them rather harshly but not taking a bite.

Janus waited for more exposition but didn’t receive it. “I don’t suppose you’d like to elaborate on that.”

“I don’t think you’d want to listen.”

Janus shook his head to indicate a negative, taking a bite of his pancakes. “I’d love for your day to be ruined by unresolved worries. Considering the stress I put on you yesterday, it’s only fair for me to listen to your troubles in return.”

Patton glanced up at Janus from his food. “There are a lot of benefits to talking about your feelings…” Patton stated, considering Janus’ offer. “Sounds pan-tastic.”

Janus snorted at the pun, suppressing a smile. “I’m disappointed you agreed. What’s on your mind?”

“I just…can’t help but be mad at myself for what I did to Virgil. I know he doesn’t blame me for it, but I still feel really bad.”

“He would’ve killed you if you hadn’t,” Janus pointed out, taking a sip of his tea.

“I know,” Patton sighed. “But he’s my best friend! I can’t help it.”

“That makes no sense. It’s understandable. Of course you feel guilty, you’re Patton. But you have to remember—you totally deserve the guilt. It’s not like you did anything wrong.” Janus took another sip of his tea. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say your actions were more considerate than what could be expected of you.”

“Thanks, Janus,” Patton said, taking a bite of his syrup-soaked pancakes.

“Of course,” Janus responded. “Anything else on your mind?”

“Uhh,” Patton started hesitantly, “yeah? I may or may not be confused and...just a tiny—” he held up his index finger and thumb to Janus in a position that made them almost touch, “—bit annoyed and, well, irritated as well as previously a small bit angry with you for forcing me to fight Virgil.” He gave Janus an unsure look, smiling nervously. “Sorry?”

Janus sighed; this part of the conversation was inevitable. “Ah. Yes. Don’t be sorry, I get why you’re upset. You have every right to be.” He sipped his tea.

Patton nodded, refusing to look at Janus and staring at his pancakes instead as he stabbed at them with his fork. “Was it really necessary?”

Janus opened his mouth to defend his actions, but he shook his head. “No. It wasn’t.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I was supposed to play the bad guy.”

Patton frowned. “It has to be more than that. You don’t seem like the type to do stuff like that just because of a role someone gave you.”

Janus sighed, pouring more syrup on what remained of his pancakes. “If you must know, Logan was beating me in our fight; I had to distract him.”

“You could have done anything else.”

“He also wasn’t getting in my head.”

Patton raised his head to meet Janus’ eyes. “In your head? Logan?”

Janus nodded. “It was quite a travesty. I guess I tried to...prove something to him and myself.”

“And?”

“I didn’t,” Janus said with a pitiful laugh. “Logan was right.”

The two ate in silence for several minutes, processing the conversation, before Janus realized he hadn’t apologized.

“I’m not sorry, Patton,” Janus said to break the silence. “It was right of me to take out the confusion of my inner struggles on your and Virgil’s emotional wellbeing.”

Patton gave him a weak smile. “I’m sorry, but...I don’t know whether I should forgive you yet. I want to, but...it hurt.”

“You don’t have to. I definitely expect you to, especially this soon after events. Just please know that my apology is sincere, and I will do my absolute worst to make sure it never happens again in the future.”

Patton finished his pancakes and put his fork down. He put his elbow on the table and leaned his head onto his fist. “I don’t wanna forgive you yet but you make it so hard. I wanna hold out until this evening but I’m not sure I’ll be able to.”

Janus’ human side adopted a pink tint. “You’re rude, Patton, but strong. I’m sure you can do it.”

Patton’s face lit up. “I have an idea!”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “I’d hate to hear it.”

“You’d have to be up for it, though, and you in no way are expected to be,” Patton prefaced.

“Alright.”

“We could fight it out! With swords!” Patton said with a grin. “If I win, it’ll satisfy me enough to forgive you, and if you win, I will be dissatisfied and be able to not forgive you.”

“Losing creates anger, does it not?”

Patton waved a hand. “No, I’m not mad at you, silly. You can not forgive someone and not be mad.”

“Fair enough,” Janus replied, finishing his breakfast. “I agree to this, especially if it helps calm your mind.”

“Yay!” Patton stood, taking Janus’ arm. “Let’s go sword things out.”

Janus snorted and shook his head. “Hilarious.”

The two ventured into the Imagination. Patton conjured the sword he had used the previous night, and Janus looked at it with amusement.

“A beautiful sword you have there, Patton, though I think I will have to trade mine for a shorter one.” He conjured a black gladius with a yellow hilt.

They were in a plain black room, the only color filling it being them and their accessories. However, they could see the other very well.

Janus stood in a fighting stance, smiling at Patton.

“Square up, sweetheart. Starting a fight unprepared is incredibly wise.”

Patton laughed nervously, a pink on his cheeks from the pet name. He shifted to a fighting position. “You got it. Prepare yourself to be defeated.”

“So you want to forgive me?”

Patton made the first move, not dignifying the comment with a response. He stepped towards Janus and swiped at his shoulder. Janus parried, and made a strike at the moral side’s neck, only for that to be parried as well.

They went on for a couple of minutes, trying to disarm the other. The only noises heard was the shuffling of feet, grunts of effort, and clashing of swords.

Janus made a particularly hard hit that Patton could barely parry, throwing the moral side backwards a little. He took the opportunity to discard his cloak and his hat, throwing them a good fifteen feet away.

“You removed your hat? And your cloak? Woah, this is a moment to remember!” Patton teased, striking at Janus’ head.

He blocked the blow, taking the opportunity to stare Patton in the eyes. “Only for you, honey,” Janus replied.

Patton flushed, stabbing at his torso.

“Oh, you needn’t try to hit my heart, it’s not there.”

Patton raised an eyebrow, deciding to humor him. “Where is it, then?”

“I don’t think I saw you holding it a few minutes ago.”

Patton laughed and made a cut to the neck. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my breath.”

“Considering it’s not cold enough, no….”

“Oh. I thought you had taken it away for a second,” Patton said with a cheeky grin, swiping his sword at Janus’ legs. “But if you haven’t…”

Patton knocked the gladius out of Janus’ hand, the blade falling right beside him. He stood close to Janus, really close, too close (though Patton could never be too close in Janus’ eyes), his sword at his side. Though Janus may have imagined it, he could swear he saw Patton’s gaze drop to his lips for half a second.

“I suppose I can take yours instead.”

Janus smiled, raising his hands to surrender slowly. Patton’s smile widened, and he took a step back.

“So I w-”

Janus kicked his sword up, grasping it by the hilt and knocking it horizontally into Patton’s torso, making sure not to hurt him. Patton fell backward, eyes wide as Janus knelt over him. His right hand was clasped over the moral side’s left, holding it in place so he couldn’t strike. He got himself as close to Patton as he had been before; leaning over him with a victorious smirk on his face.

“I think I win this one, my blue beauty,” Janus whispered, staring into Patton’s eyes. “Though, I’m completely opposed to a rematch.” He glanced at Patton’s lips, before looking back to his eyes.

No. Patton hadn’t said he forgave him, he was a dark side, this could have all just been a game. For show. And even still, romantic feelings were a completely different level than friendship.

He stood up and extended a hand to Patton to help him up. Patton took it, pulled himself up, dropped his sword, and in one fluid motion, pulled Janus in for a passionate kiss.

Janus’ eyes widened and he dropped his sword in surprise. He didn’t know what to do and was more surprised than he should have been. His hesitation prompted Patton to start to pull away.

“I-I’m sorry, I should’ve as-”

Janus reconnected their lips, putting his arm around Patton’s shoulders and kissing him like there was no tomorrow.

He pulled back for air. “You’re giving me mixed signals here. I won, yes, but you’re kissing me, so am I forgiven, or…”

“Not yet.” Patton pulled him back in for a third kiss—a smirk on his face and his eyes alight.

~

Taglist: @the-sympathetic-villain ​ @justanotherhumanstuff ​ @thistledown15 ​

~

This is the final installment! Originally this was a sequel, that’s why it has a title (I kept it cuz I like the pun). Hope you liked it! This one wasn’t quite as serious as the others so the writing is different.

                                                    \_/. _ . \_/

                                                        /     \

                                                       /        \ 

Love you all, thanks for reading this story!

[iclaimedtobethebetterbard]

if you’re going my way, i’ll go with you - chapter 9

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: All the sides, character!Thomas, minor/background OCs Rating: Teen & up Relationships: Analogical, Dukeceit, platonic Loceit and Intrulogical, platonic/parental Prinxiety and Logince Warnings: Language, very non-graphic injuries, a few extremely vague references to child abuse. Word count: 3384

Read on AO3!

My writing masterpost

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–

Chapter 9

Logan made quick work of his investigation of Count Ruthless’s lair. He didn’t need to bother with minions, of course—no minion who valued their skin would ever challenge a superhero, let alone Dr. Logic. Besides, most of them seemed to be concerned with vacating the premises at top speed and could not care less about Logan making his way to the heart of the lair.

The Count, Logan was unsurprised to discover, owned very little tech that was of real interest to him, but there were several pieces Logan deemed it best to remove from circulation among the villainy of Sandersville. Virgil would no doubt be unhappy with this, but he had promised Logan first pick.

Once he had selected the items he wanted, Logan loaded them into a cart and took it back to the rooftop. He’d scheduled a bot earlier in the day to arrive here precisely when he needed it, and sure enough, it was right on time. Transferring the cart to the bot and sending it back to his lab was a simple matter. After sending it on its way, he crossed the rooftop back to Virgil’s prone form to check on him.

Virgil was still unconscious. His pulse was steady, and his breaths were long and even. The device Logan had used to knock him out, a new model he’d been working on that was small enough to conceal in his hand, had worked beautifully; it should leave him with no unpleasant side effects upon awakening. However, it would likely be another hour or two before Virgil came to—in order to eliminate all unwanted side effects, Logan had had to increase the minimum time the device affected its victims for.

Having been prepared for this, Logan clipped one of his stock invisibility devices onto Virgil’s belt. He arranged Virgil’s arms into a more comfortable position, so that they would not cramp by the time he woke up, and tucked a note into his hand. On it, he had printed the dictionary definition of the word “prank.”

He turned on the invisibility device so that Virgil would not be discovered in his vulnerable state, then took off from the rooftop and flew across the city back to his lab to wrap up his duties for the day. All in all, everything had worked out beautifully.

***

The bot and the cart full of tech were both waiting outside the outermost set of doors to his lab. Logan frowned to himself. Remus ought to have seen the notification that something was outside and let the bot in by now. That was odd.

But the reason for the delay became evident when he made his way into the lab proper and discovered Remus, perched in Janus’s lap, cupping their face in his hands and trading soft words and giggles and kisses with them.

Logan rolled his eyes and cleared his throat loudly. Janus started so violently the chair went skidding a few inches and Remus fell right off of it, landing on his tailbone.

“Oh, hi Doc!” Remus greeted cheerily from the floor without so much as a wince. He waved up at Logan as Janus composed himself in an excessively dignified manner, trying to act like he hadn’t been startled at all.

“Reflection, I have no desire to revoke your access to my lab, but every day you find new ways to test me,” Logan told Janus as Remus got to his feet and brushed himself off. “We just discussed this.”

“Actually, it’s just the same way a lot of different times,” Remus pointed out, taking an instinctive-looking step to the side that put himself in front of Janus. It was a remarkably subtle movement—the casual slide seemed perfectly natural. Only the slight line of tension in Remus’s shoulders gave his anxious state away.

Logan frowned to himself, a protective feeling nudging away some of his irritation with his intern. He knew what this type of behavior stemmed from, and though he’d offered what he could to help remedy it, that made him no less angry on Remus’s behalf for what had caused it.

“It’s mostly my fault, anyway,” Remus added, greatly increasing the strength of the emotion Logan was experiencing. “Don’t get her in trouble. Please.”

“Neither of you are ‘in trouble,’ Remus,” Logan assured the younger man gently. “I am merely exasperated.” He directed the bot towards one of the storage rooms and went to power his main computer all the way down for the day. “And you certainly do not bear a higher share of responsibility in this matter than Reflection does—you never leave your workspace to seek him out. But, to be clear: I would appreciate it if you would incorporate my feedback into future actions, but I have no intention of meting out unpleasant consequences for you, now or ever.”

“Okay,” Remus said after a considering pause. “Thanks.”

“So I can do what I want,” Janus put in, sounding very pleased.

“No.” Logan pointed at her. “You I am annoyed with. If you continue testing me, I may actually revoke your access to the lab for a day or two to make my point.”

Janus pouted at him. “Meanie.”

“I feel I have been extremely lenient on this matter up to this point in time, actually,” Logan informed her.

“Well, I could just put on your face. Or his.” Janus pointed at Remus. “You can’t ban yourself from your lab, so you can’t keep me out.” He grinned triumphantly.

“I’ve actually developed bio-scanning capabilities that can detect the shapeshifter gene,” Logan informed them. “So I can, in fact, keep you out if I should desire to do so.”

“What?” Janus all but shrieked, absolutely scandalized. “You said it blends in and hides! You said that mimicking DNA was one of my key strengths!”

“Precisely,” Logan said, greatly amused. “That is why it took me a decade to develop something that could consistently and reliably identify it.”

“And you just didn’t tell me you had this?” Janus flung his hands in the air.

“I was planning to save it for an opportune moment.” Logan gave them a teasing smile. “But drawing this reaction from you is in fact entertaining enough to suffice.”

“You’re awful,” Janus told him, which Logan knew was a compliment. “Can you show me how it works?”

“I would be happy to. However, not today.” Without further preamble, Logan took off his labcoat and hung it in its place on the wall.

“…Whatcha doing, Doc?” Remus asked, clearly unsure if he was supposed to know why Logan was preparing to leave or if his confusion was well-founded.

“I have some personal matters that need my attention, and will be unavailable for the rest of the day,” Logan explained. “I should be back to a normal schedule tomorrow. Anyone trying to reach me should be directed to try again in the morning. For now, I’d like you to put off your normal work for the remainder of the day and instead begin cataloguing the assets I’ve just brought in. They are various pieces of supervillain tech reclaimed from the lair of Count Ruthless.”

“Got it,” Remus said with a nod, getting to his feet at once and heading for the back room where the cart was. For all his time spent flirting with Janus on the clock, he was a busy worker once he set himself to a particular task.

Sometimes too busy. Logan had not forgotten the day, a month or two after he’d initially taken Remus on, when he’d arrived at the lab in the morning to discover that Remus was still busily working away, having forgotten to go home at all or even to sleep.

“Remus,” Logan called.

Remus paused and looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, Doc?”

“Remember to go home on time and to prioritize fulfilling your need for food and sleep,” Logan said. “It is more than fine if your task is unfinished today.”

“Sure, sure,” Remus said dismissively, then visibly reined himself in. “I mean—okay. I’ll try and remember.” He hesitated. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Of course,” Logan assured him.

***

After bidding goodbye to both Remus and Janus, Logan made a quick stop at his official Dr. Logic apartment, which he kept in order to maintain the privacy of his actual apartment. He shed his work attire in favor of a simple turtleneck and pair of slacks and replaced his contact lenses with glasses, then left the apartment by the secret exit. From there, he then made his way to the overdramatic tower that Virgil made his home in.

Waiting until there was nobody on the street to witness him—though this was not a long wait; people generally avoided the Nightmare’s lair at all costs—Logan stepped onto the grounds, waiting just a second before continuing. The security system should recognize that he was out of costume, and therefore had clearance to access the building, but it was always best to make sure. Having satisfied himself that he was not about to be obliterated via laser, he made his way up the steps and let himself in.

He knocked on the door of Virgil’s penthouse-style living quarters as he let himself into that a moment later.

Roman’s head, the only part of him visible over the back of the couch, swiveled at once. “Oh!” He waved as Thomas reached to pause the television. “Hi, Doc—tor…” Roman trailed off, little brow wrinkling in confusion as he clearly remembered mid-sentence the instruction not to use Logan’s hero name when he was out of costume.

“Good afternoon,” Logan said. He glanced around. “Virgil has not yet returned, I take it?”

“No,” Thomas said. Something in Logan’s tone must have been off, because Thomas squinted at him. “Do you… know something about that?”

“I have no idea what you are insinuating,” Logan said blandly. “I’m sure he will be back soon. Perhaps in approximately three and a half minutes.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Fine. Fine. Be like that. Supers,” he mumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes.

Logan made his way to sit beside Roman on the sofa. “How are you doing physically?” he inquired.

“Um, good. I had more of the painkillers at lunchtime.” Roman bounced a little. “I’ve been watching so much She-Ra! Because Virgil said you said I should rest. And not go to school. But Virgil says he’s going to make it so I can just go to school again later without getting in trouble. Have you seen She-Ra? Besides what I showed you yesterday? Do you know Sea Hawk?”

“I do not,” Logan said. “May I—“

“He’s a very handsome man,” Roman said eagerly, “and he has a shiny mustache and he sings! He’s my favorite. Um, one of my favorites.” His eyes widened. “Oh, I—I think I interrupted, sorry.” His shoulders drew inwards.

“It is fine. He sounds fascinating,” Logan said politely, though to be honest he could hardly care less about the show or its characters. “May I examine your bandages?”

“Sure.” Roman stilled his bouncing, allowing Logan to lift the child’s t-shirt off his belly and assess the state of his bandages.

“They seem to have held up well,” he commented, pleased. “You bathed with them on, correct? How did they hold up against exposure to water?”

“Good. I don’t think the water got in at all,” Roman said.

“Excellent. They still need to be changed, at the very least so I can examine the wound itself, but that is good to know. How are—“

The door opened.

Roman lit up. “Virgil!”

“Hi, kid,” Virgil said lightly, closing the door behind himself. He fixed Logan with a pointed stare and crossed his arms. “Hi, babe.”

“Hello, dear,” Logan said, struggling not to laugh.

Virgil tossed something through the air towards him. “I think this is yours.”

Upon catching it, Logan discovered it to be the invisibility device. “How thoughtful of you to find that for me,” he said innocently.

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” Thomas interjected.

“Oh, Virgil is just very happy to see me,” Logan said, forcing down a smirk as he went to set down the invisibility device on the kitchen island for safekeeping.

Virgil came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Logan’s waist, hooking his chin over Logan’s shoulder. “You, my love,” he murmured, punctuating his words with a tender kiss pressed to the side of Logan’s neck and speaking too quietly for Roman or Thomas to hear, “are an asshole.”

“Hmm.” Logan felt he had to concede this point. “Perhaps.” He paused. “But it was funny.”

He felt Virgil smile against his neck. “It was kind of funny,” he allowed. “After I woke up and figured out what had happened.”

“And you did say I could have first pick of the technology in the lair,” Logan added.

“Well, I somehow imagined that, like, you would let me know what you wanted and I’d give it to you,” Virgil said, sounding greatly amused. He pressed his cheek against Logan’s. “Not that you’d knock me out and go get it yourself.”

Logan turned his head to peck Virgil on the lips. “I am nothing if not proactive, dearest.” He tugged Virgil’s hands gently away from where they were still clasped around his waist. “I would like to continue attending to my patient now.”

Virgil whined in half-joking protest, but relinquished his hold on Logan with one final kiss on the cheek. “I’m going to go change out of this,” he announced, gesturing at his supersuit, and made his way down the hall to his bedroom as Logan rejoined Roman on the couch.

In short order, Logan had unbandaged Roman’s wound and begun examining it to ensure that there were no signs of infection, Roman watching with fascination all the while.

Virgil stepped back into the room moments later, now clad in a t-shirt and jeans. After an assessing look at Logan and Roman, he evidently came to the correct conclusion that Logan had matters under control. Instead of immediately joining them, he beckoned Thomas to the side and began a hushed conversation about the morning’s events.

Logan ignored this in favor of giving his attention to his young patient. Roman’s wound was doing well—exceedingly well. In fact—

“Were you aware you have superhealing?” Logan inquired of Roman.

“What?” Roman said. “I do?” He stared down at the stitches in his stomach with renewed interest and reached to poke at them.

Logan caught the child’s hand, suppressing both his initial flash of panic at the action and his sigh of relief at successfully preventing it. (Was this what parenthood was like? No wonder Janus could be so high-strung.) “Touching your injury with your bare hands could infect it. Please do not,” he instructed Roman.

“Oh.” Roman bit the inside of his cheek. “Sorry.”

“It is alright. No harm has been done, and now you know,” Logan assured him. “But to answer your question: yes, you clearly have superhealing. I would have expected this amount of progress to take a week under normal circumstances.”

“Cool!” Roman enthused, visibly forcing himself to keep his hands away from his injury as he continued to examine it.

Logan nodded, refraining from telling the boy that this was not at all an uncommon power. His state of delighted wonder was endearing, and Logan felt strongly inclined to preserve it. “How are your pain levels?” he asked instead.

“Fine,” Roman said quickly. “I’m okay. It wasn’t that bad. And I had painkillers anyway.” He hesitated. “I think it’s better today than yesterday?”

“That is encouraging news,” Logan said, filing away the it wasn’t that bad to discuss with Virgil later, because it certainly had been that bad, particularly for a child who barely qualified as tweenaged. He pulled out a cleaning wipe and began sponging carefully at the wound. “Have you noticed any other powers that you are in possession of?” he asked. Roman’s main power was clearly the glitter ability, but his secondary powers could be anything, and the number of them could vary.

“Um. I can fly?” Roman shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t—” He hesitated, looking away; Logan suspected he was deliberating how to word his sentence. “Didn’t think it was a good idea to experiment and try and find out.” He looked back at Logan. “I just knew I could fly and make glitter stuff because I found those out by accident.”

“Hm. Well, no matter—the assessment new students undergo at Brennan is quite thorough. They will compile a full list of your powers when you enroll.” Logan glanced over at Virgil, who had just finished debriefing Thomas and sent him to do some task relating to the business with Count Ruthless. “He is being enrolled there, I assume?”

“Obviously,” Virgil said. He came over to sit on the sofa near Logan and Roman. “I was thinking we could work on that tomorrow, Roman?”

“That’s the powers school, right?” Roman asked.

“It is indeed,” Logan confirmed. He set down the wipes, satisfied with the state of Roman’s injury for the time being. “Let’s bandage this back up and check on it again in another day or two.”

“Mmkay.” Roman sat still as Logan began to rebandage the injury.

It was quiet as Logan worked. His thoughts, however, were whirring back and forth with an indecisiveness and hesitancy he rarely experienced.

His identity was secret; that was the point of it. The fewer people who knew anything about him, the better. And a child had far less secret-keeping ability than an adult.

All the same, Roman had to call him something. At this point, it seemed certain that that Logan would continue interacting with this boy on a regular basis. And he’d proven himself to be capable of discretion.

He drew in a long breath, making up his mind at last. “My name,” he said to Roman, voice quiet because he was taking such care to keep it steady, “is Logan Crofter. When I am out of costume, you may use it to address me.” Logan held Roman’s gaze and spoke firmly. “I expect that you will keep this private, and do your utmost to ensure that my name and my personal information are never associated with the title of Dr. Logic. Clear?”

Roman nodded several times, eyes wide. “I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”

“Good.” Logan examined the bandages one last time. “These should be sufficient for the time being.”

“Thank you,” Roman said, tugging his shirt down from where it had been rucked up under his armpits. “Why is your watch trans?” he asked, staring at Logan’s hands.

Oh. That was right; the strap of Logan’s watch had the trans pride flag running along it. “Because I am a transgender man,” he said simply, shrugging.

Roman’s eyes went huge. “Wait, really?” he gasped, delighted.

“Yes.” Logan hesitated for a moment. “That is another piece of information that I expect you to keep private,” he added. “I prefer for people to know as little identifying information about Dr. Logic as possible.”

“Oh. Gotcha.” Roman nodded. “I get that,” he said, far too seriously. “You just gotta keep things secret sometimes, you know?”

Logan felt a sharp, strong ache in his chest at the seriousness of the little boy’s tone and the solemn look in his brown eyes. He reached over and cupped Roman’s warm little cheek in his hand. “Sometimes,” he agreed. “It’s better when you have friends to confide in.”

Roman made a noise of consideration. “That makes sense,” he agreed.

“Is he all good, L?” Virgil inquired.

“Yes,” Logan confirmed. “He is doing very well.”

“Cool. Sounds great. Can I grab you for a minute?” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I want to talk with you about something.”

Logan raised his eyebrows at the vagueness of this phrasing. “Certainly,” he agreed.

“Awesome. Hey, Roman,” Virgil said, “why don’t you finish up this episode of She-Ra while I talk with Logan?”

Roman frowned for just an instant, and then it was gone. “Okay,” he said, voice sweet and blandly accommodating.

Virgil hesitated, brow furrowing, but did not press matters, beckoning Logan down the hall to his bedroom as Roman picked up the remote.

-

Taglist (ask to be added/removed!): @theimprobabledreamersworld @the-sympathetic-villain @just-a-little-anxious @your-local-crackhead-gremlin @remy-the-lemon-berry @midnightstorm-underthe-moon @crazydemigod666  @did-he-just-hiss-at-me @virgil-is-verge @simplestoryteller @oblivionartworks  @so-youre-a-rock-with-issues @emoprincey @theblackcatscratchpost @biwithapie @poettheythem

[moceit]

Home Is Where...

Masterlist

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Summary: It's boring being a teenager when you have no friends and are stuck working as a waiter at your dad's restaurant. At least that's what Virgil thought until a set of twins move into town and start attending school with him. Now how will Virgil survive after letting himself befriend Remus Rey? Suddenly Virgil's life becomes a roller coaster of never-ending adrenaline that he wasn't prepared for... and neither were his parents.

Pairings: Platonic Dukexiety, Eventual Prinxiety, Divorced/Eventual Moceit, Background/Implied Intrulogical, Brief One-Sided Logince

Prologue

Word Count: 1,533

Chapter Warnings: Divorce, lmk if something needs tagged

Read on AO3

"Attack!" the little boy with a toy dinosaur in his hand screamed as he jumped off his bed and onto the pile of blankets and pillows he had laying on the floor.

"Raaaaawr!" he waved the dinosaur in the air to make it look like the toy was the one rawring before he threw the dinosaur at a ton of blocks he had stacked up to stand in place of a skyscraper.

"Destruction!" the little boy cheered as he threw his hands in the air in celebration when his dinosaur toppled over his skyscraper.

"Virgil~" came the recognizable singsong voice of his daddy.

Virgil looked over at his bedroom door to see both of his parents standing there watching him. "Daddy! Papa!" he shouted as he ran up to greet them. He threw himself into a hug between both of his parents who hugged him back.

"Time for bed, kiddo." said Virgil's papa as he stroked his hair.

Virgil threw his head back and groaned as he wiggled himself out of the hug. "Five more minutes?"

Both of his parents glanced at each other and back at him with the same look in their eyes that often told Virgil he was about to be disappointed.

"Afraid not." said his daddy. He came further into the room and lowered himself to be more at eye level with Virgil who was frowning at his parents with begging eyes. "You have school tomorrow so you have to go to bed early."

"Yeah," Virgil's papa squatted down next to his daddy and placed a hand on one of Virgil's shoulders, "your first day of kindergarten. You wanna get lots of sleep tonight so you can wake up refreshed and ready for your big day tomorrow. Okay, kiddo?"

Virgil perked up a little. He had been looking forward to starting kindergarten all summer long and tomorrow he'd finally get to go. Virgil ran to his bed and jumped into it.

His dads followed him, picking up the blankets and pillows discarded on the floor as they went. They helped get Virgil's bed put back together so he could sleep in it that night. After replacing the stuff onto the bed they each gave him a kiss goodnight.

"Wait!" Virgil sprang up from his bed as his papa pulled away from him.

"What?

Virgil ran to where he had left his toy dinosaur in the rubble and picked it up before climbing back into bed.

"Okay!"

Both of his parents planted another kiss on his forehead and wished him goodnight. Virgil closed his eyes. His dads crept out of his room, making sure not to step on any of the blocks they'd remember to have Virgil clean up tomorrow. His papa was the last one out of the room. He flicked off the main light leaving only the dim purple night light to illuminate Virgil's bedroom before slowly closing the door behind him.

Virgil's eyes shot open when he heard the click of his bedroom door. He listened carefully for the sound of his dads' footsteps pad their way down the stairs. Virgil waited for one beat, two beats, then sprang himself out of bed and tiptoed his way across his bedroom to the door that he quietly pulled open. Virgil continued tiptoeing down the hall until he was sitting at the top of the stairs where he could listen in on his parents' conversation from the living room below.

"I can probably stay at my mother's until I find a place close by to rent." Virgil overheard his daddy say.

"That's like an hour away from here. Is that fair to Virgil?" his papa replied. Virgil tensed at the mention of his name. What were they discussing that could possibly pertain to him and his grandma?

"Is any of this fair to Virgil?"

There was a second of silence. Virgil leaned forward, whatever they were talking about really piqued his interest and he didn't want to miss a word.

His papa sighed before finally saying. "No… it isn't. But we can't keep living like this. It's a toxic fantasy that's hurting all of us. We have to give each other space before we both go absolutely crazy and—"

"—and I opted to leave." Virgil's daddy finished his papa's sentence.

"Don't say it like that, Janus."

"Well how do you want me to word it, Patton? We have to separate before we both go insane! One of us needs to move out! We can sort out Virgil's custody later, but for now I think it's best if I make the move as soon as possible."

Virgil felt panic rise in his chest. What did his daddy mean by leaving? Was he going away forever? Virgil was not having it. He ran down the stairs and turned the corner into the living room to meet his dads sitting on the couch staring back at him.

"Virgil?" his papa stood from the sofa. Virgil hadn't realized he started crying until his papa was knelt in front of him brushing tears and hair from his eyes. "What's wrong, kiddo?"

Virgil couldn't bring himself to admit what he overheard upstairs. He blubbered some nonsense as he pressed his face into his papa's shoulder. Virgil wiped the snot and tears on his papa's sleeve as he continued to console his son.

His papa looked over at his daddy who had also stood from the couch and was watching the two of them. "Janus, can you help me?"

Virgil's daddy came up behind Virgil and lowered himself down. He began rubbing soothing circles around Virgil's back. Virgil shifted himself into his daddy's arms as he tried to calm down.

Virgil's daddy pulled Virgil away from him a little so he could look into the boy's eyes. "Are you okay?" his daddy asked.

"I want a bedtime story." Virgil managed to gasp out instead of what he wanted to say.

Both of his parents looked at each other. "A bedtime story?" Virgil knew they didn't believe him, but his dads played along anyway

"There's no need to cry over a bedtime story. If you want one you don't have to be afraid to ask."

Virgil stepped away from his parents and wiped the remaining mess from his face onto his pajama sleeve. He nodded solemnly then led his dads back up the stairs and into his bedroom.

His papa picked him up and placed him back into his bed while his daddy picked out a storybook from his bookshelf.

Virgil's papa took a seat at the foot of his bed. His daddy handed the book to his papa and went to sit on the floor next to Virgil's head.

"Goodnight moon." his papa read the title of the book off to Virgil who snuggled under his covers. Virgil's papa read the entire book as he and his daddy listened.

When he finished he placed the book on Virgil's bedside table. Both of his parents gave him a third kiss goodnight and stood to leave. His daddy walked out of the bedroom and his papa tried to follow but was stopped by one of Virgil's tiny hands reaching up and resting against his arm.

"Is there something else you need, kiddo?" he asked, looking down at the boy laying in bed.

Virgil was about to reveal what really upset him earlier. "Papa? Daddy is not going away for good, is he?"

His papa gave him another one of those looks. "Oh, no baby, no!" he tried to assure the five-year-old. "He's not going away for good." he paused only for a second before adding. "Your daddy is just going on a little vacation from home for a few months. He'll come back soon, I promise!"

"How soon?"

His papa hesitated before answering. "I don't know," he replied truthfully. "But you'll get to see him lots during his vacation. We'll make sure of that, okay?"

Virgil rested his head against his pillow. "Okay papa. Goodnight." he wasn't sure if he was satisfied with his papa's answer, but he didn't press it further. His papa gave him a fourth kiss goodnight and left the bedroom again as Virgil hugged his dinosaur close and fell into a restless sleep.

A few months would pass. His daddy would find a new home to live just a few minutes away while he was on "vacation." Virgil would visit frequently and he loved spending time with his daddy at his temporary house.

Those few months would turn into a year and Virgil's parents would have to explain that daddy's vacation from home would become permanent and that would be how Virgil would first learn about divorce and what that meant for his family.

They would settle on a custody agreement where Virgil would switch homes every couple days. It was jarring for the little six-year-old at first, but he started to get used to the constant jumping back and forth. It became fun for him to mix things up.Just a few months after explaining that daddy was never coming home the divorce would be finalized and this arrangement would become Virgil's new normal. Something the boy would find wouldn't always be easy.

[shapa-likes-art]

Chapter two: Roman Molina

Warnings: Death of a family member, cursing/swearing, crying. Tell me to put more warnings if needed.

Pairings: Eventual Prinxiety and Intrulogical

Summary: Roman Molina, a 16-year-old student from Los Feliz high, lost his love for music after his mom died last year. His only one chance of keeping his spot in the music program is to play music and sing, problem is; it reminds him of his mom.

A/N: And here is another chapter for the Jatp au! You’re finally introduced to Roman after, what, a month? Sorry, haha, It’s not easy for me to write and art at the same time, but I hope you enjoy!

First | Previous | Next

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It was the 10th of September, 2020. The bells rang signaling, the dismissal of all classes and signified the end of a school day. Amid a crowd of many bustling students in the halls of Los Feliz

High school, was a Teen making his way down the crowded hallway to his locker. 

Said teen had tan skin, curly dark Auburn hair that was covered and pressed down by a red baseball cap. He wore Red flannel over a mostly white and blue accented crop-top with high-waisted denim jeans, he had many bracelets around his wrist and two necklaces around his neck, they were both gold in color. One hanged from his neck that seemed to be a locket while one that was flush against his neck as if a choker it spelled out the name "Roman"

He clutched the binder full of notes close to his chest as he scrunched up and avoided the people he passed. Only when he reached a blue locker that had a red "R" stickered on that he seemed to relax. He

quickly unlocked the locker and went to put his things away.

"Hey, underachiever!" a familiar voice greeted.

Roman smiled, "Hey Disappointment," he greeted back with a small laugh. He turned to Remy, his best friend, with a small smile.

Remy was about an inch taller than Roman and had warm sepia brown skin, his braided dark hair pulled back into a bun, he wore a holo windbreaker jacket on with a dark grey shirt, a rainbow bead choker, a gold necklace with a lock, and two earrings from left to right reading “what” and “ever”

He had a smirk on his face as he looked at Roman through his shades

"Ok, Hun, I know you don't want me to ask-"

"Rem.."

"- But have you figured out what you're going to do today?" Remy continued with a small huff.

Roman sighed, "I know in the moment,"

"Seriously, Ro?" Remy said, going to bring his shades up to rest on his head, his chocolate brown eyes staring into Roman's hazel, "That's all you're giving me? Miss Harrison said that today is your last chance!"

Roman just offered a smile, "I know. I was there,"

Remy sighed, throwing his hands up and putting his shades back on.

"I'll see you at the rally!" An overly sweet and chipper voice said from only just a few steps away.

Remy looked over to see Percy, "Ugh, what is he handing out?" He said with an eye roll, watching as said person handed out a flyer with a sickly sweet and fake smile. He talked as if emulating a heart at the end of the sentence.

Roman went to look over as well, huffing slightly, "Hm, desperation?" He offered.

Remy let out a small huff of laughter before the exact person they were talking about approached. Percy still had that same fake smile as he took a couple of flyers and gave them to Remy and Roman.

"Here you go, My group's performing at the group rally tomorrow!" He said. He looked up and down both teens and smiled even sweeter, "I'm sure you have nothing better to do."

Remy mimicked Percy's smile, "Oh my gosh, Percy, thanks! " He said sarcastically using the same overly peppy tone, mocking him.

"Oh my gosh, Remy! don't bother coming!" Percy shot back, still keeping his overly peppy attitude. He went to turn away and back to giving out flyers, leaving a stunned Remy.

Remy scoffed, his eyes still trained on Percy as he crumpled up the flyer.

Roman, however, couldn't care less, leaning against the door of the open locker as he stared at someone by the pillar with a dopy and lovesick look in his eyes.

Remy Let out a small frustrated sigh, glancing to Roman before doing a double-take once he saw just who exactly Roman was looking at.

"Really, Ro?" He asked, crossing his arms, "Thomas, still? " Remy looked to said teen then to Percy,

"You know they're gonna get married and raise a bunch of unholy babies," he huffed

"Thomas is a sweetheart!" Roman defended with a pout, clutching the binder to his chest

Remy raised an eyebrow, "You'd actually have to talk to him to know that, Hun," he said. Roman just rolled his eyes.

"And only one of them has to be a demon to make a demon baby," Remy continued, looking over to Percy, "Demon! " He shouted quickly, pulling Roman with him to hide immediately, their backs turned to Percy as they faced their lockers, smothering their laughs and hiding

from Percy as his eyes snapped over to them with an offended glare.

Roman smiled, turning back to Remy after a few seconds

"There's that dazzling smile," Remy cooed, "now, let's go prove everybody wrong,"

.

An electric guitar solo sounded through the halls, reverberating from the music room where the music program was held.

Thomas carefully plucked and strummed the strings of his sky blue electric guitar, the whole room

silent as they watched his performance, almost captivated by each note he played. He finished up with the last few chords and the room erupted with applause from the other students, which among them were Percy, Remy, and Roman. 

“Nice job, Thomas,” Miss Harrison said with a smile, “Almost as impressive as your game against Glendale,”

Thomas gave a small smile, “Uh, stings a bit, but thanks,” he said with a small awkward smile, going to take the guitar off and put it away.

Miss Harrison smiled as she turned to the students seated around the “stage”, which was just the free floor space, her eyes looking through the many people as if searching for someone,  “Alright,” she started with a small clap, “We have one last performance for today.”

Wordlessly, each student’s eyes drifted over to a person seated nearly in the back.

“Roman?” Miss Harrison called out, gesturing to him.

Roman tensed and he slowly looked up to the teacher, nervous. Miss Harrison nodded, smiling sympathetically. He clenched onto his binder of sheet music and stood up, going to take off his hat and set it down onto his seat before walking towards the grand piano that was tucked away to the side of the room.  Thomas passed by him and tried to give a reassuring smile to Roman as he walked back to his seat. Despite this, it did nothing to calm Roman’s fears.

Roman sat down and set up the sheet music and let out a heavy shuddering sigh. He looked to Miss Harrison, almost asking if he could go back. 

“It’s ok, take your time,” Miss Harrison tried to reassure, smiling softly.

Roman looked down to the case and went to open it, revealing the achingly familiar white and black keys. His hands hovered over the keys, staying there suspended in air in hesitance. All he could think about was how he used to sit next to his mother on the piano when she was still alive, when they used to play together and write songs. He missed the comforting smile she used to give him when he figured out a chord progression to put into their song, her warm laugh when he showed her what silly lyrics he had scribbled down in boredom, her soothing voice humming small melodies and mumbling lyrics… It was almost too much.

Roman’s hands shook as his mind kept reminding him of what he’d never be able to see again. He quickly shut the case and stood up, “I’m sorry,” he said, looking to Miss Harrison.

Remy’s brows furrowed in concern, immediately standing up. He didn’t like what was happening. Percy, who had been sitting right in front of Remy raised a hand, “Is this where we clap?” he asked, playing dumb

Roman’s jaw clenched and he immediately set off for the door, leaving the room entirely silent.

Remy glared at Percy, “Watch it, Percy,” he snapped, brushing past the teen, and ran after Roman, out of the room and down the halls. 

By God, he won't let Roman waste his life away and waste his opportunities like this any longer.  He soon caught up with Roman, narrowly missing him as he walked down the steps of the stairs in haste. Remy took in a few deep breaths, catching his breath.

"Roman," he said firmly, making said teen freeze and turn around, his head to the ground. Remy held up and hand and went to place his shades atop his head.

"Hun, you better get back up here," he said, looking at Roman with furrowed eyebrows, "And show them you can sing!" He said, pointing back to the music room, "That you deserve to be there and that you can still do it. That you still haven't lost the only other thing that you love,"

Roman shook his head, taking in a shaky breath as he fiddled with the strings of his bracelet, "Remy, I- I've tried for myself," he said, finally looking up to Remy, eyes were red and teary, "I've tried for Miss. Harrison, I've tried for my dad," he ran his hand through his hair, "And I've fucking tried for Mom,"

Remy stood there, stunned and filled with guilt as he listened.

Roman let out a small sad laugh, "For the whole year, I've been trying," he just gave a small teary smile, "But I can't do this anymore. I just can't. I'm done with this, Remy," he said. Roman let out a sigh and went to turn back to walking down the stairs, having nothing left to say but just that.

Remy felt a bit of panic spike, "Roman." He said, "Roman!" He called out, but he just ran down to his locker. 

Remy shakily went to sit down on a step of the stairs, curled up into himself as he watched his best friend take his bag and ran out the doors. He tried to blink away the tears that formed in his eyes. He just wanted to help.

[full-of-roman-angst-trash]

Safe And Sound

Last Part of Blind and Naive. Also, I promise that this chapter has fluff just to balance out the angst in the previous chapters.

(Part 1) (Part 2) (You Are Here)

TW: Unsympathetic Virgil, Abusive Virgil, Unsympathetic Patton, Abusive Patton, Abused Roman, Abused Logan, Toxic Prinxiety, Toxic Logicality, Anorexia, PTSD symptoms, Fighting, Cursing, Small Panic Attack, Logan Angst, and Roman Angst

If I missed any, please tell me and I will add it.

Pairings: Toxic Prinxiety, Toxic Logicality, Intrulogical, Roceit

Word count: 2142

............Roman’s P.O.V............

I slowly wake up and sit up, rubbing my eyes to adjust to the sunlight lighting up the room. After a few minutes of my eyes adjusting and me stretching, I stand up. 

Once I make my way to the kitchen I am greeted by Remus and Janus.

“Good morning Roman.”

“Good morning Romy!!!”

“Good morning guys. And, don’t call me that Waluigi reject,” I smack him on the head gently, which only makes him snicker.

I playfully roll my eyes before turning my attention to Janus, who seems to be making breakfast, “Hey, Snakey McSnakerson.”

Janus looks back at me, “Yesss?”

His small slither makes me blush, though I’m not sure how heavily, which results in me silently hoping he doesn’t notice.

Wait, is he blushing!? N-No... Don’t be ridiculous, you’re just seeing things... Why would he ever like you... Especially considering the fact that you guys have only really mended ways 3 days ago...

“May you please do me the honor of handing me a cup?”

This time, the blush on his face is very clearly there.

He’s blushing? Why? D-Does he actually like me back!?

“Sure, drama queen,” He gets a cup and hands it to me.

I giggle and take it, “Thank you.”

He gives me a warm smile that makes butterflies fill my stomach. I return the smile and for a second we just stare at each other, smiling and blushing.

“Eww! I’m trying to eat, go eye fuck each other somewhere else!” A certain rat breaks the moment.

We both flush red and look away. I clear my throat, “Oh hush.”

I walk over to the water dispenser and fill up my cup. Once it’s full I start walking out of the kitchen, “I’ll be in the living room if you guys need anything.” 

Before I can fully walk out, I feel someone grab my free hand. I turn around and see Remus staring at me worryingly.

I raise a brow, “Yes?”

He bites his lip and quietly mumbles, “Ro... You need to eat breakfast...”

The sentence nearly knocks my breath away, I’m not sure when but I some point I started staring down at my cup. The water inside moving thanks to the shaky hand holding it,

A small, “No...” Makes its ways out of my mouth as I pull my hand free of Remus’ grasp.

I was just about to walk to the living room when Logan blocks the doorway. 

“Roman. You need to eat, especially considering that your Anorexia has been going on for quite a while...”

His voice is soft and sympathetic, one you would imagine coming from Morality instead of Logan.

I sigh heavily, “Fine...” I grumble and sit down.

It feels wrong to eat breakfast... Is this how it’s going to be every morning...? I don't know if I can handle that... I guess one step at the time for now...

............

For the past 7 weeks, Remus and Janus have worked on helping me and Lo. They made sure I ate small meals 5 times a day. They made sure to clear every room of any item I can use to self-harm. They helped me control my perfectionism and the voices in my head. They woke me up and calmed me down from nightmares.

As for Logan, they made sure he didn’t overwork himself. They made sure that he got out of his room to talk and hang out with us ever so often. They helped him be more open about his feeling and ask for help.

It’s been a lot. We’ve been through many highs and low and had to overcome a lot of struggles but things have been looking up.

Virgil and Patton have left us relatively alone, the only time they bother us is during videos or while we’re doing fan service. Patton does it more passive-aggressively while Virgil just outright harasses us. Of course, none of the fandom or Thomas has called them out on their behavior but it doesn’t matter, cause we still have Remus and Janus.

During the 7 weeks, I’ve gotten closer to Remus. We go on missions in the imagination together. We brainstorm and work together during projects. We have movie and game nights together.

My crush for Janus has grown during that time as well. Everything he does make butterfly fill my stomach. His laugh and giggles are like music to my ears. His occasional hisses and snarky smirks make my heart skip a bit. 

Of course, I haven’t confessed to him yet. I just don’t feel ready to get into another relationship, especially since I’m still technically in a relationship with Anxiety.

Logan and Remus also seem to be getting close. I’ve caught both of them exchanging looks and blushing around each other. Both of them deny it anytime Janus or I bring it up though, but I’m certain they’ll get together eventually.

............

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Remus looks at the two of us with a concerned and unsure expression.

Logan is the first to nod, “Yes. We want to completely cut off our connections with Morality and Anxiety.”

“Yeah...” I hug my arm tighter.

Logan and I both agree that we would go to the Lightside and official break up with Patton and Virgil. Originally Logan had suggested we did so after a month of being with the Darksides, however, I disagreed in fear of the fandom’s reaction to our relationships breaking up. Yesterday though, I got fed up with constantly having to do fan service.

“Alright... Just be careful, okay? We’ll be right here for you guys once y’all come back.” Janus says softly.

A small smile appears on my face and I quietly mumble, “Alright. We’ll be right back. 

With that, we both sink down.

............Logan’s P.O.V............

I sink down to the living room of the Lightside, Patton is sitting there on the couch working on some papers. When he notices me, he immediately puts his work down and stands up.

“What are you doing here...?” He sounds nervous and on edge as if I was the abusive one in the relationship.

I take a deep breath, “We’re breaking up,” I get straight to the point, not wanting to be here longer than I have to.

His eyes widen and he doesn’t speak for a while.

“W-what...?” Is all he manages to mutter out

“I said we’re done,” I repeat in a bland voice, “Goodbye Morality.”

I sink down before he can say anything else.

............ 

The second I raise up in my room I crumble to the floor.  

W-why am I so shaken up....? Nothing bad even happened... He didn’t even do anything to me...

I curl up on myself, getting lost in my thoughts. Suddenly, I feel a comforting hand on my back and I turn to my side, coming face-to-face with Remus.

“Hey... You okay...?” His voice is heavy with worry, yet he makes sure it’s soft and soothing.

Before I can even think, I hug him tightly and to my surprise, he immediately holds me close.

He begins whispering reassurance in my ear as he rubs my back. His actions and presence make a lot of my worries quickly start to fade away. 

Soon, I fully calm down, yet I don’t pull away from him. I can feel myself blushing but I don’t care. I just want to be held by him. 

“Hey Lo...?”

I look up at him, “Yes?”

His face is flushed red and uncertain which makes me concerned, but before I can say anything he speaks up again.

“I like you, like a lot!” He quickly blurts out

This catches me off guard and it takes me a while to compose myself.

“I feel the same way, Remus.”

He looks up with a shocked and hopeful face., “Really!?”

I nod and he kisses my cheek, making me blush harder.

“Yay!”

I chuckle softly before letting out a soft yawn, suddenly feeling very exhausted.

He smiles softly and softly says, “Get some rest, Lo.”

I curl up closer to him, nodding a little before quickly falling asleep.

............Roman’s P.O.V............

My heart is basically beating out of my chest as I raise up in the kitchen of the Lightside. Anxiety is there sitting on the counter with his legs crossed, the second his eyes lay on me his face drops and he stands up.

“Oh? So you’ve come crawling back?” He speaks in a condescending voice that makes me immediately look down and lose any confidence I had.

“N-no...” I quickly mutter out.

He glares at me, “What!? Then why are you here!?” His voice raises.

I flinch and take a step back feeling myself begin to shake.

No, remember why you are here. You are done letting him treat you like this. You don’t have to take it.

I take a deep breath before looking up and bluntly saying, “I’m breaking up with you.”

He seems taken aback by this but he quickly recovers.

“No, the fuck you’re not!”

“Yes, I am. I’m not staying with an abusive asshole any longer...”

I go to sink down but before I can do he manages to hit my arm.

“YOU’LL FUCKING REGRET THIS ROMAN! JUST YOU WAIT!” He screams

I quickly sink out before he can do anything more.

............

I raise up in my room crying and shaking, holding my arm that was stinging so badly from the smack Virgil gave me. My breathing quickly becomes short and uneven.

No... No... Not again...!

However, before it can get any worse, Janus’ voice hits my ears.

“Roman, it’s okay,  I’m here. Is it okay if I touch you?”

I nod desperately and I feel him quickly hug me tightly. I hug him back immediately and break down in his arms. 

He holds me close and gently sways us. He starts softly walking me through a breathing exercise. 

After a bit of time, I fully calm down and slowly pull away from the hug.

“Thank you so much, Jan,” I quietly mumble.

He nods, “Hey, Ro, I need to tell you something...”

I raise a brow, a bit on edge from hearing the nervousness in his voice, “Okay, what’s up...?

He takes a deep breath before softly saying, “I’ve had a crush on you for a while now and well I was wondering if you felt the same way?” 

He looks down nervously, blushing heavily and I can’t help but let a fond smile plaster my face.

I gently kiss his cheek, “Well, lucky for you, I do feel the same way.”

For a few seconds, he’s completely frozen. Once he collects himself he hugs me tightly.

“Oh, thank god! I was so nervous you were going to say you didn’t like me at all!”

I giggle softly and hug him back.

A few seconds later though I let out a soft sigh, “But Jan...”

He looks at me, worryingly, “Yeah..?”

“I-I’m not ready to get back into a relationship just yet... I-Is it okay if we wait for a little...?”

He visibly relaxes and holds me closer. 

“It’s okay, Ro. I understand we can wait for as long as we need to.”

I gently nuzzle him and smile brightly, “Thanks Jan.” 

............Janus’ P.O.V...........

I look down at the sleeping prince next to me, gently running a hand through his hair. Remus and I were both in my room. Remus was on my bean bag with a sleeping Logan on his lap while I was on the bed with Roman.

“Jan?” 

I look up and Remus, who’s holding Logan as close as he could to his chest. His face is strange. It’s warm and soft yet there’s a hint of concern and anxiousness in it. His voice was hushed and somewhat sad.

“Yes?”I keep my voice soft and calming.

He takes a small deep breath, “What now...?”

Remus and I have been friends ever since Creativity split. We’ve been through everything together. We were both banished to the Darkside together. We both welcomed and raised Paranoia. We dealt with Paranoia’s short temper and screams. We both had to learn to heal after he abandoned and betrayed us.

Yet, in all does years of being with him. I’ve never heard his voice be so unsure and lost when he asked that simple question.

A put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and speak in the same voice as before, “Hey, it will be okay. All we can do now is continue to help and protect Logan and Roman to the best of our abilities.

He visibly relaxes and smiles softly. He glances down at Logan for a few seconds before answering me.

“Yeah. You’re right. Thanks, Double D.”

I smile and nod, “No problem. Now, let’s get some rest.

He nods and we both go to sleep shortly after.

............

Finally finished this! So, yeah, this is the final part of this small trilogy. I’m planning on writing a Roloceit fanfic next. Who knows? If you have any suggestions on what I should write next, feel free to tell me, I’ll do anything except for a Virgil centered fanfic or Unsympathetic Roman.

Tell me if you want to be tagged or removed.

@anti-virgil  @romanvirgil  @yeet-ceit  @nachosforfree  @unsympathetic-virgil @sanders-sides-soap-box   @virgil-negativity  @a-gay-angel @potatsanderssides  @sapphire-knight  @a-small-snidget  @easterpop-reblogs @nostarsinthedark  @itriedandimtired @anti-patton  

[gaylotusthatexists]

rises the moon - part ten

Pairings: eventual intrulogical, parental moxiety, some platonic prinxiety in this chapter

Summary: After running away from home, Virgil find the Forest, where he is appointed as the new Lord of Spring. 

Trigger Warnings: remus mention (portrayed as morally grey ig?)

Word Count: 1.2k

Taglist: @theloveliestsweetspongy

previous || ao3

i promise you that soon the autumn comes

Virgil wasn't sure how long it had been since the moon ceremony. He'd been working hard with Janus to fully restore the forest, and to keep everything running smoothly. He'd been trying to take regular breaks, still sleeping every now and then at Patton's place - his place now as well, he supposed, since Patton had just about adopted him at this point - but it was hard with Janus needing him all the time, with Janus depending on him.

He was tired, so tired, all the time. He'd always been tired, even back in the human world where he didn't have many responsibilities, or no responsibilities that he cared about at least, but now he was even more so, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He wondered how Logan had done this for so long, had controlled the forest without collapsing. Perhaps he had and no one had noticed. Virgil hoped that he hadn't.

After the hundredth-or-something session with Janus, Virgil found himself wandering the forest, taking a moment for himself. He supposed he could have just gone straight back to the cottage, but going there would mean talking to Patton, and whilst he did love Patton, more than any other 'parental figure' he'd had in his life, sometimes it was all a little too much, and he needed a while alone to just... clear his head. Remind himself that things were better in the forest, away from the human world. Things were better here.

What he didn't need to do was bump into Roman, painting again on the forest floor, but of course that is what he did.

Roman looked up at him, frowning. Even after being in the forest for so long, Virgil still didn't know what to make of Roman. He can't have been that bad of a guy, could he? He hadn't tried to hurt Virgil, at least, like many other people had tried to do. It was very rare that Virgil ever even saw Roman, outside of formal gatherings, meetings hosted by Janus. Still, figuring that maybe Virgil should get to know Roman a little more, he sat down, watching Roman's paint brush glide across the paper, creating a flower of sorts.

"It's beautiful," Virgil complimented. "The painting, I mean."

Roman just grunted in response. Fair enough. Virgil didn't really want to talk to himself either. Still, he... had to try.

"Are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine," Roman grumbled, turning his body away from Virgil. Virgil found that a little hard to believe, but he didn't want to dig. Didn't want to give Roman even more of a reason to hate him. Even though Virgil was pretty sure he'd never given him a reason in the first place. "Why are you here?" Roman eventually asked.

Virgil shrugged. "I was just taking a walk."

"Don't you have work to be doing?"

Virgil blinked. "I... Not right now, I don't think?" He glanced around the forest. "Why, did Janus call me again?"

"I mean, shouldn't you be working on getting this over with?" Roman snapped, turning his head to face Virgil. Fire danced in his eyes, and Virgil tried his best not to visibly wince. "I've been waiting so long for it to be summer, and now you have the power to make it summer, how hard is it?"

Virgil took a while to response, his body frozen in place. Roman was angry at him, because Virgil... wasn't trying hard enough? Yeah, that sounded about right. That's what pretty much everyone else thought of him. Everyone back at school, back... back there. But at least Roman wasn't trying to hurt him, not yet. Eventually, he breathed in, and said quietly, "I'm sorry. I'm... trying."

"Try harder."

"I can't," Virgil told him. "I don't know how to make this all go faster. I want it to as well, I'm not... I wasn't ready for any of this, and I want it to be over just as much as you. But Janus needs me, and it's not as if I can control the moon."

Roman had turned away again, bringing his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. "This would be so much easier if Remus was still here," he mumbled, barely above a whisper. Almost as if he didn't want Virgil to hear.

He did, though, and... it only made him want to hear more. Find out what happened to Remus, why he had to leave, what he did. It... really wasn't any of Virgil's business, he supposed, but that didn't make him any less curious. And maybe knowing what happened would mean that Virgil would be able to help Roman, to make him feel better, to... gain his trust. He wanted Roman to trust him. He wanted Roman to... at the very least, not hate him.

"Is... Is it too invasive if I ask about Remus?" Virgil asked, quickly.

There was a long pause after, in which Virgil thought that Roman probably didn't understand his rushed tone, before Roman simply said, "Yes."

Virgil nodded and backed down, shuffling a little further away from Roman and staring out into the forest, trying to give Roman space. Every now and then he'd glance back, and notice that Roman had started... crying? Perhaps Virgil should have just left him alone, return to Janus and Patton and Logan where he was safe. He was just about to stand up and walk away, when Roman spoke up again.

"Patton was supposed to take care of him," he said, turning his body a little more towards Virgil but still staring down at the ground, his tears drying up on his face but no more falling out. "He wasn't well. He had changed, and I wanted to help him, but I couldn't. So I told Patton to. I told him to speak to him, and..." He trailed off.

"And what?"

Roman breathed in. "He never did. I told Remus over and over again that he would get help, that eventually Patton would come, he'd be there soon, but he never was. So Remus hung out with Logan more, because Logan would listen, but then he stopped eventually too. Until it was just me."

"And what happened then?" Virgil looked at Roman with concern in his eyes, as well as an underlying curiosity.

"It got out of hand. He lashed out, and then Janus sent him away. He's still out there somewhere, but he isn't the same as he was before." Roman looked up at him now, looking almost guilty, like he blamed himself. From the story, it seemed like Roman held the least blame of all, though. "I see him sometimes, in the forest. He plays tricks on us, or... tries to hurt us. At first I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen. He still won't listen. He won't come back. I haven't... I haven't tried again in a long, long time."

Virgil hummed. "How about we try now?"

Roman blinked. "What?"

"We could go look for him," Virgil suggested, without even thinking. What was he thinking, suggesting that? "I'm here now, maybe I could talk to him as well."

Roman stared at him for a while, then huffed. "That's a dumb idea."

"I know," Virgil admitted, "but it's worth a shot."

Roman stared again, the tips of his mouth lifting up just a little, and a hopeful look beginning to fill his eyes.

[the-volume-is-astronomical]

The Crown, The Sword, and The Gay

Meant To Be Good News

A/N: ... heyyyyy- its been a bit. I got rapped up in exams and i felt like being productive today so u get a chapterrrr and i wrote another one so u have about two chapters guaranteed ill try to be more consistent lol (also long chapter as compensation)

(also let me know if you wanna be added to the taglist!)

First | Previous| Next

words: 2286

summary: Virgil doesn't want to deal with this mess but he was sent to deliver a message so, theres not much he can do

pairings: eventual prinxiety, eventual intrulogical, eventual moceit, Remile

warnings: some potty language (not much), stress, anxiety, negative self talk, food mention, worried for a characters safety

(let me know if there's any other)

They went up the steps in silence.

As they entered through the door, Roman grabbed the basket that was abandoned during the argument. He left it on a table near the entrance, he headed towards the corner with shelves, grabbed a brown book, nothing interesting in the cover, just a plain brown book and headed towards the window seat to read.

Virgil was struggling to decide if he should try to speak or not, he absolutely despised small talk but if he didn't talk he didn't want it to get awkward. He looked over to Roman because if he did decide to talk to the prince, what in the hell would he even talk about?! Virgil saw the royal glance up from his book to look at the small table near all the shelves that had a single red book, it was simple like the one he was holding, it just had a title, yet it caused more intrigue than the other.

When Virgil took a good look at Roman he looked somehow defeated, like he had lost- no, given up on a 100 year long fight. The monarch glanced once more at the table with the red book, this time however, he caught a glimpse of the stormy knight, “ You should sit down, the trip back alone takes a few hours, it's gonna be some time before you get to go back.” Virgil looked up at the prince who had resumed his reading, “Uh… yeah” he took a seat near the desk Roman kept glancing at.

Virgil decided to take a glance at the book. It seemed to be a fictional adventure book...seems interesting. Roman looked at the table again and spotted the tall knight carefully opening the book. “It’s an adventure book. Just a fairytale.” Roman’s voice seemed to startle Virgil as he immediately slammed the book shut.

“Y-yeah sorry, I didn't mean to open it without permission, that was so rude of me and-” Roman stopped him mid rant “It's alright, you can read it. One of my personal favorite books.” The prince smiled at him to show he didn't mind “I’m not much of a reader. I just uh… got curious, I guess?” Virgil didn't seem sure of his answer. “Well, I can give you a small summary! If you’d like me to, of course.” Roman backtracked pretty quickly, snide comments about how excited he got over meaningless things forcing themselves into his head. But Virgil’s “Sure, Why not?” Made him a little less apprehensive.

“Ok! So, the story is focused on this boy named Aaron. He is a poor farm boy living with his family in a village that was overthrown by the guards, they became corrupted and betrayed the royal family and took control for themselves.” Virgil just nodded along.

”They treated the least wealthy of the kingdom the worst, they didn't have money to bribe them with so to them they were useless, it got to the point where they were becoming the robbers, they would never steal from people with money because they were cruel people. Aaron and his father wanted to make a change but his mother didn't want them to, she wanted to play it safe and just gather enough money to leave for a better place.”

Roman rambling about the story not realizing how little of a summary it actually was since he definitely wasn't being concise, “I agree with the mom. Her plan sounds safe and effective.” Virgil didn't really mind, at least he wasn't going to be bored while he waited, “Maybe so! But where's the fun in that, dear knight?” Roman didn't really get the knights perspective “May not be fun but at least they'll get outta there without a problem” Virgil thought he was in the right and that the main character would make stupid reckless decisions for the drama and suspense.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Aha! They went back to the mom’s plan anyway! There was literally no need to try and do all that heroic shit.” Virgil was now fully invested in the story, he probably wouldn't have been if Roman wasn’t such a good storyteller.

“Well yeah... But it was worth it! If they didn't try they would have never known the outcome of that situation.” Roman was happy the knight seemed invested, he was mostly happy because he finally got to discuss the book with someone, and that someone had very different opinions than himself.

There was a knock on the door.

They both looked at each other, It didn't feel like they had been talking for that long. So, who in the hell was at the door?

Virgil stood up, hand fidgeting with the hilt of his sword. Roman stood as well, they both walked towards the door. Virgil opened the door, only to find Ruth on the other end of the door. “Oh, it's the lady from earlier.” Virgil turned to Roman as he let her in.

“Nurse, how did you get back so quickly?” Roman spoke up. “I wouldn't say it was that quick, it's been a few hours. But we found someone along the way so that did speed up the process.” Ruth talked as she noticed the untouched basket and started nearing it.

Roman and Virgil on the other hand looked at each other with confusion. It didn't feel like they had been talking for more than half an hour. “I'm sorry, I must have been talking your ear off.” The royal felt a need to apologize, “Hey, at least you made the wait entertaining.” the knight did not deem it necessary.

Ruth turned and glared at Roman. “So, you haven't eaten?” Roman glanced at the untouched basket and cursed under his breath, he completely forgot. “ Well…” Ruth was not having it “You brat.” She walked behind him and started pushing him towards the table.

“I had an excuse!” Ruth stopped pushing him “And what is it?” Roman turned to meet her eye and said, “I get nauseous when I eat too early.” Ruth looked unimpressed “I'm fully aware Roman. But it's almost noon.” Roman’s brain scrambled for another excuse “I was reading and I lost track of time.” She was still very much unimpressed. “As long as it wasn't the book you always read, fine by me”

As Roman’s nurse made sure Roman ate she noticed Virgil standing a few feet behind them. “I wasn't able to introduce myself earlier. I am Ruth, the brat’s nurse.” She extended her hand with a smile. Virgil shook her hand while he chuckled, which was interrupted by Roman’s overdramatic offended noises. “Nurse! You’re making him think I'll be a nightmare to care for!”

Ruth turned to him “Was I supposed to lie to him and tell him you’re a delight? My apologies, sire” Roman put a hand on his chest and gasped. “Now I understand why Trent called you a witch!” Ruth laughed, “You’re just basically proving my point.” Roman could only grumble and go back to eating.

Ruth took a look around the tower and spotted the red book on a table. “I see you've decided to become a liar huh?” Roman turned to her “Whatever do you mean?” She walked towards the table and picked up the book “Seems like someone was reading the same book they always read, I don't understand why they read it if they've memorized the whole book!” Roman knew Ruth was only joking but he didn't appreciate being called a liar “I wasn't reading it this time it was just out in the open! You can ask him!”

Roman pointed at Virgil, Ruth just looked at Virgil expecting an answer, “He wasn't reading that book, he was reading the one by the window” it wasn't a lie. “You better not be covering for that devil.” Virgil noticed there wasn't any malice behind her voice, her words portrayed something different. “Are you accusing me of being a liar? I thought that was reserved for the prince.” Ruth started laughing “Hey! You’re supposed to be on my side!” Virgil just chuckled.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roman’s nurse sat next to the window, looking out worriedly. Roman knew his nurse fairly well, “Has Remy not gotten back yet?” Ruth sighed and turned “My son and his tardiness again”.

Roman went over to his nurse, giving her a hug “I’m sure he’s just a little late..” Ruth tried to smile at Roman “I know Roman. I'm just a worried old hag.” Roman rolled his eyes and sat by the window

Ruth looked out the window one last time and took a deep breath. “Well I have to get going so we get there some time before sunrise” Roman stood up to say a proper goodbye to his nurse. “See you in a few days…” Roman really didn’t want to let go but he didn't have much of a choice.

Ruth started packing what she had brought in silence, once she neared the door she spoke “Roman, his and her majesty will have to be informed about this incident..” Roman was obviously not content because this would surely somehow be put partially on him. “Yes, I understand.” Ruth smiled sympathetically and turned to the storm eyed knight only a few feet away.

“Virgil, you’ll have to stay with Roman for a while longer. Commander Arlott sure didn't expect the need to find a replacement for Trent and truly not a day after being stationed here.” Virgil just nodded, he understood the circumstances and was glad to be able to witness such a sight. “The Commander insisted it would take quite some time to take someone off their post, he insisted he wasn't worried.” Ruth opened the door ready to leave, while Virgil was just trying for the pressure to not get to him.

Ruth said her final goodbyes and exited the tower.

Virgil then turned to the Royal, who went back to the same spot he had been before Ruth arrived, and just stared out the window as his nurse left.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Roman sat near the big window just looking out he started wondering why Virgil had even come here in the first place. He vaguely remembered Trent mentioning him being a messenger but that could just be some Knightly insult he was unaware of. So… he asked “Virgil, if you don't mind me asking...why exactly did you come here?” Virgil looked alarmed for a second as he had just zoned out for about 20 minutes “Commander Arlott, wanted me to deliver a message to Trent” Roman just responded with a simple “Oh” and resumed his staring out the window.

“So… how did the book end?” Virgil felt a little embarrassed to interrupt the silence to ask but he got extremely invested, to the point that if the Prince refused to share the information he might just read it himself. Roman just laughed, he knew how intriguing the book was “Well… In the middle of the mother’s plan being in motion they actually got word of a rebel group that had been inspired by their attempts to take the crown back.” Virgil sat down right across from the Royal nodding for him to go on.

Roman continued speaking but he kept getting distracted by a tapping sound. At first it was nothing, but then it got so prominent he couldn't ignore it anymore. Mid-rant he stopped himself and started looking around to see where the sound could possibly be coming from.

Virgil was confused as to why the heir had stopped speaking but then he started to hear taps. They didn’t sound like just a regular forest sound and they would surely not hear minuscule noises from such a height.

“Dear knight, are you hearing that?” Virgil nodded and stood up to see what could possibly be causing the ticks, Roman stood right along with him and then suddenly pointed towards the balcony doors. “Virgil, it's coming from the balcony.”

Virgil stopped to listen carefully “Yeah, but what's causing it?” They then saw a little pebble hit the glass doors of the balcony and make the tapping they had been hearing.

Roman went to the balcony with no hesitation and opened the doors.

Virgil started having his thoughts race a mile a minute, what if this was to lure the prince out to assassinate him? If the prince died on his watch he would be hung no doubt.

As these thoughts crossed his mind, he moved forward to follow the prince. He then quickly realized the prince was leaning over the balcony having a casual conversation with his possible murderer.

“Remy, what are you doing here? Ruth is going to kill you if you don't get there by sunrise!” Roman screamed down to the man in a black cape with dark tinted glasses covering his eyes. “Well yeah! But I had to make a stop here! I have something for you!” That made Roman start jumping with anticipation as to what Remy could have brought him from his trip

“What is it Rem? Is it something fancy? Is it food? Is it a book?” Though his eyes couldn't be spotted, not only because of his glasses but due to the height, it was very apparent he rolled his eyes. “No! It's a letter.” That got Roman even more excited. Could it actually be him? Roman haven't received anything but it could actually be! Finally some good news!

“Who’s it from?!” Remy looked down at the letter as if inspecting it “I don't know.” That caused Roman’s excitement to dull immensely. He would have surely marked it. There’s still a chance it could be him, right? Roman’s anticipation quickly turned into more of an anxious feeling.

taglist:

@meowthefluffy

@shade-romeo

@pattonsmile

@sevencreepycatsinacoat

@mychemically-imbalanced-romance

@innerpostturtle

@queenof-hell

@joyrose-fandomer

@vpow

[the-volume-is-astronomical]

The Crown, The Sword, and The Gay

Not So Stormy Knight

A/N: there's a lot more people in the taglist lol. I'm still working o an upload schedule but yeah enjoy! (its on of the shorter chapters I have writing but yeppers)

(also let me know if you wanna be added to the taglist!)

First | Previous| Next

words: 1490

summary: Virgil doesn't want to deal with this mess but he was sent to deliver a message so, theres not much he can do

pairings: eventual prinxiety, eventual intrulogical, eventual moceit, Remile

warnings: some potty language (not much), stress, anxiety, pretentious character, violence (near the end), talking down to someone

(let me know if there's any other)

Virgil didn't want to deal with this weird shit so early but, he didn't really have a choice. He made eye contact with who he could only assume was the prince, who was not panicked in the slightest and just shrugged. When Virgil got a good look as to who this servant lady had pinned to the ground he almost laughed out loud, it was none other than the stuck-up, self-centered, overall piece of shit Trent. Now he was actually glad to be delivering this stupid message.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Virgil was awoken in the early hours of the morning (incredibly rude but that's besides the point). “Get dressed and meet me at the workstation in 20 minutes.” When Virgil's brain finally decided to be awake enough to process words, his blood ran cold as he realized who was speaking to him. Commander Arlott. Virgil knew better than to question his superior so he did as instructed.

The Commander wasted no time to speak as Virgil arrived,“Virgil, I need you to deliver this message to Sir Trent Ortiz” Arlott held a letter with the royal crest sealing it “Sir, with all due respect, why not send one of the squires?” Virgil had always been careful with how he spoke to people in power since they could make or break his entire life plan, “Since Trent is ...assisting King Leonardo, by keeping Prince Roman safe, he is in an undisclosed location. I need someone of trust and my Seneschal recommended you.”

Commander Arlott always talked slow and calmly, no matter how much stress he was under, Virgil always appreciated that. “Understood?” Arlott sounded a little irritated, “Yes, sir.” Virgil didn't want to make that worsen, he knew his commander was known to have a temperament.

As Virgil loaded his things, he took a moment to examine the map. The Commander had explained it was going to be a three to four hour trip, so at least he could get back the same day if he was quick enough.

He arrived, about three hours later, at this secluded tower in the middle of nowhere. He had almost believed he was lost as he couldn't see the tower from above but it was meant to be a lot lower than the trees around it so as to not be spotted and spark curiosity. The Tower was incredibly daunting. He had to admire the measures taken for the tower to be hidden. They built the tower deep into the forest, very far away from the path, they made the tower shorter than the coast redwood trees surrounding it, and they made it incredibly hard to find as the path was infuriatingly confusing and it was located in a dense part of the forest.

After he got over how intimidating a tower can look, he noticed a carriage near the entry of the scary building. Virgil remembered how his Commander had told him there wasn't supposed to be anyone there other than Trent and the Prince. But he could clearly see someone waiting in the carriage.

Virgil noticed how his stomach felt like it was a black hole, he didn't really want to be the person to inform the death of a Royal. He left his horse near the edge of the forest and started sneaking closer to the Tower, as to not be spotted by the man in the carriage. He quickly climbed the steps of the tower and reached a door, yet there were more steps. He decided to check anyway, when he opened the door he saw nothing but a room with a few recognizable belongings, similar equipment as his, definitely where Trent was sleeping, that or the prince had an affinity towards knight equipment.

He heard some commotion at the top of the tower, so he begrudgingly headed up the steps. As he heard the voices rise even more, he quickened his step and tried to listen in. He wasn't able to make out what they were saying but he recognised Trent’s unpleasant and overall irritating voice and a random lady. As he reached the door he heard the voices stop and a thud, followed by groaning.

Virgil opened the door to see something that till this day he will say was one of the most hilarious sights, Trent Ortiz being held at an armlock by some servant woman. He tried his hardest not to laugh at the sight, which was pretty easy considering he still felt anxious and overwhelmingly confused, as funny as the sight was, what in the world had happened? As he raised his gaze to look around the room, as if it would have any answers, he locked eyes with a browned eyed boy, who he quickly identified as the prince Trent was supposed to be protecting, his robe gave it away. The prince just shrugged and yawned as if this was a common occurrence, which it may as well have been, he didn't know much about what being a royal felt like.

Ruth looked up and spotted the young knight with a terrified look on his face, in an effort to comfort him, she gave him a smile “Hi darling, what brings you-” she stopped talking as Trent tried to get out of her grasp “Don't struggle, you’re going to break your arm!” she tried to warn him.

“As if, get off of me, witch!” Ruth sighed and was about to give him another warning but Trent saw Virgil and spoke up again “Virgil, what are you doing standing there?! Get this old hag off of me!” Before Virgil could do anything, Trent continued trying to break free from Ruth’s grip but ended up breaking something else. His arm to be exact. Trent screamed in pain. Ruth immediately let go, it was never her intention to actually hurt him. Trent curled up holding his arm close to his chest.

Roman wasn't really paying attention to the situation, until he heard the scream. He got close to see both, the knight and nurse were okay. Ruth pushed him back as Virgil kneeled down to try and help the knight in pain. Ruth went to one of the trunks and got some fabric that could be used as a temporary sling. She tried to get close to Trent but he backed away slightly, Virgil spoke up “Maybe, I should put the sling on him.” Ruth nodded and gave him the fabric.

When Virgil finished tying the sling, he stepped away from Trent and Ruth decided to speak “It’s in his best interest to see a doctor, he should probably head back.” Virgil nodded, seeing that as the best option. Ruth spoke again.

“You should probably take him back soon, we don't want the injury to get worse.” at that Trent broke his silence “Prince Roman is supposed to be under knight supervision at all times.” Roman rolled his eyes and tried to reason with him

“My father will understand. You’re hurt and need to go get your arm checked out. I can be without a knight for a few hours.” Trent didn't budge “No. Your father gave me a direct order and i’m not going to disobey.” Roman looked at him like he was mad.

Ruth decided to ask the young boy who had stayed silent in the corner. “Virgil, was it? Honey, are you a knight?” Virgil looked up and nodded. “Well, he can stay with Roman and I can take you to a doctor in the carriage.” Trent scoffed. “They made me the Prince’s knight because of my skill; you can’t just replace me with someone who acts as a messenger.” Ruth did not like that at all, Virgil reminded her of Remy and her motherly instincts were kicking in

“Right now you arent of any help because you're hurt!” he fired back quickly “And who’s fault is that?” Ruth didn't want another screaming match to start “I warned you didn't I? Just let the boy be Roman’s temporary knight and later on they'll find a ‘better fit’ replacement as you put it.” Trent looked annoyed but begrudgingly agreed.

Virgil looked at the Prince as the other two were arguing, he was quiet and his eyes seemed to be distant, his posture made him seem annoyed but his face didn't show it. Ruth signaled him to help Trent to get down.

Virgil seemed to be doing the same as the prince and ignoring Trent arguing ‘how Roman couldn't be left alone in the tower’. He helped Trent into the carriage and turned back to see the servant lady talking to the prince, she gave the royal a hug and turned to the carriage, Virgil helped her in.

Roman and Virgil watched the carriage leave. Virgil turned to tell the royal how it’d be better for them to head inside. But he saw the monarch already headed to the tower, and he quickly scrambled to catch up with him.

taglist:

@meowthefluffy @shade-romeo @pattonsmile @sevencreepycatsinacoat

@mychemically-imbalanced-romance

@innerpostturtle

some aren’t working i’ll see if I can fix it :(

[the-volume-is-astronomical]

The Crown, The Sword, and The Gay

Knight's Mistake

A/N: y'all some people actually cared so i decided to share this chapter which is def shorter but hope y'all enjoy and remember to stay alert there could be clues as to what happens next anywhere (also let me know if you wanna be added to the taglist!)

First | Previous| Next

words: 1601

summary: Roman’s in the tower and he is now alone with his new knight in shinning armor pairings: eventual prinxiety, eventual intrulogical, eventual moceit

warnings: some potty language (not much), stress, anxiety, pretentious character, violence (near the end), talking down to someone, blatant sexism

(let me know if there's any other)

“Your majesty…” Trent opened the door for Roman, he didn't react at all. He kept looking out the carriage window. Ruth asked Trent to give them a minute and he nodded looking complacent but, she saw from the corner of her eye his smile drop and his eyes roll...she’d have to look into that later, for now…

”Roman, I truly do hate to bring you back to reality but-” Roman seemed to sober up at her voice “I know, I know.” They both got out of the carriage, Trent at the ready with Roman’s possessions. Ruth and Roman gave each other a goodbye. “I'll be back in the morning. I hope by that time with Remy..” Roman chuckled

“And I swear if I see you reading that damn book-” “No! I promise I'll read something else this time” Roman knew Ruth was just joking “You are such a bad liar- I thought I taught you better!” Their little moment was rudely interrupted by Trent’s over exaggerated coughing.

Roman turned around almost forgetting Trent was there. “Sorry for the interruption, Your majes-” Roman interrupts Trent “No, please, call me Roman” The knight gave a tight nod and gestured towards the tower which Roman purposely ignored. Roman gave Ruth a hug, afterwards Trent helped her to the carriage.

Roman watched his only way out leave with his nurse. Trent was getting tired of being ignored. He grabbed Roman’s arm, not forcefully, the Prince was his only way of proving to the King how much potential he had. He had heard how ingenious the heir could be, he had outwitted several knight before, it was obvious the royal hadn't done it to embarrass the knights but, the other trainees always made fun of those who were fooled by the young prince.

Trent did not intend to be one of them.

Roman quickly twisted his hand off “his” knight’s grasp, he just started walking forward without saying another word, not even looking to where he was going. From an outsider perspective it might look as if he had memorized the path to such a degree he could get to his destination with his eyes closed, they would be right.

After arriving at the top of the tower, he went towards the nearest shelf and took out the only book with any color that wasn't brown or gray, he sat by the window but instead of rereading his favorite book, Trent spoke up trying to make conversation.

“So, I heard Hugo had been your knight before I” dropping Romans possessions as he spoke. Roman looked up pretty confused, he wasn't used to talkative Knights, he usually had to fight stories out of Hugo.

“Well yes, there was a time where Hugo was planning to retire but all the knights that applied to be my babysitters, to upgrade rank of course, were very easily fooled” Trent ignored almost everything he had said just waiting out until it was his turn to talk “Yeah, yeah.. Did you know Hugo actually taught me for a while?”

Trent obviously expected curiosity, which he got. “Really? Hugo has never spoken of you, I've asked him about his life for so long, I could write a whole book about his life.” Trent looked a little annoyed at that “He did indeed teach me for a while not for long though, it was back in Meadowfort…” making an obvious pause expecting Roman to ask for more details about Hugo’s home, he was a very private person

… What he did not expect on the other hand was Roman to start monologuing about what Hugo had told him about the place.

“Oh, Meadowfort!” He jumped up starting to look through a trunk, until he pulled out a drawing “Gosh, I remember Hugo telling me so much about his home” Trent didn't really know what to say, he looked at the drawing that Roman had laid on the desk, and it was Meadowfort.

He only had a foggy memory of what the place looked like, last time he had been there he was a child. “Hugo went back a few years ago, he got an artist to make me this painting of his hometown. I had completely forgotten about it till you mentioned it!” Roman rambled admiring the drawing.

Trent, still trying to impress Roman, spoke up. “Yes! That's um... his street, his house was…” he trailed off looking around the drawing, actively trying to remember which was Hugo’s house, before his memory could be refreshed the Royal next to him beat him to it, “...I believe it was this one, Hugo always told me what a perfect view he got from his bedroom window.” He was very hesitant as he felt he was interrupting his new knight too much.

Trent agreed with that sentiment. He was incredibly annoyed with the prince. Trent tried to impress him by other means but, Roman proved to know a lot about Hugo’s life. So he headed towards the big shelf and picked up one of the philosophy books he recognized.

“Ah! ‘Philosophy Without A Goal’, an amazing piece of literature... though, I certainly don't agree with all it’s ideals” he again expected a reaction of awe towards his knowledge on a type of book mostly used to teach royalty but he got none of it

“Oh yeah, I think I remember a bit of that book. I wasn't really interested in the topic and my professor was very considerate, he always included some adventure or fantasy book when it was time to practice reading, after my parents found out he got fired...always felt bad about that.” Roman spoke while eyeing the red book that sat abandoned by the window.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

After several attempts of trying to impress the prince with the amount of knowledge he had but, being out done by the monarch, Trent gave up. “It’s getting late, i'm going to head to bed...where exactly am I going to sleep?” Roman stood up and quickly headed for the door “There's a room we passed while heading up-” Roman, hand on the door handle, was going to show Trent where he was going to sleep but, the knight panicked thinking this might be the prince trying to trick him.

“No!” He ran towards the door and slammed it, startling Roman “I can find it myself- thank you though, your majesty” Roman was very confused and still a little shocked at the outburst “Um...sure, if you have any questions about anything let me know, i’ve spent half my life here.” there was something bitter tracing his voice, not that Trent noticed nor cared so, he excused himself.

Trent actually found the room pretty easily, he was unsure how he had missed it before. He was unbelievably annoyed once he realized he'd have to be in the tower with the royal for an undisclosed amount of time, why couldn't the prince shut his mouth from time to time, on the other hand, he could handle it as long as he could cut a few extra steps and effort to actually get to a position of power.

Though life isn't always ideal.

(In this case, he definitely had it coming)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roman woke up to raised voices, in his half-asleep self he couldn't make out what they were saying but he did recognize Ruth’s voice and how much anger she laced her words with.

He stood from his bed concerned for his nurse and who might be on the other end of her venom, she only really had patience for those she cared about. He hurriedly put a robe on and headed out his room. He found Trent and Ruth arguing, his nurse was absolutely fuming, and in a lack of better words “ready to kill a bitch”.

As Roman finally realized they were arguing, he tried to listen as to what they were fighting about. “The King gave me direct orders to not let anyone who wasn't of importance in, that obviously doesn't include a random servant bringing the Prince some tea. Trent emphasized on the word King, as if to prove he was somehow above Ruth.

“Look hun, I get it you think you’re hot stuff because ‘the king chose you to babysit the prince and that's going to help your career’ or whatever, just let me in to see how my baby is doing...ok?” Ruth sounded tired but Roman could hear the murderous edge to her tone.

“Did they not teach you to not to talk that way towards a man?” Trent apparently heard the tone she was obviously trying to hide and he also didn't have a will to live, Roman was about to say something but, Trent spoke before he could.

“Just leave the food and head back, you sure as hell aren't strong enough to get by me.” Roman genuinely thought Ruth was going to go off on Trent and go on a screaming match. However, he did not expect his nurse to, in a blink of an eye, have Trent on the floor, one of her hands on his back and her other hand extending Trent’s right arm while putting a foot on his left arm, basically having this trained knight in an armlock.

Roman was confused and impressed but, mostly too tired to analyze what was happening in front of him so, when a random purple haired knight showed up holding a piece of paper and made eye contact with him, looking extremely concerned and confused, he just shrugged and yawned as if, his nurse didn’t have the his assigned knight in an armlock.

taglist:

@meowthefluffy

[moceit]

Home Is Where...

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Summary: It's boring being a teenager when you have no friends and are stuck working as a waiter at your dad's restaurant. At least that's what Virgil thought until a set of twins move into town and start attending school with him. Now how will Virgil survive after letting himself befriend Remus Rey? Suddenly Virgil's life becomes a roller coaster of never-ending adrenaline that he wasn't prepared for... and neither were his parents.

Pairings: Platonic Dukexiety, Eventual Prinxiety, Divorced/Eventual Moceit, Background/Implied Intrulogical, Brief One-Sided Logince

Chapter 1

Word Count: 2,906

Chapter Warnings: Lmk if something needs tagged

Read on AO3

Virgil is awoken by a loud knocking on his bedroom door. He pulls his comforter over his head to block out the noise, but his papa has other plans. He pushes open the door and stands in the entryway holding a large mixing bowl under his left arm.

"Good morning, kiddo, how would you like your pancakes today?" he asks his son who moans and rolls over to face the wall away from him in reply.

Patton resumes stirring the batter in his mixing bowl as he enters Virgil's room, careful to not step on the clothes strewn around the floor as he approaches his son's bed. He pulls the comforter off his son's head which prompts Virgil to try and hide his face in his pillow, wanting so desperately to be left alone so he could get more sleep.

"Now Virgil, I know you were up late last night, even after I told you to go to bed, but you do have school this morning. It's the first day of your junior year, isn't that exciting!" 

Virgil groans while sitting up in bed. The teenager glares at his papa who stands innocently smiling down at him while he continues whisking away at an already smooth pancake batter. 

"Chocolate chips." he simply says, then stretches his arms and lets out one big yawn.

"Alright. I'll see if there are some left." Patton puts down his whisk and pats his son's shoulder. "Get ready. I'll see you downstairs." Then he walks out, leaving Virgil sitting alone on his bed.

Virgil strips off the old t-shirt he wore to bed and throws it across his bedroom. He blearily scans the room over to his desk chair piled high with clothes he believes have all been washed. Virgil finally stands from his bed and walks over to the chair. He picks through the pile and pulls out a fresh t-shirt that he smells to ensure it's cleaned before throwing on. He follows the same pattern as he puts on a pair of black jeans, then finishes off the look with his favorite hoodie and some socks he left lying next to his bed before finally walking out of his room and jogging downstairs to greet his papa in the kitchen.

Patton is flipping a pancake when he sees his son walk in and plop down at the breakfast table with a mumbled "morning" before hiding his face with his hood.

"Good to see you up." says Patton. Virgil shrugs and reaches over to the cartoon of orange juice Patton left out on the table. "You were in luck. I had just enough chocolate chips for this batch of pancakes this morning."

"Yippee." Virgil deadpans, standing to get a glass from the cabinet, orange juice in hand.

He fills his glass with the orange juice. His papa asks to pour him a glass of juice as well, so Virgil grabs another glass from the cabinet and repeats his action. He brings the glasses over to the breakfast table and sits back down at his spot.

Patton appears behind him carrying two plates of chocolate chip pancakes. He lays a plate in front of Virgil and carries the other plate over to his spot. He sits down across from his son.

"Dig in." he smiles, pushing the syrup he set out on the table towards Virgil for him to get started first.

Virgil pours a little syrup on his pancakes before passing it back to his papa. He starts scarfing down his pancakes, wanting to finish up so he can get out as soon as possible. He was planning on mindlessly driving around town before he had to force himself to pull into the parking lot of the high school that he dreads attending.

"I'm driving you to school today." his papa says abruptly, as if he is reading Virgil's mind. "And your dad is gonna pick you up for work after."

Virgil rolls his eyes and groans. "Why…?!" he whines as he places his fork down next to his plate.

"He's short staffed and needs the extra help." Patton says matter-of-factly before taking a bite out of his breakfast.

"But do you have to drive me? Do you not trust me enough to take myself there after school?"

"Wouldn't it be easier to carpool with your dad instead?" Virgil glares at his papa something quite threatening, but his papa seems to ignore the look "One time. That's all we're asking you."

Virgil looks away from his papa. "Fine." he huffs. 

His dad beams back at him and thanks him for cooperating before returning back to eating.

---

Patton pulls up to the front of Virgil's school. Virgil sits next to him in the passenger seat with his knees up against the dashboard and his headphones on listening to his music. He lost himself in his thoughts and he didn't even register they have arrived until his papa taps his shoulder to get his attention.

Virgil pauses his music, lowers his headphones around his neck, and looks at his papa.

"Remember that your dad will be picking you up after school." says Patton with his ever kind smile. "Have a good day. I love you."

By this point Virgil has already cracked open his car door. "Yeah." he says in reply before swinging the door open all the way and climbing out of his papa's old Chevy Cruze. 

As his papa pulls away from the school Virgil glances back at the parking lot and notices a brand new Lexus ES pull in and park. The sight of a luxury vehicle being quite a foreign concept to all the students around him so Virgil isn't the only one who stops to stare at the two boys who step out of it.

While Virgil definitely couldn't say he knows everyone at the school, having spent his entire school career fairly alone, he realizes these two guys have to be new students.

Virgil turns back around and shuffles through the front entrance of the school. The halls are crammed with other kids excitedly chatting and catching up after three months apart from each other. Virgil watches as two students run up to each other and throw themselves into a hug. The excitement of the two students catching up in his view is something very unfamiliar to Virgil. Every year he walks down these halls and not once has anybody ever bothered to greet him, aside from a couple friendly teachers and faculty members who like to welcome back every student who locks eyes with them.

With nothing for him out in the halls Virgil continues his trudge all the way to his first period class. He's the first one there, even beating the teacher, though that's not a surprise to him. He takes a seat in the back of class and puts his headphones back on, hitting the play button and letting himself enjoy these next few moments of peace.

As it starts getting closer for class to begin students begin filing into the classroom. One of the kids in Virgil's class he recognizes as one of the boys who stepped out of the Lexus this morning. He appears to have already met a couple of the girls in their first period as he walks in with them, chatting away like they were old friends. The group sit down together with the boy two seats up from where Virgil is sitting. 

They're talking quite loudly and Virgil decides to be a little nosy as he pauses his music to eavesdrop on them. If they are going to be louder than his music then he might as well pick up on a piece of their conversation.

"So are you considering auditioning for the fall musical? We do it every year!" Says one of the girls, gesturing to all of her friends with the last statement.

"This fall we're doing The Little Mermaid!" says another girl excitedly. "One of my favorites!"

"Oh, absolutely!" the boy says with an overly grandiose flare in his voice that almost makes Virgil want to gag. "I've been doing theater since I was five so I'm not gonna miss an opportunity now!"

"Great, another pompous theater kid." Thinks Virgil sarcastically.

"Then we can all go to the audition together!" A third girl chimes while clapping her hands excitedly.

"It'll be great. You're gonna love our director." Says the first girl.

Virgil goes to hit play on his music again, deciding the conversation wasn't worth his time listening in to. Virgil was never interested in theater talk. He recognizes the three girls as being some of the most active members of the school's drama club so Virgil should've figured that this conversation would lead to something theater related anyways. Before Virgil gets a chance to hit the button on his phone he's stopped short when the teacher walks in and immediately grabs the attention of her students.

"Welcome to eleventh grade chemistry…" she begins.

---

The day drags on slowly as Virgil is forced to go from class to class listening to practically the same exact spiel as the teachers read off their syllabus for the school year. Then he finally gets to fifth period and he feels a bit of relief knowing lunch comes right after.

As he walks into the class a couple students are already seated but he is luckily able to get a spot in the back. One of the kids already in the classroom happens to be the other boy in the Lexus from this morning. He is also seated in the back so Virgil chooses  to sit on the other side of the classroom. If this kid is anything like his brother (?) then Virgil wants to stay as far away from him as possible. 

The other boy stays to himself as more students continue finding their way into class, but Virgil notices the boy staring at him out the corner of his eye. This unsettles Virgil as he's never had anyone pay him any mind before, let alone look at him with such intent as the boy across the room from him did. Virgil is anxious to say something to him so he tries his best to ignore the boy's glances. He distracts himself by chewing a hang nail on his thumb and bouncing his leg as he tries to stare ahead of himself and not turn back in the boy's direction.

Virgil could still feel the boys eyes on him throughout the entire class. When the bell finally rings Virgil bolts up from his seat and practically sprinting out the door. He takes deep breaths out in the hall as he begins to calm himself down during his walk down to the cafeteria.

Something tells Virgil fifth period World History will be interesting.

---

When Virgil gets to lunch he goes into his usual routine of standing in line, grabbing his lunch and going to the table in the far corner of the cafeteria. It's the usual spot he sits at where he can be alone, just him and his music.

Except this time his normal lunch will be interrupted. As Virgil is enjoying his time to his self his eyes meet with that of the boy's from history. Virgil's heart drops as he realizes the boy is coming straight towards him.

"Oh no" the boy plops down right across from him. Virgil's single table to himself becoming a table for two for the first time in years.

"You look lonely." The boy states. "But I wanna change that."

Virgil pushes his tray closer to him as he desires to curl in on himself and hide away. There's no way he is letting this boy get too close to him.

"I'm fine."

"Wouldn't you like a friend?"

"I don't need a friend."

"Well, I'm not moving."

"Fine!"

Virgil is hoping that the conversation will end there and he can try to enjoy his lunch in peace as usual. He is wrong.

"My name is Remus Rey. I'm new here and I'm looking to make new friends. I saw you last period and thought you and I would get along."

Virgil takes a second to process what Remus is saying to him. He doesn't understand what about him screams friend material for Remus or why that would warrant Remus to stare at him all period long. Should he feel flattered or concerned? Virgil decides it's better if he doesn't think about it too hard.

"I'm Virgil… Hudson-Bullard."

"That's a unique last name."

"It's hyphenated."

"Two last names?"

"Sure."

"Well," Remus begins, "my family moved here over the summer. We live in Oakland Heights."

Virgil's dad lives in Oakland Heights. When Virgil is over at his dad's he likes going on walks. For several years there was one house in the neighborhood that sat for sale. Virgil has always been so blown away by the house’s beauty and size, but the home was way out of the price range for the average person living in town. At the end of last school year Virgil remembers walking past the same house and the For Sale sign had a big red "Sold" over it. Virgil can't think of another house that was sold around that same time so it's safe to assume Remus is talking about the large home in Virgil's mind.

He can't believe the boy sitting across from him would live in such a nice home. If what Remus is saying is true then that would mean his family is well off. Then again, it would add up. He arrived to school in a freaking Lexus! Virgil shouldn't be too surprised but he's still taking time to process all of this.

"You're not talking about the large home at the end of Berry Street?" Virgil is still in disbelief.

"Yep, that'd be the one. Me and my twin brother, Roman are both excited to be starting school here today! We've never been to a public school before."

Twin brother? Virgil looks past Remus over to another table where the boy in question is sitting at laughing with a bunch of theater kids and other popular students that Virgil would rather not associate with. Roman seems to have found his clique and is hitting it off with the others quite well.

Remus notices Virgil's gaze drift behind him so he turns around and traces Virgil's eyesight over to Roman. 

"We're like night and day." Remus says. "He and I don't really get along. We haven't since around the time we started middle school. We got into two different interests and friend groups. People tend to find it easier to get along with Roman than they do me." 

Remus turns back to look at Virgil who's attention has now returned back to him. "I sometimes think even my parents like him than me… at least in our mom's case."

Virgil is almost beginning to pity him. Perhaps it was because he saw himself in the new boy and didn't want to wish the same fate on someone else.

"I've recently been cut off from my allowance." He continues. "So now I'm looking for a job so I can have a little bit of spending money."

Virgil shrugs. "I wish I knew how to help." He says simply to be kind, but also because he really was beginning to feel for him.

"Thanks. I suppose I'll find something eventually?" Remus finally takes a bite out of his lunch before adding. "I really like you, Virgil. I think we'll be great friends."

---

The second half of Virgil's school day felt just as slow as the first half but luckily it lacked any more sightings of the Rey brothers. When the final bell rang signalling the end of the day Virgil finds himself speeding lightening fast out the doors to the parking lot. He starts searching for his dad's car waiting for him all the way in the back. Figures he would make Virgil walk.

Virgil makes his way all the way to his dad's car and slips into the passenger seat.

"How was school." His dad deadpans as soon as Virgil closed the door. His voice sounding as if he didn't care, though Virgil knows his dad well enough to understand it's just his tone and that he was more concerned than he sounds.

Janus starts pulling out of the parking lot as Virgil replies. "It was fine." He shrugs. "Got a couple new kids. The one decided to sit next to me during lunch." Virgil says nonchalantly.

"Oh~" Janus drawls, "you made a new friend?"

"If that's what you wanna call it." Virgil puts on his headphones to tell his dad he is done with the conversation.

The rest of the car ride is silent as Janus drives the two of them over to the restaurant. Virgil stares at the building with no emotion as he slips his headphones off his head and into his backpack.

"I brought some work clothes and your black work sneakers in case you needed them." his dad says as he goes to open the door. "They're sitting in the back seat."

Janus gets out of the car and starts walking inside. Virgil looks at his clothes through the rearview mirror before he gets out himself. He opens the back door and grabs the outfit his dad had for him before going in himself. Time for work.

[iclaimedtobethebetterbard]

it was always you (falling for me) - Chapter 1

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: All the sides, Remy Rating: Teen & up (for swearing)  Relationships: Prinxiety, Moceit, and mentioned QPR Intrulogical (eventually this will develop into Intrulosleep!) Warnings: Language; Remus being Remus; Shakespeare fans will probably hate my interpretation(s) of the plays I reference here, if the English major friend I showed this to is anything to go by, and I’m very sorry about that 😂 Word Count: 8340

Read on AO3! 

My writing masterpost

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Summary: In a world where you and your soulmate swap dreams once a month, seven young adults enter the same college as freshmen. Each of them is wondering when they'll find their soulmate and what that will mean for them.

Notes: Happy Holidays @sanders-sides-fics !! I was your Secret Santa for @sanderssidesgiftxchange !! (Sorry this post is up so late today!) I’ve done my best to combine all 3 of your wishes for this story into a Prinxiety soulmates AU with mutual pining. The complete story will be 12 chapters; I’ll be uploading hopefully a minimum of 2 chapters a week, and the first 3 should be up in the next 24 hours. I also have a google doc with the entire plot of the fic in bullet point format; if you’d like access to it so you can see the whole story right now, since it’s a story for you, send me a DM! If you’d rather not see the plot summary and instead watch the fully-written story unfold as it goes, that’s fine too. I hope you enjoy! :) 

Chapter 1

“Sorry I’m late, calculus was a—you’re not Remus.” Virgil stared at the boy, who was sitting at the library table Virgil always met Remus at.

The weird thing was that he looked a lot like Remus. Same prominent nose, same rich sparkling brown eyes and brown skin, but a smaller build; where Remus was gangly and full of sharp angles, this boy was compact and stocky, looking both softer and more muscular than Remus. His cheeks were rounder and softer than Remus’s, and his mouth was softer too—Virgil was almost sure the vivid pink color of his lips must come from lipstick. His hair was the same loose brown curls as Remus’s, but his curls were tidier and shorter than Remus’s, without the dyed streak that Remus had. He was cleanshaven, too, with an outfit much more jock-y than Remus would wear.

“I’m Roman. Remus is my brother,” the boy said, and Virgil instantly felt like an idiot. Right. Remus had a twin. They knew that. Remus talked about him sometimes. Virgil just hadn’t expected to meet him like this.

They hadn’t expected him to be cute.

“Oh.” Virgil stared at Roman for a moment, holding their backpack half-on, half-off, unsure of whether they should take a seat or not. “Why are you here?”

Roman frowned, a soft little pout. “I’m waiting for Remus, he’s late.” He crossed his arms, and Virgil did their best not to stare at his biceps—listen, it wasn’t their fault the dude was wearing that red tank top; it was practically designed to draw attention to how muscular his arms were.

“Yeah, no shit he’s late. But like. Why are you waiting for him?” It was only midway through the third week of the quarter, but Remus and Virgil had already formed a habit of meeting up at this table by the library’s indoor cafe every Tuesday and Thursday to do homework together; they each had a free hour between classes, and it was in a convenient location, and they helped to keep each other on task. Roman? Roman was not a part of this equation. And Virgil didn’t appreciate him showing up with no warning and throwing the normal order of operations off.

“He borrowed my calculator last week and I need it back today, he said to meet him here.” Roman hadn’t uncrossed his arms. “Who are you?”

“I’m Virgil. Remus is my roommate.” Virgil decided they might as well sit at this point, so they slid their backpack onto the worn wooden bench opposite Roman and sat beside it, pulling out their Psychology reading.

“Ohh.” Roman slowly uncrossed his arms and rested his elbows on the table, propping his chin on his hands. “He didn’t say anyone else would be here.”

“Sounds like him,” Virgil commented. “We do homework here. He must not have thought to mention it.”

Roman grinned, quick and bright. “That makes sense, he is a dumbass sometimes.”

“He really is,” Virgil agreed with a small chuckle.

There was a beat of awkward silence; Roman was eyeing Virgil curiously. Virgil did their best to ignore it as they pulled out their notes. They knew perfectly well how androgynous they looked; it was on purpose. Didn’t make it less annoying when people stared.

“Hey, by the way, what are your pronouns?” Roman asked.

Well. That was a lot better than “are you a boy or a girl?” Virgil had to admit, they were pleasantly surprised. “He/they/ze,” Virgil said.

Roman nodded. “Mine are he/him. Ze like ze/hir, or xe/xem, or something else?”

Virgil blinked. They really hadn’t expected that. “Ze/hir,” they said, a little less brusque.

“Cool.” Roman nodded again. “Are you a freshman too?”

“Yeah. I’m your twin’s roommate, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, right.” That little splash of metaphorical cold water didn’t seem to dim the interest on Roman’s face. “What’s your major?”

“Psychology. I’m planning to build my own concentration focusing on gender and sexuality.”

“That sounds cool,” Roman enthused. “I’m a Theatre major!”

Somehow, Virgil wasn’t surprised.

“That’s neat,” they said politely, opening the Psychology textbook to the reading for this week.

Roman nodded eagerly, curls bouncing; he then reached up to pat them back into place. “I’m really really liking it so far—we’re actually using Romeo and Juliet in one class I’m in to practice running lines, it’s so romantic and adorable!”

Virgil looked up from their Psych textbook. They normally didn't have strong opinions when it came to Shakespeare, but in their high school English class sophomore year, they’d gotten into an unspoken competition with the annoying boy who sat next to them to see who could get the better grade. They’d won, of course, and in the process they’d done a lot of thinking about Romeo and Juliet. To hear Roman describing the play as romantic? Worse, adorable? Those were fighting words, in Virgil’s opinion. “Excuse me?”

“What?” Roman looked confused, blinking at Virgil with wide brown eyes.

“Did you just call Romeo and Juliet ‘adorable and romantic’?” Virgil demanded, gearing up for a fight. Roman had better not bring up the soulmate argument; people always tended to focus on the fact that Romeo and Juliet had a soulbond, in Virgil’s experience. They had plenty of counterarguments for that, but they were sick of hearing about it. Just because Romeo and Juliet were soulmates didn’t make the story better.

“Well, yeah!” Roman responded. “I mean, look how much they risked for true love!” He paused and winced. “Admittedly, it didn’t pay off, but that was due to some honest mistakes! They’re the original star-crossed lovers, for goodness’ sake!”

Virgil rolled their eyes. “Dude, they were teenagers, it lasted for like three days, and six people died. Also, Romeo was a total womanizer who was just as infatuated with Rosaline hours before he met Juliet. Nothing about that screams ‘romantic’ to me.”

Roman huffed, looking scandalized. “Listen, just because there are darker thematic elements doesn’t mean you have to focus on the bad stuff! I mean, look at Romeo and Juliet themselves! Their families hated each other, but they chose to focus on their true love, and let that overcome all their problems!”

Virgil shook their head. “Okay, but like, can we circle back to the part where they had just met that same evening? They didn’t have time to build something stable or healthy enough to be called ‘true love.’”

“They are literal soulmates, okay?” Roman’s voice rose, together with Virgil’s spirits. He’d brought up the soulbond, and they were ready to decimate whatever argument he was going to base on that. “Just because they died before they could confirm they were actually soulmates doesn’t mean—”

“But that’s the thing! They died not knowing whether or not they were soulmates, that’s how brand-new their relationship was! There was nothing solid there!” Virgil pressed.

“But Juliet choosing to take a chance on someone who might be her soulmate, instead of letting her father pressure her into a marriage with someone she knew wasn’t? That’s amazing! Her monologue about that choice is one of the best moments in the entire play!” Roman waved his hands in the air as he spoke, punctuating his sentences with emphatic gestures.

“I’m just saying, it’s not exactly what comes to mind when someone says ‘adorable and romantic,’” Virgil insisted. “And besides, even if Juliet was asserting her autonomy or whatever—”

“‘Or whatever,’ ze says! ‘Or whatever,’ you know I’m right, you just don’t want to admit it!”

“—Romeo was still kind of a shitbag fuckboy. I mean, he didn’t know who his soulmate was, and he didn’t really seem to care. He tried to get with multiple women without thinking about their soulbond at all.”

“He was in love! Can you blame him? And he got it right in the end. Stop focusing on Rosaline, she was mainly just a plot device to set up the way he meets Juliet!”

Virgil raised an eyebrow. “Wow, cherry-picking your arguments, much? You can’t just shove Rosaline to the side and discount her just because her existence contradicts your interpretation.”

Roman crossed his arms. “Uh, I can and I will, watch me. And Romeo was loads better for Juliet than Paris would have been! He literally was her soulmate, which you keep discounting, so the cherry-picking argument goes both ways here, I feel like.” Roman’s little pouty frown was back.

Virgil sighed in exasperation. “Listen!” They slammed their hands down on the table. “There’s a difference between finding your soulmate, being widowed, and seeking to remarry after the fact, like Paris did, and marrying someone without knowing or caring enough to even try to confirm if they’re your soulmate, like Romeo did. We can condemn Paris and Juliet’s betrothal from a modern standpoint, but the fact remains that women of Shakespeare’s time were often denied the opportunity to look for their soulmate. They were expected to marry for status and money, and just have an affair if they ever did find their soulmate. Paris would have provided Juliet with a home and everything she needed, and since he’d once been married to his soulmate and knew what it was like, he likely would have been very understanding if she and Romeo ever got close enough to confirm they were soulmates. Juliet has to choose between an unpleasant but ultimately very liveable compromise, and throwing everything away for literally a hair-thin chance. And she dies because of her choice. It’s stupid.” Virgil sat back and crossed their arms.

“But she was still right!” Roman insisted. “Romeo was her soulmate, it’s textually confirmed by the parallel scenes where Romeo talks about his souldream to Mercutio and Juliet talks about hers to the Nurse, and we as the audience can see that they were sharing each other’s dreams! The point is that Juliet is choosing between a life of security without love, and risking everything for love, and that making that choice is worth it no matter the outcome because she was happy with Romeo!” Roman jumped to his feet and began pacing back and forth along the length of the table. “The tragic ending is a scathing social commentary examining how the system was stacked against her to the point where even once she found her soulmate, human error could still steal everything away from her, and ultimately arguing that that system is flawed and making an argument in favor of prioritizing soulmate marriages over political ones!”

“The tragic ending is commentary about how stupid it was to throw away her security in a system that wouldn’t take care of her otherwise. You can have ideals all you want, but at the end of the day, you still live within a society and have to work within its confines,” Virgil countered. “That comes up again in the subplot about Mercutio’s death emphasizing his inability to marry his soulmate Benvolio, because the system also prioritized heterosexual marriage over any other form of relationship.” Virgil regretted the words as soon as they said them, realizing that Roman could easily use that subplot in favor of his own point. They could have made their argument without bringing that in. Now he had more fuel—if he realized it.

Roman, who was still pacing, froze, the annoyance on his face melting into an expression of sheer delight. “Wait, you like the ‘Mercutio and Benvolio as soulmates’ interpretation, too?” he asked, the argument seemingly forgotten.

Virgil snorted, hiding their relief that he hadn’t noticed the easy win they’d accidentally handed him. “Dude, it’s barely an interpretation, it’s basically right there in the text.”

“Scholars have tried to erase it for centuries, though!” Roman was bouncing on his feet, flapping his hands back and forth in excitement; he seemed absolutely thrilled that Virgil was agreeing with him on this point.

Over Roman’s shoulder, Virgil caught sight of Remus, all the way on the opposite side of the library; he was walking purposefully towards the table, but when he met their eyes, he grinned, waved, and made an exaggerated shushing motion. Virgil looked back to Roman, who clearly hadn’t noticed Remus. They saw no reason to give Remus away and spoil his fun.

“Homophobia doesn’t take away from the textual canon.” Virgil shrugged.

“Oh, that’s a really good way of phrasing that, actually.” Roman looked impressed. “I might need to steal that, there’s this one guy in my class that I keep getting into arguments with.”

“Sure, feel free. Get his ass.” Normally Virgil might take issue with someone wanting to use their ideas, but to annoy a homophobe, all was fair game as far as they were concerned.

“Thank you, I’ll do my best.” Roman beamed.

Remus slowed to a tiptoe as they neared the table, snuck up right behind Roman, and bopped the top of Roman’s head with the flat of his palm. “Boo!”

Roman shrieked and flailed his arms wildly, leaping to his feet; Remus, laughing uproariously, had already ducked into a well-practiced crouch, and Roman’s hands sailed right over his head.

“Hi, Ro,” he said, standing up and easily sliding onto the bench at the table where Roman had just been sitting. “Hi Virge!”

“You’re late, asshat,” Virgil said amiably.

“Yeah, sorry, I had to stay after class and ask my professor something, and the guy who got to him before me took forever. I could practically have decomposed my entire corpse by the time it was my turn.”

“Gross!” Roman commented brightly, hugging Remus from behind and resting his chin on top of Remus’s head. “Also, I hate you.”

“Yeah, I can really tell that from your tone of voice,” Remus said dryly, but he reached up and patted Roman’s face, nearly poking him in the eye. “I see you two are getting along well.”

“No!” Roman whined. “Virgil’s mean!”

“Awwww, you poor thing.” Remus made an overexaggerated face of sympathy. “Were they winning?”

“Yeah,” Virgil said with a chuckle.

“No!” Roman protested at the same time, stamping his foot.

“Gotcha,” Remus said, nodding sagely.

“Romeo and Juliet were soulmates, Remus!” Roman said insistently, grabbing Remus’s sleeve.

Remus nodded, grinning. “Yeah. And they died. With lots of blood and stabbing. Also poison, which is sick. Do you want my fake blood recipe for your class? It’s awesome, I have a gushy version and a viscous version.”

“Ew! No!” Roman batted at Remus’s arm, sitting on the bench beside him. “What is wrong with you?”

“A lot, thank you for asking!” Remus beamed. “Shouldn’t you be totally into my fake blood, though? Since you’re so big on soulmates?”

“Why would I possibly—” Roman began in disgust.

“Because Logan helped me with the formula for the viscous one!” Remus interrupted before Roman could even finish the question. “Cute soulmate bonding activities, am I right?”

Virgil had met Remus’s queerplatonic partner a couple of times, and from what they knew of him, yeah, that checked out.

“Are you kidding?” Roman demanded.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Remus responded. “No, I’m serious. It was fantastic, he helped me figure out the exact ratio of cornstarch to make it look the most realistic, and then I got to pose like a dead body with it all over me and he took pictures! Wanna see?” He was already reaching for his phone.

“No! No, that’s fine, I believe you!” Roman tried to grab the phone, but only succeeded in knocking it out of Remus’s hands onto the floor.

Remus leaned down to pick it up, snickering; as he straightened back up, Virgil was struck by how, even seated, he was still significantly taller than Roman.

“Can I have my calculator back, though?” Roman asked.

“Oh, right.” Remus dug into his backpack, scattering loose papers across the table.

Roman picked a couple of food wrappers out of the pile and set them to one side, making a face.

“Here it is!” Remus said triumphantly, pulling out the calculator and holding it aloft. “I didn’t even lose the case, see?”

“Great job, I’m very proud of you.” Roman accepted the calculator and slid it into his own backpack, then gathered up the food wrappers off the table. “You shouldn’t leave these in there with your homework.”

“Oh, I know, I just forget sometimes. I throw ’em away eventually.” Remus seemed unconcerned.

“That’s disgusting,” Roman said, getting up and walking to the trash can a couple of tables away to dispose of them.

“Thank you!” Remus said, though whether he was referring to Roman throwing away the trash or just to being called “disgusting” was unclear. He pulled out a notebook, flipped it open, and began running his finger slowly down the page, mouthing to himself.

Roman shook his head and sighed as he returned to the table. “I should probably go now. Let you study, or whatever.” He picked up his backpack and slung it across his shoulders. “See you later, Rem. Nice to meet you, Virgil, even if you have totally wrong opinions about Shakespeare.”

“Nice to meet you too, even if you’re a sore loser,” Virgil responded easily.

“I did not lose!” Roman insisted.

“Whatever.” Virgil snickered. “Catch you later.”

“Bye,” Remus added, not looking up from his notes.

Roman nodded and walked off. Virgil watched him go. So that was Remus’s brother; not really what they’d expected. He had made some good points about Romeo and Juliet, not that Virgil would admit it; he clearly knew his stuff.

“Are you checking him out?” Remus demanded, following Virgil’s gaze to Roman, who was by now nearly out of the library.

“What? No!” Virgil spluttered, grabbing a pencil from the mess Remus had spread across the table and throwing it at his head. “He’s just. Got a lot of muscles. That’s all. Shut up!” they added when Remus looked like he was about to begin laughing.  

“Iiiinteresting,” Remus commented with an evil chuckle. Virgil threw a crumpled paper at him. He batted it aside, eyeing them up and down. “You’re not his usual type, but I could see him being into your, like, dark and brooding thing. Plus you have the whole gender fuckery with your presentation going on, and that’s just objectively hot. Like, I’m gay as shit and I can still tell you’re super hot,” he added matter-of-factly.

“Cool. Good thing I’m not interested in him, so it’s irrelevant, so you can shut up now.” Face burning, Virgil pulled their Psych textbook closer. It wasn’t like Roman was his soulmate or anything, anyway, so it didn’t matter if he happened to be—objectively—very cute, or if the way he’d gotten so passionate about the argument was—theoretically—kind of attractive. Virgil had long since decided they had too much anxiety to date people without knowing first if they were soulmates or not. And you didn’t just ask people about their souldreams, that was personal; Virgil only knew one person they’d really be comfortable talking about souldreams with.

“Sure, you’re ‘not interested,’” Remus said, but he seemed to be letting it go, resuming his perusal of his notes.

Virgil had fully relaxed and was halfway through the reading when Remus reached over and poked them.

“What?”

“I could totally tell you what times he goes to the gym to work out, so you could watch.” Remus waggled his eyebrows.

Virgil threw another paper at him as he dissolved into giggles. “Shut up!”

***

A week or so later, Virgil topped the slight hill that led to hir dorm, pace quickening as the building finally came into sight. Ze’d had a long day and was ready to collapse on hir bed and drown hir thoughts in hir Sudoku app for a while. Ze pulled out hir key as ze approached the door to the building.

“Virgil!” a voice called.

Virgil looked up; Roman was waving wildly at hir as he got up from one of the benches outside the building and jogged over, and—wow, okay, he was wearing a crop top, and his arms were not the only muscular thing about him.

“Hi,” Virgil said uncertainly, trying hard to keep their eyes on his face and not… anywhere else. Ze hadn’t thought people just casually went around having visible abs in real life.

“Can you let me in? Remus asked me to come over and help with an essay, but he hasn’t answered my texts yet, and the door’s locked.”

“Sure,” Virgil said, suppressing a sigh; there went peace and quiet for the next hour, in all likelihood.

“How have your classes been going?” Roman asked, snapping his fingers repetitively, as they walked up the stairs together—Remus and Virgil’s dorm was on the third floor.

“Fine,” Virgil said shortly.

“Cool! Mine are mostly awesome, but I’m in this biology class and I hate it, it’s so gross. Remus would totally love it, though. It’s a stupid GE and I have to take it but I can’t stand it. There are so many terrible textures I have to touch. And Remus and I aren’t even identical so I can’t make him take the final for me.” He pouted as he said this last part, as if it were the worst injustice known to humanity. “What’s the point of having a twin if you aren’t identical and can’t help each other cheat on homework?”

That startled a laugh out of Virgil. “Damn, you’re really not a fan of that class, huh?”

Roman shook his head emphatically, then smoothed his curls back into place before resuming his rhythmic finger-snapping. “Not one bit.” He brightened. “I love my English class, though! The professor is so engaging and the assignments are lots of fun!”

Virgil blinked at him. “I see why Remus wanted your help with an essay.” Actually enjoying English classes? Who did that?

Roman nodded. “I’m very good at essays,” he said seriously.

Virgil stopped at the door to hir dorm and unlocked it. “Remus, please collect your noisy brother.”

“I was making friendly conversation!” Roman spluttered.

“Sounds noisy to me,” Remus said, tipping back in his chair so he could look at them upside-down.

“Dude.” Virgil crossed the room speedily and pushed him forward so his chair stood on all four legs again. “Don’t fall and kill yourself, please.”

“I’ll be fine,” Remus said, waving his hand, but he didn’t tip his chair backwards again.

Virgil looked back at Roman, who was still snapping his fingers quietly, almost as if he wasn’t thinking about it at all. “Why are you doing that?” ze asked.

“What?” Roman startled and looked over at them.

“Snapping your fingers like that,” Virgil clarified.

Remus tensed just slightly; out of the corner of hir eye, Virgil could see him watching hir like a hawk. Which was a weird reaction, to say the least. Had hir tone been off, or something?

“Ohh,” Roman said, the confusion on his face clearing up at Virgil’s clarification. He hesitated for a beat. “It’s a stim, I’m autistic.”

“Ah,” Virgil said. “Cool.” Ze shrugged, trying very hard not to acknowledge the way Remus was still watching hir.

Roman paused. “Is it bothering you?” he asked uncertainly. “I can stop—”

“No, dude, you’re all good,” Virgil said quickly. The noise wasn’t bothering hir, only hir curiosity had been. “I just wondered why. I do that when I’m having trouble remembering something,” ze added, smiling a little.

Roman relaxed and grinned back. “Oh, I do that too sometimes!” he said, sounding delighted. “Not now, but I know what you mean.”

Remus finally relaxed and stopped staring at Virgil. Virgil hoped that meant ze hadn’t said anything egrigiously terrible.

Remus sighed loudly and dramatically, gesturing at his laptop. “Ro, c’mere, look at this bullshit.”

Roman came up beside Virgil and looked over Remus’s shoulder at his computer screen. “‘Write a four- to seven-page essay explaining what role your assigned historical event played in shaping the course of American politics. Cite at least three assigned sources,’” he read aloud. “Okay, what’s your assigned historical event?”

“The gold rush,” Remus said plaintively, sprawling forward face-first across his desk.

“Cool, what do you have so far?” Roman perched on the corner of the desk.

“Absolutely nothing,” Remus groaned into a textbook.

“Really?” Roman raised an eyebrow. “Why am I here, then?”

Remus sighed and lifted his head. “I have some notes?”

Roman seemed to teeter between annoyance and optimism for a second before visibly taking a breath and straightening his shoulders. “Good! Let’s start there. I’m not writing this for you, you know,” he added warningly.

“Yeah, I know.” Remus wrinkled his nose, digging out a notebook and flipping through it.

Virgil climbed up onto hir bunk and pulled out hir headphones as the brothers settled in; Remus seemed to be, more or less, actually working, while Roman kept up a steady stream of chatter that Virgil couldn’t quite block out. Ze did hir level best anyway, and managed to lose hirself in Sudoku games for maybe half an hour before Roman’s voice rose. Virgil nudged one ear free, lifting hir head.

“No, you have to put another comma,” Roman was saying emphatically, pointing at Remus’s computer screen.

“How come?” Remus demanded, overly whiny.

“I—you gotta,” Roman said; when Remus just gave him a look, he relented enough to add, “Because we stan the Oxford Comma in this household, okay? Eat a protein bar, you’re getting grumpy.”

As Remus reached for the bowl of protein bars on the corner of his desk, Virgil couldn’t hold back a snicker. “I think the Oxford Comma is stupid,” ze put in, purely for the purpose of messing with Roman; ze was actually more inclined in favor of it, but it was one of those things where it was fun to bug those who had strong opinions about it.

Roman gasped like Virgil had personally murdered his hopes and dreams in cold blood, clutching his heart. “I’m sorry, what?” he demanded.

Virgil shrugged, dangling hir legs over the end of hir bunk bed. “Dude, you heard me.” Ze turned up hir music a notch to tune out the tirade Roman was no doubt about to unleash and opened the Messages app to text Janus.

Virgil: hey, u busy?

“I’m sorry, you cannot just say something like that like it’s no big deal,” Roman began, and Virgil turned up the music another notch, looking at Roman very seriously and nodding along like ze was listening. Ze caught bits and snippets: “makes no sense—if I said—you wouldn’t know if—you need the Oxford Comma to—or you could end up looking like an accessory to murder!”

“Good,” Virgil and Remus said in unison.

Roman floundered for a moment. “No! Not good! Murder is bad!” he finally snapped, voice going high with distress.

“Murder is sexy,” Remus said, sounding like he was barely holding back laughter.

“No!” Roman insisted, just as Virgil’s phone lit up with a reply from Janus.

Janus: Nah, not busy. What’s up?

Virgil: can i come over?

Janus: PLEASE do

Janus: My day has been a disaster

Virgil: omw

Virgil shut off hir phone and pocketed it, glancing up at Roman, who seemed to be finishing up another tirade.

“—so you see, it makes a huge difference!”

Virgil nodded very seriously, climbing down the ladder. “Okay, interesting,” ze said. “But you forgot one crucial point.”

“What’s that?” Roman demanded, hands on his hips.

“I don’t care.” Virgil smirked. “See you around.” Virgil gave him a two-fingered salute, picking up hir backpack as Roman gaped indignantly and Remus burst into cackles of amusement.

“Oh, you two are rich—we’ve got to hang out together more often, watching you bicker is the most fun I’ve had all day,” Virgil heard Remus saying to Roman as ze closed the door behind hir.

Virgil walked down the hall to Janus’s room, pulled out the key Janus had copied for hir—which, yeah, was definitely illegal, but it wasn’t like either of them cared—and let hirself in. “Hey,” ze said.

“Hi,” Janus said. He was lying flat on his back on the floor, his arms sprawled outward like he was T-posing. His thin legs, in black skinny jeans, were propped up vertically against his bed, making him look almost like he was sitting upside-down. A hat was plopped dramatically over his face. “I hate everything,” he announced.

“Mood. What happened?” Virgil plopped down on the floor next to Janus, leaning against the bed so that ze was facing him.

“The professor in one of my classes assigned partners for a group project today,” Janus began.

“Oh, gross,” Virgil said amiably.

“No, no.” Janus made a “wait” motion, raising his hand to hold up one long finger before dropping his arm to the floor again. “It gets worse.”

“Oh? Yikes.”

“Yeah. So my group partner and I are talking about the project, right? And we exchange contact information.” Janus propped himself up on one elbow and took the hat off his face. “And I fucking know him.”

“Yeah?” Virgil wasn’t sure where this was going.

“We went to middle school together.” Janus pronounced it like a sentence of doom.

“Okay?” Virgil still wasn’t seeing what was so terrible about this. Admittedly, ze hadn’t gone to the same middle school as Janus and hadn’t met him until high school, so ze wouldn’t know. “Does he, like, have blackmail material on you, or something?” ze inquired jokingly.

Janus’s eyes widened, and he stared into space for a second. “Fuck. He totally does. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“...I’m sorry, what? What kind of stuff were you getting up to in middle school?” Virgil tried very hard not to laugh. “Because like, I’ve got to tell you, freshman you was a total dork and not really blackmail-worthy.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Janus said fondly, swatting at Virgil’s knee. “No, but like, seriously. I was an asshole in middle school.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“Fair. But like, I was such an asshole. Going through my edgy phase and my depressed phase at once, and super emotionally constipated.”

Virgil made an exaggerated face of shock. “Sorry, those were phases? I thought that was just your entire identity as a person.”

Janus raised an eyebrow. “Oh, does the lifelong emo have something to say?”

“Wow, okay.” Virgil chuckled slightly. “I get it, I don’t have room to talk, and you were a special asshole. Go on.”

Janus sighed dramatically, letting his head drop back onto the floor, turning the hat over and over in his hands. “So like, there was this one kid in middle school who was just, like, sunshine and rainbows 24/7, right? He’s called Patton. He was super nice to everyone. And he seemed really happy all the time. I was jealous, I think, so I was just a total asshole to him every chance I got. I think I even tripped him in the hall once.”

“No,” Virgil said, beginning to see where this was going. “And this dude—”

“Uh-huh,” Janus said with an overdramatic moan, draping the hat back over his face. “It’s the same guy. I didn’t even know he went here!”

Virgil, to be quite honest, wasn’t totally sure how to respond, but Janus was someone it was always fine to be quiet around, so ze just waited.

“Like, the worst part is it was literally entirely my fault,” Janus went on. “He never did anything. Sure, I told myself he did at the time, but like, looking back, it was all me. Maybe I would have gotten my act together and apologized eventually, but, you know.” He waved in Virgil’s direction. “I moved away in eighth grade and figured I was never going to see him again, and I don’t think I properly stopped being an asshole to everyone I knew until I met you.”

“Oh, right, you met me and stopped being an asshole to everyone you knew so you could focus on just being an asshole to me? Yeah, I remember that,” Virgil teased lightly.

“Shut up.” Janus scooted closer so that he could lean against Virgil’s legs. “I feel really bad about it, is all. I literally had no reason for being so awful to him.”

“Yikes,” was all Virgil could think to say.

“Yeah,” Janus said miserably.

“Does he realize it’s you?” Virgil asked after a moment.

“Sorry, how many people named ‘Janus Aspinwall’ do you know?” Janus snarked, pulling the hat off his face again. “Yes, he obviously recognized me. The smile fell right off his face and everything.”

“Yikes,” Virgil repeated.

“Yeah,” Janus agreed, smushing his face against Virgil’s shin in despair. “So I guess I’m never leaving my dorm again, basically, and I just have to die in a hole here.”

“Was it that bad?”

Janus looked up. “No, actually. That’s the worst part. He was super nice about it. Like, I apologized, obviously—”

“Did you?”

“Yeah! I told him I was an asshole and I shouldn’t have been!”

“Did the words ‘I’m sorry,’ or anything to that effect, ever cross your lips?” Virgil pushed. Ze knew hir best friend.

“Fuck,” Janus said after a pause.

“Right.” Virgil sighed. “Telling him you shouldn’t have been an asshole is a good step, though,” ze added encouragingly.

“I guess.” Janus shrugged with one shoulder. “He was really nice about it, like I said. He said he got it, or something. Which is total bullshit, I bet he’d cry if he stepped on an ant, there’s no way he ‘gets’ having been the worst twelve year old on the planet.”

Virgil had a realization. “Jan.”

“And like, it was super awkward for a few minutes, but he kept making these puns and they weren’t even good but there were so many of them that I started laughing eventually, and he acted like we were fine and okay and normal after that and we started focusing just on the project but there’s no way he doesn’t secretly hate me, fuck, I’d just openly hate me in his place—”

“Jan!”

“—and like, he got me to make some puns back, and he acted like he liked them, and he was so nice and acted like I was just a regular person and not some cheap stereotypical middle school bully—”

“Janus!”

“What?”

“You think he’s cute, right?”

“What?” Janus stared, uncomprehending, at Virgil.

“You think he’s cute,” Virgil repeated. Ze waited for the ball to drop, counting down in hir head. Three… two…

Janus’s eyes went huge. “Fuck,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Virgil reached up and patted Janus’s knee consolingly where it rested against the bedframe.

“You asshole! Why’d you have to make me realize it?” Janus demanded. “How am I supposed to act normal around him now?”

“I mean, based off listening to you talk about him for the last—” Virgil made a show of checking hir watch “—ten minutes, I’d bet good money you already weren’t acting normal around him. But you know, to each their own.”

Janus scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “He’s really cute, Virgil,” he mumbled.

“I’m sure. And it sounds like he’s taking your sort-of-apology better than most people would, so you have nothing to worry about, right?”

“Wrong,” Janus muttered vindictively, but he swung his legs down to the ground and hoisted himself up to sit next to Virgil and rest his head on hir shoulder. “Thanks, or whatever,” he added after a moment.

Virgil reached up and patted his cheek. “Course, Janus,” ze said matter-of-factly.

Honestly, Virgil kind of felt like it was a pity ze and Janus weren’t soulmates. Especially since meeting Remus’s partner Logan and learning soulmates didn’t have to be romantic. Romance with Janus? Disgusting. It would never work. They’d tried once in ninth grade, because everyone kept assuming they were together, and it had been a relief to break up after two and a half days of sheer awkwardness. Virgil had no desire to repeat that. But being soulmates with your best friend? Hacking the soulmate system and not having to worry about being right for someone you didn’t even know yet? That sounded pretty sweet.

They weren’t soulmates, of course. They were close enough that it wasn’t nosy or weird to talk about their souldreams, and so Virgil knew that their souldream nights weren’t aligned, and they definitely weren’t getting each other’s dreams. Far from it.  

But it would make things so much less scary to just be soulmates with your best friend and not have to worry about dating. All the ups and downs that came with romance. The chance to mess it up or be less than someone wanted. Risking falling for someone only to find out you weren’t soulmates after all. You didn’t have to worry about any of that with friends—it was less complicated.

Well. Ze and Janus had managed to make even friendship super complicated. But the Fight was past them. Nowadays friendship with Janus was as easy as breathing—it was just a part of Virgil. The awful eight months of the Fight aside, Janus had always been there for Virgil, and ze for him. They’d both been the first ones each of them had ever come out to and always had each other’s back. Janus had helped Virgil pick hir name. He was the only person Virgil came close to trusting unconditionally. Going through all the work of building that strong a relationship again, with another, entirely different person? That sounded exhausting, and there was no way Virgil would get lucky enough to not mess it up twice.

Plus, it wasn’t like Virgil was even that good at friendship in general—Janus was the first person who’d stuck around for longer than a year or two. If ze couldn’t even make friends right, how on earth was ze supposed to navigate a relationship with a soulmate, who was supposed to be forever? It would be so simple if one solid friendship was enough and Virgil never had to be enough for anyone else.

Never had to risk letting hir soulmate down.

Because Virgil kind of felt like the universe had probably messed up with hir when hir soulbond developed. Ze’d been sixteen by the time ze started having souldreams—not unheard of, but still very late. And from what Virgil could glean from hir soulmate’s dreams, ze was kind of the last person hir soulmate would want. There was no way ze was right for this person.

Sure, Virgil hadn’t heard of anyone being rejected by their soulmate… ever, actually, but there had to be a first time for everything, right? And when it came to “messed up people who probably didn’t deserve soulmates,” Virgil didn’t really have a problem believing ze might be top of the list. Even after all Janus’s lectures about self-loathing being bad.

So Virgil tried, really ze did, not to think about hir soulmate too much. Best not to get hir hopes up. But in spite of hirself, Virgil had a running list in hir head of things ze knew about hir soulmate.

They liked Disney a lot, first and foremost—Virgil’s souldreams were always rife with Disney characters, and souldreams were a peek into what your soulmate’s normal dreams were like.

(Virgil always winced and tried not to think too hard about that, because, well. The regular nightmares ze had weren’t something ze’d wish on anyone else. Just one more thing to turn off hir soulmate before ze even met them.)

Their dreams usually had complex storylines to them—Virgil wasn’t sure what that said about them, maybe that they had a vivid imagination? Regardless, it was always interesting.

(Ze did their best to write down some of the stories in those dreams, to remember them better. Just because they were interesting. Not for sappy reasons, or anything.)

Virgil was also nearly certain hir soulmate wasn’t cis, which… was a bigger relief than Virgil cared to admit, to be honest. At least out of all the reasons Virgil could think of for hir soulmate to reject hir, being genderfluid probably wasn’t one.

Virgil’s souldreams were also frequented by faces that felt familiar, faces that were likely those of hir soulmate’s family or friends, but faces that Virgil had never seen in hir life. Faces that would one day be the key to locating hir soulmate.

(Virgil hadn’t had any souldreams yet in the few weeks since ze’d arrived at college. Ze kind of wondered if maybe hir soulmate was starting college too, if they were making new friends whose faces might make it into Virgil’s souldreams.)

Virgil’s soulmate seemed to either have bright, colorful, happy dreams, or else dreams about failing, about crushing insecurity that finally proved right.

(Virgil worried about hir soulmate sometimes, especially after those dreams.)

Virgil thought about hir soulmate more than ze cared to admit to anyone, even Janus.

Would it be Virgil’s anxiety that turned them off? The nearly all-black wardrobe, so far removed from hir soulmate’s Disney taste? Would it be Virgil’s dark taste in music? Hir crabbiness and sarcasm? The fact that for years now, ze’d been unwittingly sending nightmares to hir soulmate? The way that, no matter how everyone else reassured Virgil time and time again, Virgil was sure that something about hirself would be too much, not enough, too wrong for hir soulmate?

Would it be hir fear of rejection that ultimately doomed the relationship, a self-fulfilling prophecy before ze even gave hir soulmate a chance?

Virgil was kind of terrified of finding hir soulmate, if ze was honest with hirself.

But that was a problem for Future Virgil. Now Virgil was here, sitting on the floor of Janus’s dorm, and Janus was curled up beside hir after panicking to hir over a cute boy and his puns.

Janus, still leaning on Virgil’s shoulder, reached up and tugged the long ends of Virgil’s undercut to cover his face like a curtain. “Much as I’m inclined to believe you wanted to come over solely to listen to me gay panic—panic. Pan-ic, get it, because I’m panromantic? Oh, god, his puns are infecting me. Anyway, was there any other reason you asked to come over?”

“What, am I not allowed to just hang out with you?” Virgil cracked a grin that ze didn’t quite feel, dragging hirself the rest of the way out of hir gloomy thoughts.

“You are. And you do.” Janus gave hir a shrewd look. “But when you do, you don’t ask if it’s okay to come over first. You only ask first if you want support.”

“Right, okay.” Virgil had to admit Janus’s reasoning was sound. “Remus’s brother was over and he’s super loud,” ze explained.

“Ah, the famous brother. What’s he like?”

“Loud.”

“You already said that. What else?”

“Loud.”

Virgil could practically feel Janus rolling his eyes. “This is highly educational.”

“Yeah, okay,” Virgil relented. “He has a lot of opinions about everything. He’s a theatre major and he’s super proud of it. He’s fit as hell and just has to wear these fucking sleeveless shirts that show it off—Jan, he was wearing a crop top, I don’t want to stare at some opinionated asshole’s abs all day.”

“Then don’t,” Janus suggested, a hint of amusement in his tone. “Sounds allo, can’t relate.”

“Shut up, I am not attracted to him!”

“I’m sure,” Janus said, the amusement in his voice growing into much more than a hint. When Virgil glared at him, he shrugged and waved it away. “Sorry. Go on.”

“But yeah, he’s like this weird hybrid of jock and theatre kid. I picked a fight with him about the Oxford Comma to annoy him.”

“Always a worthy endeavor. Sorry you had to put up with that.” Janus dug in his pocket and pulled out a pair of tangled earbuds. “Want to listen to Bright Eyes?”

“Oh, you know it.” The tension in hir shoulders starting to melt away, Virgil accepted the earbuds to unpick with glee as Janus began pulling up the artist on Spotify.

***

Virgil sighed, putting down his pencil and looking up. “What do you want?”

“Wow, rude much?” Roman, standing before him in yet another mostly-red outfit that showcased way too many of his muscles, put his hands on his hips. “I only wanted to know if this seat is free.”

“If I say no, will you believe me?” Virgil tried.

Roman pursed his lips. “Not after you phrased it like that, no.” He plopped into the comfy library chair beside Virgil, setting his backpack down on the low coffee table in front of it.

Virgil allowed himself to hope that maybe, maybe, this time, Roman would let him study in peace and quiet—

“How are midterms going?”

There it was.

“Fine,” Virgil said in a low voice. The first floor of the library wasn’t really expected to be quiet, but maybe Roman didn’t know that.

“That’s cool,” Roman said, his voice at a normal volume. “Mine are mostly going alright, except for Bio, of course, but it was a given that Bio would be terrible. Are yours mostly projects or tests?”

“Tests,” Virgil replied.

“Mine are a good mix of both! In my theatre class we actually get to just do a monologue that’s at least a minute long, we’re spacing them out across a few weeks. Mine is this Friday, I’m really excited!”

“Cool,” Virgil said, when Roman paused expectantly.

Roman pouted. “Why don’t you ever want to talk to me?”

“Why do you always insist on talking to me?” Virgil countered.

Roman’s shoulders drew inwards ever so slightly, uncertainty flickering in his eyes and a startled, hurt expression landing on his face. He stared at Virgil with slightly parted lips for a beat. “Do you—not want me to talk to you?” he asked, shrinking into himself.

Virgil’s heart gave an unexpected, painful little twist at how quickly all of Roman’s self-confidence had vanished, like a popped balloon. “I—uh—n-no,” he managed to stammer out after a pause. “I don’t mind, I guess.”

Roman searched his face, evaluating Virgil didn’t know what, before relaxing slightly. “Okay,” he said, and just like that the bright attitude was back, like it had never been gone in the first place, only now it left Virgil wondering just how real it was. “Are you an introvert, then, and that’s why you never want to talk? I bet you’re an introvert.”

“Dude, yeah. Like, have you seen me? Duh.” Virgil gestured vaguely at himself. “Also I’m an asshole.”

“Well, now you’re just being mean. Stop it,” Roman demanded playfully.

“It’s just to myself, who cares?” Janus cared, Virgil’s brain treacherously reminded him. But Janus was his best friend, he didn’t count. Nobody else cared, anyway, so the point still stood.

“I care!” Roman protested. “Nobody talks about my friends like that.”

Something about the easy way he said it made Virgil’s heart do a funny little flip in his chest. Harsh and quick, to distract from how flustered he suddenly felt, he snapped, “Dude, we are not friends.”

“Okay, maybe not yet. Nobody talks about my brother’s friends like that, either, so it still stands.” Roman beamed at him.

Virgil was having trouble coming up with cutting arguments on a stomach that was suddenly squirming with a weirdly okay feeling of lightness and softness. “Whatever,” he managed gruffly after a minute. “You still didn’t answer my question.”

Roman tipped his head to one side. “What, why I want to talk to you even though you’re always so grumpy?”

“Yeah. That one.”

“Well, sometimes I’m bored. Sometimes you’re not that grumpy.” Roman ticked them off on his fingers. “Also we argue a lot, if you haven't noticed, and it’s kind of fun sometimes, and I need to win.”

Virgil couldn’t help a chuckle, sitting a little more upright in the soft red chair. “Is that so? I told you you’re a sore loser.”

“Am not! I just know I’m right!”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, pretty boy. What’s it going to be this time?”

Roman paused for about half a second. “We’re reading Macbeth in my theatre class,” he said, an odd note to his voice that Virgil dismissed.

“Oh, hell yes. Love that one.” Virgil rested his chin on his hand studiously. What angle would make Roman the most mad? Probably dissing on soulmates. “I mean, an examination of how soulbonds can become toxic? That’s rare, even today.” Okay, so that interpretation was a stretch at best—all the murder didn’t really have anything to do with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s soulbond—but he was pretty sure it would get Roman yammering on for hours.

As predicted, Roman’s mouth made a round little o of indignation, and he held up both palms in a stop motion. “Okay, hold up, are you not going to acknowledge that he was cursed by the witches? Of course nothing in his life was going to go right after that!”

Virgil snorted. “Curse who? All I see are some friendly old ladies with a sick aesthetic doing their best to emulate cryptids, as we all should.” He was perfectly aware that this was a ridiculous argument, but he was pretty sure Roman’s argument wasn’t all that solid either, and anyway he didn’t really care at this point so long as it got some sort of entertaining reaction out of Roman.

Roman blinked at him in confusion for a solid moment. “...Wouldn’t they just… be cryptids, though?” he said tentatively.

“Eh. Semantics.” Virgil waved his hand with a grin, allowing himself to fully slip into the fun of the argument, which lasted for a solid forty minutes before Virgil had to leave for his next class.

He didn’t realize until he was nearly asleep later that night that he’d unthinkingly called Roman “pretty boy.” The thought startled him fully alert all in an instant. Had he—had he really—said that?

Yeah. He definitely had. To Roman’s face.

He’d meant it, too.

Fuck. 

[iclaimedtobethebetterbard]

it was always you (falling for me) - chapter 2

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: All the sides Rating: Teen & up (for swearing) Relationships: Prinxiety, Moceit, and QPR Intrulogical (eventually this will develop into Intrulosleep!) Warnings: Language; Remus being Remus; Shakespeare fans will probably hate my interpretation(s) of the plays I reference here, if the English major friend I showed this to is anything to go by, and I’m very sorry about that 😂 Word Count: 9042

Read on AO3!

My writing masterpost

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Summary: In a world where you and your soulmate swap dreams once a month, seven young adults enter the same college as freshmen. Each of them is wondering when they’ll find their soulmate and what that will mean for them.

Notes: Secret Santa gift for sanders-sides-fics!

Chapter 2

Roman had a problem. A person-shaped problem. Specifically, a problem shaped like his brother’s excessively pretty roommate, who seemed to take pleasure exclusively in needling Roman every chance they got.

Roman groaned, burying his face in one of the pillows on his bed.

“Hm?” his roommate, Patton, said sympathetically.

“I swear Virgil has, like, an agenda against soulmates, or something,” Roman said, rolling over and staring despairingly at the ceiling.

“Now, kiddo, I’m sure that’s not true.”

Roman lifted his head to look at Patton. “Aren’t I older than you?”

“Only by a few months,” Patton said serenely. “Spiritually, you’re my kiddo.”

“Pat, that makes no sense.”

Patton blinked up at him with a too-innocent face. “If it feels dad to you, just don’t think about it any father.”

“Oh my god.”

Patton giggled, a noise of pure delight, then circled back to Roman’s original topic. “What makes you think he’s got something against soulmates?”

“Uh, the way ze rails against them at every opportunity, for a start?” Roman sat up. “We have argued five times in the last two weeks about soulmates, and only three of them were even about Shakespeare like usual!”

“Haven’t you only known Virgil for, like, three weeks?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the point.” Roman climbed down the ladder to the ground. “Also, I feel like that makes it worse?”

“Hmm, maybe.” Patton seemed amused. “You talk about them a lot, you know?”

“He’s so annoying!” Roman said defensively. “Ze gets this stupid smirk like ze knows something I don’t and he doesn’t even seem to care about constructing sound arguments half the time!” He put his laptop into his backpack.

“Going somewhere?” Patton asked.

“Yeah, Virgil and Remus invited me over to their dorm to study.”

“Oh,” Patton said, a funny sort of look on his face like he was trying not to laugh.

“What?” Roman asked.

“Nothing, nothing.” Patton waved him away, still smiling to himself. “Have fun studying with Virgil.”

“I will,” Roman said brightly, heading out the door.

***

“I want to go get ice cream,” Remus announced suddenly, hopping to his feet. “Who’s coming with?” It was late, almost midnight, and Roman was sitting on the floor in what had been a nice triangle with Remus and Virgil until Remus had stood. The three of them had been alternately working on homework and arguing about Disney characters.

“Sure,” Virgil said with a shrug, tugging their hoodie up onto their shoulders—they’d been wearing it dangling off their body, with only their wrists in the sleeves holding it on. “Let me fix my eyeliner first, though.”

Remus nodded distractedly, looking around the room and turning in a circle.

“Whatcha looking for?” Roman inquired, getting to his feet as well.

“My wallet,” Remus said, gaze still roving around. “I don’t know where I—”

“By your chapstick,” Roman said.

“Ah!” Remus dove under his desk, scrabbled on the floor, and emerged with his wallet clutched triumphantly in one hand and his chapstick in the other. “Thank you.”

“How the fuck did you know that?” Virgil asked, turning away from the mirror hung on the door with their eyeliner in their hand. They’d reapplied it to one eye, in a perfect, pointed wing; the other eye still had the only slightly less perfect, barely faded wing they’d been wearing this whole time. It matched their black lipstick and the carefully blended eyeshadow on their upper eyelids.

“He put it down there when he was telling the story about trying to collect dried gum off the street,” Roman explained. “And the chapstick was already there right next to it. So that’s how I remembered.”

Remus nodded. “I would have gotten there in a minute, probably,” he agreed.

“I still don’t understand how the fuck you knew that, but good for y’all, I guess,” Virgil said, turning back to the mirror.

“ADHD solidarity,” Roman explained.

Remus made finger guns at him, nodding. “ADHD solidarity,” he agreed.

Virgil paused halfway through drawing the other wing on. “Oh, that makes sense.” They picked up the line again, their hand perfectly steady, drawing it out to a fine point. “I thought you said you were autistic?” they added after a moment, their face holding perfectly still as they filled in the eyeliner with a practiced hand; their monolid eyelids allowed them to draw the wings of their eyeliner wide and dramatic.

“Yeah, I’m both. There are high rates of comorbidity, and also they’re both genetic, so neurodivergence runs in families,” Roman explained, the sentence rolling out of his mouth without him stumbling over the words once or having to think about it at all. “Did you know about ten percent of the population is probably ADHD?” he went on eagerly. “It’s super underdiagnosed. Especially because of race and gender biases in doctors who diagnose it, and the misconception that it’s only something children have. I only got diagnosed because Remus did when we were little, and we’re twins, so then they tested me too. Even though we aren’t identical. It’s super frequent for identical twins to both have ADHD if one of them has it, though.” Roman bounced on the balls of his feet, tapping the tip of his finger against his thumb. “I wish we were identical, I think it’d be so funny. Like, impersonating each other, and things. We could make such good video skits.”

“We make fantastic video skits already,” Remus protested.

“Okay, fair. But you know what I mean. And we could switch places for a day and see who noticed. All the stuff twins do in stories. Twins are always identical in stories, it’s so annoying, I wish there were more stories with fraternal twins.” Roman paused for a second, his mind hovering for an instant between a not-fully-realized train of thought about the gender politics of twin representation in stories and the question of what animals were most likely to have twins. He chose, almost before he was aware there was a choice, the animals question, his emotions nudging him away from the energy talking about gender representation would take up. “Do you think kittens dream?” he asked, only a second or two after he’d stopped talking in the first place.

“Yeah, probably,” Remus responded without missing a beat, likely following his train of thought. “Better question, do other animals have soulbonds, and how do they know if so?”

“Maybe it’s a scent thing,” Roman said thoughtfully.

“Ooh, like with glands or some shit?” Remus looked thoughtful. “That could make sense. I wonder—I bet there’s answers on the internet. I’m going to look this up later. Are you coming, too, by the way? To get ice cream?”

Roman thought it over. “Sure,” he agreed.

“I’m ready,” Virgil announced, capping their eyeliner and setting it down on hir desk. “Also, I got whiplash about five times just listening to that conversation.”

“Good, my chaos is overtaking another victim and soon I shall rule the world. Let’s go!” Remus led the other two out the door and started walking towards the end of campus.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Roman inquired, shoving his hands into the pockets of his red letterman jacket to keep them warm.

“There’s an ice cream shop that’s open till one in the morning about ten minutes away walking,” Remus said over his shoulder. “Logan and I found it the first weekend here.”

“You two went in search of sweets without me?” Roman put a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt,” he declared in his most dramatic voice.

“Oh, shut up, we would have gotten around to telling you about it eventually. I mean, I’m telling you right now, so.” Remus shrugged. “Virge, aren’t you cold?”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty, so it’s worth it,” Virgil said, tossing their head so the long hair on the top of their undercut swished. They were wearing a distressed band tee and a black skater skirt over fishnet leggings and a pair of doc martens. It was quite chilly out, and even though they were wearing a hoodie too, Roman understood why Remus had been concerned.

“You are very pretty,” Roman told them seriously. Even aside from their clearly carefully chosen outfit, this was true. Their eyes were round and curious and a captivating shade of dark brown. Even with the boost from the platform of the shoes they were wearing, they were tiny. Roman was sure they couldn’t be more than 5’2” without the boots. The hair on top of their undercut was very long, almost down to their waist, contrasting with the closely-shaved back and sides of their head. About six inches on the ends of their hair were dyed purple. Their makeup, of course, was flawless, as was their golden-brown skin, which was just a little bit darker than Roman’s. He made a mental note to ask them about their skincare routine sometime; no matter how much care he treated his skin with, the acne on his cheeks refused to go away. It was his least favorite side effect of taking testosterone. “But you can be pretty and warm at the same time, if you want. I hate being cold. But I respect your decision to be pretty and cold if you want to,” he added quickly.

Virgil let out a slightly nervous laugh, rubbing the back of their neck. “Thanks, I think.” Their eyes widened as they looked past him. “Oh, my god, Remus, shut up!”

“What?” Roman asked, looking over at Remus, who was giving Virgil an evil grin.

“Nothing,” Virgil snapped.

“I didn’t say anything,” Remus said innocently.

“Shut up!” Virgil repeated, flipping the hood of their hoodie up and dragging it over their face.

“What’s going on?” Roman asked, confused, while Remus burst into cackles of laughter.

“Nothing!” Virgil repeated with great emphasis.

Roman let out a sigh of frustration, but Virgil seemed genuinely upset about whatever Remus had done when Roman wasn’t looking, so he dropped it. Maybe Remus would explain later.

Remus did not explain later; however, he did turn around to walk backwards after the silence had stretched on long enough to become awkward. “Is the ocean a soup? Discuss,” he commanded.

“Oh, not this again!” Roman groaned. “No, absolutely not!”

“Yes,” Virgil said, almost as soon as Roman stopped talking.

“No!” Roman stamped his foot. “That makes no sense!”

“It makes lots of sense. Explain how it’s not soup,” Virgil challenged.

The resulting argument lasted them all the way to the ice cream shop and halfway through their treats.

“Aren’t you going to take a side?” Roman demanded of Remus at last.

Remus looked up from his cone. “Oh, no, this is very entertaining for me, I could watch you two bicker all month. Please keep it up.”

“You’re a terrible person,” Roman told him, trying not to laugh.

“I never claimed to be anything else,” Remus said happily.

***

“—and that’s how you do it. It’s really easy, but it’s so fun, I could balance chemical equations for hours,” Remus said, bopping the tip of his dry-erase marker against the giant whiteboard in the library for emphasis. He and Roman and Virgil had all met up here to study; it was a sunny afternoon, and they’d gotten a nice spot by the window. The marker left a little black mark next to the diagram Remus had spent the last ten minutes drawing; he wiped the dot away with his finger. He was wearing a turtleneck with horizontal black-and-white stripes and a pair of faded jeans with paint splatters all over them and huge rips in the front that ran from his mid-thighs almost down to his ankles; he’d finished the outfit off with socks in sandals and a black felt beret. His outfit—vaguely artistic, but mostly just terrible—contrasted comically with the intensely technical pseudo-lecture on chemistry he’d just given.

Roman nodded without looking up. “I remember balancing those was fun,” he agreed. He hadn’t taken a chemistry class in a couple of years now, but Remus was majoring in it, and the best way for Remus to study was to explain it out loud, so he’d gathered Roman and Virgil in the library. They’d even been able to snag one of the coveted whiteboards. Roman was able to focus on his notes better with Remus’s animated talking in the background, and Virgil preferred quiet but was willing to put on his headphones to block out Remus’s noise, so all in all this arrangement worked out well for all three of them.

“Yes!” Remus agreed with a happy wiggle. He picked up his water bottle off the table and took a long sip. “Okay, next I have a bunch of molecules I have to memorize the structures of. Do you need anything first?” He addressed his question to both of them, but Virgil seemed pretty focused—or perhaps his music was loud enough to drown out other noises.

Roman, however, thought the question over. “Yes, actually, can you help me go over my lines for this one scene? It’s not very long.”

“Mmhm.” Remus held out his hands expectantly, and Roman handed him his script. Remus began fiddling with the dog-eared bottom corner of the page it was open to, folding it back and forth.

Roman dug in the pocket of his cargo shorts—he liked cargo shorts, partly for the shape but mostly for the pockets—and handed Remus a star-shaped fidget toy made of sequins that could be flipped back and forth. He’d rather the corner of the script didn’t get torn off by mistake.

“I think I’m off book, I just want to make sure,” he said as Remus accepted the toy and began fidgeting with it.

Remus nodded, scanning the page. “Sounds good. It’s just this one page?”

“Yeah. Ready?”

Remus nodded, and Roman launched into the scene. His character had most of the lines; it was essentially a glorified monologue. Remus interjected the two lines from other characters, using a hilarious nasally voice that made it hard for Roman to stay in character without breaking to laugh, but he successfully made it through the final line before dissolving into snickers.

“You’re word-perfect, kid,” Remus proclaimed as Roman got ahold of himself, handing him back the script.

Roman grinned. “Thank you!”

Remus nodded and took another sip of water before wiping down the whiteboard and launching into a ramble about the molecular structures he had to memorize.

Roman had just about tuned Remus out again and slipped back into the headspace where he could focus on his work when Remus broke off. “Logan!” he exclaimed, sounding delighted.

Roman looked up, and so did Virgil, pulling off hir headphones. Roman followed Remus’s gaze, and there indeed was Logan, his flat top haircut and dark academia outfit unmistakeable. He was stepping out of the stairwell that led down from the floor above, adjusting the strap of the leather messenger bag they used instead of a backpack. Even at this distance, the pins he kept on the bag were visible, neatly affixed in alternating rows on the bag’s buckle straps—a demiboy flag, an aromantic flag, an enamel pin shaped like an open book, and a handful of other pins Logan had collected from the university’s cultural centers during orientation. Roman had a few of that last category on his backpack himself; he knew he and Logan had matching land acknowledgment pins now, but he wasn’t sure if any of the other pins they’d chosen matched.

Remus darted across the wide open floor, weaving his way around a few students. “Logan! Hi!”

Logan looked up, a small smile finding its way onto his face as he saw Remus. He said something—presumably a greeting—but was too far away for Roman to hear, since he was speaking at a normal tone.

Remus seized Logan by the hand and dragged them towards Roman and Virgil. Logan laughed and said something in protest, pushing his square glasses up his wide nose as he followed Remus.

“Remus, I have to go to class,” Logan was insisting as they got close enough for Roman to hear. “Hello, Roman. Virgil.” They adjusted their already-immaculate clothing, the tendons in their thin hands flexing as they smoothed their mustard-brown cable knit sweater vest and tugged on the rolled-up sleeves of their periwinkle button down shirt.

Virgil gave a two-fingered salute. “Sup.”

“Hi Logan,” Roman said happily. “We’re studying!”

“Very nice,” Logan said, raising Remus’s hand—which was still clasping his own—and gently pressing it with their other hand. “I am always glad to see you, Remus, but I can’t stay long.”

“Okay,” Remus said. “I just wanted to say hi.” He gave Logan a quick, tight hug around the ribs before releasing them just as fast as he’d darted in.

Logan smiled again. “Hello, then. I hope your studying is going well?”

He received nods from the group, and gave them his own nod in return.

“You’ve got to go,” Remus reminded him. “You don’t like to be late.”

“True. I’ll see you later, dear.”

Remus nodded. “Wanna hang out tomorrow night?”

Logan considered this. “Maybe. I’m going to the Black Student Union meeting tomorrow evening. So it would have to be after that.”

“Okay, I can do that! I love you!”

Logan smiled. “I love you too, Rem.” They made as if to leave, then paused. “Roman, while I’m thinking of it—are you and Patton still free for lunch tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Roman confirmed. Logan and Patton had two classes together, and so together with Roman they’d formed a tight-knit little friend group very quickly; the three of them tried to make sure to meet up for lunch at least once a week.

“Wonderful. I’ll text our groupchat about it. See you then.” Logan tugged his hand out of Remus’s grip, waved, and set off at a brisk pace back towards the stairs.

***

“I’m telling you, Virgil, Oberon and Titania are a really good example of how soulmates can make it through rough patches!”

“Bullshit. They’re obviously not a metaphor for soulmates, why would the fae even have soulmates? Their story is a cautionary tale,” Virgil said languidly, lying on their back on the floor of their room.

“No!” Roman pounded his fist on the floor. “Why do you always do this?”

“Because it’s funny,” Virgil replied with a snicker.

“But you always bash on soulmates, specifically!” Roman said.

“Yeah, because I think society’s emphasis on soulbonds is dumb.” Virgil shrugged. “Anyway, if you think Oberon and Titania’s relationship is a good example of anything, I have some concerns.”

“No—no, stop! I didn’t mean it like that! They’re fae, like you said. I obviously don’t condone any of the ways they treated each other! I’m just saying that viewing them as a metaphor for soulmates makes a really interesting lens to view the other couples in the play! Right, Logan?” He turned expectantly to Logan.

“Wh—no,” Logan, who was sitting on Remus’s bed and combing their fingers through Remus’s hair, his head in their lap, responded. “You are both, objectively, wrong. Horribly so. Painfully so.”

“Hey! You’re not allowed to tell me I’m wrong about Shakespeare,” Roman countered quickly.

“Why did you ask me for my opinion, then?” Logan asked, rolling their eyes.

“I don’t know,” Roman grumbled.

“Wait, why can’t they talk to you about Shakespeare?” Virgil asked.

“Because they always win!” Roman crossed his arms.

“Oh, and I don’t?” Virgil demanded. “What am I to you, Roman? I thought we had something special here,” they went on playfully. “You make dumb arguments, I make worse ones, and then I win. I thought that meant something to you.” They pouted at him.

“That’s different!” Roman protested, stifling giggles at the mopey puppy dog eyes Virgil was sending him. “You just don’t care what I say. Logan actually refutes my arguments! It’s very humiliating!”

“I only do it because your logic is physically painful to listen to,” Logan said.

Roman crossed his arms and pointedly turned away from Logan, nose in the air. “Anyway. As I was saying. Puck’s role in all of this is really interesting, if you consider the question: are the fae supposed to be able to truly alter soulbonds, or are they only messing with feelings?”

“Dear,” Logan said plaintively, looking down at Remus, his fingers still carding through Remus’s curls.

“Hmm?” Remus responded, not opening his eyes.

“Make them stop,” Logan said beseechingly.

“Sorry fellas, you heard them. Stop torturing Logan, he’s already an English major, so he’s plenty tortured already. Or else I’ll have to dissect your spleens.” Remus wagged a finger in Roman and Virgil’s direction.

“What a terrible fate that would be,” Roman commented, flopping over to lie on the floor beside Virgil.

Seconds later, his phone buzzed; he pulled it out to see a text notification from Virgil.

Virgil: oberon sucks btw

Roman: Oh, it is ON!

Roman grinned as he sent the response, already anticipating the thrill of the argument that was about to ensue. He felt a warm thrill in his chest at Virgil’s answering chuckle—it was good to know Virgil was having fun with this too.

***

“—so I was hanging out with Virgil the other day at the library cafe, and he said The Tempest was dumb because magic solves everything.” Roman was lying on the floor of his dorm, tossing a bouncy ball up in the air and catching it over and over again. Logan was sitting at Roman’s desk, legs up and crossed on the seat of the chair as he worked on readings for an English class, half-listening to Roman’s rambling. “And that since it solved all the problems, it made no sense for Prospero to give it up. Which was completely ignoring all the bad stuff magic had done and the symbolism of him throwing it away!”

“What did Remus have to say about that?” Logan inquired with a small laugh, not looking up from the copy of Frankenstein in his hands.

“What? Oh, nothing. Remus wasn’t there.”

“Oh?” Logan blinked, glancing up from the book.

“Yeah, we were at the library getting Starbucks, we do that on Wednesdays now. Remus was in his history class, I’m pretty sure.”

“I didn’t know you and Virgil hung out together,” Logan said, raising their eyebrows.

“Oh, we don’t, we just get coffee on Wednesdays, it’s different,” Roman said.

Logan stared at him. “...What?”

“Like, we only hang out on our own time to get Starbucks and then argue about Shakespeare. It’s really fun! It’s a great system, honestly. And this way, you don’t yell at me about Shakespeare or text Remus rant essays about what you think I’m getting wrong!”

Logan looked away, a very called-out expression on his face. “You weren’t supposed to see those…”

“Oh, Remus didn’t show me, I just broke into his phone the other day and it was open to your texts,” Roman said reassuringly.

“Why would you break into—” Logan began, not seeming reassured in the slightest.

“I needed to check his calendar to see if he was available to come with me to the grocery store,” Roman explained. “You know we’re really good at guessing each other’s passcodes. He doesn’t mind, we break into each other’s phones all the time.” He paused, assessing Logan’s face, trying to gauge if their expression was upset or not. “I’m sorry I read the texts, though,” he added, just in case it had hurt their feelings. “I only saw the very end of it, it wasn't on purpose or anything. Promise.”

Logan sighed. “I know. It’s alright.” He reached across the space between them to press the back of Roman’s hand.

Roman grinned. “Only you would come up with a whole essay in a text,” he teased. “Dunno what I expected, really.”

“It wasn’t an essay,” Logan said defensively. “Technically speaking.”

“I dunno, it sure looked like if you formatted it with MLA, you could turn it in for a grade.” Roman giggled. “But hey, what do I know?”

Logan opened his mouth to reply, but stopped as the doorknob rattled with the sound of keys.

Patton stepped in. “Hey! If it isn’t some of my favorite people!” he greeted the two of them with a smile. His dark, wavy hair was a little ruffled. Normally he combed it to the side, but Roman remembered it had been windy today, so Roman guessed that was responsible for the irregularity. “How are you doing?” Patton asked the two of them.

“Better now that you’re here,” Roman told him with an answering grin. “How’s your day been?” He’d noticed that Patton really liked being asked how his day had gone.

Sure enough, Patton’s smile spread a little wider. “Pretty good, thanks! I haven’t had too much to do today, which is nice. How are you doing, Logan?” He sat down on the floor beside Roman, sliding his backpack off his shoulders.

Roman immediately sat up and scooted over to lean against Patton—he was an excellent cuddler; he was tall and chubby and he ran warm, and Roman liked cuddles. He tended towards understimulation rather than overstimulation, and hugs were one of his favorite things. Patton was always happy to supply.

“I’m alright, thank you,” Logan said as Patton wrapped an arm around Roman’s shoulders. “A little underslept, but otherwise good.”

“Good, good. You should sleep more. Are you both busy?” Patton asked.

“No,” Roman said, because Patton always had fun ideas.

Logan pursed his lips, glancing down at the book in his hands in consideration. “I can finish this chapter later. Why?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if either of you wanted to play a board game,” Patton said. He and Roman had each brought a couple from their homes, and together they had quite the little collection.

“Yes!” Roman agreed eagerly, breaking away from Patton and crossing to the shelf where they kept the games. “How about Clue?”

“I will decimate you both,” Logan said, deadly serious, adjusting their glasses and scooting to the floor.

“All part of the fun, Specs.” Roman pulled out the box and set it down between them. “Dibs on the red piece!”

***

“—so I told him that was utter bullshit—not in so many words, of course—and listed off the reasons why, and he simply did not seem to recognize how completely nonexistent his logic was, he just kept repeating his original points louder and louder.” Logan punctuated his rant about a classmate with hand gestures as he walked next to Roman on the sidewalk.

“I hate guys like that,” Roman said, making a face.

Logan nodded. “But I got full credit on my discussion post when I typed up my argument and I cannot imagine he got the same, based on his talking points. So.” He shrugged, clearly trying not to look too smug with himself.

“Good job!” Roman told them.

“Thank you.” Logan’s happiness was palpable. “How have—”

“Logan!” Remus’s voice shouted.

Roman looked in the direction of the noise; they were almost an entire block away still from the quad, where they’d agreed to meet Remus, but he seemed to have spotted them. He was sprinting at full speed directly towards them.

“Oh, dear,” Logan said, the exasperation in his voice belied by the grin on their face. They took a step back and braced themself, just in time.

Remus full-on tackled Logan in a hug, colliding into him at full speed. Logan stumbled back a couple of steps, but successfully avoided falling over. “Hello, Remus,” he said composedly, wrapping their arms around Remus and returning the enthusiastic hug. “How are you?”

“Much better now. I missed you,” Remus said into Logan’s shoulder. “Normal people get all weird about it when I tell them cool murder facts. You're much cooler than normal people.”

“It has been twenty-seven hours and about thirty minutes since you last saw me,” Logan informed him. “And thirteen minutes since we last texted.” They rumpled his curls, which fell messily in loose spirals about his face; they were mostly about chin length, although some of them were choppily trimmed shorter than others. Remus was very insistent about cutting his own hair. It was always mildly disastrous, but he insisted he liked it that way. He’d dyed it himself, too; he’d bleached a streak at the very front of his head and dyed it silver about a month before college started, with a surprising amount of success.

“Yeah, and I missed you.” Remus stepped back from the hug as Logan released him. “Also hi Roman, I guess.” He tossed Roman a grin.

“You are a terrible brother sometimes,” Roman informed him. “Hi.”

“Uh, I think you mean all the time,” Remus corrected him. “I’m joking,” he added. “C’mon, I got Starbucks for us! I have extra meal credits!” He seized Logan’s hand and reached invitingly for Roman’s.

Roman let Remus grab his hand, too, and his brother immediately began dragging both Roman and Logan at a slightly breakneck pace down the sidewalk. Several students dove out of their way until he dragged them to a halt by the food truck, bouncing on the balls of his feet and waiting expectantly.

Not even a moment later, the barista placed three cups on the delivery window tray and called out Remus’s name.

“Yes!” Remus pumped his fist, darted over, and picked up two of the cups—Roman recognized Remus and Logan’s go-to coffee orders, a trenta mango-dragonfruit refresher and a grande vanilla sweet cream cold brew with extra ice. Roman picked up the last cup, a warm drink in a grande cup; he sniffed to check what it was even though he knew what Remus usually got him. Steamed apple juice with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top—his favorite as a kid and still one of his favorites now. He wrapped his hands around the warm cup and followed Remus and Logan over to a sunny patch on the lawn.

Remus sprawled out, taking up more space than seemed humanly possible for one person to fill; Logan tucked their legs beneath them as they sat beside Remus and began pulling out a textbook, a dog-eared novel, and a handful of pens and pencils from their messenger bag.

Roman sat so that he completed the triangle between the three of them, his legs crossed so he could lean his cup against them between sips and not worry about knocking it over.

“Thank you for the coffee, Remus,” Logan said, his cup halfway to his lips as he flipped through the worn novel.

Roman nodded in agreement, breathing in the warm cinnamon scent of the apple juice.

“Of course!” Remus said exuberantly, taking a noisy slurp of his drink.

Roman and Logan both winced slightly.

“Could you be a little quieter, there?” Logan asked mildly.

“How dare you.” Remus clutched his heart, leaning back so far Roman was surprised he didn’t lose his balance and fall over.

Logan sighed, reaching over and placing a hand over Remus’s, gripped around the edge of the cup’s lid. “At least please be careful not to splash,” he said, guiding Remus’s hand downwards until the cup came to rest on the ground. “This textbook cost rather a lot and I’d like to sell it back in a decent condition at the end of the term.”

Remus let go of the cup, leaving it to rest where it was, and leaned forward. He took Logan’s face in both of his hands and looked seriously into their eyes. “Hey. You are my best friend in the whole world and you mean everything to me. I love you and I’m so glad we’re soulmates. But I draw the line at stopping my annoying behavior for anything less than a natural disaster.” He released Logan and picked his drink back up. “I promise I won’t spill on your book, though,” he added lightly. “Roman gets no such promises.”

“You wouldn’t dare, you know I hate being sticky—” Roman began heatedly.

“Okay, okay. Jesus. You two are really conspiring to foil all my chaotic little gremlin dealings today. I’ll order an ice water to spill on you instead, will that make you happy?” Remus snickered.

Roman frowned. “If you must,” he begrudgingly agreed, since this seemed the closest thing to a compromise he was likely to get out of Remus. He suspected it might be a joke anyway, but he wasn’t sure about that and didn’t want to take any chances.

But Remus didn’t return to the food truck, so it seemed likely that it was a joke after all. Instead, he devoted himself to more noisy slurping, crossing his eyes and looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“You’re the tallest one of us,” Roman said after a moment.

“Huh?” Remus looked up at him.

“He has a point, dear,” Logan said, turning a page.

“Like yeah I know I am, but what’s the point?” Remus asked.

“You said we were foiling your chaotic little gremlin dealings,” Roman elaborated. “You’re, like, fucking… six two.”

“And a half,” Remus added. “Emotionally, I am a chaotic creature of spite who’s about three five and can sneeze fire, though.”

“That makes no sense,” Roman protested.

“Does too,” Remus responded, crossing his arms.

“It does,” Logan agreed. “For example, emotionally, I punch that one classmate in the face twice a week, but we can’t always embody what we want to be. And you, Roman—emotionally, you’re very invested in Shakespeare, but in actuality, your interpretations are painfully bad.”

“Hey. You talking about me and Shakespeare is off limits. We’ve discussed this.” Roman waved a warning finger at them.

“I still think that’s unfair and have raised a motion to reject and overturn the ban.”

“Unfortunately for you, the judge and jury are my feelings, and you hurt them, Logan. Shakespeare and I have something special. You need to stop trying to come between us like this.”

Logan glanced up from his book to give Roman a singularly unimpressed look. “You are preposterous.”

Roman beamed at him and made a heart shape with his hands, holding it up like a picture frame to look at Logan through. “But you loooooove me,” he singsonged.

Logan nodded. “This is true.”

“You’re both nerds and Shakespeare isn’t even that good,” Remus put in, a shit-eating grin on his face.

“I’m divorcing you,” Logan said immediately.

“Noooo, come back!” Remus dramatically grasped at the air as if reaching out from afar for Logan.

“Fine.” Logan shrugged. “Then Roman’s disowning you.”

“Hey, that’s my line!”  

“He can’t disown me, he’d miss me,” Remus said confidently. “Y’all are stuck with me.” He looked very pleased with himself.

There was silence for a beat, then all three of them burst into laughter.

“I’m really glad we’re all friends,” Remus said happily, leaning back and taking another long sip of his drink.

“Yeah,” Roman agreed.

“I don’t know,” Logan said, holding back a smirk. “Sometimes I think about a world where I don’t have to deal with a pair of himbos every day of my life.” He maintained his faux-serious face for all of the three seconds it took both twins to start pelting him with ripped-up blades of grass, then devolved into helpless laughter again.

***

“Patton, you good? You’ve been kind of spaced out all day.”

“Huh?” Patton looked up, blinking through his round gold-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, I’m okay! Just… boy problems, I guess? Which is… it’s new.” He wrinkled his nose for a second in a face of dissatisfaction before smoothing his face back into a smile.

“Oh? Want to talk about it?” Roman asked eagerly, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hands, interest definitely piqued.

“I don’t know…” Patton glanced away. “It’s complicated. And it’s probably not a big deal.”

“Patton. We are friends. The main purpose of friends is gossiping about crushes.” Roman crossed his arms. “I am offended that you would ever doubt my capacity for talking about boys in a gay way.”

“I don’t think that’s the main purpose of friendship,” Patton said, but his smile looked more genuine.

“Shush, I know that, I’m being dramatic. How about a movie night and you can spill the deets in a cozy setting with popcorn? And Logan?”

“I mean… okay,” Patton relented. “It’s probably not as exciting as you’re hoping for, though, I’m sorry.”

“Nonsense. You are perfect and so is everything you do,” Roman said absently, pulling out his phone and FaceTiming Logan.

“Roman! You’re sweet, but you know you shouldn’t go around passing out compliments that should go to you,” Patton said.

“Oh, stop,” Roman said, grinning wide.

Logan picked up on the second ring. “What do you need, Roman?”

“To see your gorgeous face, nerd. Also we’re having a movie night at me and Pat’s, attendance mandatory. Seven works, right? Pat’s having boy problems.”

Logan stared at Roman with a blank face for several beats. “And… you want me there to help… why?” he deadpanned.

“Shut up, you have a nonromantic boy toy, you’re basically qualified to help.”

“Don’t call Remus that! He’s a person, not a—wait, he’s your brother, Roman, that’s worse, that’s so weird—”

“—Anyway, I can more than handle giving Patton plenty of terrible advice on his love life,” Roman interrupted. “You’re there to tell him everything I say is a terrible idea and let me throw popcorn at you. We can watch Big Hero Six. C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

Logan heaved a sigh. “Fine. But you have to put your dad’s curry powder on the popcorn.”

“What kind of man do you take me for, Logan? Of course we’ll have curry popcorn! See you at seven, love you, bye bye.” Roman blew a kiss and hung up.

After his English class, Roman grabbed a burrito from the dining hall and hurried back to the dorm, making it there at half past six. Patton was already back; he made hot chocolate while Roman microwaved popcorn and tossed it in a bowl with curry powder.

At precisely seven o'clock, there was a knock on the door; Roman let Logan in and the three of them climbed into the nest of pillows and blankets Patton had built on the bottom bunk, pushing aside the bi pride flag and the Puerto Rican flag Patton had hung like curtains around his bunk.

“So,” Roman said eagerly as the movie’s opening bot fight began on the laptop screen, turning to Patton and bouncing (Logan grabbed the popcorn bowl out of Roman’s lap as it jostled), “spill!”

Patton squirmed under the attention, a half-hidden smile ghosting its way onto his face. “I don’t know… what should I talk about?”

“What’s he like?” Roman asked. “How do you know him? Is he cute? Have you got his number?”

“Oh, wow—that’s a lot.” Patton giggled nervously.

“Okay, start with is he cute?”

“He’s really cute,” Patton allowed, biting back another smile. “He’s got all these freckles all over his face and neck and hands, and his eyebrows are really expressive—he gets this really serious face when he’s thinking, and it’s… really pretty.”

“Eyes?” Roman demanded. “How are his eyes?”

“I mean, they’re eyes? They’re this kind of greyish blueish color. I don’t know, I try not to stare, especially when he’s looking, you know?”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Roman relented. “What else? Is he fashionable?”

“I—not really, honestly. He mostly just wears longsleeve tees and jeans. Sometimes beanies. He has these really cute yellow converse that he always wears, though. He, like—oh, gosh, I’m not sure how to describe it. He’s not, like, fashionable like you asked, but he—kind of the way he holds himself makes it seem like he is? He wears his clothes well, I think is maybe the phrase.”

Roman nodded. “Alright. Do you know whether or not he’s queer?”

Patton hesitated. “Um… I’m not sure. I don’t know either way. But he was the only one that laughed at a bi pun I made one time, and he wore a pink shirt and yellow belt with faded jeans one time, which I might be reading way too much into but it sure looked like a sneaky pastel pan flag.”

Roman nodded very seriously, taking mental notes. “All good signs. Anything else? Any stickers on his laptop or water bottle? Pins on his backpack?”

Patton shook his head. “They’re, like, super empty. He doesn’t really do anything that tells people about his personality. His outfits are usually really plain, like I said, and everything. It’s weird, because he’s got such a distinct personality, and he really doesn’t seem like someone who’d leave his stuff unpersonalized. It’s like he’s afraid of something, or something.” Patton was silent for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “But then, he seems kind of nervous around me in general.” He looked away, a worried expression crossing his face.

“Maybe he likes you back?” Roman suggested. “Plenty of people get nervous around their crushes.”

Patton shook his head quickly. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I think I know what the thing worrying him is. I just… don’t know how to talk about it with him.”

“You do realize you’re being super vague here, right?” Roman queried; he couldn’t parse what on earth Patton meant by that, but his curiosity was piqued.

“I know.” Patton bit his lip. “I, um, don’t want to talk about it yet, I think. It’s complicated. I don’t think it would be fair to him to discuss it with others.”

“Oh.” Roman did his best to hide his disappointment. “Okay, that’s fine. How do you know him?”

His attempt to change the subject didn’t seem to ease Patton’s discomfort, based on the way his shoulders drew up even closer to his ears. “...Kind of from a class we’re in together?” he answered after a long pause. “We’re partners on a group project.”

“Sounds like a meet cute to me,” Roman said, searching again for new lines of questioning that would hopefully not be as upsetting for mysterious and unknown reasons. “What do you like about him?”

Patton lit up. “He’s really sweet, actually. It takes some looking to see it, because he’s got a lot of walls up, but you can tell he’s really thoughtful and observant, and he’s really warming up to me, I think—he’s being much nicer to me than most people, and I’m starting to think he really means it and wants to be nice to me just to be nice, not because he feels like he has to.”

“Well, of course he’d be nice to you, you’re like the sweetest person I’ve met in my life,” Roman said, feeling bewildered by this line of reasoning.

“No, I—oh, nevermind. I was worried he wasn’t genuinely being nice for a while, but I’m really starting to think he means it, is my point. Anyway, he’s really smart—he’s so good at like, you know, synthesizing stuff? He’s really good at finding the information we need and paraphrasing it in a way that works really well for our project. I have such a hard time wording things how I want, you know? So it’s awesome that he can do that so well. And he’s good at puns, too! He tries not to laugh, but he scrunches his nose up and gets really red cheeks so you can always tell, it’s really cute. And one time I was trying to explain to our professor he was wrong about something, but I was kind of having trouble getting my point across, the teacher didn’t seem to get it, and he just spoke up and pointed out exactly where the misunderstanding was. It was really nice and reassuring of him. He just seems really protective of people he cares about, you know?”

“He sounds great, Pat!” Roman agreed.

Patton nodded, giving an excited little wiggle.

The brief silence was broken by a quiet crunching noise. Roman looked to his other side to see Logan, eyes fixed on the movie, who had worked their way through a solid third of the popcorn.

“Oh, you fiend!” Roman cried, seizing the popcorn bowl back since he was sitting in the middle.

“What?” Logan defended himself exasperatedly. “You two seemed to be handling that just fine! I like this movie! Neither of you asked for the popcorn back! What did I do?”

“...Okay, technically nothing,” Roman admitted after considering this defense and finding it to be unfortunately solid and covering all of Logan’s bases. God, they knew him too well. “But we are supposed to be doing this as a group.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “Fine. Patton, he’s probably queer. You should ask him out and see what happens. Happy now?”

“Wh—how are you saying that with such confidence?” Roman demanded.

“Which part?”

“That he’s queer. I agree Patton should definitely ask him out at the first opportunity, we just hadn’t gotten to that yet.”

“I mean, I can’t say for sure, but being the only person in a classroom to react to a queer joke is pretty telling.” Logan shrugged. “Any other relevant details?”

Patton shrugged. “I don’t know. Janus—that’s the guy—he doesn’t talk about himself very much—”

“Hold on, Janus?” Logan interrupted. “Lanky white guy? Constantly acts like he’s just swallowed a lemon? Kind of a twink? Looks incredibly uncomfortable in his own skin? Growing his hair out?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Patton admitted. “You could maybe be nicer about him, though.”

“I’m sure I could,” Logan said, seeming unconcerned. “Yeah, I know him. He’s queer, I’m pretty sure he’s compatible with you. No idea if he’d be interested, or frankly what you see in him, but go for it.”

“Wh—how do you know him?” Roman demanded. “I feel left out now!”

“We met at the Aspec—at a pride center identity group. Also he’s Remus’s roommate’s best friend. They’re practically attached at the hip. I’m surprised you haven’t met him yet, with how much you hang out over there lately.”

Virgil had a best friend? A best friend here, at college? That was news. Surprisingly unpleasant news—Roman wasn’t quite sure why. It wasn’t like he disliked Virgil to the point of not wanting them to have friends! Of course not! Frankly, he was glad to hear the tiny emo had a social life. It just kind of stung that this was the first time he was hearing about someone evidently so important to Virgil. And not even from hir own mouth. He’d kind of thought they were closer than that. That he’d have learned basic facts about what and who was important to Virgil by now. Learning otherwise was a remarkably unpleasant experience.

Logan took another handful of popcorn out of the bowl in Roman’s hands, startling Roman out of his thoughts.

“Stop!” he yelped. “I want some, too!”

“You have more if this bag runs out,” Logan pointed out. “I have some extra popcorn in my dorm too. And you’ve been holding out on me with your curry powder.” He popped another handful into his mouth and crossed his arms.

“If you just asked my parents, you could have some of your own! They’d even give you the recipe! Now share with Patton!” Roman leaned himself and the popcorn bowl away from Logan, trying not to laugh.

“I don’t mind,” Patton put in. “It’s very tasty, but I’m not as attached as Logan is.”

“No, you have to take some, he’s been hogging it,” Roman insisted.

“I don’t mind!” Patton insisted. Roman shoved the bowl in his face, and he relented and took a handful.

“Let Logan have some more now,” Patton said, gently pushing the bowl back into Roman’s lap.

“Thank you,” Logan said primly when Roman relented.

“You’re welcome!” Patton said with an easy smile. The smile fell away after a moment, though, and he looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure about asking Janus out, though,” he said hesitantly.

“Why not?” Roman asked. “You really sound interested in him! What have you got to lose?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Patton said, worrying the edge of a blanket between his fingers. “I’m not sure if he’d be comfortable with it. I don’t—I don’t know.” He looked away. “I’ll figure it out, I guess.” He looked back at Roman and Logan, forcing a smile onto his face. “Thank you both for the advice, though. And for listening.”

“Patton—” Roman began, concerned.

Patton shook his head. “Let’s just watch the movie now, okay? Really. Thank you. But I’m good for now. Can I have some more popcorn?”

Logan wordlessly held out the bowl and Roman allowed himself to be mostly distracted by Big Hero Six. He felt better when Patton leaned on his shoulder, a genuine smile on his face as he watched Fred goofing around on the screen. Whatever the issue Patton was dealing with was, at least it didn’t seem big enough to keep bothering him after putting it aside.

***

“So,” Remus said with an evil grin.

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” Roman said. They were both sprawled on Remus’s bed, sharing earbuds as Remus swiped through TikTok.

“It’s nothing!” Remus protested.

Roman gave him a suspicious look. Remus’s face was entirely too innocent.

“I was just wondering when you’re going to get your shit together and do something about your crush on Virgil,” Remus said, the evil grin back.

“My what?” Roman did a double take. “I—I don’t have a crush on Virgil, we barely even get along!”

Remus rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. The tension between you two is so high I’m surprised something hasn’t snapped yet. And you definitely have a crush.”

“I do not!” Roman grabbed Remus’s pillow and threw it in his brother’s face. “We’re barely even friends!”

Remus shoved the pillow aside and rested his chin on top of it, making a skeptical face.

“I mean, are they really pretty? Sure. But that’s not a crush,” Roman insisted.

“Mmhm. Okay. So what makes it not a crush?” Remus pressed.

“I—well—” Roman stammered, flustered by the very question.

“Uh-huh.”

“No!” Roman snapped, voice cracking. “I just—that’s a hard question to answer right off the bat! How do you define a crush? It’s just not, okay?”

“I mean, I define crush as, like…” Remus paused. “Huh. Okay. You have a point, or whatever. I guess… a crush is, like—huh. No. Okay. You’re distracting me. I’m teasing you about your crush that you totally do have, we are not veering off topic.”

“I do not have a crush on Virgil! I just want to be his friend! Okay?”

Remus made a skeptical face. “Sure, whatever you say. I’m still going to tease you about it.”

“Oh, whenever you find that third soulmate, I am getting so much revenge.”

“Eh.” Remus shrugged. “Like, go for it, but I dunno if you’ll have that much time to tease me about it before we get together. You know? Like, think about me and Logan.”

“Logan knew you were soulmates for two and a half years before you got togeth—”

“Yeah, because he’s smart, but I didn’t figure it out until thirty minutes before we got together. Or like. Thirty minutes before we started talking about it. You know this.”

Roman crossed his arms. This was unfortunately a very good point; the day Remus had figured out that Logan was one of his soulmates had been a pretty memorable one even for Roman. Logan and the twins had grown up next door to each other, and had been best friends since elementary school. One Saturday morning near the end of their senior year of high school, Remus had bolted upright in bed while Roman was brushing his teeth, blurted out something nigh incomprehensible, and taken off at a sprint; he’d slammed the front door behind himself on his way out and he hadn’t answered any of Roman’s texts for two hours, only to show up by sprinting back into the house and screaming at the top of his lungs “Logan and I are soulmates!”

This had prompted a lot of confused questioning from Roman. He’d learned that yes, Remus and Logan were definitely soulmates; Logan had figured it out in sophomore year but hadn’t said anything; Remus had only just figured it out; yes, Logan was still aromantic; yes, Remus was still allo; no, neither of them felt like either of these facts was an issue; and Remus was very happy.

“We’re going on, like, a date, but platonic,” Remus had announced to him that day, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I’m really excited, this is so cool! Who’d have thought, right? Logan and me!”

Roman had smiled and tried hard to just be happy for Remus and Logan, and not jealous of them. Particularly about two months later, when they’d made their relationship official and become queerplatonic partners. He was happy for them! He was!

But Remus had never cared that much about finding his soulmates. Roman had. It didn’t feel fair. Remus, who didn’t care, got two soulmates, and one of them was literally his childhood best friend. Roman, who’d been daydreaming about finding his soulmate since he was too little to remember, and had learned just about everything there was to know about how soulbonds worked, seemed to have just the usual one soulmate. His soulbond hadn’t even developed until he was sixteen—admittedly, that was an expected side effect of the puberty blockers he’d been on for a few years before he’d been approved for T, but he was still salty about it. And when his soulbond finally had developed and he’d started tuning into his soulmate’s dreams, they were so creepy! He wasn’t sure he’d had a single souldream so far that wasn’t a nightmare. They ruined his sleep for the night whenever he got one. It was irritating and frustrating and all sorts of bad things; he’d actually cried over it a couple of times, not that anyone but Remus knew.

But as annoying as it was for him, it had to be worse for his poor soulmate—if these nightmares were what was making it through the soulbond, he could only imagine how much worse their nightly sleep must be.

He hoped he’d find them soon. He was ready for a proper romance, thank you very much!

[taxicabinmemphis]

Prince Charming - Chapter 5

chapter one - chapter two - chapter three - chapter four - chapter five - chapter six

Word count - 3,332 Pairing - Intrulogical, Prinxiety, Moceit (I’m deleting the pre bc I have decided to have a chapter with them getting together) Warnings - some characters are a lil insensitive in spots but I wouldn’t call them unsympathetic, creativitwins angst, swearing, food mention, self-deprecation bc they’re all wrecks, pining, and then there’s Remus-typical behavior (body horror mentions, sexual innuendo/mentions of sexual stuff, and other stuff heh), if there’s anything else that should be tagged or put in the warnings, tell me!

After a hearty and delicious meal of spaghetti and meatballs with a side of broccoli, the sides had all retired to get ready for bed. The adventure had gone terribly late, so dinner was later than they’d ever had it.

Logan stopped when he reached the door to his room. Yes, he knew that the next logical course of action would be to enter his room and get ready for bed, perhaps read a book as his stomach digested dinner, but he couldn’t help but remember how quiet Remus had been at dinner. He was never quiet.

His mind flashed back to what Roman said to Remus when they left the Imagination, and Logan clenched his left hand into a fist. Roman, while always striving to do what he saw to be the correct course of action, could also be awfully insensitive. Especially when he didn’t even know he was doing it.

Logan promptly turned on his heels and walked towards Remus’ room.

He ended up meeting the side in the hallway outside his room. Remus was walking alarmingly slow and seemed to be contemplating something.

“Remus,” Logan called, a good fifteen feet behind him.

The creative side jumped in surprise. He turned to face Logan, eyes widened. “Oh, uh, Logan! What brings you to the dark and hellish end of the hall?”

Logan fiddled with his tie nervously. “I came to ask you about something, Remus.”

Silence followed Logan’s statement, prompting Remus to speak. “Well? Fire away, my sexy robot!”

A pink dusted Logan’s cheeks at the nickname. “Yes. Umm...are you okay, Remus?”

Remus blinked. “Of course I am, Nerdy Wolverine!”

Logan frowned. “I believe that’s a falsehood, Remus.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “Really? What can I do to convince ya? Rip my heart out and dissect it?”

Logan shook his head, adjusting his glasses. “No, none of that. Just...I remember what Roman said back when we exited the Imagination. It wasn’t kind, but he also had no cruel intentions. However, I could see that it...affected you. Are you okay? Do you require someone to...talk to?” Logan hoped he was doing this right.

Remus sighed and threw his hands in the air in resignation. “I might be okay. Does it matter?”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Remus. It does. You are a part of Thomas’ mind and it is important that you are functioning properly.”

“Functioning…” Remus gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. “Look, Logan. Ultimately, I am fine. I can intrude on everyone’s well-being just as I could three hours ago. You can go to bed, you don’t need to worry.” He paused. “Why do you care, anyway?”

Logan frowned. “You are a side, essential to Thomas creating and acting like himself.”

“You don’t know that,” Remus disagreed, shaking his head.

Logan closed half of the distance between them, concern written all over his features. “Of course I know that. I can logically ascertain what exactly your worth is as a side, especially considering I spend a significant amount of time with you.”

“Maybe all that time you spent analyzing my contributions in preparation to shoot them down has clouded your judgement, Logan,” Remus replied, spitting out Logan’s name like it repulsed him—when in reality, it did nothing of the sort.

Was that really how Remus thought of Logan? Someone who only listens so he can later tell someone else why everything he said was wrong? Logan tried to be kind like he did with everyone else, and many of Remus’ ideas interested him. He gave him honest opinions, criticisms, and scientific observations on anything Remus pitched him. But did Remus only see him as an instrument of the intrusive side’s demise?

“Remus…”

“No, Logan, please,” Remus interrupted. “Don’t pretend to care.”

“When did I ever say anything about pretending?!” Logan exclaimed abruptly, widening his eyes and putting a hand over his mouth when he noticed his volume. Logan did his best to erase the surprise from his face and compose himself, clearing his throat and making sure to lower the volume of his voice before continuing. “I apologize for the outburst, Remus. However, you seem to have perplexed me with everything you have said so far during this conversation. Presently, I believe the statement to question is your most recent one and I will state that I am unaware of any action I took that would give you a reason to think I was engaging in a deception at your expense.”

“Oh, Logan, you know. Just drop it and go to sleep,” Remus said, turning around and waving his hand in dismissal.

“No, Remus, I’m afraid I don’t know,” Logan said honestly. “That troubles me. Could you elaborate, please?”

Remus turned around slowly. “Maybe you think you don’t know, so I’ll enlighten you.” He took a deep breath. “You’ve been assigned to listen to me. You have to listen to my crazy bullshit whenever I think it up. In return, I listen to your criticisms, opinions, scientific analyses, notes, whatever. Even when you go insanely far in depth into a topic I might’ve brought up with one of my...contributions, as you call them. It’s a trade, a deal. You have to listen to me and then I listen to you because it’s the least I can do. Neither of us would’ve chosen it on our own, we both hate it, and you know you have better things to do. Don’t pretend to care just because some extra time together allows you to know more about me than you should.”

Logan processed what Remus said, staying unmoving only with the exception of blinking. This is what Remus thought of their arrangement? That he hated it, that he thought Logan hated it, that he forgot Logan was the one to suggest the arrangement in the first place? Janus’ words at the end of their sword fight rang through his head. Logan had been scared that Remus, the one side who listened to him, only did so out of courtesy. And he did. Logan’s fear was a reality.

“You forget that I suggested this...arrangement, as you call it. I was the one who pitched it to Thomas. I chose to do this, and do I have anything better to do? That’s subjective, so I don’t know. I am sorry this arrangement you hate so much has ended up being a prison rather than a way to save Thomas distress while not repressing you at the same time, so if there’s anything I can do to make the experience more pleasurable, I am open to hearing it. However, you are also mistaken that I hate it. I do not, I am incapable of such emotions. Though--”

“No you’re not,” Remus said, voice having a shocked tone caused by Logan’s previous statements and admissions.

“Sorry, what?”

“You’re not ‘incapable of such emotions’, you’re not some heartless robot without a soul. You have feelings, Logan, and I’ve seen them,” Remus elaborated, shock slowly dissolving from his tone.

“That’s ridiculous, you even called me a robot-”

Remus shook his head. “No. I’ve seen you interested by anything remotely scientific I bring up, I’ve seen you as burnt as black toast after I’ve talked to you for a particularly long time, I’ve seen you immediately after a conversation with the others when you have a desperate need to be listened to because they refused to, I’ve seen you embarrassed, I’ve seen you flustered—yes, I caught you burying your face in your hands today—and you just said you care about me. Even though that likely isn’t true, you have demonstrated care for Patton, Roman, and Virgil as well. Even just one of those examples is enough to prove you have feelings.”

Logan was silent for a few seconds, his weight shifting from foot to foot, looking everywhere but at Remus himself. Accepting that he couldn’t argue with most of Remus’ statements without communicating a falsehood, he decided to argue over the only one he could. “I do indeed care about you. It’s not just Patton, Roman, and Virgil. How could it be, considering only you listen?”

“I…” Remus tried to think of a good response. “I bother you. I wear you out. I give you all these terrible things to go through, forcing you to pick them apart like a medical examiner does with a rotting corpse, despite how disgusting and terrible they may be. I occupy way more of your time than I should, and I guess I’m sorry for that, so how could you care? I wouldn’t.”

Logan didn’t quite know how to respond. He wasn’t aware Remus thought so lowly of himself. He contemplated his reply.

“See? It’s not that hard to-”

Logan raised his hand as a demand for silence. Remus shut his mouth, only complying out of surprise. He waited as Logan carefully pondered what he would say next.

“Falsehood,” Logan said gently, starting his response. “None of those things are true. You shouldn’t be suspecting such things either, considering you have no way to know your effects on me. I want to say I wish you hadn’t said that, but I couldn’t do so with honesty, since my real wish is for you to never have thought—much less, believed—those falsehoods in the first place. However, I am considering your previous behavior and would postulate you do not believe me as I have not done anything to prove your statements are falsehoods. Would I be correct in saying this, Remus?”

Remus took a moment to respond, still processing Logan’s response. “I..uhh...yeah.”

Logan nodded. “First, you do not bother me. To bother someone is to trouble or annoy someone by interrupting or causing inconvenience. Considering that I volunteered to be in your company—which immediately debunks anything related to interruptions—and that my time with you makes you cause less inconvenience, you neither cause interruptions nor inconvenience to befall me. You don’t trouble me either. I spend time with you so don’t trouble anyone. And, everyone annoys me. So even if you did, which I don’t find to always be true, you wouldn’t be alone in that regard. You don’t wear me out too often either. Working with you only requires my ears and my brainpower, neither of which take much out of me since you rarely say anything that troubles me or forces me to contemplate problems that drain me. When you do, the reasons are typically seeded in my scientific curiosity for something you might’ve brought up, which is something I can in no way blame on you. To be candid, your company can be a relief, especially after dealing with the others.”

“That makes less sense than glow-in-the-dark lungs.”

“I’m not finished,” Logan stated, trying to be as kind as possible. “But if you would like me to restate what I just said-”

“No,” Remus shook his head. “I understand what you said...it’s just...how? How is that the truth?”

Logan’s face softened. “I am Logic, Remus. Many things that would normally affect a person or another side in a certain way will affect me in different ways or not at all. Your contributions don’t bother me as I am aware of their detachment from reality and get less disgusted at them than the others. And you listen to me, which is a far cry away from being a nuisance.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Remus said, shrugging.

Logan gave a small smile. It was hardly visible, but to Remus, it was as if Logan was grinning. Remus relished in the sight, hoping he could see it again soon and wishing it was something he could gaze at every day till the end of time. Logan never smiled, and Remus causing it made him all the happier.

“I am pleased to hear that you understand that I care for you,” Logan said, voice quiet and gentle. “Now, back to my original question. Are you okay?”

Remus turned his head to the side. “I was hoping you’d forget about the question.”

“Yes or no?” Logan pressed.

Remus took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “No.”

Logan nodded, taking a small and cautious step forward. “Do you require someone to talk to?”

Remus opened an eye and peered at Logan. “I don’t need anything, Pocket Protector.”

“Would you like someone to talk to?” Logan rephrased.

Remus shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to listen to me.”

“I already do.”

Remus gulped. “Alright. Yes, I suppose I would.”

Remus took a moment to gather his words, facing the floor but eyes flicking up to look at Logan every other second.

“Well, you were right,” he started. “About Roman, I mean. It was his comment. I know it’s kind of silly-”

“It’s nothing of the sort, he was out of line.”

“-But it still hurt. And yeah, he said none of us besides him were heroic and charming or whatever instead of just me, but still. It was directed towards me, and...he’s not wrong. I’m the resident villain. He’s the hero. I’ll never be heroic, or charming, or romantic while he can go and sweep Virgil off his feet. I guess his comment was just a wake-up call,” Remus continued. “I know he didn’t mean it to be mean and he’s just nowhere near being self-aware enough to take note of his insensitivity, but I still let it affect me. I shouldn’t have, but I did.”

“It’s fine if his comment got to you, Remus,” Logan said, taking another small step forward. “Roman says things like that sometimes without knowing what their consequences could be, and so it likely did mean nothing, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be able to hurt you, or that you’re wrong for letting it. But you also have to acknowledge that he’s wrong, and not view it as a wake-up call of sorts.”

Remus frowned, making eye contact with Logan. “What do you mean? I’m the evil murdery green side who will pull your teeth out and string them on a necklace if you’re not careful. Of course he’s right.”

“I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. Anyone can be a villain in the eyes of someone else. However, any establishment that a certain person is a villain ‘factually’ would be incorrect as the concepts of good and bad are arguably meaningless and any action can be seen as wrong or right in the eyes of another human. There is no truth in opinions, only preference.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

“You may be a villain in Roman’s eyes, you can be a villain in your own eyes if you so choose, however, there is nothing that can or will establish you as a villain for everyone forever.”

“So to Roman, I’m a villain,” Remus said slowly, trying to understand.

“Maybe, he could have just been exaggerating,” Logan said quickly. “He also sees everything as very black-or-white, which I imagine contributes a great deal as well.”

Remus nodded slowly. “And I can see myself however I want.”

“Though I’d prefer that you see yourself positively or neutrally. A negative self-image is never good.”

“And you…” Remus trailed, raising an eyebrow playfully.

Logan’s eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t care for labeling those types of things. I do see you as a positive influence on my existence if that was your question.”

Remus grinned brightly. “That answer is better than fermented semen!”

There was an awkward silence between them.

“Do you honestly believe you can’t be heroic, charming, and romantic?” Logan asked quietly, not wanting to scare off the intrusive side.

Remus stared, surprised by Logan’s question. “It’s not an opinion, Logan, it’s fact. I’m a duke, not a prince.”

“And royal status dictates those traits?”

Remus shook his head. “No...I’m just not those things.”

Logan frowned. “Do you want to be?”

Remus took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to reply without confusing the nerd. “No. I know none of them fit my personality, and I don’t want them too. Especially charming. But...it might be nice to experience once. To prove Roman wrong and that it isn’t impossible for me to have the traits of a hero.”

“There are no specifically assigned traits to heroes, Remus,” Logan said, tightening his tie. “However, you can act however you want within the bounds of acceptable reality.”

“I can?” Remus asked, a smirk on his face. He started to take a couple of steps closer to Logan but stopped a good four feet away.

“Yes, you can,” Logan replied, voice quieter at Remus’ confident advance. The logical side shuffled his feet back, only moving a couple of inches.

“Do you think I’m heroic?” Remus raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Do you think I’m charming?” He took a step closer.

“I-I don’t-”

Remus took another step, a larger one, closer to the logical side. There was likely only six inches between them. He stared deep into his eyes, a fiery passion for the visually impaired nerd burning hotter than any star Logan could name.

“Do you think I’m romantic?”

“I…”

Logan’s words died in his throat as he met Remus’ eyes. Remus, who was intrusive, offensive, bad to the bone, impolite, occasionally funny, interested in certain sciences, and strived to learn whatever Logan could teach. Remus, the only one who ever listened.

“You can if you want to be,” Logan said quietly, finally able to speak but never louder than the volume he was currently speaking at.

Remus hummed and pulled Logan flush against him by the waist.

“Remus?” Logan asked nervously.

“What is it, my bashful brainiac?”

“Do you really hate our arrangement?” Logan asked quietly, the question so painful to ask but the answer was something he needed to know before anything else happened. “And do you only listen out of courtesy?”

Remus sighed, running his free hand through the logical side’s hair. “Not one bit. And you are the most interesting person I’ve ever spoken to.”

Logan let another small smile cross his face and glanced at his feet.

“So I can be romantic, hmm?”

Logan nodded.

Remus smirked. He swept Logan into a dip—one arm around Logan’s thigh, lifting his leg into the air, and the other arm around his shoulders. Remus gazed lovingly into Logan’s shocked brown eyes and admired the red face of his nerd, giving the side a second to process what he did. He then dipped his gaze to Logan’s lips and flicked his tongue across his own.

“May I?”

Logan gulped before nodding.

Remus immediately crashed his lips against Logan’s; the simple nod of Logan’s head acting like a lamp that just turned on and Remus’ lips being their loyal moth.

Logan was still shocked from previous events when Remus’ lips met his, his eyes still open. Remus didn’t hate him, which was a plus, and now Remus was expressing romantic interest in him? He couldn’t believe it.

Yet, it was still happening. Logan closed his eyes, put a hand on the nape of Remus’ neck, and deepened the kiss.

It was something both were desperate for, something they had both wanted for ages—no matter how long they were aware of their romantic feelings for the other.

And so they dissolved into the other: Logan melting wherever Remus’ hands met his body, and Remus putting his desperation and need for Logan on clear display as he kissed him like he never would get to again. Remus got to be romantic, Logan was treated like a beautiful princess, and they both felt so incredibly loved.

The kiss eventually had to come to end, so when they both remembered they had to breathe, they pulled away and opened their eyes. Remus kept Logan in a dip and looked down at him like he was the loveliest thing to ever walk the earth. This only reddened Logan’s cheeks further. Remus gave him the fondest, most loving smile he could muster.

“I suppose I can be romantic.”

~

Taglist: @the-sympathetic-villain​ @justanotherhumanstuff​ @thistledown15​

~

This was technically the end of this story, but I do have a Moceit themed sequel that I have decided will just be chapter six. After that, hopefully it’ll be done! Hope you liked this chapter. Sorry, I meant to get this to you on Thursday but homework piled up and I just had a bad day Saturday so it’s coming to y’all now. (Also um you may have guessed but the image of Remus dipping Logan popped into my head and inspired this fic. It was 18k longer than expected)

[taxicabinmemphis]

Prince Charming - Chapter 4

chapter one - chapter two - chapter three - chapter four - chapter five - chapter six

Word count - 4,094 Pairing - Intrulogical, Prinxiety (I didn’t plan it, it just kinda happened and I rolled with it), pre Moceit Warnings - some characters are a lil insensitive in spots but I wouldn’t call them unsympathetic, creativitwins angst ig, swearing, food mention, self-deprecation from most sides bc they’re all wrecks, character injury, pining, and then there’s Remus-typical behavior (body horror mentions, sexual innuendo/mentions of sexual stuff, and other stuff heh), if there’s anything else that should be tagged or put in the warnings, tell me!

The six sides and their horses eventually arrived in Azeria. Remus had abandoned his plan that would allow Janus to escape and instead was pondering his best friend’s love life. Logan and Janus were tired of the adventure and wanted to leave, while Patton and Virgil were hoping to finish so they could treat their injuries. The brothers, however, were having fun and expressed no desire to leave.

“Well, we’re here!” Roman stated as they got to the stables. He dismounted.

“Finally,” Virgil muttered under his breath, before dismounting. “Where should I put Sally, Roman?”

“Over there is fine.” He pointed to where Virgil should leave his horse.

All the other sides dismounted and left their horses in the stables. They walked into the castle, entering the tower where they kept the crown jewels.

“Care to do the honors, Patton?” Roman offered, as Patton was currently wearing the backpack which held the jewels.

Patton walked over to the open glass case. He opened the backpack, removed the jewels, and placed them carefully onto a velvet blanket which covered the bottom of the case. Roman closed the case after Patton finished, and Virgil clapped a hand on the fatherly side’s shoulder.

“Good work, Dad,” Virgil praised. “Thanks for carrying the jewels and keeping them safe.”

“Out of our dirty hands, you mean?” Remus teased.

“As a matter of fact, yeah,” Virgil said, malice in his tone.

Janus put an arm around the emo’s shoulders. “Oh come now, Virgil. You’ve beaten us once, we know not to try again.”

“Hmmph,” Virgil huffed, shrugging off Janus’ arm. He glared at him, suspicion evident on his features.

Janus gave a small laugh and turned to Roman. “What happens now, Roman?”

“Does this scenario end?” Logan asked, masking the hopefulness that would otherwise have been clear in his tone.

“There’s so much more we can do in this adventure!” Roman argued.

“We’re already having dinner way later than normal….” Patton objected quietly. “We shouldn’t hold off on it for much longer.”

“Patton is right,” Logan agreed, “we wouldn’t want to eat too late and end up having trouble getting to sleep on time.”

Roman rolled his eyes. “How about we go to the courtyard and clear everything up. You know, finalize what happened and such.”

“That sounds acceptable,” Logan said.

The sides then left the tower, exited the castle, and went to the courtyard, the flowers surrounding it making Patton’s face light up. The pristine white walls of the castle surrounded them fully on one side and partially on two sides, and the grass was a healthy shade of green. The darker, evening sky inhibited a clear look at their surroundings, though the pretty blues and purples above them seemed to make up for it. The sun would set soon, and the six would likely get the pleasure of watching it, depending on how long it took to end the adventure.

“May I sit on that bench?” Virgil asked, pointing to an ivory-colored bench near where they were standing.

“I’d like to as well,” Patton added, raising his arm slightly.

Roman nodded. “Of course. We can talk near the bench.”

Virgil and Patton sat next to each other on the bench. The four others stood in front of it, each of them standing where they could see each other.

“Okay, so we have the crown jewels, Remus and Janus are in custody, Virgil has been released and is now a citizen of Azeria, and us knights are okay. Anything else we should clarify?” Roman said.

“I was given full permission to annoy Logan while in custody.”

Roman rubbed his temples in annoyance. “No. Logan is a valued knight and respected citizen, we wouldn’t subject him to your company.”

Remus laughed. “Logan visits me in prison, then we fuck-”

“Remus!” Patton exclaimed, hitting his arm.

“Sorry, Pat, but yeah.” Remus shrugs. “That’s what happens.”

The sides looked at Logan, whose face was ducked and buried in his hands.

“No, it isn’t,” Roman disagreed firmly. “Anything else?”

“Reptania and Azeria eventually work out their problems and become allies?” Patton suggested.

Roman stared at him for a few moments, blinking a few times before answering. “I mean, sure. We don’t want these crazies in our dungeons for too long. They would get annoying.”

Virgil snorted. “True that.”

Silence surrounded the group.

“Well then,” Janus said, breaking the silence. “It seems that we’re fini-”

“Look,” Patton interrupted with a gasp. “The sunset.”

The five other sides trained their gazes on what Patton was looking at, and their faces all contorted to an expression of surprise and wonder. The sky was painted in a beautiful display of reds, oranges, yellows, pinks, and purples which contrasted with the canvas of dark blue incredibly well.

“Preeeeeeeetty,” Remus commented softly, holding out the ‘e’.

“As pretty as Logan?” Roman mused, glancing at his brother shortly, before returning his eyes to the colorful sky.

Remus’ face pinkened. “As pretty as Virgil?” he shot back with a scowl.

Roman let out a low sound of annoyance, but he left the conversation at that, preferring to appreciate the sunset than argue with his brother.

The sides spent a good five to ten minutes admiring the sunset, Patton making sure to snap pictures.

Janus cleared his throat. “We really should get going, as it seems that we’re finished.”

The others nodded, slowly tearing their eyes from the sky. Roman snapped his fingers and his fellow sides returned to their normal clothes.

“We could’ve just done that instead of changing earlier?!” Virgil asked incredulously.

Roman shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe, but I don’t think so. Who knows? But now you don’t have to struggle with removing chainmail.”

Virgil groaned and threw his head against the back of the bench.

“Next time, Roman, you should play the villain!” Remus said teasingly, leaving the castle grounds and walking towards the door out of the Imagination, his fellow sides joining him. “Bet you’ve never done that before!”

Roman shook his head. “I am a prince, not a villain. And why not let the resident villain play the part? Besides, I’m the only side here who knows how to be heroic, romantic, and charming.”

Remus’ footsteps slowed, but he eventually reached the door, his mood having soured immensely. He left the Imagination, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Patton, Janus, and Logan followed him out the door, Roman walking towards it himself. His hand grasped the doorknob, and he opened the wooden door slightly, only for his efforts to meet an opposing force that stopped the door from opening further.

The prince looked behind him to see Virgil standing there, left hand on the door.

“Hey there, Princey,” Virgil greeted quietly.

“Virgil,” Roman replied, showing clear confusion.

The purple-clad side took a deep breath. “I was hoping we could discuss something.”

Roman’s eyes widened in surprise, his grip on the doorknob slipping. He hardly registered Virgil closing the door after his hand fell to his side. Roman quickly concluded that Virgil’s previous statement was a softened and less anxiety-inducing version of the phrase “we need to talk”.

The realization made his stomach drop.

He followed Virgil away from the door and back over to the courtyard. They stopped at its entrance, and Virgil turned to face Roman.

“Roman, I have a few questions about some of today’s events,” Virgil said slowly. “As you know, I’m anxiety. I pay attention to behavioral red flags and abnormal actions and they will bother me until I get answers. So to spare future Virgil insomnia, could I please get clarification on a few things?”

Roman took a moment before answering. “And...none of the other sides’ behavior bothered you? Just mine?”

“Afraid so, Princey,” Virgil replied with a grimace. “At least when it came to the way they acted with me. Everything with Patton and Janus followed, except for one thing I managed to figure out. And no one else talked with me much.”

“Alright then,” Roman said, clearing his throat. “Fire away, I guess.”

Virgil shifted his feet. “I suppose I should start with the most recent source of alarm...back during the ride from Reptania? We were talking, and I rejected the idea of riding faster due to my soreness, and you said you wouldn’t cause me any harm or some cutesy shit like that, and then you ended up speeding up? I’m not mad by it or anything and I was eventually able to get used to the added pain it caused but I’m still confused by your actions.”

Roman felt a pang of guilt in his chest. Virgil’s sarcasm towards his care for the anxious side had angered him and slightly hurt his heart, so he sped up to be petty. He didn’t take Virgil’s injured state into account when committing the action, but now wished he did.

“Was that nice thing you said before you sped up sarcastic or something? I mean it was very dramatic like sarcasm often is, but you’re extremely dramatic so I thought it was you being you...maybe I read you wrong-”

“No, Virgil,” Roman finally spoke, raising a hand to halt his companion’s spiraling speech. His head was ducked down and he refused to meet Virgil’s eyes. “The comment was sincere.”

“Then why…”

“I…” Roman really didn’t want to answer this question, “I’m sorry. Your sarcasm after my comment wounded me when it really shouldn’t have because you’re such a sarcastic person by nature. I then forgot all about your injuries and sped up to be petty. I’m so sorry Virgil, and I am absolutely disgusted by myself for causing you pain. Especially after declaring I wouldn’t. You must be so angry...so rightfully angry.”

Virgil looked at the prince for a few silent seconds, blinking while he contemplated his dramatic and apologetic exposition. “I...I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I was flattered and didn’t know what to say so I reverted to my normal sarcasm. I should’ve realized what I said might hurt you. And...I’m not angry, Princey. I was just confused and maybe a little annoyed.” Virgil paused for half a second, pondering whether or not to say his next words. “Don’t be angry at yourself, or...disgusted. Lashing out without care is normal, especially for someone as passionate as you. I’m fine now, the additional pain has faded, and I’m not annoyed anymore.”

Roman slowly lifted his head and let himself make eye contact with Virgil. “I...But you still suffered, Virgil, at my hand.” Roman clenched his fist and closed his eyes.

Virgil let out a tiny laugh. “Seriously, Roman. I’m fine. I didn’t suffer or anything that dramatic. Stop beating yourself up about it.”

Roman stopped, looking back to Virgil. He took a deep breath. “Okay. I acted insensitively out of anger. It was stupid. I apologize. I understand that you were...wait, flattered?” Roman stopped, remembering what Virgil said earlier.

Virgil’s eyes widened. He forgot he’d said that. “Yeah,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand. “‘Your safety is my priority’? ‘I will instigate nothing that will cause you harm’? Those are some pretty sweet words you said there, Roman. I guess it, uh…—” he lowered the volume of his voice, “—made me feel a little special.”

Roman’s face had reddened at Virgil repeating Roman’s declaration from the horseback ride and emphasizing its kindness. But he smiled too. He made Virgil feel special.

“Not to say I’m not aware of how drama and bold declarations of action and emotion are basically your main way of interacting with others,” Virgil started to backtrack, “and maybe it shouldn’t have flattered me the way it did, considering you always act like that, but it did, and I’m sorry it made me say something that hurt you.”

“You needn’t apologize further, Virgil,” Roman said, a fond smile adorning his features. “I am aware of how passionate I am, especially towards you, and I should have considered that before I did what I did. If what I say bothers you, please tell me. I have no desire to hurt you.”

Virgil’s gaze was on the grass from Roman’s offhanded flirtatious comment. “What you say doesn’t hurt me or anything, and I know it’s just you being you. Compliments aren’t something I navigate well either and it’s not like anyone else speaks half as dramatically as you, so if you say something nice, it’s really nice and I don’t know how to respond. That’s all.”

Roman chuckled, the smile staying on his face as he glanced over and internally marveled at Virgil’s lovely facial features. “Hmm, flustered Virgil. Something that seems so alluringly impossible but is existing before my eyes. Truly, a wonderful sight.” Roman’s smile only widened at Virgil blushing, and he got back on topic. “What else did you wish for us to discuss, Virgil? I remember you mentioning that there was more than one worry on your mind.”

“I, uh, yeah,” Virgil said weakly, still bashful from Roman’s words. “Roman...Patton’s hit to my stomach didn’t knock me out. It couldn’t have, to be honest. And I remember everything that happened. Everything that was said.”

Roman frowned. “What are you trying to say here, Virgil?”

“Why were you so angry?” Virgil asked softly, looking into Roman’s eyes. “You were so mad, so incredibly furious at Patton…. No one else was. And you didn’t know the whole story.”

“Virgil…”

“Again, I’m not mad,” Virgil clarified. “Or disappointed, or anything of the sort. I’m just confused. I mean, as soon as you learned Patton was the one who knocked me down, you were so angry! You didn’t even listen to his defense...it took Janus yelling at you and his explanation to shut y-- to stop your anger. Your apology was fine and sincere and Patton understood your actions so, again, I’m not mad. Why were you so angry, though? No one else was. But you were. Why?”

“I…” Roman trailed. “I care about you, Virgil. You know this.”

Virgil’s eyebrows creased. “Is this your way of telling me the others don’t?”

“No!” Roman exclaimed. “I just...didn’t like to see you hurt. My fight with Remus, while it got a bit angry verbally, neither of us were injured. The same happened in Janus and Logan’s sword fight. It was as if there was an unspoken rule that no one should be hurt. I didn’t think that you getting hurt was fair. And so I lashed out at Patton...the person who seemed to break that rule. I know it was wrong to do so as I didn’t have all the information and am very aware of how much he loves and cares for you, but I wasn’t thinking. I was just angry. I apologize. I know how much Patton means to you, and I’m sorry for making him feel bad when he shouldn’t. When he didn’t deserve it.”

Virgil nodded. “I get that, I guess. You don’t need to apologize any more though, you already did. Again, I’m just...shocked that you were the one who got so mad at him….”

“Is that really so hard to believe, emo nightmare?” Roman asked with a smile. “I’m the one in the group who goes after those who I believe have done wrong, I’m the one who doesn’t listen when I should—”

“Roman…”

“—and I’m also the one who tries to valiantly protect people. Not anyone else.”

Virgil chuckled, shaking his head. “You don’t need to protect me, Roman. I’m fight or flight, right? I can do the fight part for myself, you know.”

“Aww, but what if I want to protect you from harm?” Roman teased.

Virgil hit Roman’s shoulder lightly. “You don’t need to. Besides, the harm had already been done.”

Roman chuckled, taking a tiny step closer to Virgil. “Don’t try to stop me from protecting you, My Chemically Imbalanced Romance. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Virgil snorted. “I can try.”

Roman laughed, shaking his head. “Why can’t you let me show my love for you the way I know how to?” The question was light, joking, casual. It meant next to nothing to Roman when it left his lips.

However, it had the opposite effect on Virgil. He looked down towards his feet, noticing how Roman was four feet away from him. The anxious side didn’t know whether to be happy the creative side couldn’t see his blush or sad he wasn’t closer.

“Y-Your love for me?” Virgil asked quietly, still looking at the grass.

“Of course, my raisin oatmeal cookie. You are my fellow side, my friend, my lovely Incredible Sulk! Don’t we all love you?” Roman replied, more nervous than he let on.

“O-Oh, yeah.”

“And even still, how could anyone not love you?” Roman said with a laugh.

Virgil’s face reddened further. “Can’t be too hard. I seemed to do it without trying.” The nervous side chuckled, approaching the worrisome comment casually, trying to impart sarcasm. He figured a joke would divert any possible attention from his blush.

Roman frowned, looking at the ducked head of Anxiety. “Well, that just won’t do.”

“...What?”

“My wonderful Charlie Frown, we can’t have you not loving yourself,” Roman said, dramatic but soft. He then put his hand under Virgil’s chin and delicately lifted it so he could meet his eyes. He gazed into them, admiring the beautiful shades of purple and green.

“Oh, Princey, it wasn’t that serious-” Virgil started to object, glancing away from Roman.

“No no no,” Roman silenced him, moving his hand from Virgil’s chin to in front of his lips, his index finger pointed up as a signal for him to stop talking. “You have to know how amazing you are, or at least learn.”

Virgil shook his head rapidly. “No. No, no. We are not doing this. It’s not that important anyway. Please don’t do this.”

Roman shook his head. “Do what? Tell you how spectacular you are?” His hand dropped from in front of Virgil’s mouth.

“Spectacular is subjective,” Virgil objected. “But yeah. Don’t do that.”

“Hmm…” Roman seemed to be pondering this. “Considering we are supposed to be talking about other topics, I guess I’ll do so another time, my dazzling Doctor Gloom.”

Virgil exhaled lightly. He was free of compliments for the time being. He didn’t dare argue, as that might cause Roman to take back what he said and say nice things about him. Virgil didn’t think he could take all of Roman’s dramatic sweetness, especially considering it was all platonic...right? He did say ‘friend’….

Roman looked at Virgil, his friend, his former enemy, with overwhelming love in his eyes. While it would be wrong of him to compliment him now, he couldn’t just leave that at that. He had to do something to demonstrate that Virgil should love himself. At least, that he was loved by others.

“Oh, Roman, look.” Virgil’s voice was small with wonder. His eyes left Roman’s and rested on the night sky above them. “The sun has set and the stars are out. There’s so many of them!”

Roman turned his head from Virgil to look. “Indeed. It’s quite beautiful.”

“Yeah…”

“Almost as beautiful as you.”

“You corny son of a bitch!” Virgil exclaimed, whacking Roman’s arm. “You said you’d stop complimenting me. And gosh, even if you still did, that was too cliché.”

“What? You walked right into it,” Roman defended with a shrug. “I’m not wrong either.”

Virgil took a deep breath, repressing his annoyance and a blush that wanted to crawl across his cheeks. “No more, Princey.”

Roman laughed, glancing at Virgil. His eyes lingered on the anxious side and the unique way the stars lit up the face Roman already adored so much.

Virgil glanced at Roman, doing a double take when he noticed the creative side’s eyes already on him. “What is it, Roman?”

Roman chuckled, placing his hand and laying his gaze on Virgil’s jaw, finger grazing over the white foundation that covered the emo’s face. He flicked his eyes up to meet the purple and green ones of his companion. “Oh, Virgil. Sweet Virgil.” Roman could see the red even through the makeup. He took a few steps closer to him. “May I kiss you?”

Virgil’s eyes widened. This was one of, no, the last thing he ever expected to leave Roman’s mouth. He stared at Roman—looking so absolutely majestic in the moonlight, so unbelievably attractive. His prince, his creativity, his talented, charming Roman was asking if he could kiss him.

“Please,” Virgil whispered, the one word laced with clear desire.

Roman smiled widely, looking down at his emo and placing his lips against his. They both closed their eyes, Roman’s hand not leaving Virgil’s jaw and his other arm encircling the purple side’s waist. Virgil wrapped his left arm around Roman’s neck and rested his right hand on the prince’s chest.

The kiss was delicate and so incredibly loving. It was purposeful, but soft. There was no lust but oh so much romance, no need for more but also quite desperate. The kiss wasn’t short—and it seemed just long enough—but it still had the two treat every second of it like precious gold as they savored the other like rich chocolate consumed on a warm evening. It left the two addicted to the other in a way that made sure what had just occurred would happen many more times in the future.

The two pulled away at the same time, letting their lips part so terribly slowly it was as if they were trying to make the most out of the last couple of seconds. Their eyes stayed closed, their arms not moving from where they were positioned on the other, and their faces flushed from the kiss.

Roman opened his eyes first: slowly, and with reluctance. He swept his thumb under Virgil’s closed right eye lightly, across his eyeshadow, and smiled at the beauty that was his emo. A part of him wanted him to lean down and kiss him more but another wanted to watch his radiant romance process what happened.

Roman watched as his purple prince opened his eyes slightly and smiled at him. Roman, already smiling, just looked at Virgil with fond wonder, always thinking the side couldn’t get more attractive and then constantly being proved wrong.

“Was it nice?” Roman asked after a comfortable silence, voice low and quiet. He moved his hand from Virgil’s jaw to brush hair out of his face.

“Nice? No,” Virgil replied at the same volume, sliding his right hand up Roman’s chest and around his neck. “Wonderful beyond words? Definitely.”

Roman put his forehead against Virgil’s, humming as he placed the hand formerly resting on his love’s face around his waist. “It is my sworn duty to make you happy.”

Virgil chuckled. “I suppose I shall have to take that ‘sworn duty’ upon myself in reference to you now, hmm?”

“Oh, my darling, you don’t have to do anything for me except exist happy and healthy in my arms.”

Virgil snorted. “You’re such a sap, you know that?”

“Yes, I do.”

The two stayed where they were in comfortable silence. Admiring the other, admiring the stars in their peripheral vision, relishing the magnificent feeling that came from being in each other’s arms.

“I had another question, you know.”

Roman hummed in acknowledgment.

“Why did you cast me as the cursed prisoner?”

“You were being annoying. Endearingly so, yes, but the fact still stands.”

“I’m always interrupting you with sarcasm,” Virgil said, shaking his head. “You wanted to save me, didn’t you? The prince, rescuing the prisoner. Very ‘damsel in distress’-esque, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, give me a break. Who can blame me for wanting to save you, and what did you expect when I was given the opportunity?”

“It’s fine, Princey,” Virgil stated with a laugh. “It’s cute. Adorable, really. Very romantic.”

Roman groaned and gave his Virgil a kiss on the jawline. “Take it as a way to tell you that I will protect and save you from harm, especially throughout...whatever we have going on here.”

Virgil chuckled. “I can’t wait.”

The two heard the door to the Imagination open, but they didn’t move away from each other.

“Aww, you two,” Patton cooed. “I finished making dinner. Come now, kiddos, we’re already eating way too late.”

Virgil and Roman gave Patton a nod of acknowledgement and gave each other a short and final kiss before heading out of the Imagination.

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