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do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them · 6 years

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On the Other Side / Ch7: Truth or Dare part 3

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Summary: For the past thirteen years, a secretive organization has been raising two groups of superpowered children. Half of them, since their very first memories, have been told they’ll grow up to be brave and strong superheroes; the rest were taught a much harsher view of the world, and groomed to become villains. Neither group knows of the other’s existence. But when a certain trio of heroes-to-be meets two future villains who really just want to be left alone, they all realize how much they haven’t been told.

Warnings: non-graphic violence, bullying, child abuse, sympathetic/good Deceit (Devon) is a main character

A/N: Sorry this is late, the past week has been kind of crazy... I'm thinking about switching the update schedule for this to Friday or Saturday so this won't happen as much. What do you guys think? Also, don’t worry, this is the last super-dialogue-heavy chapter before we get back to Plot Events and such.

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Patton noticed Roman’s hesitation, and it wasn’t difficult to guess the cause. He took his hand with an encouraging smile and led him back to the fort.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he assured him. “I know you didn’t mean to, you just didn’t know it would scare them… I’m sure if you explain that and apologize, they’ll understand!”

Roman wasn’t as certain, but he allowed himself to be pulled along anyway. After all, what kind of hero would he be if he couldn’t do the right thing and apologize when he messed up?

Everyone glanced over when they came in, although no one said anything yet. The blankets were still soaked in the corner where Patton had been sitting, but it only took him a second to pull the water out of them and deposit it in the bathroom sink, leaving everything nice and dry again. Roman winced a little at that. To have such good control of the water, he must still have been feeling pretty bad, even if he was trying not to act like it.

“Is everyone okay now?” Patton asked, sitting cross-legged in the same spot as before and patting the blankets to tell Roman to join him. As soon as he complied, Patton let his head rest on Roman’s shoulder, blinking heavily. The storm had taken a lot out of him, and it was a fair bit later than they were used to staying up anyway.

Devon nodded. “We’re alright.” He was leaning on the wall, and Virgil was leaning on him, turned away from everyone else so that his face wasn’t visible. They both looked about ready to fall asleep where they were, too- well, insofar as the back of Virgil’s head looked like anything. Maybe that was why they didn’t have all their defenses back up; they were just too tired.

“Guys, I- I’m really sorry,” Roman blurted before he could overthink it. “I was just so excited to get to show off, I wasn’t thinking- I understand if you don’t… trust me around you anymore.” He pulled his knees up to his chest, moving away from them and closer to Patton to show his willingness to stay away, not that they could see him very well in the dark. The light had gone back where it belonged earlier, with Roman focused on other things. He brought it into the fort again and played with it absently in the increasingly awkward silence that followed.

It was a bit of a relief when someone at least moved. Virgil lifted his head, turning a little to look at him. Silently, of course. It was very uncomfortable until Roman realized he was just watching the ball of light bounce between his hands and not staring him down.

“Oh, uh- I can, I can put it away if you want,” he stammered, assuming it was making him nervous. To his surprise, Virgil shook his head quickly and actually reached out a bit as if to stop him from putting it back. Roman was suddenly reminded of Devon had related to him shortly before things had gone wrong.

“Do you… want it?” He got a slightly confused look in response and attempted to clarify. “I can make it so you can touch it, and I can’t do anything else to it without touching it myself, so it won’t do anything unexpected this time… Just- will you allow me to begin to make this up to you? Please?”

Virgil considered him for a few seconds. This was a very unfamiliar type of interaction for him, after all. Then, he nodded slowly and held his hand out. Roman perked up, cheering internally, and took a moment to solidify the little orb of light before floating it over to him. Virgil caught it and turned it over in his hands a couple times, then gave him a thumbs-up and- was Roman just imagining that he seemed a little happier?

“Does that mean you’re not mad at me anymore?” he asked hopefully. A brief whispered exchange, and Devon answered.

“We don’t hate you or anything,” he assured. “Just don’t do anything like that again.” He ended with a warning look, but Roman was too relieved to be very intimidated. Then he put his arm around Virgil and continued, “And uh- we’re sorry too… for overreacting and interrupting the game and upsetting Patton…”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Logan said carefully. “I would guess that in the context of your previous experiences, the way you reacted made perfect sense, and the game was really not that important.”

“I’m the one who should be apologizing to you,” Patton cried. “I tried to use my powers and help and- and it made everything worse!”

Logan realized he was still apparently the only one here thinking rationally. “You were having a panic attack too,” he pointed out. “You couldn’t possibly be expected to control your emotions.”

Virgil and Devon looked at each other. There was a term for it? They would have to ask about that, when they were more awake.

“Now, if we’re all done blaming ourselves for things that we either didn’t mean to do or had no control over…”

“Can we finish the game?” Patton asked. “I mean, I know we’re all really tired, but I don’t want the last thing that happens today to be that…”

“I’m willing.” Roman didn’t want to fall asleep thinking about it either.

Devon shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind if we fall asleep in the middle of it.” Point of fact, he wasn’t entirely sure Virgil hadn’t done that already.

“If it will make you feel better, I’ll participate too,” Logan agreed. “Actually, I believe I was supposed to demonstrate my power now. I’ll keep it calm since it’s getting so late. Er… Virgil, do you think you could move the light a little so we can see?” He’d sort of curled up against Devon and was holding it like a stuffed animal, which was somewhat endearing, but also prevented the light from doing its job.

“You make a better door than a window,” Patton giggled.

Virgil made a sleepy, barely-there “hm?” sound and turned his body so that the light was more visible. He blinked hard a few times and rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up so he could watch Logan.

“Thank you.” Logan pushed his glasses up and began. “I have the power of molecular manipulation- which, if you haven’t gotten to that yet in your classes, molecules are the little pieces that everything is made of, I have a book I can show you tomorrow- but with the limitation that I have to understand what I’m doing to be able to do it, so I can fairly easily do something like this,” he held up the pieces of the blanket Roman had attacked and put them back together as if nothing had ever happened, “or what I did earlier today to make a hole in the wall, but if I wanted to cause something to explode or similar I would need to do some research first. Moving things is the easiest. Teleportation is possible in theory, but I’ve tried it with some small objects and they don’t necessarily look the same afterward, so I wouldn’t want to do it with anything living.” Roman and Patton exchanged a “yuck” face at the very thought.

“It also allows me to change the temperature of things,” he continued, leaning forward and taking a couple of cookies. It was a miracle any were still left, honestly. He frowned at them for a few seconds. “There- an example.” He scooted closer in order to hand them to Devon and Virgil, who were pleasantly surprised to find the cookies were warm now, making the chocolate chips all nice and melty.

“Do some for us too, Lo, please?” Patton could, of course, get Logan to do this any time he wanted, but still.

“Oh, all right.” He warmed up two more for Patton and Roman.

“Surely you know this is the only reason we wanted you to room with us,” Roman teased, slinging an arm around Logan’s shoulders. “Our own personal nerdy microwave.”

“Oh, get off me,” Logan grumbled, trying not to laugh as he pushed him away. “It’s supposed to be Patton’s turn now, right?”

“Right!” Patton tried to say, only his mouth was still full of cookie, so it came out more like “Rmph!” He swallowed quickly before going on, “Logan, truth or dare?”

“Oh, don’t even bother,” Roman interjected with an over-dramatic sigh, “he’s boring, he’s only ever going to say- ”

“Dare,” Logan interrupted, crossing his arms and giving Roman a look. “Only so you’ll leave me alone about it.”

“Oh! Um… I need a minute to think about it now,” Patton said with a surprised giggle. “No, wait, I know…” He whispered in Logan’s ear, cupping his hands so no one else could hear. “I dare you to lick Roman’s face every time he says the word ‘the’ for the rest of the game with no explanation.”

“I am not doing that,” Logan said immediately.

“What?! What did he tell you to do?” Roman asked, clearly disappointed.

“He wanted me to lick you-”

“Wh- Patton,” he whined. “Gross.”

“Yes, exactly, which is why I’m not doing it. I forfeit this round, and also propose a rule of no more dares for the rest of the night, because clearly some of us have started getting weird.”

“Aw, no!”

“Just because you don’t want to-”

“You two, shush. Devon? Virgil?”

“Uh…” Thanks a lot, Logan, they totally wanted to be put on the spot right now. “Well- Vi’s pretty tired, so it might be a good idea…?”

“Thank you. See? They’re on my side, majority wins.” There was some complaining, but the new rule was accepted fairly quickly in the interest of not having their new friends think they were mad at them.

“Oh well, that makes it my turn again… If we’re not doing dares anymore, I guess I can jump right in and ask someone a question, right?” Patton hummed thoughtfully, considering his options. “Hey, Virgil, what’s your favorite kind of cookie? If you’re still awake over there…”

Virgil sat up straighter to answer, looking slightly insulted by the insinuation that he was falling asleep just because he was curled up with his eyes closed and hadn’t moved in a while. Devon listened to his answer and started, confused.

“Snickerdoodles? When did you even have snickerdoodles?”

Virgil merely shrugged with a mischievous little smile.

“Ohhh, I love those too!” Patton exclaimed. “We should ask Thomas to get some for us next time he goes to buy snacks… oh, you guys didn’t really meet him, did you? He’s really nice, you’d like him, and he gets snacks for everyone sometimes ‘cause he’s our dorm parent. Shoot, I’m rambling,” he laughed. “Sorry, Virgil, you can take your turn now!”

Virgil nodded and thought for a while. Coming up with things was getting harder as his sleepiness grew. Eventually he shrugged and indicated Logan. “What’s your favorite animal?” Devon asked for him.

“Oh, that’s a difficult one, there are so many good choices… well, I don’t know if it’s my absolute favorite, but I think the octopus is very interesting. Three hearts, no skeleton- so they can fit into tiny gaps and escape sometimes when they’re in captivity, and they absolutely will try if they get bored- and they can change colors to camouflage themselves. Also, when they mate-”

“Wow, Logan, that’s neat!” Patton quickly interrupted. “I like cats, myself.”

Logan was thankfully distracted from saying any more on the subject. “You- you’re allergic to cats.”

“Well, yeah, but I like them! They’re cute!”

Roman shifted, stretching out on the floor and propping himself up with his elbows. “Bet I can guess Devon’s favorite.”

“Oh, shut up.” Devon stuck his tongue out at him, which did not necessarily help his case.

“I believe it was my turn,” Logan reminded everyone. “So, hmm… Roman, if you were to compliment, let’s say two of the other people playing, what would you say?”

Roman graciously refrained from pointing out how that was basically a sneaky rephrasing of a dare and Logan was already exploiting loopholes in his own rule. He did, however, also refrain from choosing him as one of the two people he now had to say something nice to. “Patton,” he proclaimed, throwing himself over said boy’s legs so as to make sure he had his attention, “you’re an absolutely wonderful friend and I love you.”

“Aww!” Patton hugged him. “You’re a great friend too, love you back!”

“And…” He was determined to include one of the other two rather than Logan, but he didn’t exactly know them well enough to have much to work with. “Uh- Devon, your face looks cool!” It wasn’t the most original, he certainly knew what his own face looked like already, but it wouldn’t look good if Roman sat there for too long trying to come up with something complimentary to say.

Speaking of Devon’s face, it darkened instantly. “Thanks,” he said with more bitter sarcasm than should have been able to fit in his small body. “I know how stupid I look, alright, it’s not new information to me, so whatever you’re trying to pull you can just forget it.”

“Wait, no! I wasn’t- I just genuinely thought it was cool, I didn’t mean to insult you, of course not! I- hold on, who told you it looked stupid? I’ll fight them,” he declared, seeming like he really did mean it.

Devon blinked, his scowl fading. Okay, maybe he’d been a little quick to get defensive, but to be fair… “Uh… how about everyone? If you actually think this looks good, you’d be the first… See, I used to look normal, but then something happened with my power so now it’s like this, and it’s easy to make fun of, so… yeah.”

“Then I suppose I shall have to fight everyone you’ve ever met. By the way, what are you guys’ powers?”

“Well, I can shapeshift, only as you can see it hasn’t worked very well so far-” he rubbed his arm, embarrassed- “and Virgil… we’re not sure yet. He’s not ready to try using it, whatever it is. Was that your question, is it my turn now?” Upon receiving confirmation, he turned to Patton. “What’s so great about cats that you love them even though you’re allergic?”

Patton bounced excitedly, jostling Roman, who was still lying across his legs. “They’re just so cute and sweet and soft, and they purr, and their little paws are so cute, with the toe beans, you know? And when they like you they rub their little face on you and it’s just adorable!”

“Which is bad in your case,” Logan reminded him, “because then you have fur on you and have to change clothes because you are allergic to cats.”

“I know but still!”

“Hey, I have an idea,” Roman spoke up from the floor with a yawn. “How about we stop the game and just have a conversation like normal people, because what we’re doing right now is just a conversation with extra rules and it’s getting sort of hard to follow.”

“You have a point,” Logan admitted, and everyone else nodded in agreement.

“Great, in that case I don’t have to wait to ask Devon why he acts like he’s never, like, seen a cat before?!”

“I’ve seen cats before,” he protested. Which he had, just not in person that he could remember “But this is a school, you don’t have cats in a school!”

“In our school you do,” said Patton, “they bring them in sometimes and if you’re having a bad day or you need to calm down you can go play with them. Except I’m not allowed to anymore because they figured out about my allergies, so unless I start taking medicine I can only play with the dogs now. Which are also great! But I’m still kinda sad about the cats.”

“Weird.”

Logan tilted his head. “So that’s one difference… are there other things we have here that your school doesn’t, or vice versa? I suppose it’s probably hard to say since you haven’t seen much of ours.”

He thought about it. “Another one is that we don’t really have a ‘dorm parent’ like you do… I mean, there’s adult supervision, they don’t just leave us to do whatever, but there isn’t someone actually called that. And they definitely don’t take requests to go buy us snacks. More of just someone being nearby all the time to make sure we’re not breaking rules… don’t think we’d get away with staying up talking this late either, they would’ve noticed and come told us to shut up and go to sleep by now.”

Patton frowned. “They don’t sound very nice…”

“Yeah, well. They’re nice to some people. Not us, though.” He unconsciously hugged Virgil, pulling him closer to his side.

“Well, you should just stay here, then,” Patton decided. “Thomas is nice to everyone.”

Remembering something, Roman asked, “Is that why you hadn’t had Doritos before?”

“Yeah- I mean, kinda. There’s stuff like that in the cafeteria sometimes, but then people take more than they’re supposed to and if you don’t feel like fighting to be at the front of the line there isn’t anything good left, and we’d probably just get hurt if we tried to do that since everyone literally has superpowers, so…” Not to mention they got hurt quite enough as it was. “Doesn’t seem worth it for chips or whatever.”

Virgil leaned up and whispered something.

“Oh, what? Really? Okay, apparently Vi gets cookies sometimes from Mr. Remy who works in the cafeteria because he thinks he’s too skinny. Is that how you got snickerdoodles? No fair, he doesn’t sneak me cookies.” He was surprised Virgil hadn’t told him before. He would have been surprised he hadn’t seen it, but they often weren’t scheduled to eat at the same time, being in different grade levels and all.

Patton gasped. “We know him too! And Thomas likes him but he won’t admit it,” he revealed, giggling.

“We’re trying to set them up,” added Roman, wiggling his eyebrows. “I think we’re getting close, Thomas actually managed to say a full sentence to him last week!”

“What do you have other than that?” Patton asked. “Does your cafeteria have the same foods we do? Pizza and stuff?”

Logan side-eyed him. “Are you hungry or something, Patton?”

“I just need to know! ‘Cause if they haven’t had something we have then we need to bring it back for them tomorrow so they can try it!”

“Probably? It’s just, y’know, normal cafeteria food. Not amazing, but like, it’s edible and all.”

“Devon, I have a very important question for you.” Patton scooted closer and looked him in the eyes. “Do you have french fries shaped like smiley faces.”

He blinked. “What? No. How would you- how does that even work?”

“You don’t?!” He was much more distraught than the situation seemed to call for. “Don’t worry, I’ll get them for you as soon as I can!”

“O… kay? You don’t… have to-”

“Yes I do.”

He put his hands up in surrender. “If you say so. But, ah… can we stop talking about food now? Because it’s kind of the middle of the night and we can’t actually get any of it until morning, and we’re not going to get very far anyway if you’re just going to list things off and ask if we’ve had them, and anyway I think Virgil is asleep for real now.”

“I think we should all go to sleep now,” Logan chimed in. “At least the three of us who live here and have to be up early tomorrow.”

“Aw, I guess you’re right…”

“That’s fair,” mumbled Roman, who had faceplanted into the blankets. He rolled himself slowly off of Patton’s legs and stretched. They’d all been in the fort for at least a couple hours at this point, and he wondered vaguely why Devon and Virgil didn’t seem to mind being in the same exact position in their corner for so long. “‘M going to bed.”

“Brush your teeth first,” Logan called after him as he left, having done so himself before they’d even sat down in the first place. He’d sort of expected everyone to finish talking way sooner than they had.

“You can’t make me,” he responded. “You’re not Thomas.” He was already halfway in his bed at that point, given that it was approximately five feet away from the fort and he had the lower bunk. (He would’ve argued for the top, but Patton had an unfortunate habit of floating in his sleep and winding up in the upper bunk regardless of where he’d started, so it was easier to just put him there in the first place.)

“Will you two be okay down here?” Patton asked Devon as Logan made his way out as well. “Do you want more blankets, or water or anything? I mean, there’s probably enough blankets since the whole fort is made of them, but if you’re cold I can find more… actually, are you comfortable being by yourselves, because I can stay with you if you want and then if you need anything you can wake me up, but I don’t want to be in your space too much…”

“Patton.” Devon blinked at him tiredly, having only really heard about half of his fretting. “We’re fine. Go to bed.” He adjusted a few pillows, making a cozy little nest for the two of them to sleep in, and flopped down with more than one blanket pulled over his head. The conversation was clearly over.

“Okay, well, you just poke me if you need anything,” Patton said, leaving. “Good night!”

“G’night…” Devon curled up next to Virgil with a content sigh, just close enough to tell he was there without having to look. Despite being in a strange place with people they’d only just met a few hours ago, he already felt more secure and comfortable here than he ever did normally. There was so much to process about what had happened in those few hours he didn’t know where to start, but… it could probably wait. He was tired, and warm, and full of junk food. Time to follow everyone else’s example and go to sleep.

#sanders sides #roman sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #my post #my writing #on the other side

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