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chameleon66 · 3 months

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The framed fate of two twins

Sanders sides soulmate au: In this universe on your sixteenth birthday the last photo you and your soulmate were both in will be sent to you framed and when you first touch it will reveal the picture (And that picture can be updated to the most recent picture).

Ships: Prinxiety and Dukeceit (Yeah that poll I did was a joke, I was going to do both along)

Warnings: Remus being himself, soulmate au, mild angst, (Let me know if I need to add anything)

Word count: 3129

Remus and Roman were about as different as twins could get from each other, Roman was in the drama club and well liked by practically everyone as he was charming, witty and not to be shallow but very good looking.

Remus had always been a problematic guy, he liked to fool around and break rules, he wasn’t bad, just chaotic. Plus there were people who admired his bold and outgoing nature.

Despite their differences there was one thing the brothers had in common, they could not wait for their sixteenth birthday to find out who their soulmate was. After hearing their parents' story of meeting each other they both desperately wanted to know who their soulmates were. The idea of having the special someone to share secrets and love with made them both giddy with joy.

Soon enough it was their sixteenth birthday and both of them made plans for the day, Roman invited some of his theater club friends and they all chipped in so they could go to the local community theaterhouse to watch ‘The Neverending Story’. While Remus asked Janus to go to a R rated movie with him then they’d go look at some wall murals downtown.

Remus was on cloud nine knowing he’d get to know who his soulmate was that nightstand couldn’t stop talking about it, not that Janus minded, he always thought Remus was adorable when he was excited. Remus hardly payed attention to the movie and when they stopped to take pictures together in front of the mural, in the back of his mind he thought it wouldn’t be so bad if saw one the photos he took with Jan in the frame, but out of all the people on earth what were the chances it would be him. Remus didn’t know Math isn't his strong suit but he could hope.

Roman meanwhile was to put it lightly, a complete stressed mess. He couldn’t stop thinking that he’d get to see who his soulmate was that night and he was going a mile a minute snapping pictures of everyone in the group and everyone passing by because according to him “What if I walk by them today and don’t realize it Patton!” It took Patton the whole walk to the theater to calm Roman down with his promise that the stars wouldn’t doom Romna to be alone forever and once he met his soulmate they’d be perfect for eachother, Roman could only hope.

Both brothers arrived home just before dinner was to be served and they’re mom couldn’t stop saying how happy she was for them and that they weren’t her little baby boys anymore while their dad patted both of his sons on the back and told him he was happy for them.

After dinner they all shared a chocolate cake that their mom baked herself, then it was time for them to open the packages that came addressed to them that afternoon when the mail man arrived. They all sat down in the living room, both brothers shaking in anticipation as they were handed the wrapped packages. Remus and Roman didn’t hesitate as they both messily tore off the wrapping paper then opened the lid of the boxes to find two identical frames in the box.

Both twin’s hands reached down in the box and grabbed the frames which instantly lit up to reveal the pictures hidden. Remus’s picture was the selfie he and Janus took earlier that day downtown in front of a mural called while Roman’s was the cast and crew photo from the show he had closed at school a few days ago, Beauty and the Beast.

The brothers were stunned quietly as their parents began yelling happily but neither responded to the yelling.

Remus was thrilled, his best friend was his soulmate but did Janus like Remus that way? What if they weren’t meant to be? What if he ended up losing Janus as a soulmate and best friend? What if it was a mistake? Millions of questions flooded Remus’s brain all at once, and Remus had no answers.

Roman was puzzled, His soulmate had to have been in the picture but then which person in the picture was his soulmate? I couldn’t have been Patton or any of his other friends he was with that day since he took many other pictures with them that day. So that narrowed it down to at least a dozen other people in the photo, but then who was it?

— Timeskip, to the next day at school —

That morning both brothers came to school with a purpose, to talk/find their soulmate. Remus texted Janus before class to meet up at their favorite spot behind the bleachers at the football field during lunch. That is when he planned to tell Janus that he was his soulmate, until then all he could do was hope, which felt like all he had been doing lately.

Roman on the other hand was as busy as a bee playing detective trying to find out who his soulmate could be, before school and in between his classes he took selfie after selfie with the cast and crew of the recent school play but the picture in the frame remained the same picture. In fact Roman almost gave up when he was rushing to the cafeteria to meet with Patton for lunch class when suddenly someone crashed into him and knocked his phone out of his hands.

Both Roman and the person he walked into fell to the floor in the hallway with a grunt.

“Oh I’m sorry.” Roman started to gather the belongings scattered across the floor. “I wasn’t looking where-.” Silence woke up mid Roman’s sentence when he looked at the person he crashed into. Then all time seemed to fall still.

The person Roman crashed into was dressed darkly in ripped jeans and a hoodie that looked to be hand sewn, his hair was dyed purple and he had dark circles under his eyes that could have been makeup with how dark they were. The person blushed as he looked up and met Roman’s gaze and quickly scooped up his stuff and speed walked away from Roman, leaving Roman there on the floor unsure of what had just happened.

Once Roman collected him and his belongings he began walking much slower to the cafeteria checking his phone on the way. Once he finished checking his instagram notifications he decided to clear up some memory in his phone by deleting a few of the many pictures he had taken that day, trying to find his soulmate.

When he opened the app he saw a photo of the guy and him he had chase into, he must have accidentally clicked the photo button while he was falling, the angle wasn’t very flattering but he could clearly make out the features of the guy, that’s when something clicked together in Roman’s head, that guy was on costume’s crew for Beauty and the Beast.

His name was Virgil and Roman had talked to him before when they were on a five and he needed his sizes for his Lumiere costume, but could it be?

Before Roman could properly understand what he was doing he reached for the frame stuffed down into his backpack and compared the image in it to the one on his phone, they were an exact match. Which could only mean one thing, Roman had found his soulmate.

— Meanwhile with Remus —

Remus couldn’t focus on what was happening around him, the shadeness from under the bleachers, the taste of hot and spicy chips in his mouth or the sound of Janus ranting about how a kid in his Science class Logan was such a teacher’s pet and always reminded the teacher about their homework.

Normally Remus would laugh and crack a few jokes but now he was just silently pondering to himself, he was sitting right next to his soulmate right now and Janus didn’t realize it. He hated to admit it but he wanted Janus, he wanted to kiss his vitiligo coated face and protect his smile and laugh forever. But then what if Janus ran away and got freaked out, I mean Janus knew he could be a bit much but that never stopped Janus from being his very best friend so why would that stop him from being his soulmate. Things would never be the same if he told Janus.

“Earth to Remus, are you even listening to me?” Janus shouted in his ear bringing Remus out of his head and back into the real world.

“Yeah I’m listening.” Remus flashed his toothy grin but Janus looked unconvinced.

“Yup, something’s wrong.” Janus narrowed his eyes at Remus, as if trying to see through him to figure out what was the matter.

“With you?” Remus tried to redirect the conversation away from himself.

“No, you.” Janus moved closer to Remus and Remus felt like he would have combusted right then and there on the spot.

“You've been really quiet, which is highly unusual for you.” Janus stated in a tone of voice that reminded Remus of a lawyer. “Does this have anything to do with you finding out your soulmate last night?”

Maybe Janus was some undercover law school student because he always seemed to put two and two together and know what was going on. Remus knew he had to do it, he just couldn’t hold it inside anymore plus Janus’s birthday would be in a few months so he’d find out on his own sooner or later so Remus just had to tell him.

“Janus.” Remus started “I need to tell you something important.”

“Did you finally commit a felony and need me to represent you in court?” Janus mockingly asked but Remus didn’t laugh, that is what told Janus that this was serious and he sat still waiting for Remus to continue talking.

“So… I did find out my soulmate and I do think I like them, romantically.” Remus hated the way the sophisticated words sounded coming from him but he didn’t know how else to put it without sounding like a creepy stalker.

“Well then who is it Re?” Janus gently asked but something in his head was telling him he knew who it was but he couldn’t believe that voice, it was best not to get his hopes up too high, that’s what he had been telling himself for weeks before Remus’s birthday.

Remus groaned into his hands “It’s so weird to say.” Remus whined.

“Say it.” Janus urged “I double dog dare you to say it.” Janus smirked knowing Remus never said no to a dare.

“Ok, fine, it’s you ok, I saw the selfie we took yesterday at the mural in the picture frame!” The words came out of Remus’s mouth in a tizzy and Remus couldn’t get anything else out of his mouth so he just sat there looking down at the ground listening to the silence of Janus.

Janus almost felt his eyes bulge out his socket out of every emotion that ran through his head at once, first came shock, then bewilderment, then finally rejoice. He was Remus’s soulmate so that meant Remus was his soulmate.

“I’m sorry.” Janus said in such a melancholy voice that it almost sounded depressed. And Remus almost had to mentally kick himself to get himself to respond.

“What?” Remus looked up to see Janus’s eyes down on the ground now.

“I’m sorry that you got stuck with me as your soulmate.” Janus sunk in his seat as he spoke.

“No, don’t you pretend to not know how incredibly amazing and sexy you are.” Remus’s hand went up to Janus’s chin and pulled his face up to look at his.

“Stop Remus.” Janus giggled and flustered at Remus’s comment; this made Remus feel more confident so he decided it was time to ask him.

“Janus, would you like to be my Boyfriend?”

Janus took a pause, a pause that made Remus grow tense again, what if he said no?

“What’s the dowry?” Janus purred and Remus could help the chuckle he let out.

“Whatever I have in my pockets and…the last photo on my camera reel?”

“I accept.” Janus replied putting both of his hands on Remus’s neck drawing them closer together.

It was meant to be, they were meant to be, they both knew it for sure as their lips met in a passionate first kiss. Remus’s hands cupping Janus’s face and Janus’s hands on Remus’s shoulders.

Well Remus was right, things wouldn’t ever be the same after that.

— And now we’re back with Roman —

It was Roman’s last class of the day, theater. Which should have made Roman happy but he was too busy wallowing in self pity to be happy about his favorite class. He had tried to talk to Virgil twice that day but every time he messed up and ended up running away.

The first time during lunch he almost walked up to Virgil but then the person Virgil had been sitting with spotted him and Roman panicked.

Then the second time after lunch on his way to his fourth period he spotted Virgil in the hall and tried to introduce himself but ended up saying “Hi, I’m Roman numeral.” Where did that even come from?

After that attempt Roman became even more stressed out, fearing he had already made his own soulmate hate him. To make the situation even worse he had his Theater period with Virgil so he was just sitting in his seat in the auditorium trying not to look at Virgil.

Perfect, just perfect.

Since it was the first class after they closed their show the teacher had a small party planned where they pretty much got to eat snacks and talk with each other all period. Roman tried to sit at his own desk and focus on one of his latest passion projects but he just found himself fantasizing about Virgil. How the universe had planned for them to be together but was making it so difficult for Roman to talk to him without sounding like a complete brain dead moron.

Roman was so busy mentally scolding himself that he almost missed the tap on his shoulder. When he looked up from his paper he saw Virgil standing next to him.

“Hey…” Virgil rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, he took a deep breath then asked Roman “Do you think we can talk for a minute?”

Roman’s mouth felt dry as sand in the desert but when he nodded his head in response he felt like something was gnawing at his stomach.

“Ok.” Virgil began to walk away from the isle where Rpman was sitting then motioned for Roman to follow him. Roman got up not bothering to grab his things and followed Virgil to a secluded part of the Auditorium where no one else was.

Roman already started scripting out an apology in his head, for being annoying or whatever Virgil was going to be mad at him for. Which really was a shame because Roman honestly wished Virgil felt the same and that they would live happily ever after but maybe fate was wrong.

Virgil stood against the wall while Roman stood about two feet in front of him. Roman swallowed trying to regain some of the moisture in his mouth then he tried to speak.

“I-I’m…I’m sorry about-.” Roman tried to gather his thoughts into a sentence but so much wanted to come out all at once and none of it sounded right.

“Listen, Roman…I know I’m your soulmate.” Virgil’s eyes avoided Roman’s and the blush was obvious even behind what looked to be a layer of white foundation.

Roman’s mind went blank for a few milliseconds, trying to remember if he was daydreaming or if this was actually happening and after he concluded this was really happening he realized Virgil knew that they were each other's soulmates.

“My birthday was a few months ago…” Virgil explained. “I’ve honestly kind of always had a crush on you but I’ve always been too nervous to actually talk to you. But during the closing show on Sunday I heard some of the other actor’s talking and one said it was going to be your birthday on wednesday, so I guess I figured you found out, right?”

“Yes! I-I did.” Roman was now practically vibrating with anticipation, he had no clue what Virgil was going to say next, was he going to ask Roman out? Was he hearing all of this right or was he just crazy? No, Roman was definitely hearing things right. But that meant his soulmate was in love with him, so what did that mean for them now?

“So…would you be interested in meeting up with me tomorrow after school, for coffee, as in a date?” Virgil's smile made an appearance on his face and Roman smiled back.

“I’d be delighted too.” Roman beamed at Virgil and Virgil beamed back.

The both just stood there for a moment lost in the moment with each other, looking into the others eyes. Roman was lost in Virgil’s brown eyes, they were an enchanting display of dark brown with flecks of gold shining in them. But then the school bell jolted them out of the moment and they both jumped out of surprise.

“I’ll see you tomorrow after school.” Virgil excused himself walking past Roman but as he walked past Roman felt the press of lips on his cheek for but a second then it disappeared along with Virgil from his line of sight.

Roman touched the place on his cheek where Virgil kissed and felt himself swoon in bliss. He really just got a date with his soulmate and a kiss.

Ok, so maybe today wasn’t so bad.

— After school —

Both brothers arrived home in great moods, for once not arguing on the car ride home and when their mother asked how their day was they both replied in unison “Perfect.”

Author’s note: So this was my first attempt at a soulmate au fanfiction, I think I did pretty well, but please let me know what you think and maybe I’ll do another soulmate Sander sides fanfiction at some point again soon. Thank you for reading.

#random #sander sides #sanders sides #i love them #remus sanders #roman sanders #sander side virgil #sanders side fic #virgil sanders #janus sanders #soulmates #soulmate au #prinxeity #prinxiety #demus #dukeceit #fanfiction #fanfic

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typically-untypical · 4 months

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A New Beginning

AU: Flower Shop

CW: Remus typical sexual innuendos

WC: 2,186

Date: 12/15/2023

The doorbell rang on his store front and before Janus could say greet his newest customer he heard the man slam his hand on the counter his register sat on. "How much money would it cost to get a bouquet that says 'you're an insufferable git' in flowers?"

It seemed his reputation preceded him. Janus was known for his beautiful flower arrangements, but he was more known for flower arrangements that told people to fuck off without actually saying it. He didn't actually know how to use flowers to properly say things but he knew enough about some of the split meanings for flowers to come up with something convincing. Also, there were a lot of people who wanted to tell someone off, a boss, an in-law, or a friend they weren't too friendly with and so Janus had a brand. The stronger his brand, the more people bought for their unsuspecting victims. Janus had seen people choose quiet violence and he was happy to be of service if it meant a little extra money in his pocket. There was nothing wrong with someone telling their mother in law they hated her as long as she never understood the message.

"I believe that's something I can do for you, but I'm going to need a little more information. For example, who is this for? If it's for a family friend I would probably choose different flowers than something for an ex-lover." Janus looked the man up and down, sizing him up. He had wildly messy hair, like he had slept on it wet, and the strands were all dyed a variety of greens. However, despite the unkempt nature of his hair, he looked put together in a strange sort of way. There was beauty in his chaos.

"It's for my twin brother. He's not a bad guy but he also has his head stuck up his own ass. He has this play thing tonight and I want to get him something nice, but I also want to tell him to fuck off."

That was a lot of mixed and complicated feelings which made choosing flowers just a bit harder. Janus drummed his fingers on the counter as he thought about what would make the right impression. “What about Dandelions for nuisance, Candytufts for indifference, Buttercups for childishness, Meadowsweet for uselessness and since it seems like you do care enough for your brother to be getting a bouquet, Daisies for joy.”

The other man laughed a bit. “Am I that easy to read?”

"I'm just good at my job."

The man was blushing a bit but his smile was spread wide across his face. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. Could you do it today? I probably should have preordered this shit but I didn’t even know if I wanted to get him flowers. I thought about teasing him and getting him a bunch of fake snakes, or a bouquet of dildos but I also gotta make sure not to piss my mom off.”

“Completely fair, I had an order cancelled so I have time today. If you come back in an hour I’ll have it prepared for you.” Janus already had the boutique designed in his mind, the mix of white and yellow would look bright and cheerful but it would also feel slightly off putting in a dressing room for a play. It would probably feel exactly the way this man wanted.

“Perfect, you’re a life saver. My name’s Remus BT-dubs, and I’ll pay for this now so I don’t leave you hangin. But the price, I’m not made of money.” He was shuffling around in his pockets nonetheless and Janus realized he almost expected the man to pull out a credit card just as much as he expected a wad of unfolded dollar bills.

“I pride myself in pricing well for my skills and labor but also decently affordable.” He wrote down a number, passing it to Remus who looked it over before nodding.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can afford that,” He smiled, finally pulling out a wallet which somehow wasn't what Janus expected. That seemed to organized for a man of this chaos. “And you didn’t give me your name. Should I just call you pretty boy?”

‘Pretty’ Janus mouthed, eyebrow quirked as he looked at Remus. The man was lost to his own world as he attempted to pull out the money he needed and Janus watched him, head tilted to the side.

“I’m very careful about who I give my name out to, however, I’m sure if you try hard enough you’ll be able to find it.”

“Challenge accepted.” The man slammed down the cash with a brilliant grin that was also a bit twisted. Janus felt his heart jump and he straightened his shoulders, eyebrow quirked curiously. Remus just continued to smile so without another word he got together the order form and passed it over.

Remus signed, waved, and turned to leave. “See you later, Venus.”

Venus was the name of a god. Janus was the name of a god. There was no way he had figured it out already and made a joke based off of his name in that short time, right? No, it had to be something else. Not to insult the intelligence of a man Janus just met, but he didn't know anyone who could have figured out his name in that short of a time frame and then make a joke about it, not unless they already knew. Janus sighed and shook his head, walking to the back. It didn't matter. This guy was just a guy and whether he knew Janus' name or not wouldn't affect anything. Janus didn't flirt with patrons... well, not seriously. He might flirt a little bit to get a tip, but he wasn't going to go out with anyone. Anyway, he had a boutique to make and it was going to be the best bouquet he had ever made, not for any important reason. Just to prove a point. He slipped on his bright yellow gloves and grabbed his clippers.

An hour later, on the dot, Remus returned. He had cleaned up a bit, wearing a suit that was just slightly loose on him, hair slicked back and no longer raging against propriety. His smile was still wild, and Janus felt his chest grow tighter, a sensation he promptly forced down. “Hey Venus, did you get my flowers done?”

“I did, but why Venus?" He had spent far longer thinking about it than he would have liked to admit. When he was arranging flowers all he was left with were his thoughts and he couldn't wrap his brain about why that one. Why Venus? Janus leaned his face into his hand, elbow rested on the countertop that separated the two of them. He had to know, but he didn't want to seem desperate for the information.

"Y'know, like Venus Flytrap, because you lure them all in. I feel like you've got a dangerous streak and you're more than willing to strike if you need to." Remus smirked at Janus, something devilish that sent an imperceptible shiver down his spine. He was thankful he was good at hiding his emotions otherwise he would give away far too much to a man he just met. "And I think Venus is a bit more appropriate than Janus. After all, you are very sexually desirable."

Despite the cackle that filled his shop after Remus' comment, Janus found himself blushing more than he could control, pushing his long hair behind his ear before he once again schooled his face into nonchalance.

"Not tryin to make you uncomfortable," Remus said, "But I also meant what I said. You're pretty hot." He reached for the bouquet, and Janus almost reached out to meet him but it was too soon. They had just met each other.

"You didn't make uncomfortable, in fact you would have to do something quite outrageous to phase me." Janus looked at his nails, though his true focus was on the man just past his fingers.

"Is that a challenge?"

Did he want it to be a challenge? Did he want to see this man again or leave him as just another customer that occasionally came around. Who was he kidding. Self delusion wasn't his forte, so he smirked and tilted his head to the side. "I do ask you don't loiter here, I do need the space for customers." Would Remus get it? Would he understand the subtlety in Janus' smile or would he be just as dense as the recipients of most of Janus' flowers.

He got it, if Remus' smile was anything to go by. He pulled the bouquet close, hoisting it into his arms. "Alright, I'll show you what I've got." He looked Janus up and down. "Let the games begin." He didn't linger after that, waving a bit with his shoulders before pushing the door open with his foot. He wasn't supposed to flirt with customers, but this was fine. It would all be fine. He was sure Remus wasn't actually going to come back, so few people did when they made declarations like that. Their never got ahold of them and they disappeared from Janus' life.

The distraction had been nice at least.

Cleaning up the counter top, Janus looked at the door. It was closing time.

Two weeks later Janus' bell rang and he was surprised by the voice that greeted him. "Alright Venus, what can I get for my mom, something simple and beautiful so she thinks I'm a good son. Also, maybe something that if she looked up the flowers she would actually think I liked her, cuz I kinda do but y'know, I'm not gonna say that."

For a moment Janus looked at him, mouth hanging open. He was back? Remus had come back. Janus snapped his mouth shut to think. "Tiger Lilies," He started "They mean strength, Burgundy roses for commitment, and white hydrangeas. Hydrangea's typically mean family and white specifically can mean abundance. Overall it's a sappy combination that would make most people feel like they were cared about."

Remus nodded, "Make it so flower man, and while you're at it, throw in something for yourself." He was smiling that impish smile and Janus rolled his eyes, turning around so it would be far easier to hide the curl of his own lips. He had come back. That was a first and Janus was not going to admit how many times he had thought about Remus over the past fortnight. The other man was entertaining, at least that was the easiest thing to call it. He sparked an interest in Janus and sure he wasn't supposed to flirt with customers but fuck it. He was going to play along, at least until Remus walked away.

“What could I buy from my own flower shop that I don’t already have?”

“Good point,” Remus tilted his head. “What about something that says new beginnings? Or maybe fresh starts?”

Janus smiled, “I’ve always been fond of daffodils.”

“Good, one of those, and you can bring it on our date?” Remus wiggled his eyebrows. Another surprise. That was a bit forward wasn't it? What if this guy was actually a murder? That would at least be an interesting story if he survived, right?

"Oh really?" Janus responded, leaning back, "And where exactly am I meeting you on this so called date?"

"I'll pick you up here, take you to all the sites and wonders. By the time we're done you'll be so enamored with me that you won't ever want to leave my side."

Janus rolled his eyes with a slight smirk. "That's a pretty tall order, kidnapping me from my job and expecting me to get into an unknown car."

"Oh no, we'll be taken the bus. Cars are so espensy, and I'd rather spend my money on experiences."

"And can you truly show me a good time from a bus?"

Remus chuckled. "Of course I can, I'm a good time all on my own." He finished filling out his order form, leaving the money on the counter without asking how much it was. He did, however, turn around to plow Janus a kiss. "See you tomorrow."

Janus looked down at the money that was obviously too much for the order. He sighed and picked up the form, running his fingers along it as he read it over. It would be hard not to fall for this man, the way he smirked and smiled as if he knew exactly how things were going to turn out, or better yet, he didn't care about the outcomes. There was something else written at the bottom of the form, put outside the bounds of any box. A phone number. It was so cliche, so dumb, yet Janus found himself pulling out his phone and typing the number in. He wasn't smitten. He didn't fall that easy, but he was willing to play for a little bit.

So he named the contact Remus, and added a little heart.

@tsspromptmonth

#TSS Rare Gifts Event 2023 #Untypical Creations #Sanders Sides #Sanders Side fic #Fanfic #Remus Sanders #Janus Sanders #flower shop au #demus #dukeceit #pre relationship

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greenninjagal-blog · 3 months

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Deja Vu pt 12

Hey, pretend it hasn't been eons since the last update!

If you’re new around here you can find the first chapter [here] or if you just want a refresher you can find the previous chapter [here!]

Summary: Remus is falling, and he's just now realizing that he's been falling for a lot longer than he thought he'd been.

Word Count: 10901

Read on Ao3 || Hero Worship Series || My General Writing Masterlist

The thing about freefalls is that there’s absolutely nothing freeing about it, but there’s a whole lot of falling.

Sometimes minutes, sometimes seconds, sometimes years and eons and eternities and blinks: sometimes Remus doesn’t realize he’s falling at all because his brain has mentally reset too many times and he forgot there was ever a feeling that was not falling and then the weightless, worriless feeling becomes its own type of prison because he can’t do anything but fall.

It doesn’t feel like falling though. It feels like floating, like if he closes his eyes he wouldn’t be moving at all, like he could breathe and float and enjoy the dose of overwhelming euphoria that comes from his brain trying to make sense of all the alarms going on inside of him. He’s stuck and he’s floating and time means nothing, and existence means nothing, and Remus Regis means nothing.

Here’s the other thing about freefalls: they don’t end softly.

The sidewalk outside a skyscraper in Detroit that he gave himself access to on a Tuesday afternoon at 3:46 pm, the water surface that tastes like cement when Remus’s foot misses a step on the bridge railing on a summer night so hot it feels like his skin is peeling off, the rocky bottom of the shallow end of the pool from the hotel balcony when Remus got too curious, too tempted, too alone, the windshield of an SUV at 3 AM.

There’s no cushion. No parachute. No hidden cartoon trampoline or careful hands wrapping around his waist to drag him back from the plunges that he’s taking bites out of like they’re all midnight secret pleasures.

Remus steps off that solid sturdy ledge and there is no other ending. There’s no way for him to say wait, no way for him to scream hang on, no way for Remus to think I didn’t mean to lose control like this, please let me take it back, please let me kiss Janus one more time, please let me try on Virgil’s sweatshirt just for a second, please let me see that Roman fucking does care just this once—

Remus would know.

They don’t end softly. But they do end.

But hey, maybe that was for the best. Remus had spent his whole childhood choosing who gets to live and die. He’d been selfish and arrogant and Roman Roman Roman and now the universe was telling him he used up all his good will: the headaches and nose bleeds were all warning signs to knock it off and instead Remus flipped a coin in the air and told Janus that he was going to see this through.

((Remus is twenty one and he knew kissing Janus was like letting go of the railing. Is it any surprise that there’s no soft ending to this either?))

Remus’s body had curled on instinct: wrapping himself around the kid— Logan’s kid brother, Remy— so that Remus would hit the ground first and maybe his body would break the fall for the kid so he didn’t die due to Roman’s shitty ass powers and poor Library structural upkeep and Remus’s own stupid part in all this.

He’s never jumped with someone else before. Never had something to hold close as the tattering, violent winds and the heavy iron chain of gravity, and the long, drawn out, endless, breathless space between his heart’s rapid fire beating and none at all, work in tandem to make his last moments the most memorable. But despite it all, Remus’s arms wrap around Remy’s head and the impulse to protectsavekeepalive consumes the last of his mind.

(He can’t be older than sixteen, maybe seventeen, he can’t be any more enamored with his older brother, he can’t be aware yet that all older brothers are shit and they stand at the top of staircases in houses that don’t feel like home and they say I don’t need you, Remus— )

The noise around them turns to static and Remus can’t hear Remy’s scream, but he can feel it in how Remy clings desperately like he hadn’t been fighting to get away like a wild animal less than thirty seconds before.

Remus braces for the floor, for the pain, for the end because he doesn’t have any type of control and there are no soft endings and he was an idiot for ever thinking he’d get to have anything soft in his--

R emu s wak es up thi nki ng abou t sh ards of gla ss in his spine, barbed and jagged and clinging to his insides, because his inner organs are much warmer than the cool night air and much more accepting than the windshield frame.

There’s blood in his mouth, cotton in his throat, a bursting, bulging headache behind his eyes. The rest of his body almost feels like nothing in comparison. His limbs are a distant memory, or maybe a dream? He can’t quite remember what it’s like to have them, even as his left arm wavers in the air over his head and limp and heavy and Remus shakes it just to see if his wrist will fly off and toss his hand into the fuzzy world around him.

He’s lying on the ground.

His spine is still intact by some miracle. His skull isn’t shattered and his brains aren’t spilling across the white porcelain tile floor he’s on. He doesn’t even think his ribs are fractured although they ache and whine with bruises that match every other part of his body. If it weren’t for the dizzy, distant feeling of needing to vomit up all his organs Remus would think he just fucking died and this was his shitty prize in the afterlife.

He blinks a few times trying to… trying to focus his mind on anything. The taste of saliva in his mouth, or the scent of coffee and Lysol hovering in the air, or the pins-and-needles feeling of his fingers twitching as if they had lost all blood circulation in the blank space where Remus’s brain refuses to make any connection as to what is going on, what had gone on, and what is going to happen now.

It’s like scratched DVD in a video player: his memory plays perfect scenes, Blue Ray edition of his tragic life, right up until the floor breaks— until his arms wrap around Remy— until he tries to brace them both for the impact— then there’s a jump-skip-scratch and Remus is staring at blurry, fuzzy drop ceiling tiles and the outline of fluorescent lights that do not belong in the public library that Remus spent all of the night prior memorizing the layout of.

There are desks, a couple dozen, all around him; a giant window, partially weeping condensation and the blinds slightly bent that colors the entire set in a gold-yellow filter; cement brick walls painted a truly inspiring shade of off-white and if Remus squints he can make out pencil sketches of dicks dusting over the closest wall. But the masterpiece that ties it all together is the shitty poster handing right over Remus’s head, staring down at him in some type of mockery.

You miss 100% of the chances you don’t take, it reads. There’s a hockey puck and a net and fine white print of a “Wayne Gretzky” that makes Remus want to claw his skin off.

Remus is twenty one and he’s staring at a shitty drop ceiling feeling like he’s seventeen again and one of Roman’s friends just laid him out in the five seconds the teacher turned her back after the bell rang to release them. Remus’s lungs hurt as he laughs because— because his head swivels around and the cloudy surroundings begin to piece themselves together, creeping out of the fog to say hello, hello, do you remember the worst years of your life, Remus? We remember you!

He is not in a library. He’s not in the library. Remus thinks he’d rather be dead in that library than lying on the floor in a high school classroom.

It’s not even a classroom he recognizes. But the suffocating feeling of his mother forcing his jaw open and the powdered pill taste overwhelms all the other sensations in his disconnected body. The memory of snipped comments from his teachers rings in his ears, living ghosts that Remus hadn’t been able to shed no matter how loudly he’d screamed and hadn’t been able to outrun no matter where he’d gone. His eyes are burning, but he’s certain that if he closes them he’ll wake up again as that same stupid seventeen year old that let Roman’s shitty friends ruin his life on the blind hope that Roman wouldn’t turn out like them too.

Remus had met people who said they peaked at high school, that college had broken their spirits and grinded their souls to dust, that life after schooling was lofty and uncertain whereas high school had been crafted with such rigid rules and a constant social struggle that surpassing expectations had been a breeze that they no longer could grapple with not having. Remus doesn’t know much about normal people, normal lives, normalness, but he remembers very vividly thinking of blood dripping off his lip onto the boys locker room bathroom tile and knowing that he’d met people whose cruelty peaked at high school too.

((Fourteen year old Remus had been excited for high school. Seventeen year old Remus had gripped the edge of a gas station sink debating which hurt worse: getting run over, or knowing that Roman had chosen those asshole high school friends who were going to kill him at a party Remus hadn’t been able to convince him not to go to over his own brother.))

The sterile silence breaks suddenly with a soft snore, and abruptly Remus is very aware that the reason he can’t move the right half of his body is because there’s someone on top of it.

There are no soft ends to freefalls, but Remus’s chin is pressed against the dark curls of Logan’s younger brother who is completely asleep on top of the other half of Remus as if they hadn’t ever been in danger at all. The kid is drooling, lips barely parted, salvia dripping out onto Remus's leather jacket. The fake bomb vest Remus had been wearing is completely crushed, the edges of the cardboard digging numbly into Remus’s ribcage as the kid just curls up on him like a human sized koala.

“What the fuck,” Remus rasps out.

The kid doesn’t stir. Remus uses his still strangely disconnected left hand to shove at the kid’s body, bapping his face just enough to wake him, but the kid’s face scrunches and he nudges his face deeper into Remus’s chest, perfectly content to continue using Remus’s like a giant awkward pillow.

“Kid. Kid. Damnit fuck— Remy.” Remus says. Then louder. “REMY! Fuck, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

He shoves the kid off his right arm in a slow painful movement that is not made easier by the fact that Remus can’t feel anything that had been pinned underneath the kid, but after all the shoving, Remy still just gratefully curls up on the floor as if he found that just as comfortable as a king sized bed in heaven itself, and lets out a drowsy mumble of syllables and goes back to snoring.

Remus’s head throbs distantly as he tries to put anything together, come to some reasonable conclusion, remember if this was some part of Janus’s plan that he cleverly forgot about. He shifts slowly trying to leverage himself into a sitting position and still Remy doesn’t make any move to wake up and start screaming.

There’s a tsunami of panic in the back of Remus’s mind, blocked behind a glass wall made of confusion, just so that Remus can wave to it casually, experiencing microdoses of jitters that usually would have put him into a frenzied state of needing to drive a car into a guard rail. He needs to get up, he needs to find Janus and Virgil, he needs to find out if they’re okay, if anyone is okay, he needs to figure out what the fuck miraculous thing happened to save them both and why Remy then decided to curl up on a known villain, who may or may not be the most wanted man in the country and take a fucking nap.

He needs to— he needs—

They’re both at the back of an empty classroom and had been awkwardly crumpled against the back wall. Several of the desks closest to them are spread in some sort of weird ass pattern which, at first glance, Remus had assumed all teachers who needed to be on pills much more than Remus ever needed to be liked to put their desks in, but at the second, more clear glance, all the desks at the front are lined up in exact rows facing a wall mounted white board with the words “Homework: pg 234, odd problems ONLY!!” printed on it in blue expo marker. In the back closer to where Remus is, the desks were tossed out in some chaotic, nearly artistic design, swirling inward.

But the more Remus looks at it, the more purpose everything has: almost as if someone or something had rolled a giant human-sized, bowling ball into only the third row of seats.

It’s another second before Remus notices that where the figurative bowling ball would have ended is exactly where he just woke up with Logan’s kid brother solidly asleep on his shoulder.

“Ah,” Remus says to an empty classroom. “Fuck.”

Remus isn’t a genius, but well. He can see the future and Janus can shapeshift into animals and Virgil can talk to targeted people on frequencies no one else can hear. There must have been a reason Logan and his brother were both at the FBE.

All of Remus’s bones crack as he stands up, even bones Remus hadn’t been sure he had anymore. His neck aches so dramatically that would have made Roman jealous of its performance and his ribs are certainly whining like a little bitch and the taste of blood in the back of his throat might be real or it might be a side effect of reenacting a swan dive off a hotel balcony in a thunderstorm this time with the supporting cast of a teenager who may or may not be able to teleport on command. The clock on the wall is covered up with a handmade poster stating that a watched clock doesn’t learn math and Remus thinks that he hates this teacher more than he hated any teacher he actually had.

He squats back next to Remy, watching him sleep for a long second, the subtle in….hale and ex….hale steadily unconcerned in all the ways contrary to most people when a sociopath is this close to them. He’s got all the marks of being Logan’s brother, to be honest: the same nose shape, same eye shape, the same hair color although there’s a distinct lack of gel in his hair compared to Logan’s over-saturation. He’s wearing a black, unzipped biker’s jacket, and skinny jeans with white T-shirt that reads “I’m SLEEPING” in Times New Roman Font, like a joke that someone had half heartedly put together and abandoned half way through.

Remus taps his fingers on his knee twice before he makes up his mind. “If you wake up now, I’m going to shove a calculator down your throat.”

And then he starts a quick process of checking the kid’s pockets for his phone. Jacket pockets, inside jacket pocket, jeans front and jeans back as quick and formal as a bouncer at a casino checking someone for bugs. Remy snores deeply, and his breaths even out again and Remus steps back a healthy distance, filled with a relief he’s not going to acknowledge, and holding a slick black iPhone with a kawaii coffee cup hand painted on the case.

It's one thing to be on the FBI’s most wanted list for super villainy. It’s another thing for him to be on the list for the combination of an empty classroom, a sleeping teenager, and Remus’s reputation for being unhinged.

((Seventeen year old Remus remembers a party that he begged Roman not to go to and twenty one year old Remus sucker punches him in the face so he will shut up and stop bringing those memories up.))

The lock screen is a picture of Remy and Logan standing in front of some model spaceship. Logan’s expression is uncharacteristically open and excited, as if he’s experiencing true joy in the face of a hunk of metal. He looks….normal. Human. As if Remus hadn’t watched him die, as if Remus hadn’t feared that smug smirk on his face, as if Remus hadn’t heard Logan use whatever his bullshit superpower was to utterly dismantle all of Remus’s part of the plan, start a gunfight that could have killed them all, and look fucking good while doing it.

Remus could play the logic game here: the back right pocket is where Remus found Remy's phone, so it's a 56.734% or whatever likely that the kid uses his right hand to unlock. But in all honesty Remus “Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Fuck-This”-ed it and chose the right hand.

The kid’s hand is limp and cold as ice. It startled Remus for a whole moment, sending cracks along that glass wall holding back his panic. It if weren’t for the obvious respiratory movements, Remus would have thought he was handling a four-day-old corpse in the middle of a winter snow storm.

But he presses Remy's thumb to the sensor (a very logical finger choice and not at all picked at Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Fuck This again) to unlock it. And then, once Remus has congratulated himself on his very exciting first time hacking the mainframe, he swipes away every. Single. One. Of the billions of notifications the kid has. Even as he's doing it the kid gets fourteen more, each bright and shiny and terrifying to someone who only gets notifications when his phone is almost out of battery.

Instagram reels being sent by four people, text messages from a group of people who don't know how to say everything they need to in one message and aren’t afraid of double-quadruple texting, TikTok videos alerts, gacha game reminders, six calendar notifications for today alone--

The home screen is a selfie of Remy in a big group of kids, all laughing and smiling and holding boba cups and peace signs in the middle of a cafe. It's a bright day in the photo, and several school backpacks shoved under the table as if all the kids had run to this cafe after school on a whim. Probably Remy’s based on how he’s in the middle of it all, looking rather smug for someone who’s personal space had been reduced to a negative.

"I bet you and Roman would get along fucking great," Remus says.

Remus still stares at it for a long minute longer, analyzing the various smiles and fending off the bitter gritty feeling in the back of his throat that comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

"Whatever," Remus says, clicking the call button.

Nearly a dozen suggested contacts pop up when Remus starts painstakingly typing Janus’s phone number, with someone having the same number until the very last digit. Remus's thumb hovers over the call button, his eyes flicking to the dutiful clock in the top left corner of the screen (already crowded by new notifications again).

Math has always been one of Remus's more average skills: his perception of time and his ability to count are probably superior to any living being on the planet, but a childhood plagued by the constant visions of the most important person in his life dying meant that his focus had never actually been on his classes. His report card read out half the alphabet, but he especially cheesed his way through his math classes, using a hand full of futures to copy the answers off tests of various studious kids around him, instead of actually learning how the fuck to solve a triangle.

((Remus had been seventeen when Mrs. Copperson had decided to start making him take the her pop quizzes and tests out in the hallways by himself on account that his psychiatrist mandated drugs made him a distraction in her class and Remus liked adding "uck" after the giant red F's she stamped on his papers.))

Still, it throws Remus for a loop, checking the time and then the date because at most he thought he managed to buy Janus twenty minutes of distractions so that he could download the FBE's records and upload a virus that Virgil made which had the defining features of being able to eat through the rest of the system like acid and leave the FBE and Janus’s mother with nothing. When Remus had woken up in the stillness of this classroom it felt like his entire body had been in stasis for eons; a crumpled ragdoll that didn't need bones, left forgotten in the back of a closet or a computer suddenly being booted up but the whole rest of the world didn’t exist anymore thanks to one apocalypse or another.

In fact, Remus thinks that he might have just woken up from the best sleep he's had since he was eight.

But despite the surge of energy, the distant rolling anxiety, the strange suffocating stillness of the atmosphere, and how deep of a sleep Remy is in, the time reads of less than seven minutes since Remus guessed he'd been in the library surrounded by gunshots, clinging to a railing, and facing Roman’s maybe-brainwashed ass.

Remus thinks he might have spent all of it just getting his fucking barring on the new surroundings and the sleeping child and not being dead and buried in a library he’d never stepped foot in before today.

Janus and Virgil probably hadn't even made it out of the library themselves yet, assuming the entire library hadn’t come down with them.

Remus closes out of the call screen, searching through Remy’s apps for a news app that he doesn’t have, before Remus caves and pulls out DuckDuckGo. The top stories are already flashing on the screen: six different news sites with live reporting videos of what is happening at the FBE center in Portland. Remus taps on one that has a frozen picture of Kidnapped Virgil’s panicking face as the thumbnail.

“—et Down! Everyone, get down!” The female reporter is yelling. Underneath her, the border headline of the new site spells out Karen Davenport: Reporter. LIVE ON SCENE. As if the background wasn’t already enough to show what was going on. The tinted glass windows of the library shatter over the frame, and the camera fumbles as the glittering shards dance through the air to the tune of gunfire.

“Are you getting this?!” The reporter yells, caught between fear and excitement. Her hair is frizzing, a strand of it stuck to her pink lipstick, as she crouches with the other reporters and civilians at the front of the crowd, ignoring the police and hired guards and common fucking sense trying to back them away. The camera doesn’t seem to know what to focus on, struggling to jostle between the reporter and chaos in front of them.

Several people rush out of the doors of the library, nearly tumbling down the staircase and into the crowd, screaming. Remus’s heart thunders as he looks at the glimpse of faces contorted in horror for the people he’d recognize or a flash of those blue-grey eyes that no other person in the world has.

“John, are you seeing this?!” the reporter repeats. “I’m here, live at the newly registered FBE headquarters in—”

The camera and the cameraman pitch to the side, disrupted by the chaotic crowd rightened only at the last second before it topples to the ground. Remus has to wonder how much the person behind the screen is being paid, and how they could possibly think it's enough. The bruises on Remus’s ribs ache distantly and his tongue remembers the taste of tear gas and blood and—

By the time the camera rightens again, Virgil is skidding on the platform at the top of the concrete stairs leading up to the front of the shuddering-but-still-standing library. His mask is down, hung around his throat, and displaying his fangs for the world to see. Janus tumbles into him, nearly knocking him down the flight, and his mouth moves in a WE CAN’T LEAVE HIM way although the crowd and the reporter are too loud for Remus to truly make it out.

Virgil grabs Janus by the shoulder, yanking him down several inches and a blast of Patton’s white, power stealing light explodes over their heads in a narrow miss that makes someone to the left of the report scream so loud it peaks the microphone.

“Where is The Prince?!” The reporter’s mic picks up from someone nearby as the camera zooms in on Janus and Virgil arguing. “He was just here!”

“—where it appears a super power aided fight has broken out with no sign of The Prince. Twenty minutes ago, the controversial twin brother of the Prince, previously identified as Remus Regis, armed with a hostage, charged into the building igniting what was sure to be a direct confrontation with The Prince. However, no new information could be captured by our cameras until moments ago when gunfire from inside the building signaled some type of gunfight breaking out. Sources have even suggested that the Mezzanine level inside the building has taken significant damage and gave way— HEY!”

Logan materializes from the side, ripping the microphone away from the reporter with all the finesse of someone who previously owned it. His black jacket is dusted grey with the dust from the collapsed level inside and there’s a scratch along his hand that’s bleeding bright red. Still he shoves the reporter back and brings the microphone up to his own mouth even though his gaze isn't on the Library or the camera.

“The Prince was inside,” he says to the crowd of people still pressed together at the barricade line. “He managed to move fast enough to save all of those underneath the collapse and barely sustained any injuries himself. Statistically—”

“Give that back!” The reporter says lunging at him.

The camera frame latches on to Janus and Virgil as the camera man probably tries to help his coworker get the microphone back. In those precious seconds, Janus’s head snaps over his shoulder and he shoves Virgil back, pushing him down the stairs and towards the crowd and sets himself in front like a human shield. There are too many voices picked up by the reporter's mic— the fight between her and Logan has it jostled in every direction and the confusion must have jostled the settings, but Remus feels his stomach sink all the same when the library doorways fill with those guards and their guns.

“GET DOWN!” Virgil’s voice booms in the area, echoing off the buildings like a scream in a cavern. The rest of the windows in the library and the surrounding buildings shatter at the sudden pressure, the screen of the camera fractures, but it still gives a decent view of Janus throwing off his stolen lab coat, and the acute tips of his wings slicing through his shirt.

Remus feels like he’s underwater. Like he’s stuck floating in space as his arteries burst from the low pressure. Like he’s watching another (and another and another and another and anoth—) future and he can’t change it despite the fact that it's not 3 AM and there’s no thunderstorm and he’s not falling.

Janus’s wings erupt from his back, flaring outwards and unfurling like yellow and black caution tape, covering the civilians behind him like a burning shield. Virgil grabs the nearest person, Logan, and yanks him and the reporter under the cover, under the protection of Janus, and Remus wants to scream at them to forget the people, to leave them, to run, but he can’t breathe around the sweltering terror that sweeps through the open area leaping from the phone screen right into Remus’s chest.

“—police would know better than to fire into the crowd—” Logan’s voice says desperately.

“Oh MY GOD!” The reporter screams.

The light seers into his eyes with crackling, horrific popping noise. It's like popcorn, or Pop Rocks, or the Pen Clicker Douchebag Olympics and all Remus can think of is the noise that the bones in the human bone make when bullets splinter.

The camera does not catch Janus’s face, and the microphone doesn’t catch his screams over everyone else’s, but his body jerks, his wings tremble, and blood sprays up into a mist over the crowd. Remus thinks he might be dying too, thinks that he might have stopped breathing, that he’s seen Janus die a million times and it should have stopped feeling like he’s being ripped open.

“JANUS!” Virgil’s (unmistakable, indisputable) voice yells, sharp and cracking like lightning, and the blowback over the microphones would break the eardrums of anyone listening with earbuds.

“— multiple people have been reported to have survived being shot that many times!” Logan’s voice tries.

The camera gets a single shot of Virgil’s eyes widening, of his mouth opening, of his hands reaching out to Janus as he drops, wings still flared out trying to protect people who were too stupid to leave, who won’t even thank him, who don’t know his coffee order or how he likes to organize his stacks of stolen dollar bills or what size oxfords he likes to wear.

And then Virgil looks up, at the top of the stairs, opens his mouth, and everything explodes away from him. The camera frame flings into the air, swirling around in a epileptic nightmare of colors before slamming into something and the frame goes completely black.

On the news app, holding a phone in both his hands Remus stares at the “[The video you are watching is experiencing some connection issues]” message with white knuckles, but the video stays cut off, the screen frozen and broken and dark and Remus is left drowning during what feels like the end of the world from the other side of the universe a million years after it's happened.

“H-ha,” Remus’s mouth twitches, a rumble clawing up his throat with fingers made of his stomach acids. He desperately covers his mouth with a hand, pressing the meat of his palm into his lips if only to keep the laughter from tumbling out into the air like a freefall because there’s no such thing as a soft end and Remus was stupid for ever thinking so.

He thinks for a moment, that he’s back on that staircase staring at Roman knowing that what he says next is going to be the wrong thing, that he’s on the ground at a mall blinking away visions of flame grilled corpses and words that Janus doesn’t mean, that he’s in a crowd staring at an empty stage seconds and seconds and seconds too late for someone who trusted him more than Remus ever deserved to be trusted.

(How can he always be too late?)

The ground is solid and sturdy under his feet, but Remus is falling anyway. Suspended in the middle of a jump he hadn’t meant to take, his stomach is swooping with the acceleration pressing up into his lungs until he can’t force them to accept any oxygen anymore and his limbs are tingling in that disconnected way that makes them seem like they belong to someone else, something else, somewhere else.

He had fallen asleep, fallen into a wonderful dream, fallen and kept falling and forgotten that the real world didn’t end softly. A scream creeps up Remus’s throat, inch by inch, wriggling and thrashing and tearing horribly against his lungs.

His fingers tremble over the phone, fumbling through the apps for the phone even though he knows what's going to happen, he knows what’s coming, he knows, he knows, he knows.

The buttons are not stiff. Remus’s knuckles are not bleeding and they don’t leave behind traces of his blood as he dials. There’s not a gritty feeling along his teeth and the bottom of his mouth from the Cliff Bar that he ate at a rest stop an entire lifetime ago. His knees tremble to the sound of the ringing, leaving him swaying in the too-long silences, in the bated breaths, in the calm before the hurricane that’s left him at the only survivor when he was supposed to be the only casualty.

The line is ringing and Remus is standing in a high school classroom, shaking apart even though he knows that Janus is not going to answer. The line is ringing and Remus is standing at a payphone knowing that his mother didn’t try half as hard for him as she did for Roman.

The line is ringing and Remus is listening to a generic voicemail and his fingers are canceling the call just to start it again because maybe this time he’ll pick up, maybe this time Janus will huff at him for not believing in him, maybe this time Janus will snap about Remus not following a plan, maybe this time Janus will pick up the phone.

Remus remembered leaving his own phone in his bag, stuffed inside a pair of socks that he stole from Janus the second week they’d been together. He knows he watched Janus leave his in his own bag, grinning as Virgil and him had been bickering about if pumpkins were a fruit or a vegetable. So he knows, he knows, that Janus doesn’t have his on him, that answering a phone call would be the least of his concerns after— five, six, seven— bullets landed in him, that no matter how many times Remus’s fingers dial out the number, Janus still isn’t going to miraculously answer and beg him to come home and call him the wrong name anyway.

He’s twenty one and Janus is not going to pick up the phone call.

He’s twenty one and he thinks he’s been falling for far too long. He’d gotten too used to the jolt of adrenaline and taste of the winds. He’d been treating his four-year fall like a never ending dream that he could live in forever, and now he was waking up with a start in his bed with all his muscles contracting and remembering that the real world is a fucking nightmare.

Remus could have call himself a free fall expert, with all the times that he’s tipped himself over the edge, with how many times he’s merged himself with the concrete sidewalks, with the number of times he’s seen the great THE END to his own story but this… this—

He’s been falling for so long he forgot he’d been falling at all.

“I need to go back,” Remus gasps out.

The idea latches on suddenly, and Remus is suffocating in it, trapped in a void that’s approaching absolute zero at rapid speed. The anxiety swelling around him crashes down like a guillotine’s blade, sharp and merciless in all the ways that Remus has always known the universe to be and forgot anyway.

His hands are shaking and his knees give out but it's fine because he landed next to Remy’s sleeping form. He reaches out and shakes the kid’s shoulder, hard enough to jolt his entire body.

“Kid, Remy. Wake up. You gotta take me back. I need to get back to him.”

Remy's head lulls to the side, his skin an icy cold compared to the burning in Remus's veins. There's no movement behind his eyelids, no sudden jolt that knocks him awake, no grimace of his face or swallowing as he drags himself back to consciousness.

“It’s time to wake up!” Remus says. “You have to take me back!”

Because if he can get back he can— he can— Janus was on the ground, they were shooting at him, Virgil was screaming and Remus can see the future and they need him. If he can get back Janus can tell him what he needs to do to save him and Remus will kiss him and tell him and tell him he’s stupid and he’s sorry he left him. If he can get back— He needs to get back, he has to get back because they need him and Remus pinches hard on Remy’s cheek, but even that doesn’t cause the teenager to flinch.

“I have to fix this. Take me Back! Take me Back There! TAKE ME FUCKING BACK THERE!”

Remus shakes him, and Remy’s head makes a dull thud as it bumps the ground with each shove. Remus barely notices; his brain is counting every second he spends here, scrambling to catch the passing breaths like they're grains of sand in an hourglass counting out Janus's life while Remy dreams so soft and peacefully.

“REMY!”

--There’s no bump or bruise or anything under the dark curls, and Remus doesn’t even have a memory of hitting anything on the way down, not even the fucking floor and so there shouldn’t be shit causing him to be this fucking out of it. Janus was dying and Remus was here with an idiot fucking teenager who was sleeping like they had all the fucking time in the Fucking World. If it weren’t for Logan, if it weren’t for Remy, if it weren’t for Remy’s fucking horrible power that Remus didn’t ask for him to use--

--There’s no bump or bruise or anything under the dark curls, and Remus knows too much about being splattered on the ground to think that they might have hit it like that, to think they might have died, to think that the bitchass kid in front of him is doing anything other than pretending like they have time to pretend to be asleep when Janus just took seven bullets for people who don’t love him and wouldn’t care if he was dea--

--There’s no bump or bruise or anything under the dark curls, and Remus took the brunt of whatever hit they did have, was ready to fucking die when Remy did whatever the fuck he had to get them out of there, wasn’t going to let Remy get hurt and he didn’t get hurt so Remus shouldn’t need to keep shaking him to get him to wake up because they need to get back to Janus who just got shot and shot and shot And Shot AND SHOT and Remus needs to fix it because Janus wasn’t supposed to die, he wasn’t supposed to be alone, Remus promised to stay, promised to help, why aren’t you waking up What is wrong with youwakeup,WakeUp WAKEUPWHATDOESITTAKETOWAKEYOUUPDOYOULIKETHIS?DOYOUTHINKITSFUNNY? STOPMESSINGAROUNDHE’SGOINGTODIEICAN’TFIXITICAN’TSTOPITWHATDIDIEVERDOTOYOU?--

Remus blinks his eyes, just barely manages to stop himself from ramming the kid's head into the porcelain tile floor again.

His hands are around Remy’s head, cupping his ears, and Remy’s limp body is impossibly still, barely breathing and the golden yellow light reflects off the poster over them creating a red hue over his pale skin.

There’s no blood.

Remus can’t breathe anyway. His hands are trembling, his fingers stiff and robotic and bending like metal spoons when he pries them off Remy’s uninjured head. The kid’s skull lulls to the side, a soft huff, another snore, and Remus thinks he’s losing his mind.

The cold silence of the classroom has the walls closing in around them, the cinder blocks exchanging knowing looks because even if Remy didn’t wake up, even if that future— those futures— didn’t happen, even if Remus backs away now and swears never to get near the kid again, the sticky feeling of brain matter on his hands won’t leave.

He can't be older than sixteen.

There’s something in Remus's throat that tastes like blood and feels like live bees and burns like tear gas and hot sauce. He scrambles away from the kid, slamming into a desk so hard that his ribs displace further than the desk does as he flees the room.

((He remembers running through halls like these once, remembers his nose feeling like it was broken when one of Roman’s friends grabbed his hair and slammed his face into his locker after the last bell, he remembers leaving his bag behind in his panic to get away, scrambling on nearly on his hands and knees with blood from his second broken nose trailing down his lip. He remembers the laughter of billions of students as he ran away, and he remembers Roman waiting impatiently at his car later, asking where he was, why he took so long, doesn’t he know that Roman has play practice at the community theater today? Why would you deliberately try to make me late? I’m not even going to ask what happened to your backpack. I should have just left you here, Re. Come on, Let’s go.))

He remembers blood on his hands and on his face and a hundred billion bathroom mirrors that show a person he doesn’t recognize and hasn’t recognized for a long time.

The posters on the walls are colorful smears and Remus wants to drag them down one by one and tear them apart as he runs. His shoes skid on the polished tile and he takes the corner so sharply he slams into the lockers and remembers the sound of a sleeping teenager’s cranium shattering under his fingers.

Remus hits the ground, panting, laughing, choking, crying until the world around him blurs. He’s suffocating on oxygen that tastes like tar, on breaths that congeal in his lungs like molasses, on gasps that harden like stone in his tightening rib cage. It burns worse than a fireball to the face, searing, smoldering, scorching his entire body.

And Remus— Remus can’t— he can’t get it to stop, every inhale throttles in his throat wheezing out through the hundreds of puncture holes in him that match every gunshot wound that Janus is currently dying out from, eons and realms and miseries away, because he believed in a promise that Remus had never been able to keep to anyone.

Stupid, idiot Remus.

Murderous, psychotic Remus.

Sick, sick, so fucking sick Remus.

Who kills— who killed— Roman. Remy. Who got Janus killed and dragged Virgil in this. His parents. Those people at school. Those people on the street. Everyone. All the time. Sick, stupid Remus.

Who can’t just fucking seem to kill himself and make it stick.

Fuck. Fucking Fuck.

He can’t breathe.

He’s aware of every oxygen atom fizzling in the air around him, laughing as he gasps for some type of stability, like he’s on the Mezzanine Level of a library that’s centuries away, feeling the floor crack under his feet and staring at a brother who doesn’t love him and probably never has. His throat is sandpaper and dried stucco and blood and every version of I love you that he never said to his father and when he blinks his eyes, the ghosts of every person he didn’t save, couldn’t save, hadn’t saved, are screaming around him because he can’t do anything right, he can’t save anyone, he’s a murderer and always has been and he’s been pretending this whole time that it was Roman’s fault, but it wasn’t, was it?

It’s just Remus. Sick, stupid Remus. Who should have died getting hit by a silver sedan going twenty over the speed limit instead of Roman.

It would have been better if he had. It would have been right. It would have been— It would have been—

Fuck. It would have been good.

Because if he hadn’t survived, Mom would have never known how to be disappointed, Dad would have never stopped coming home, his friends would have never turned into the monsters that he’d brought out in people. Janus never would have been attracted to a Casino where rumors of a person who never lost were and he never would have died a billion times for something as meaningless as money and Virgil never would have been dragged back into this fight kicking and screaming just to watch his best friend, his lover, his everything die in front of him.

Remus laughs, tears dripping off his chin into the polished floor, splattering over the shadowed silhouette of his reflection. He presses his forehead into the tile, squeezing his eyes closed because if he can’t see— if he can’t see it then— then— fucking then—

It would have been better if he hadn’t been born. All he’s done is ruin things and people and places. He’s brought out the worst pieces of people, like a magnet for every terrible thing that the people he loves are capable of doing: he’s stained through the family portrait and leaving black smears on everything he touches.

He’s seventeen again standing outside Roman’s room staring at a closed door and wondering why Mom didn’t come to break them apart, why Dad hasn’t been home for dinner in months, why the future he saw didn’t line up with what happened and why he can’t stop laughing and why he hurts and hurts and hurts and why Roman seems so certain that he’d be okay without Remus when Remus had given him everything there was to give of himself? Why is he the only one hurting? Why is he always the only one hurting?

He’s seventeen and he’s twenty one and he’s eight and he’s eleven minutes younger than Roman and he wishes that he’d just died instead of growing up.

Because— Because if he stares at his reflection and sees that kid, that stupid idiot sick little kid he’d wrap his hands around his throat and s-squeeeeeeeze just to put him out of his misery because it didn’t get better. Because it only hurts more. Because he wanted to be so right that he stopped listening and maybe those pills had made him better and—

Remus wheezes against the stranglehold on his own lungs, painful and grating and choking as his eyes fight against tears he didn’t give permission to leak out. There’s a person staring back at him in the polished white tile floor, and he looks like a boy who he once saw get run over by— fall off of— dropped a toaster in with— scissors— keys—

A hundred million deaths and Remus didn’t learn from any of them.

There’s a reflection of every person Remus didn’t want to become staring at him and then there’s not because there’s a purple blob covering right where his right eye would be.

Remus gasps for air, sucks in, gulps, and his fingers scrabble over the item: small, round, fits in his palm. His thumb grinds into the imprint on the flat side, his nail chipping along the irregular shape, the irregular grooves, the irregular scratches and gouges and furrows.

The color is plum purple with intersects of off-white eroded with wear until its nearly gray and Remus hysterically remembers bruises on his own skin, on his throat, on his ribs, on his shoulders, on his knuckles. He’s staring through burning eyes, through lava tears, through ashy eyelashes thick with slag and he’s thinking, a coin, a casino coin, a casino chip, a promise made between business partners in a hotel room of a place that housed a million deaths for both of them before Janus’s death had meant anything to him.

There’s a snake on the coin, jaw agape, with fangs on display inviting danger, courting risk, encouraging peril because it’s survived it all anyway. There’s gash across one of the unseeing eyes, notches in the scales, scrapes along the trimming edge from Remus’s special brand of stupid, idiot carelessness, but the dirt and grim has been cleaned from it by Virgil’s gentle, kind hands. There’s a coin in his palm that Janus once bet with, bet on, bet for.

Remus’s lungs ache and weep and Remus squeezes the coin to his chest, and breathes.

His chest shudders in rebellion too short, too quick, and Remus’s fingers ache from how they cling and hold and stay. He breathes, he breathes, he breathes. Even when it feels like he’s trying to move a mountain, even when it feels like he’s trying to climb his way to space, even when it feels like he’s trying to un-bury himself from the grave his family put him in at eight years old.

Remus is twenty one years old and he breathes.

When it stops feeling like he’s drowning after every breath, when the fireburningacidic sense pitters out like a resilient spark being snuffed along hot coals, Remus finds himself sitting against a row of olive green lockers. His head feels cotton stuffed all over again and he uses his sleeve to wipe his face numbly, only managing a wince when he tries to uncurl himself from the ball he coiled into. His spine creaks, twinges, complains and whines and Remus makes an awful noise when he straightens out and takes another look around himself.

Right. Hallway. Highschool. Right.

“Fuck,” Remus rasps.

The hall is empty, and Remus almost laughs at the passing thought of hundreds of students being in the building peeking out of the classroom to see a wanted supervillain having a breakdown in the corridor. He’d be the picture perfect symbol of “Reasons to Stay in School”, and he could almost hear the squeaky voice of a well-meaning, underpaid educator clicking their tongue and saying “And this is what will happen if you don’t clean up your act and focus on passing your classes. Do you want to be this type of embarrassment to yourself?”

Jokes on them, Remus thinks idly. He’d been an embarrassment to himself for so long he didn’t know how to be anything else. He was— is— a mess, the stain and splatter on a blank canvas that ruins it for the artist, the blemish in a glass that causes it to shatter at the slightest touch.

He’s also alone, and not falling, and holding a coin made of a thousand promises. He’s a mess and he’s Janus’s mess.

The thought sends a pain down his throat, an itch that only another round of sobs would satisfy. If he closes his eyes he can picture Janus sitting next to him dressed up in that suit he likes, yellow and gold and dangerous. He can picture those blue-grey eyes that only ever looked at him with kindness, and hear his haughty tone repeating that he does have a poker face thank you very much, and smell the cardamom scent that follows after him like a cloak. If he lets himself sink, he knows he’ll fall into that memory of Janus carding his hands through Remus’s hair, warm and gentle despite all the ways that Remus continued to fuck up.

But he can’t let himself. Remus shakes with his whole body, dislodging the warmth of the anamnesis.

He’s not sure where he is, or what he is, or who he is anymore. But he knows he can’t stay here. He knows he doesn’t want to stay here.

His list of other places to go is short— achingly, brutally short— but it's okay because Remus is not exactly in the mood to do a lot of thinking. He feels like someone came and stole all his skin while he wasn’t looking, like he’s raw and exposed for all the world to see and not in a fun way. The walls aren’t leering at him; they’re sharing side eyes with each other, snickering and whispering about Remus just loud enough for him to know they think he’s irrational and weird.

There’s a chill ghosting along his limbs that he hadn’t noticed before, something plucking at his skeleton, wrapping him in a cocoon of cold. He feels sluggish, and distantly hungry. The thrumming of his headache is back, pounding in his skull like a car alarm someone set off in a hit and run.

He drags himself back to his feet, hugging the lockers as his legs wobble and his vision blurs. It clears after he gives himself a frustrated tickticktick of a second.

He can’t go back to that Library. Remus’s mind creates the picture of it without prompting: the gaping broken structure marked off with caution tape and police officers and all private security; News reporters and cameras flashing because horror sells more than common sense; Roman. The frozen picture left of the news video has Remus’s lungs combusting. How many people got caught underneath? How many people got hurt when Remus managed to get out without more than bruises? There’s a body cooling at the top of a concrete staircase for everyone to see, a martyr made of love for strangers who never fucking deserved it.

If he goes back, walking on his own two feet, he’ll fall to his knees next to that body, and that fall will have so much collateral damage that Janus’s sacrifice would mean nothing.

He can’t go to Virgil’s apartment again. Remus knows that like he knows he can’t trust himself to drive a car without losing track of the speed limit. If he thinks too long about Virgil’s apartment, he’ll remember what Janus’s lips taste like, what level of softness Virgil’s clothes feel like, what warmth and safety and hope could be like, and the stability that is keeping Remus’s feet underneath him will give away. If he goes to Virgil’s apartment he’ll remember everything that could have been and he'll try to figure out he's supposed to do without....without.

And if then he’ll tumble off Virgil’s little balcony and the thing that crawls out from the splatter— because something will crawl out— will take a retribution in pieces from every person it sees after that.

((His bones are humming, rumbling, vibrating with the horrible horrible urge to go anyway.))

He can’t go back to the hotel room he shared with Janus just three days ago, before Roman had reappeared, before the world knew his name, before Janus was Janus and before Remus let himself admit that he wanted to be loved like loving him wasn’t a fucking nightmare that got people killed. For all Remus knew the organization of the parking lot, and the sounds of the city at night, he couldn’t remember the name of it as much as he could remember the taste of rain during a thunderstorm.

He breathes. Forcibly.

Remus is awake, jolted out of a dream he didn't know he'd been in and now he doesn't recognize his surroundings anymore and doesn't think he can fall back asleep ever again.

There's no Idahoan Mall. There's no stolen cars with seats reclined enough for Remus to throw his feet on the dash. There's no generic diner with waitresses that will scream over a kiss. There's no casino with sparkling chandeliers and smiling strangers waiting to be business partners.

That’s nothing new. Remus hasn’t had a stationary place to stay since he was seventeen. He slept in cars and in back alleys and hotel rooms he jimmied the lock to. He hitchhiked his way from the east side of the country to the west with nothing but a bag of two outfits and a pair of boots he stole.

Now he’s twenty one and doesn’t even have a bag.

Well. Remus blows out a breath. He doesn’t have his bag yet. The fragments of the plan are coming back to him, like broken puzzle pieces: Janus had drafted up the entire thing on the napkins on Virgil’s coffee table until Virgil had relented into giving him paper. For all that Virgil had been stubborn about not being involved, he’d been drawn into the planning phase like a comet falling into a blackhole, vetoing ideas left and right as a one man council and poking holes in others like he’d been possessed by a bored second grader left alone with a hole puncher and a stack of report cards.

Janus had picked out Linda Maddock the chocolatier and her daughter as his own way in (after several arguments over how to approach the situation: Janus had wanted to give the mother plausible deniability by not telling her at all, and Virgil’s voice had found a pitch that could make glass shatter), and negotiated Remus’s way in with an antsy vampire who didn’t like the idea of having all those eyes on him for such a long time (a whole five minutes). After about an hour of pointless back and forth, Remus had stepped in to personally promise that Virgil wouldn��t be the center of attention for more than thirty seconds; Remus would steal the show himself or he’ll brighten the ever present spotlight on Roman. Virgil had been soothed with promises of being labeled as a victim of a horrible kidnapping, and subsequently forgotten after he’d been “saved” just like all of Roman’s other damsels-in-distress.

“Alright, fine. Fine! Stop looking at me like that!” Virgil had said, chewing on his lip with his fangs. “You both have a way in. How are you idiots going to get back out? Other than in body bags after this blows up in your faces.”

They had a bunch of contingency plans for their exits. The first was if everything went according to plan and it meant that Janus would sneak his way out through the back entrance of the library and then welcome himself in from the outside through the front for the cameras to catch, swooping in to drag Remus out before anyone could figure out what happened. It incorporated time for Janus to throw a few misleading comments about where he’d been, and for him to flash a smile at the cameras, both of which Janus had insisted were non-negotiable points for himself and Remus had kissed him for it.

If Janus got found out and an alarm got pushed, he was to ditch the flashdrive entirely and get himself out by any means, Remus would leverage the bomb threat over Roman and the security until he got outside and then Janus would find him and fly them to safety. If Janus didn’t meet up with him again (meaning he got caught or injured enough that he couldn’t heal), Remus was supposed to use the crowd to get away, stealing what hats and other clothes he could until he was a few streets away and felt safe again. If no alarm went off but Janus wasn’t appearing for their escape, (meaning that something worse than being caught or injured was going on) then Remus was supposed to ditch entirely, use the crowd to escape, and let Virgil figure out what happened.

If Roman called Remus’s bluff immediately, the whole plan was to be ditched and both him and Janus were to leave by any means possible.

If Dragana Witchall appeared at any point, the whole plan was to be ditched and they’d escape by any means possible.

If aliens attacked—

Remus is pretty sure they had everything covered except for what to do when Logan steps forward and steals the whole show. Revealing the bombs were fake, incentivizing the gunfight with innocent civilians around, having Remus suddenly outnumbered and forcing Virgil out of hiding just to save his life…Remus hands shake thinking about freefalls.

In every version of the plan they said goodbye to Virgil at the library, never to see him again, but amidst the gunfire Remus had hesitated leaving him there and it had caused their escape opportunity to explode into fragments and bring the Mezzanine level down on their heads literally.

But also in every version of the plan, their place of residency to lay low after it all is a motel several counties away that Virgil drove to after he’d done the honors of tossing the molotov cocktail through the library window at nine thirty and checked into and left their bags at.

So. That’s where Remus’s best bet is to gather his unstable, unsteady, un-fucking-believable thoughts and figure out what to do next. The Motel. He can get Janus’s things. He can get his own things. He can figure out a plan to get Janus’s body back and he can bury it somewhere safe and gentle and and and—

He takes a step away from the lockers he’s leaning against and the batshit fucking insane amount of exhaustion yanks at his bones. As if someone amped up the gravity on earth and Remus was the only one to get the fucking memo, or maybe the one who fucking cared to notice all the hard work the universe was doing.

The thought nearly drags a laugh out of his abused strained lungs: wouldn’t that be grand? If the universe took gratitude that Remus was paying attention to it and decided to repay it with even the tiniest smidge of kindness? Wouldn’t it be amazing to wake up in a few seconds and realize his entire life was just one nightmare that never happened? Wouldn’t it be fucking fantastic if he could shed this reality the same way he shed every single one of his deaths?

The more he looks around the less the hallways mimic the ones that he’d grown up in: the brick pattern here is off-white and green and he grew up with gold and reds and blacks, the walkways are wider, polished and there’s no graffiti on any lockers that point out exactly who everyone had collectively decided didn’t belong. The lack of real color has him feeling off-balanced and the haze of weariness has his footsteps dragging like a dream he didn’t remember entering: there’s a taste in the air that reminds him inexplicably of being in the middle of a crowd and seeing flashes of white light wrap around him until there’s nothing left of the world he knew.

He only barely knows where he ran, barely realizes that he’s retracing his blurry fuzzing panicky paces until he’s nearly walking right by the only classroom with an open door.

Remy is still laying there, on the floor, unharmed and asleep, chest rhythmically lifting and falling with a deep unconsciousness. It feels like no time has passed, like all the time has passed, like the world is gone and they’re the only ones left, and at any second Remus will turn around and find a billion people behind him watching and waiting to prosecute him for the mistake he makes.

He hovers in the doorway, hands dragging along the fringe of his shorts, and fingers catching on his fishnets. His feet are waiting to walk away, to sing adios as he leaves the kid right there, to forget about the feeling of brain matter on his hands and the shine of blood on the off colored brick walls.

No one would have to know about a future that didn’t happen, and he could keep running away.

But Remus can’t help thinking of the snippets of blurred futures where Remy got shot in that library for the crime of being behind Remus when he dodged and how Logan screamed like the world was ending. Remus can’t help but think of a home screen of a boy surrounded by more people than Remus can count. Remus can’t help thinking that people would miss the kid in front of him more than they had ever missed Roman Regis’s weird younger brother.

“Okay,” Remus says to himself. “Okay.”

He’s not Janus. He’s not a shield to defend against attacks, throwing himself forward without a hesitation to take the brunt of something he won’t survive. He’s not and never has been, but if Janus were here he could never leave this kid to wake up alone after dying or near dying or almost dying or dying-but-not-this-time or not-dying-but-I-thought-I-was. Remus is not a comfort, but even he wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone.

He shoves his way into the classroom before he can think anymore. The desks flinch apart with a little persuasion from Remus’s hands, jolting like they’re afraid of him, of what he did to Remy, of what he could do again. The small shrieks of noise pick and pluck at Remus’s resolve, until he’s moving on adrenaline and animal brained instinct only.

((There’s a phone on the ground, face down, with a coffee cup winking up at him, and Remus’s hands shake as they pick it up. It’s not covered in blood and his hands are not sticky and there’s a billion notifications dinging on the screen and not a single one talks about a murder that just happened on live TV to a man whose last act was trying to protect people.))

But he can’t think about that. He won’t think about that. He told himself not to think anymore, and so he doesn’t, not until he has Remy’s arm pulled over his shoulder and he’s dragging him towards the hallway again, and then after that, the only thing Remus is focusing on is getting them both to somewhere far, far away.

[Next Chapter]

#deja vu au #Remus sanders #Janus Sanders #Remy Sanders #Lets goooooo #sanders sides #demus #dukeceit #tw: panic attack #TW: temporary character death #Remy's existence is enough to get him into Situations(TM)#That Feral Type of Love That Makes You Commit Crimes

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i-am-bitterly-jittery · 2 years

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Teacher AU

Logan and Roman are the rivals that no one realizes are married. Logan teaches English, Roman teachers drama, and they both have different interpretations of Shakespeare and the likes. Frequently yell at each other in the halls about Romeo and Juliet

Patton and Virgil are the couple that everyone knows is married but they’re confused about it. Whenever Patton learns that one of his students have Virgil’s class after his he asks them to deliver notes for him. The notes say things like “ily -p” or a variety of puns based off either his or Virgil’s subject. Virgil pins them all to a board in his room but otherwise doesn’t acknowledge them at all (his class can’t see him being soft!)

Janus and Remus think that everyone knows they’re married because they have the same last name and they’re not trying to hide it, but no one ever notices or brings it up.

#sanders sides #ts sanders sides #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #sanders sides au #teacher au #logince #moxiety #dukeceit #demus

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goodieghosty · 2 years

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Dialog is from Sinbad

Remus: Wake up, my beauties. Rise and shine. It's a brand new day, and the mortal world is at peace-But not for long

Janus: Up to no good, I see

Remus: Always

#digital art #godsides au #art #sanders sides #artists on tumblr #godsides au asks #tsart #remus sanders #janus sanders #snake #remceit #demus

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fangirlwriting-stories · 2 years

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Complete Me (Please)

Summary: Roman has been waiting his whole life to meet his soulmate. Okay, yes, he can already hear Logan's voice in his head that their wouldn't be a way to wait less than your whole life to meet your soulmate, but the point stands that Roman has been waiting longer than is assumed normal. And he isn't going to say that hasn't been hard on him. But that doesn't really matter, because he knows the minute he meets his soulmate everything is going to click into place and all of his problems will disappear.

Or at least, that was supposed to happen.

Everything, Roman knew, would work out once he met his soulmate.

That was how love worked. That was how life worked. That’s what everyone had always told him. His parents had met in high school and fallen in love just like they were supposed to. His best friend Logan had met Patton and they’d fallen in love just like they were supposed to. Even his brother had fallen in love with Janus just like he was supposed to. And they were all so much happier afterwards. Granted, they’d all been doing okay beforehand, and Roman was… oh, but that didn’t matter! Roman didn’t have to worry! Because one day he’d meet Virgil Storm and then he’d be totally fine! Because that was how it worked!

Until then, he’d just ignore the disappointed looks from his parents when he went home for the holidays, as if expecting him to somehow control when he met his soulmate. He’d ignore the worried looks from his brother and his friends, as if they thought he could do something to make life move faster, to make his life start already. He’d ignore the looks he got every time he explained to someone that yes, he was graduating college this year, and no, he hadn’t met his soulmate yet.

He’d ignore it all and he’d be fine. Because it was only a matter of time, and then he’d actually be fine. Then he’d have his soulmate, and everything would be okay.

Unfortunately, whether that day came next week or next decade, he couldn’t spend all the time in between focusing on it. He had classes to pass, careers to build, and bills to pay. The last thing on that list was why he was here.

He’d gotten the job as something that would pay those bills until he hopefully got his first acting job. (His prospects there, at least, were looking much more promising than his prospects in his love life. He had auditions coming up in a few months for roles he could do in his sleep.) Selling coffee wasn’t exactly the dream, but he could be friendly and he could sell things and he could run a cash register. Besides, it was temporary. Just like being single.

On his first day, he was handed his apron and nametag and directed towards the person who was going to train him, who for some reason was not wearing a name tag and leaning on his elbow behind the counter and looked like he’d rather be anywhere else in existence.

Even so, Roman put on his best smile and walked over to him. “Hello! I’m Roman! May I ask who has the honor of training me on this lovely Tuesday?”

The person turned a gaze on Roman that had about all the grace of a feral raccoon, and then turned back towards the counter. “We open in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Talk to me when that happens.”

“Oh, well, I mean I think I should probably know some of what to do before that happens?” Roman said, rubbing the back of his neck.

The person groaned, and pushed himself up to a standing position. “Fine,” he said. “Listen closely, I won’t be repeating this. Regular coffee cups are over there, coffee is in those huge-ass heater things, we sell mugs for fifteen bucks, yes that’s overpriced but you can’t say that to the customers, all of the creams are over there including whipped cream and other toppings for shitty fancy crap that doesn’t even count as coffee, all the prices are on the wall behind me, it’s your first day so I’m making you do all the hard chores.” With that, he flopped back down onto his elbow. “If you have questions, keep ‘em to yourself.”

“Uh, what’s your name?” Roman asked, feeling a little offended.

“What did I just say?” the person snapped, glaring up at him. “I intentionally don’t wear a name tag so people don’t know my name, why would I then tell you upon asking?”

“Because it’s polite?”

The person blew a raspberry. “I just sell coffee to customers, and we’re just coworkers, no one involved in those interactions needs to know my name.”

“Okay then, you’re rude,” Roman said, rolling his eyes and moving away to look for everything the person had pointed out. Coffee cups, giant heater-looking things that held coffee, creams, prices that he’d have to work on memorizing. He had no idea where the mugs they apparently sold for too-high prices were. Maybe he’d ask someone else.

Roman gave the person at the counter a distasteful look. Anyone else would do, really.

A little while later, the person went up and flipped the sign around to open, then moved back behind the counter.

No one was there immediately, but it didn’t take long for people to start trickling through the doors, and as soon as they did, Emo Feral Raccoon Person immediately turned into a completely different person.

“Hi, what can I get you today?” he asked, putting on a pleasant smile that almost gave Roman whiplash.

He’d been instructed to watch for a little while to get a feel for how things worked, so he watched as Emo Man helped the first couple people in line, then he moved to try helping the next person at the other register.

“Hi, what can I get you?” he asked. Naturally, the customer rambled off a list of things that all somehow went into one coffee, and Roman immediately felt in over his head.

Thankfully, it seemed Emo Man wasn’t a completely horrible person, because he headed over to the register the second the customer started talking.

“Sorry sir, it’s his first day, so I’ll be helping out a little bit,” he said. “Can you run through that one more time?”

The customer, looking irritated, did so, and then Roman followed Emo Man as he made the coffee, taking note of everything while he did, and then turned to face the next customer as soon as he finished.

Thankfully, this person just ordered a black coffee, which Roman was able to take care of.

He fell into a groove eventually, and while Emo Man had to help with an occasional complicated order, Roman felt he did pretty well for his first day.

The coffee shop didn’t close until 9:00 that night, meaning since this was just a training shift for Roman, someone was going to relieve him around lunchtime. But about half an hour before that happened the manager Carol appeared from the back during a time the store was empty.

She tapped Emo Man on the shoulder. “Virgil, take the trash bags out, would you?” she asked, and suddenly Roman couldn’t breathe.

“Wait a second,” he said, and both of them turned to face him. “Your name is Virgil?”

Virgil glared at Carol. “See now why’d you have to let him know that?”

“No, no, I—” Roman waved his hands. “Virgil Storm?”

Virgil got a very suspicious look on his face. “Who’s asking?”

Roman reached for his shirt and pulled his sleeve up, revealing his wrist. “Uh. Roman Prince?”

Both Virgil and Carol’s eyes widened, and a second later Carol clapped her hands together, starting to smile. “Oh! Never mind about the trash bags Virgil, you can take your fifteen minute break now!”

“Oh, no,” Virgil said instantly, turning towards the trash cans. “Those things are overflowing, let me handle them.”

“Virgil,” Carol said, giving him a strained smile. “You can take your fifteen minute break now.”

“I don’t want to take my fifteen minute break, Carol,” Virgil said, giving just as strained a smile back.

“Well, I simply insist,” Carol said, widening her smile. “Virgil, show Roman where the break area is please.”

“But I don’t—” Virgil groaned and looked up at the ceiling. “If someone’s up there after all, now would be a perfect time to strike me down.”

“Uh… did I do something wrong?” Roman asked hesitantly, trying to shove down the massive pile of nerves this whole interaction was bringing.

“Nope,” Virgil said, sounding very done. “Let’s go to the break area, hurray…”

Roman’s hands started shaking a little as he followed Virgil.

They headed to a spot in the back that had some falling apart chairs and table, and Virgil sank into one, crossing his arms.

“Look,” he said, giving Roman a very done stare. “I appreciate that the universe is trying to hand me a gift wrapped relationship or whatever, but I’m not looking for a partner right now.”

Roman’s hands were definitely shaking. He swallowed. “What?”

“I mean I just…” Virgil ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know you very well, dude. And no offense, but it doesn’t really seem like we have a ton in common.” He gestured between his outfit of all black and Roman’s bright red shirt and light blue jeans.

“I…” Roman’s mouth felt dry all of a sudden. “But… but we’re soulmates.”

“So?” Virgil flopped back in his chair. “That means I owe you something?”

“But—” Roman next breath came in wheezy, and suddenly he was finding it really difficult to stand.

It took Virgil a second, but he seemed to notice this, and he turned widening eyes up to Roman.

“Wait. Oh, holy shit. Are you okay?”

Roman put a hand to his chest, trying to breathe past the strangled feeling now building up in his chest.

“I don’t… understand,” Roman wheezed out, sinking into a chair. “That’s not how this… how it works.”

“I…” Virgil held his hands up, not seeming like he knew quite what to do. “Uh… fuck. Dude, I don’t… I don’t know you, man. It’s nothing personal. I don’t… I just don’t want to date anyone. It’s nothing against you, I… shit. Okay, okay, come here.” He grabbed Roman’s hands and started tapping out a rhythm on them. “Can you breathe to that pattern? You really shouldn’t be gasping this much dude, it’s not good.”

Roman tried to do just that, but it was a little difficult when his world was sitting in front of him and telling him that he didn’t want him. Virgil was supposed to make everything okay. What was he supposed to do if Virgil didn’t make everything okay?

“Roman, hey.” Virgil snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. “Can you hear me?”

He definitely couldn’t, and a second later Virgil disappeared, which didn’t help with anything. What were his parents going to say? What were Logan and Patton and Janus and Remus going to say? What was he supposed to do now?

A second later he felt a shock of cold on his forehead, and he managed to pull back to see Virgil holding an ice cube out in front of him and looking more than a little guilty.

Virgil held the ice cube out to Roman, who took it and pressed it to his forehead, trying to focus in on that until he could slow his breathing and lean back in the chair.

“Okay, so… I could have done that way better,” Virgil said weakly. “I… shit, I’m sorry.”

Roman shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t understand, you’re my soulmate.”

Virgil looked away uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. “I… I don’t want a soulmate,” he said hesitantly, and Roman’s world fell out from under his feet again.

“You… but why?” he asked.

“Dude, I just… it doesn’t sound like something that would make me happy,” Virgil said.

“It doesn’t…” Roman trailed off weakly. He leaned forward to lean his elbows on his knees as he tried to process that.

“Look,” Virgil said, shifting on his feet. “I’m sorry. I… I think I need to go get back to work. You can stay until my friend Remy gets here to take over for you. I’ll let Carol know. I won’t tell her about the… yeah.”

And with that, Virgil walked away and left Roman’s world to crumble around him.

…

Janus and Remus were both playing video games when Roman got home. He lived with them for right now, because it was way more expensive if you didn’t room with your soulmates, but Roman hadn’t met…

“Hey Ro!” Remus called without looking as Roman shut the door after him. “How’s the job?”

Roman looked over at the couch. Janus and Remus had moved his blankets, and turned the futon back into a couch so they could play video games. They’d erased Roman’s presence just like that. Was that what everyone else was going to do now too? Was that what his parents were going to do? Was Logan going to find a new best friend, one who was actually worth something? Was Remus going to find a new brother, one who wouldn’t be sleeping on his couch forever because no one else wanted him?

“Ro?” Remus said, starting to glance back over, and Roman realized he hadn’t said anything for a good ten seconds.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, trying to inject some emotion into his voice that wasn’t despair. “Yeah it’s… good. I’m just tired. I’m gonna go lay down for a bit.”

“Oh, okay, cool!” Remus called. “You can use our room! We might grab dinner out later, I’ll let you know if we do.”

“Okay,” Roman said, desperately hoping that they wouldn’t.

He went back to Remus and Janus’ room and curled up miserably under their covers. He’d dreamed of the day that he’d get to move into a place of his own with his soulmate. Now… what was he going to do now?

Virgil didn’t want him. Virgil, his saving grace, the one who was supposed to make everything okay. Okay with his parents, okay with his brother, okay with his friends, okay with him. What in the world did a life for Roman Prince mean without Virgil Storm?

Was he going to have to couchsurf with his brother forever, and watch him and Janus live the life he wanted to have with his soulmate? Was he going to continue to be a huge disappointment to Mom and Dad, who had always placed such importance on soulmates? Was he going to have to be alone, forever?

Roman pulled out his phone, trying to quiet the rushing thoughts in his head, and looked up “Help my soulmate doesn’t want me.”

Results that came up ranged from support groups, to therapists, to advice articles, but the overall advice was generally, horrifyingly, the same: If your soulmate doesn’t want you, you can’t force it.

Many articles also talked about things working themselves out in time, but even those started by saying there often wasn’t much you could do. The only places Roman saw people saying there was something you could do were people essentially advocating for manipulation and abuse, with more flowery and disguised terms. For obvious reasons, Roman wasn’t going to do that.

But that meant it was sounding suspiciously like he was going to be… alone. Alone. How was he supposed to deal with that?

A knock sounded on the door, and immediately Roman’s brain shouted at him that right now he was going to deal with it by telling no one.

“Roman?” Remus called.

“Yeah?” Roman called back, putting on his practiced fake smile and the customer service voice he’d spent the morning developing.

“I think we’re just gonna grab some fast food, come talk about what you want, okay?”

“On my way!” Roman called brightly, heading towards the door as Remus started back towards the kitchen.

Fake it till you make it wasn’t a terrible start.

…

Virgil seemed understandably uncomfortable when Roman came into work again the next day. Roman gave him the best smile he could muster and walked up to lean against the other counter, trying to seem as casual as possible.

“Hey,” Virgil said, doing the vocal equivalent of shooting finger guns. “How… how are you?”

“I’m ready to help some customers!” Roman said with probably the fakest smile to ever exist.

Predictably, Virgil winced. “Hey, look, I really am sorry about yesterday. It was kind of shitty of me to not consider that you were probably expecting—”

“Oh, water under the bridge,” Roman said, waving his hand dismissively.

“Are you sure? You don’t really have panic attacks about stuff that’s water under the bridge the day after.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Roman said, clenching his hands tightly on the counter. “Besides, we’re opening soon and I still have a ton of questions about how things work around here.”

Virgil bit his lip, still looking unsure, but he nodded. “Okay. Uh, shoot.”

Roman managed to fill the rest of the time before they opened with questions about how various things worked, and it had the effect of not letting Virgil talk about the whole “crushing Roman’s entire hopes and dreams” situation that happened yesterday, as well as meaning that by the time the doors opened, Roman actually did feel like he had a handle for what to do. That was probably good, because tomorrow started his actual shifts, which would be much longer and come with one of those dreaded fifteen minute breaks.

Roman, after a little while, managed to lose himself in the work throughout the day, and by the time he left again, he’d at least gone most of the shift without thinking about Virgil.

As soon as he left, however, all of the thoughts came rushing back, and he knew for a fact he couldn’t go home and see his brother’s perfect soulmate story right now.

He pulled out his phone and called Logan, who answered after his usual two rings.

“Roman, you’re off work I presume?” Logan asked.

“Yep! Want to do something just the two of us like old times before you met Patton?”

“I… suppose?” Logan said. “What would you like to do?”

“Let’s go to the planetarium,” Roman said, because that would distract Logan enough that he wouldn’t ask Roman what was wrong.

Sure enough, Logan immediately agreed, and started talking much faster and more excitedly as Roman made his way to the car. In another couple minutes, they were both on their way, and since Roman was much closer, he was free to have his breakdown in the car once he got there and make sure he still looked presentable before Logan showed up.

He let himself space out to the sound of his best friend’s excited voice as they walked through the planetarium, and really only managed to not get lost because he was hanging off of Logan’s arm the whole time. His distraction plan worked, though, and Logan never once asked him what was wrong.

Roman was probably hoping a bit too far to think he wouldn’t notice something though. He just had a different way of calling attention to things.

“Roman,” Logan said as they were leaving, and Roman glanced back at him.

“I appreciate this,” Logan said with a smile. “This was a nice surprise. I hope you know how much I enjoy spending time with you, whether we’re doing something, or,” he raised an eyebrow slightly. “Just talking.”

Roman nodded weakly. “Thanks, Pocket Protector. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Logan nodded again, and they both headed their separate ways. Roman pulled out his phone to get directions back home, because he could never quite remember the way, and winced when he saw five missed calls from Remus.

He hadn’t told him where he was going, had he?

Roman hit “call back” and held the phone up to his ear. Remus answered on the first ring.

“Hey Re,” Roman said weakly.

“Where the hell are you?” Remus asked. “I thought you were coming back home!”

“I just went with Logan to the planetarium,” Roman said, holding up his hand, though Remus couldn’t see it. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”

Remus sighed, part irritated and part relieved. “Ro, we were waiting for you here.”

“What? Waiting for me? Why?”

“Just get back here, dummy,” Remus said, and hung up.

Roman gave the phone a curious look, but went to navigate to directions, and got home about half an hour later.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see when he walked in, but it definitely wasn’t Janus and Remus both sitting at the dining area table with a huge cake that read “Congrats On The New Job Dummy!”

“What…” Roman said, giving them both baffled looks. “I started yesterday.”

“Yeah, but this was your last training day, right?” Remus said with a grin. “So we got you a cake to celebrate your shift into seven hour shifts with not enough time to rest or sit down!”

Roman blinked at the cake for a minute, and Remus and Janus both smiled at him and picked it up to display it a little.

“Oh,” Roman said, swallowing past a lump in his throat. “Okay.”

He walked forward before either Remus or Janus could ask about the tone of his voice and plastered a giant smile on his face. “Thanks, guys,” he said, and at least he really meant that part. “This means a lot.”

“Course, dummy,” Remus said, leaning forward and ruffling his hair. “You know we’re proud of you, right?”

Roman swallowed past a bigger lump in his throat and widened his smile.

“I’ll go get a large sharp knife now!” Remus called happily, and started for the kitchen.

“Oh lord,” Roman muttered.

“I think I should supervise that,” Janus said with a smirk at Roman. “But good job, Roman.”

“Thanks Janus,” Roman said with a smaller smile up at him.

Janus picked up the cake and headed into the kitchen with Remus to get a knife, and Roman pulled out his phone again to avoid focusing on all the emotions rushing through him right now. He could deal with them later.

Unfortunately, it seemed Logan wasn’t going to let that be the case, because on his phone was a text from him.

Logan: I had quite a bit of fun with you today Roman. I hope we can do that again sometime. You are an enjoyable person to spend time with.

Roman set his phone down, called that he was going to the bathroom, and vanished down the hall.

As soon as he made it to the bathroom, he shut and locked the door. He managed to make his way over to the toilet and sit down on top of it before he started sobbing quietly into his hands.

Okay. Maybe he’d been a little wrong.

Maybe he wouldn’t be alone alone.

…

Next time, it felt a little easier to talk to Virgil. And now that it didn’t feel quite so raw, Roman really did have questions for him. So, when there was a break between customers and they were restocking supplies, Roman glanced over and called, “Virgil?”

Virgil glanced back at him. “Yeah?”

“Can I… can I ask why you don’t want a soulmate?”

Virgil immediately looked away uncomfortably.

“You don’t have to answer,” Roman said quickly, despite how desperate he was to know.

“It’s really that big of a deal?” Virgil asked, looking hesitantly back over at him. “It’s really that big of a deal to just… not be looking for a partner right now?”

“Right now?” Roman asked, and suddenly he could see a wall go up in Virgil’s eyes.

“Hey,” he said immediately, leaning away. “Don’t count on it.”

Roman bit his lip and looked away. “But why?” he asked.

“Because I don’t like the idea that I owe so much to someone I barely know,” Virgil said. “I don’t like the idea of changing my life for someone who isn’t me. Before I know if we’re compatible, before I know how they’ll treat me, before I know if I like them as a person.”

“But…” Roman shook his head in confusion. “We’re soulmates.”

“So?”

“So doesn’t all of that stuff kind of… work itself out?”

Virgil’s gaze darkened. “Says who?”

Roman blinked in surprise. He didn’t know how to answer that.

Before he could even try, the bell rang, and Virgil turned around to help the customer that came through the door.

And Roman wasn’t sure why, but he found himself unable to stop thinking about what Virgil said. Did he really not believe that they’d be compatible, or that he’d like Roman as a person, or… that Roman would treat him well?

Was that the issue? Because he would treat Virgil well. He’d been dreaming about having a soulmate his whole life, of course he’d treat Virgil well. When they both got off at around 3:00, Roman brought this up to Virgil.

“You know,” he said, as they both started towards the staff parking lot. “If you’re worried about how I’m going to treat you, I can assure you—”

“Ugh, no, oh my god!” Virgil groaned, throwing his hands up. “See, this? This is what drives me crazy. You focused on that reason? I’m not worried that you wouldn’t treat me well. I’m honestly far more worried about whether or not we’d be compatible.”

“But…” Roman gave him a baffled look. “We’re soulmates.”

“I. Don’t. Know. You,” Virgil said firmly. “The fact that we’re soulmates does not automatically mean we’re going to work out.”

“Of course it does,” Roman said in confusion.

“Really? You don’t know stories about people whose relationships with their soulmates fell apart? You don’t know people who were soulmates with someone that just did not make sense for them? You don’t know someone who was treated badly by their soulmate? And that’s not my main point, so don’t focus on that again,” Virgil snapped as Roman opened his mouth.

“My point is,” he said as he reached his car. “Having a universe stamp of approval does not mean people don’t have to put in work to make relationships work. Ask yourself this. Do you really care about who I am as a person, or do you just know I’m your soulmate?”

Roman stared at him. “What?”

“See you tomorrow,” Virgil said, and climbed into his car.

Roman walked over to his car too, but he sat in it and didn’t leave for a while.

What… what did he know about Virgil? He knew he worked in a coffee shop. He knew he could be a little rude. He knew he was Roman’s soulmate. And… and…

Roman’s eyes widened. That was it.

Oh, Roman didn’t like that feeling at all.

…

“I’m an actor,” Roman said, during a pause the next day.

Virgil looked over at him. “What?”

“I’m an actor,” Roman said. “I have a few auditions coming in a couple months. I want to act.”

Virgil stared at him. “Good for you?”

“What do you want to do?”

Virgil narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because… you said I didn’t know anything about you,” Roman admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “And you were right. So I’m trying to amend that.”

Virgil narrowed his eyes further. “I’m not going to date you, Roman.”

Roman winced. “I… I know,” he said, though the idea hurt badly to admit. “That’s not why I’m asking.”

Virgil didn’t look like he quite believed him, but after a second, he said, “I’m a songwriter.”

Roman lit up. “You’re a poet?”

“What? No, I— I mean, I guess technically. But that’s not exactly how I’d describe it. Besides,” He closed the box of creams he was restocking and gestured around them. “Doesn’t really pay that well.”

“Neither does having an acting degree,” Roman said with a small smile, and Virgil snorted.

The bell jingled, and Roman turned to help the customer coming in while Virgil put the creams away.

It was the part of the day when things slowed down, meaning no one came in after that customer left and Roman could turn back to Virgil.

“What are the chances I could hear one of your songs?” he asked.

“About as high as the chances of getting a date,” Virgil said, patting Roman on the shoulder as he walked past to start another batch of coffee.

Roman winced again, though thankfully Virgil didn’t see it that time. That still stung. But it wasn’t… it wasn’t Virgil’s fault. Roman would get over it eventually.

And in the meantime, that didn’t mean he couldn’t still enjoy Virgil’s company as a friend and have that be good too. Because once Roman started asking, it turns out there were a ton of great things about Virgil.

“Wait. A. Second,” Roman said, slamming his hands down on the counter one day, as soon as the last customer in line left and he recognized what Virgil was humming. “Is that Poor Unfortunate Souls?”

“What? No,” Virgil said immediately, turning away from Roman.

“It is. Oh my god, it is! Virgil, that sounds so good!”

“I was humming dude, it didn’t sound that good,” Virgil muttered, ducking his head down.

“Except it did though!” Roman said, clapping his hands together. “And now since you’ve brought it up totally intentionally, we’re going to talk Disney!”

“You like Disney?” Virgil asked, glancing over at him.

“I’m a gay man trying to work in theatre, Virgil, I don’t know why you’re surprised.”

“Well, I— oh, shut up.”

“But I’m guessing your tone of voice means that you like Disney too, so go on then.” Roman leaned his hand onto his chin. “Favorite movie, favorite villain, favorite song.”

“The Black Cauldron, Ursula, and Sally’s Song.”

“Sally’s Song?”

“It counts! And that movie was sick!”

“Hm, I can’t deny that,” Roman admitted with a shrug.

“Alright, your turn then,” Virgil said, crossing his arms.

“I can’t choose amongst any of my darling babies!” Roman said, pressing a hand to his chest.

“What? Dude, unfair, you made me pick!”

“Hey!” called a voice from the back, and both Virgil and Roman winced and turned around.

“You don’t get paid to stand around and talk,” Carol said with her hands on her hips. “Back to work, both of you.”

Both of them did turn back around, but as Virgil was about to start over to the fridge, he leaned over to Roman and hissed “Cheater.”

Roman gasped in offense and spun around, but Virgil was already gone.

…

“Evanescence? Really?” Roman asked, wrinkling his nose slightly.

“Hey, don’t judge it before you try it,” Virgil said, writing down the amount of cups they had left on the inventory sheet. The shop wasn’t technically closed, but they closed in five minutes, and the place was already dead, so they’d started inventory, and had gotten to talking about music while they did so.

“Besides, most of what you listen to is musicals,” Virgil said.

“I’m an actor.”

“Your point being?”

“That you’re an angsty teenager trapped in an adult’s body,” Roman said.

“Why thank you,” Virgil said, smirking over at him. “Now go count the stir sticks.”

Roman stuck his tongue out but went to do just that.

“Besides,” Virgil said, and Roman perked up to listen. “Too much mainstream music is about soulmates.”

Roman tensed slightly, but kept moving as normally as he could. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Virgil said, though it somehow sounded like he was wrinkling his nose. “It’s just… everywhere. You’re telling me you don’t notice?”

“I… like soulmate songs,” Roman said, setting the first pile of stir sticks aside. “I think they’re sweet.”

“Some of them are alright,” Virgil said. “But then there’s ones that talk about soulmates completing each other, and being two parts of a whole, and just… ugh.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Roman asked curiously, glancing over at Virgil.

“I’m supposed to wait for someone else to make me complete?” Virgil asked, turning and leaning back against the counter. “Fuck that noise. I don’t want to wait for someone else to start living my life.”

Roman suddenly couldn’t breathe quite right. “You… but you don’t have to do that, though,” he said weakly.

“No, but that’s why I hate those songs,” Virgil said, rolling his eyes. “I’m enough all by myself, thank you very much.”

Roman blinked, and now he couldn’t breathe for a very different reason. “You really think that?” he asked.

Virgil raised an eyebrow, and Roman immediately backtracked.

“No, that’s not— I don’t mean I’m questioning you,” he said. “I just mean… that’s kind of… cool.”

“Uh. Thanks, I guess,” Virgil said, turning back around. “I mean, I’m not saying I have super high self esteem, or something like that. Lord knows I don’t. But… I don’t need someone else to be a whole, complete person.”

Roman blinked again, looking down at the floor. “Yeah?” he asked.

“What, you think I need you in order to be complete?” Virgil asked, shooting a smirk over his shoulder.

Roman laughed at the idea. “Definitely not,” he said with a small grin, and Virgil grinned back.

There was a stretch of silence, and Roman turned back around.

“You don’t need me to be complete either, you know,” Virgil said, and Roman went still.

“That goes both ways,” Virgil said.

“Yeah,” Roman muttered, gathering up the stir sticks.

“Hey, I mean it, dummy,” Virgil said, walking suddenly up alongside him, and causing Roman to look over. “You had a life before you met me. That life is not any less real or important because I wasn’t in it.”

Roman looked at him for a second, but didn’t say anything, and eventually, Virgil turned away.

“Why are soulmates so important to you anyway?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Roman said quietly. He almost said that they were important to everyone. But then… that wasn’t true. They weren’t important to Virgil. And that wasn’t… why they were important to him. They were important to him because… because of the disappointment in his parents eyes. Because of the worry in his friends’ and his brother’s.

“My brother has his soulmate,” he said. “My best friend has his soulmate. I just have… no one.”

“No, you have your brother and your best friend,” Virgil said, giving him a look. “They count.”

“Not to my parents,” Roman said with a light chuckle.

“Then your parents fucking suck,” Virgil said, and Roman coughed in surprise.

“Virgil!”

“What? They do. Your worth doesn’t depend on whether or not you have a soulmate.”

Roman stopped and leaned back against the counter. “No one’s ever told me that before,” he said quietly.

“Well it’s about time someone did then,” Virgil said.

Roman looked up and saw real sympathy in his eyes. He bit his lip. “I really like you Virgil,” he said, and when Virgil tensed, he continued.

“Not as a soulmate,” he said, and Virgil relaxed. “I just mean… you’re… good.”

“I’m good?” Virgil asked, smirking.

“Shut up, you just dropped like six existential questions on me, you can’t expect my words to work!” Roman exclaimed, and Virgil laughed.

“Well, you’re good too, Roman,” Virgil said, and his eyes were sparkling a little bit, and Roman smiled at him, his chest feeling warm.

This… was not what he’d expected having a soulmate to be. But the part of him that wasn’t aching kind of liked this better.

…

Remus and him weren’t really the type to talk about deep things. Roman could count on one hand the times that it had happened, in all honesty. Which is why it was understandable Remus gave him a baffled look when Roman asked him over breakfast that Saturday why he was dating Janus.

Or maybe that was the fact that to him, the question might not be so deep. Roman was beginning to realize it wasn’t common for people to think about why they dated their soulmates.

This second assumption was proven right a second later when Remus said, “Uh, cause he’s my soulmate? You feeling okay, Ro?”

“No, that’s not exactly what I meant,” Roman said, but now he was realizing he didn’t know how to ask what he really wanted to hear an answer to.

Had conversations about soulmates used to be this difficult? Or was this just Virgil’s fault?

“What do you mean then?” Remus asked, still looking baffled.

Roman thought for a minute, then hesitantly asked, “What do you like about Janus?”

Remus’ eyes lit up, and at least he didn’t look confused anymore. “Oh, he’s witty, and he’s sarcastic, and he’s caring in his own super weird way, and he’s weird, and he likes being weird, and he likes that I’m weird! And he knows exactly how to make me laugh, and he knows all my favorite foods, and he’s fucking gorgeous. And he’s also really good at sex—”

“Okay, I did not need that last bit, Remus!” Roman exclaimed, and Remus cackled.

“But honestly, what don’t I like about Janus?” he said, leaning over onto his elbow, with a slightly dreamy smile, and Roman couldn’t help but smile too at how happy he looked.

“Do you think you work well together?” he asked.

But that didn’t work, because now Remus just gave another look of confusion. “Well, yeah,” he said. “We’re soulmates.”

Roman’s displeasure must have shown on his face, because now Remus just looked even more confused. “What did I say wrong?”

“I… I don’t know, exactly,” Roman said. “I just… did you only start dating Janus because he was your soulmate?”

Remus blinked. “Are you looking for another reason?”

Roman sat back in his chair. “I… I think I might be,” he said, but more to himself than to Remus. “I mean, Remus… would you still love Janus even if he wasn’t your soulmate?”

“Uh, yeah,” Remus said. “Duh.”

“But you only started dating him because he was your soulmate.”

“Yeah, and?”

“You’re certain you would have still fallen for him, would have still noticed him, without your soulmarks?”

“I… I don’t know. I don’t like that question.”

Roman gave a short laugh. “You and me both,” he muttered.

Remus stared at him. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. I’m just thinking about a lot of things for the first time,” Roman said, standing up.

“Why?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Roman said, waving Remus off and heading over towards the futon. “Just something a coworker asked me the other day.”

“You’re thinking about this stuff because of a coworker?” Remus asked.

Roman turned back around, biting his lip. “A friend,” he amended, because it felt right, and explaining to Remus everything that was going on felt like way too much effort at this point.

That didn’t mean he was done, though. And this time, when he pulled out his phone to text Logan, he asked the same question with intention.

Roman: Hey Logan, why did you start dating Patton?

There was a moment before Logan responded, and when he did, it was what Roman expected, but not exactly what he wanted to hear.

Logan: Because he is my soulmate. I’m sorry, I think I’m a little confused by this question, Roman. Is that what you meant to ask?

Roman huffed and flopped back on the couch. He was starting to really dislike this. Why was it that this was bothering him so much all of a sudden? If he and Virgil had started dating the moment they met, Roman would likely have given the exact same response— that he started dating Virgil because he was his soulmate. But now that felt like a problem, and no one else saw it as such, and he didn’t even understand why it felt like that to him.

But then again… maybe there was a way to bring them all on this confusing journey with him?

Roman: Can you and Patton come over here? I have something to tell you all.

…

It was just before lunch that everyone managed to get there, and they all seemed awake enough to talk (even Janus, though he was largely the reason it took a while). They all sat at the kitchen table, and Roman looked out at all of them and tried to figure out where to start.

“So,” he said. “On my first day at work, I met Virgil.”

Immediately everyone’s faces brightened, and Roman realized he definitely shouldn’t have stared it that way.

“No, wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “This isn’t a good thing. Or— or it is, it definitely is, but it’s also not, and it’s also confusing, and also I’m starting to think soulmates aren’t exactly all they’re claimed to be. Oh, but no offense to you guys! I’m not talking about you guys I’m just talking about… I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it’s weird and it’s confusing and also I think this is ultimately going to be a good thing and… yeah.”

Everyone was staring at him in bafflement, and Roman couldn’t exactly blame them.

“Uh, okay, let me start over,” he said.

“Please do,” Janus said.

“So uh… Virgil doesn’t want to date me.”

Everyone’s eyes snapped open in shock.

“What?” Remus said, looking almost angry. “That’s ridiculous! You’re you, you’re totally worth it!”

“Remus, he’s not required to date me,” Roman said, crossing his arms.

“But why wouldn’t he want to?” Patton asked in confusion. “You’re soulmates.”

“Yeah,” Roman said, looking up thoughtfully. “Yeah, we are. And I think I’m starting to realize that doesn’t… that doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Now everyone just looked confused again. God, why did this have to be so hard?

“No, just listen,” Roman said. “I… I’ve been wanting to meet Virgil like he’s an oasis in a desert. I thought meeting him was going to fix all of my problems and my life would just fall into place. But that’s… not fair. That’s too much to put on Virgil, not when he doesn’t know me. And even if he did know me! I can’t expect someone else to solve all my problems for me.”

“But… you’re soulmates,” Patton said again.

“We are, but…” Roman struggled for the words for a second. Eventually, he turned to face Remus. “Look, you said you think I’m worth it, right? Worth what exactly?”

Remus blinked. “Uh, I don’t know. Worth dating? Worth trying for?”

“But that still requires the trying part,” Roman said.

Remus nodded slowly. “So… you and Virgil are going to start dating later?”

“No,” Roman said, shaking his head. “Because trying doesn’t automatically mean succeeding. And Virgil doesn’t want to date me. And I’m not going to force him.”

“But you want to date him,” Janus said. “Don’t you?”

“I…” Roman hesitated. His automatic response was yes, but for some reason that didn’t feel right. “I do… but I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t understand it all either. Look, I just…” He sighed.

After a second, he looked back around at everyone. “Did you… did you guys care about me less before I met Virgil?”

“What? No, that’s ridiculous,” Remus said, and everyone else nodded in agreement.

“Really? Because I think I kinda did.”

Logan’s eyes widened. “What? Roman—”

“I mean, you know what Mom and Dad are like,” Roman said, glancing at Remus. “And you all—” he gestured around— “have each other. I think I was holding onto Virgil like an ideal of that, and not really… trying to care about myself in the meantime.”

“Roman,” Patton said in concern, jumping up and moving around the table so he could wrap his arms around him.

Roman squeezed him back, but then pulled back as something else clicked in his head. “And that was part of the problem,” he said, looking around. “I didn’t want to date Virgil. I wanted to date my soulmate.”

Now everyone looked confused again.

“Roman, Virgil is your soulmate,” Logan said.

“Yes, but I wanted to date the ideal, remember?” Roman said. “I wanted what a soulmate would give to me. Mom and Dad’s respect, and all the happiness you guys have. I didn’t actually care about getting to know Virgil.”

“And… now?” Janus asked hesitantly.

Roman smiled widely. “Now he’s a friend that I really like,” Roman said. “And that… well, I think that will be good enough for me. Not now, it still kind of… it still kind of aches. But I think it will be.”

Patton leaned in and wrapped his arms around him again. “We do not need you to be dating Virgil in order to love you,” he murmured to Roman.

Roman reached out and squeezed him back. After a second, Remus joined the hug from the other side, and then Logan, and then Janus.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize that’s how you were feeling, Ro-bro,” Remus said into his shoulder. “You know Mom and Dad are just stupid sometimes, right?”

“Well… no,” Roman admitted. “But I’m getting there.”

“Okay,” Remus said, squeezing him tighter.

“Ack, Remus, you’re squeezing my throat,” Roman wheezed.

“Choking is how I show love.”

“Can we move to the couch?”

“Absolutely, I call a movie night!” Patton called.

“It’s 11AM,” Janus said, raising an eyebrow.

“Movie morning, then,” Patton said, waving his hand dismissively.

“I’ll make some popcorn then,” Logan said, adjusting his glasses as he stood up. “I’ll meet you all there.”

“Roman, you get to choose the movie!” Patton called, grabbing Roman by the arm and dragging him towards the futon.

“He’ll just pick something Disney,” Remus groaned as he followed him.

“Yes, and you love me for it,” Roman said with a grin at him.

And as they all settled down on the futon, and Roman pulled up Frozen, he found himself wondering how he ever thought he needed a faceless soulmate to fix these already amazing relationships.

…

It took a while, but Roman did start feeling better about himself. It came with a lot of validation from his friends, which now included Virgil, and skipping going home for the holidays, using work as an excuse.

He had gotten some paying roles, including some of the ones he’d been trying for when he first started working at the coffee shop, but he was still working there for a number of reasons.

One of them was money, because the roles he’d gotten weren’t enough to support him full time, and the other was… Virgil. Because the universe was cruel, and the moment he’d decided he was okay, really okay, with not dating His Soulmate, he’d realized that now he just kind of really, really wanted to date Virgil.

And that was just unfair.

In all honesty, it wasn’t a huge problem. He’d meant it when he said being friends with Virgil would be good enough for him. Because friendship with Virgil was amazing. He was clever and snarky and arguing with him (respectfully) was actually really fun. When they’d started hanging out outside of work, they’d discovered that they could find common ground in enjoying going to shows, even if Virgil didn’t love acting in them like Roman did.

“I am a techie or an audience member, and don’t you forget it,” he said.

Roman also discovered that he could enjoy going to concerts with Virgil, yes, even Evanescence ones. It was just fun. Really, really fun.

They actually did still talk about soulmates from time to time, but now it was closer to the lines of friendly debates and complaining (because yes, once Roman started paying attention, there really were way too many soulmate songs). They almost never brought up the fact that they were soulmates anymore. It didn’t seem important.

Roman had noticed Virgil giving him strange looks from time to time, but he hadn’t thought much of it. There had usually been some other kind of context he could attribute it to. And he knew by this point that if it was something really important, they’d talk about it.

…And they ended up doing just that.

It finally came up one night when they had a closing shift together and were doing inventory in the coffee shop.

Roman was humming one of Virgil’s songs that he’d finally been allowed to listen to, and he wasn’t really paying a ton of attention as he was moving from task to task. This unfortunately meant that as he finished dumping out the coffee and set the now empty containers aside, he turned and ran right into Virgil, who was holding an armful of coffee cups.

“Shit,” Virgil said, ducking down to pick them all up.

“Sorry Virgil,” Roman said, doing the same. They each gathered up half of the pile, but then when they moved to stand up, they ended up standing inches from each other, practically nose to nose.

And Virgil made just about the most adorable squeak Roman had ever heard and ducked away from him.

Well, then. What was that?

“Virgil?” Roman asked, following him over to the other side of the room where the coffee cups were kept. “Virgil, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Virgil said, his voice sounding much higher in pitch than it usually did.

“Are you sure, because you—”

“Roman,” Virgil snapped, unfortunately turning around and ending up right up against Roman’s nose again.

“I—” Virgil said weakly. “I just—”

Roman started to grin. “Virgil,” he said, adding a slight tease to his tone. “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re acting like you have a cru—”

“Don’t,” Virgil snapped. “Don’t say it.”

“Say what?” Roman asked innocently. “Crush? Say that you’re acting like you’ve got a little crush on m—”

“Roman,” Virgil said, burying his hands in his hair, which is when Roman realized they were shaking.

“Woah, hang on,” Roman said, putting his armful of cups down and pulling Virgil’s hands down from his hair. “Virgil, are you okay?”

“No!” Virgil snapped. “I’m not okay! I’m a fucking hypocrite, Roman!”

He turned and stormed over to the break area, then sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands.

Roman blinked at him for a second, before slowly walking over. “And why exactly are you a hypocrite?” he asked.

“I talk so much,” Virgil said, dragging his hands through his hair. “I talk so much about how you shouldn’t date your soulmate just because the universe shoves them at you! But it’s just talk! It’s just talk because then the universe shoved you at me and I just fucking—” He buried his head in his hands again. “I’m just such a fucking hypocrite,” he mumbled.

“Virgil,” Roman said, smiling a little despite himself. “You’re not a hypocrite.”

“No? Because I think it would be really great to date you, Roman!” Virgil said, looking up at him. “That’s what I think! I think I like you and I think I’d like to date you! And I gave you so much grief about that when we first met, and I was just slow to get with the program, I guess!”

“Hey, woah,” Roman said, sitting down across from Virgil. “I am so glad we did not date when we first met. I was not in the right place for that, Virgil.”

Virgil grumbled something unintelligible.

“Virgil,” Roman said. “Can I ask you something?”

Virgil pulled his head up. “What?”

“Do you want to date me because I’m your soulmate?”

“What?” Virgil wrinkled his nose. “No. It’s cause you’re Roman, dummy. You’re smart and you’re creative and you’re talented and you’re sweet and—”

Roman raised an eyebrow, and Virgil swallowed.

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh,” Roman said with a slightly teasing smile. “Besides, Virgil, the freedom to not date your soulmate doesn’t mean much if you’re not also free to date your soulmate if you want to.”

“I just— I told myself for my whole life I wasn’t going to do that,” Virgil muttered.

“Well, I told myself for my whole life that I was,” Roman said with a shrug. “Your turn.”

Virgil snorted. “Asshole.”

“Aww, you know you love me.”

Virgil laughed again, and looked hopefully up at Roman. “You— what does that all mean then?”

“It means I think I’d really like to be yours,” Roman said, leaning closer. “Not your soulmate. Just your Roman.”

Virgil’s eyes were shining. “I think I’d really like to be your Virgil too,” he said, leaning in. He looked unsure for another second. “And if the world thinks we’re just doing this because we’re soulmates?”

“Then the world is being just as stupid as it always is,” Roman said, rolling his eyes. “We don’t have to let it dictate what we do.”

Virgil started smiling. “Okay,” he said. “Would you kiss me then?”

“With pleasure,” Roman crooned, and he leaned in and cupped the side of Virgil’s face.

#sanders sides #roman sanders #virgil sanders #prinxeity #remus sanders #janus sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #demus #dukeceit #logicality #soulmate au #this is where accidentally asexual would apply for Roman and Virgil #and I'm not saying demiromantic virgil #but demiromantic virgil

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edupunkn00b · 11 months

Text

French Kiss: Tale of the Revolution, Ch. 15: The City of Light

Prev - The City of Light - Next - All - [ AO3 ]

WC: 2350 - CW: weapons, angst, arguing

10 July 1789

It was nearly dark by the time they arrived in Paris, but the streets were still hot and humid, the sweet, fresh air of the countryside a memory. Janus didn’t wait for either Logan or Patton to climb down from the driver’s perch and slammed open the carriage door the moment the wheels stopped turning. He carried with him the bag from Remus, his wig tucked safely in its box under his arm.

“Janus, wait—” Patton called after him, but he slipped down the stairs to the back entrance of the church basement.

“Let him go,” Logan muttered. “He has every right to be angry with me. What I said was reprehensible.”

Patton rested an impossibly strong hand on his shoulder and smiled sadly. “What you said was… pretty bad.” He gave his shoulder a little squeeze. “But you were speaking out of worry and… hurt.”

“Of course I’m concerned, but…” Logan shook his head. “What would I have to be hurt about? Janus seems perfectly happy with this arrangement, he’s the favorite of the future King. You should have seen the way he smiled when he… he—” His protest withered under Patton’s knowing smile. “He cannot know,” he pleaded, gripping Patton’s arm with both hands..

Patton pulled Logan into a hug and rubbed his back. “Your secret’s safe with me, Logan.” He shrugged and pulled back enough to grin up at him. “Well… I think Remy figured it out, too, but he’s just a busybody sometimes.” He squeezed his arms around Logan one more time, then leapt down from the perch and offered his hand. “Come on down and get Remy to make you something. I’ll take care of Naif and Petit. ”

“It… it would perhaps be best to give Janus a little more time to cool off before I attempt another apology.”

Nodding, Patton smiled up at him. “Now, go on, I’ll meet you inside.” He gave Logan a little nudge as he led the horses to their borrowed stable at the end of the road.

Logan watched him go, then took a deep breath and retreated into the warm glow of Café de Foy.

~~~

Janus didn’t light the lamp in the tiny room he shared with Logan and the city’s fetid heat had made their pathetic little pellet stove unnecessary. He stubbed his toe on the foot on the bed and swore. Perfect way to end the night. How dare Logan judge him without even hearing what he had to say? How dare he assume this was mere lust? He never even considered, never even asked if there was more.

He stripped out of his clothes in the dark, and hung them in their little shared closet. Not that either of them needed much space. Logan had two shirts and two trousers. One waistcoat, which he was already wearing. Janus had acquired a few additional pieces, mostly from Logan, actually. “You do it better justice,” he’d murmur when one of his wealthier parishioners gifted him something out of guilt.

Slamming the door shut, Janus threw himself onto his bed and pulled the threadbare sheet up to his neck. Despite the worst the humid July night could throw his way, his bed felt cold and entirely too large. Had it really taken only two weeks for him to become accustomed to not sleeping alone?

Evidently.

Hours passed. Starlight shifted and the moon set, darkening the room further. The low, steady click of Logan’s prized clock marked the time, droning on and on as though nothing had happened, as though Logan was simply already asleep and quiet in his own bed. But the room was empty, the only sound to accompany the clock was Janus’ own breathing. After what felt like half the night, Logan quietly shuffled down the stone steps, foot falls echoing in the silence of the night. The door was nearly soundless as it opened and Janus lay still, feigning sleep.

Logan would want to talk. Would want to confess, to gain his absolution the way he’d grant it to his parish. Janus was in no mood to grant him anything.

He listened as Logan prepared for bed in the dark. His heart clenched at the quiet sniffles from the other side of the room. Logan was crying. Why the hell was he crying? Logan lingered near the closet and after several minutes, he murmured, almost to the clothes themselves, “I’m so sorry, Janus.” His voice was barely louder than a breath. Had the city been awake, it surely would’ve drowned out his words and Janus would have never heard what he said next.

“If you love him even half as much as I love you, I understand.”

Janus froze in his bed, afraid to breathe, afraid to reveal he was awake and had heard Logan’s confession. Blood roaring in his ears, he didn’t hear what else Logan said before he gently pressed the wardrobe door shut and climbed quietly into his own bed.

11 July 1789

Sleep was elusive but not impossible and the dawn had just begun to soak the horizon when Janus’ eyes finally slipped shut. By the time they reopened, bright mid-morning sun streamed through the little cracks around their closed shutters. Logan was gone. Janus squinted against the light. He’d left the shutters open, letting in the thin starlight and the chance for a bit of a breeze in the sweltering night. Logan must have shut them when he’d left, perhaps hoping to give him a bit more sleep. The city was busy, voices raised and more foot traffic past their window than usual. Everyone was likely trying to get in a bit of work and errands and visiting before the heat of the afternoon took them all.

Janus rose and dressed quickly. He had no way of knowing when exactly Logan had left, and he hoped to catch him in the café before too much of the morning had passed.

The city buzzed with energy, hushed voices speaking fervently at each corner. What had happened while he was gone? He pushed open the heavy oak door to the café and let his eyes adjust to the dim interior. Logan sat with his back to the door, hunched over the table, a bit of graphite in his hand and a short stack of parchment near his elbow. Engrossed in his work, he barely moved when the door clunked shut, but still his head jerked up when Patton called his name.

“Janus!” he cheered. “Let me get you a coffee!”

He nodded and made his way to Logan’s table. Head bowed, Logan watched him from the corner of his eye. “May I join you?”

Logan looked up and nodded, eyes wet. “Please,” he whispered.

They were both quiet as Patton brought a pot of coffee, letting his chattering about the heat, the new—gently stolen—water pump he and Remy had installed to support the growing afternoon crowds from the Sorbonne. “Those University students do tip well,” he said with a little shrug as he refilled Logan’s cup. “They want to pretend they’re working class but their purses are heavy,” he laughed. Finally, he smiled at each of them and excused himself before returning to the kitchen.

Logan searched for his words in the swirls of steam coming off his mug. Janus waited and slowly sipped at his cup, the smoky taste almost painting a smile across his face. He’d missed Patton’s coffee. The world’s everything at their fingertips in the palace kitchens and they couldn’t compete against the love that little server infused in his brew.

“I am sorry,” Logan finally said, ripping back Janus’ attention. “I was wrong to make assumptions and to…” He shook his head. “I said horrible things and I am sorry, Janus. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Lo,” Janus reached across the table and Logan flinched when he hesitated before taking his hand. “It’s not what you said that hurt,” he frowned, fingers tapping against the side of Logan’s fingers. His knuckles were more pronounced, as were the bones in his wrist. His fingertips were cold, even in the heat of the day. “It hurt,” Janus admitted. “But what was worse was that you didn’t trust me, that you believed that I would betray everything for… for pleasure. ”

Logan hung his head. “I don’t really believe that,” he whispered. “I… I was… was afraid. Afraid for your safety. It’s an incredible risk and…” He set down his cup and gripped Janus’ hand between both of his. “How do you know he won’t have you arrested? Have you…”

“He won’t.” Janus said. “He’s known who I was since the night we met.”

“What?” Logan hissed, leaning forward. “How could you—”

“I didn’t tell him. He had a courtier ask about ‘Sir Henri Juriste.’ Apparently my cover wasn’t as strong as we’d believed. The real Juriste is now at least thirty years my senior.” Janus rolled his eyes and finished his coffee. “But Remus waited for me to feel safe enough with him to admit the truth.”

“He’s a fool,” Logan muttered.

Janus yanked his hand back and glared at his friend. “Excuse me?”

“I do not—” he sighed and folded his hands in his lap. “I mean he brought a known imposter into his palace. Into his bed.”

“That’s enough,” Janus’ voice was quiet but sharp.

“You could have caused him real harm,” Logan explained, softer. “How do you not see that?”

“I would never hurt him.”

“And if the cause demanded it?” Logan straightened in his seat, glaring back just as hard. “Have you forgotten what you’d gone to Versailles to do?”

“And I’m doing it. Prince Remus listens to my advice—”

Logan scoffed. “Perhaps in his private chambers.”

“It is not like that.” Janus insisted. “I am doing what you would advocate for. I’ve even gotten him to read bits of your treatise—”

“You what?”

“None with your real name,” Janus crossed his arms over his chest. “It seems the Prince isn’t the only one you take for a fool.” He lowered his arms and leaned closer. “Like it or not, Prince Remus is the eldest son. He will take the throne when the King dies and King Remus will be amenable to our cause and will have the power and the heart to enact real change.”

“What has happened to you?” Logan sat back, eyes narrowed as he stared at his oldest friend like he’d never seen him before. “You were the best of us, you used your talents for the cause.” He slapped his hand on the table, punctuating each sentence. “You never forgot where you came from, never forgot what we were fighting for! And now?” Logan looked at him like something he’d scraped off his boots. “Now you're betraying our brotherhood, betraying our ideals, all in the name of some false love. You’ve known him for weeks , you didn’t tell him your real name until just now. That’s not love.”

“And I suppose you are the great expert on love?” Logan’s face fell and Janus wished he could rip his words back. “Lo, I—”

He only sat up straighter and finished his coffee. Patton was at his side before the empty cup had touched the scratched table top. Logan waited silently while Patton poured, then shook his head at Janus. “You are blinded by the needs of your heart. And your flesh.”

Janus' hands shook and he stroked his ring. “Are you quite certain it is I who is blinded, Father Gérault?”

Logan paled and looked away. Before he could respond, the café door slammed open and a half-dozen of the Garde Royale stomped inside. Conversation in the café dissolved, the faint bubble of the oat gruel Patton was preparing roared in the quiet.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Remy called out from the back room, clearly drawn by the sudden lack of ambient noise. “May I get you some coffee?” He raised a steel tankard. “On the house.” When they ignored him, he stepped closer, his full height suddenly obvious. “Or perhaps something stronger? A light ale on a summer’s day?”

Janus’s eyes widened when the palace steward stepped inside, peering through the relative darkness at each patron. His eyes landed on Janus and he pointed at their table.

Remy stepped forward, just barely in their path. “Surely it doesn’t take six guards to have a conversation with one of my patrons.” Janus looked around them. The guards had chosen their position well, blocking both the main entrance and the side door. There was a hatch hidden behind the counter, but there was no way Janus could reach it without being seen.

The steward ignored Remy and approached the table where Logan and Janus sat. “By order of the Dauphin, you are to come with me , Sir Juriste.”

“You have the wrong person,” Logan said in his ‘reasonable’ voice. He rose, shoving his papers to the side then held out his hands in benediction. “This is my friend, he is not a noble.”

“Well, perhaps your friend has been less than honest with you,” the steward remarked and pointed at the gold bracelet hanging from Janus’ wrist. “He wears the Dauphin’s fleur-de-lis. Besides…” The steward managed to sneer and simper at the same time. “I know his face.”

“It’s alright, Lo,” Janus said as he stood. “At least you get to say you were right after all.” His joke fell flat when he met Logan’s eyes. "Be safe," he murmured and gave shoulder a squeeze as he drew close and whispered in his ear. "I'm sorry, too."

The guards had fanned out, standing between Janus and the other patrons. And Patton and Remy. “Very well,” he said to the steward, chin held high. “More guards outside, I presume?”

The steward nodded and moved with staccato steps to the door. One of the guards held it open, and two led the way. The remaining three watched the patrons—and Remy—muskets at the ready. Just before he was swallowed by the glare of the midday sun, Janus nodded to Logan and Patton. And then he was gone.

The guards followed and the café door slammed shut again. Voices erupted in the café and Patton leapt out from behind the counter. “We have to do something!” Logan nodded, about to speak. He was interrupted by a loud voice carrying over the din.

“Oh, now you want to take action?” Colére spat from the corner, feet propped on the table. “Where was this fight when the people were ready to take up arms to defend our right to assemble?" He rose to his feet. "Where was this fight when the people were ready to defend our right to be heard in the Assembly?”

“You wanted to storm the palace with a handful of boys who could scarcely lift a musket.” Logan’s voice was low but the former priest knew how to keep an audience. “That’s not being heard, Lucas, that’s being massacred. They’ve likely taken Janus to the prison at the Bastille.” He gripped Colére’s shoulder. “There are more guns than prisoners there. We will not win this by might alone.” Colére’s eye twitched, but he listened and took his seat.

“We need information,” Logan said, and turned to address the small group that had assembled around him. “And we need a plan.”

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