Chapter Text
There was a boy in his bed. There was a boy in his bed. Again—there was a BOY in his BED!
Somehow, when he woke up groggily at two in the morning, he’d managed to forget that fact. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, briefly wondering why his arms had felt so heavy. Why it’d been so difficult to get up. Was he dying?
It took only a quick glance to locate the problem: Virgil’s limbs were twisted around him, weighing him—and therefore his arms—down. That made more sense than dying.
Instinctively, Roman looked over at Remus’s side of the room to see if his brother was awake, and he wasn’t. He was the only awake one in this scenario.
He tried to lay back down and go back to sleep, but that was proving to be impossible. His body had decided that he was awake, and that was that. So instead, he recapped the day in his mind.
It’d started like any other. He’d gotten up for school, drove himself and Remus there, painstakingly sat through all of his classes waiting ever-so patiently for lunch to come. The table-merging had come with quite a few benefits, as much as he was hesitant to admit to it.
The situation between Patton and Logan was still, well, awkward to say the least. Neither of them were exactly ignoring each other anymore, but even when they did talk it was forced and didn’t sound at all like before. This caused an increase in conversation between Logan and Remus, of all people. Patton ate in uncharacteristic silence.
Upon making it to the table, Roman threw himself down in the spot next to Virgil, made very clear eye contact, and said, “Hey.”
He quirked a brow in response. “Hey?”
“How are you today?”
“…Fine? I’m fine.”
“That’s good.”
Janus, seated on the opposite side of the table to them, rolled their eyes. “Christ, you two, what’s with the flirtation today? Get a room.”
Truthfully, Roman was purposefully dialing back his romancing, because he hated the idea of rubbing it in everyone’s face—Patton’s specifically—but also because he knew he couldn’t just come over and shove his tongue down his boyfriend’s throat, metaphorically, without the energy in the room shifting dramatically.
Even so, Janus’s commentary made restraining himself much more difficult.
“What?” Virgil replied before Roman could even start to. “Are you jealous?”
“Of you?” They took a sip of their water. “Christ, no, eugh. Of him? Mayhaps.”
Virgil’s cheeks were dusted a very pale pink, and he looked toward Roman in a way that said, “Are you gonna just take that?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t openly flirt with my boyfriend right in front of me, thank you.”
“Oh! My apologies, your highness.” They bowed their head. “I didn’t realize you determined the rules for what I could say about the guy I’ve known for eighteen years..!”
Logan interjected, “Are we going to ignore the fact that they just said ‘mayhaps’? With an ‘s’?”
Roman ignored him, leaning further over the table to try and make a point. “You think you can come between me and my man? Who do you think you are, exactly?”
Making a face, Janus looked right past him and directly at Virgil. “Get your dog out of my face. His breath stinks.”
Virgil nodded and tapped Roman on the shoulder, like how someone would a puppy. “Down, boy.”
Begrudgingly Roman sat back down, slightly embarrassed at the whole ordeal but not willing to admit it out loud. The group continued eating in relative silence. However, if there was one thing that Roman had gained from the whole ordeal, it was that he and Virgil needed some time to themselves. He couldn’t walk on eggshells in front of Patton forever.
“Would you be willing,” he said quietly so that only Virgil would hear it, “to come over tonight?”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know! Hang out?”
“For how long?”
“Well, tomorrow’s Saturday, so I was thinking…”
“That I stay overnight?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“Don’t you share a room with your brother?”
“Maybe.”
“I guess it wouldn’t matter, so long as neither of you snore or sleepwalk.”
“We don’t.”
“Alright,” he said, significantly louder than the rest of their conversation, “but I’m bunking with Remus.”
Remus beamed. “Ooh! Fun!”
Roman scoffed, his mouth hanging open, offended. To this Virgil chuckled, “I’m messing with you, dipsh*t.” He pecked his cheek. “And you make it sooo easy, too.”
That’s how they got to where they were now, packed like sardines onto Roman’s twin bed. There was a brief moment at the beginning of the night where Virgil circled back to the bunking with Remus concept, but he quickly changed his tune when he sat down on a half-eaten pizza that the comforter had been covering.
Now Roman was starting to get sweaty. It was almost summer, and for some God-forsaken reason nobody turned on the ceiling fan before they laid down, and there were too many blankets on top of him—not to mention the entire human whose face was hidden in the crook of his neck.
So what did he do? Easy! He thought really, really hard about Virgil waking up until it finally happened. Of course, he also had to pinch him a little, but he pretended like he didn’t.
“What time is it?”
“Two thirty-six.”
“Like, a.m.?”
“Yes, Virge, like a.m.”
He sat up ever-so slightly. “What are you doing awake at two thirty-six a.m.? You’re obviously not done with your beauty rest.”
“First of all, ouch. Second of all,” he paused, “it is really hot in here and I can’t breathe.”
“Oh,” Virgil replied, like he should’ve said that sooner. He stood up and flipped the ceiling fan switch, then came back and pulled all of the blankets down to the end of the bed. “There. Is that any better, your royal whininess?”
“I don’t like you.”
“Sure you don’t.”
“Shut up—”
“Just answer the question.”
Roman huffed. “Well, I’m certainly not overheating anymore, but…something’s missing.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”
In response, he threw his arms open, waiting for Virgil to fall into him, but that didn’t happen. He pouted. “Come on!”
“Um, no.” He shook his head. “There’s no way I’m getting back into bed with sir-sweats-a-lot.”
“You’re even meaner at two a.m., you know that?”
“Your voice is even more shrill at two a.m., did you know that?”
Again, he huffed. “Virge. Honey. Babe. My sweet stormcloud in an otherwise plain midnight sky—”
“Jesus.”
“—would you please—”
“Nah.”
His frown deepened, a clear indicator that some sort of “Why don’t you love me?” bit was to come. It was like pleading with a cat who was purposely being ambiguous about its intentions. Even so, he tried one last time, “Please?”
“No.”
“And why not?!” He demanded a little too loudly, before forcing his volume back down so as to not wake his darling brother. “Why not?”
He waited for Virgil to say something like, “Because I was just f*cking with you to see how worked up you’d get,” and then crawl into his arms, but that never happened. He just shrugged.
“Are you punishing me for something?”
“No? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Roman admitted, “but I’m starting to get a little upset, so if you are, it’s working.”
Virgil groaned. “Okay, fine,” he began, “Just to level with you, I’m just not in the mood to lay down. I was feeling a little…restless before.”
“Okay…so what do you want to do instead?”
“f*ck if I know. I was just planning on standing here until my legs gave out.”
It took him a hot minute, but eventually Roman thought of something that might work. “Do you want to go for a drive?”
Within the next five minutes they were in the car, in their pajamas—and Virgil in his jacket, too, because he rejected the possibility of being seen in just a t-shirt—on their way to nowhere.
“Just let me know when you’re ready to go back.”
“Okay.” Virgil was sitting cross-legged in the passenger seat, with no seatbelt—surprising considering how often he’d fret about his own safety—silently listening to the music that was playing softly on the radio.
Roman was more than happy to do this; nighttime car rides were an unsung passion of his, and having someone he cared for so deeply there with him made it even better. Once he was confident enough in his one-handed driving, he took the other off the wheel and placed it on Virgil’s knee.
He didn’t expect it to go this way. It was barely even five months ago that he’d talked to Virgil for the first time, a moment he kicked himself for almost every day. He had a tendency to act really dumb. But now there they were, together for just over a month, going for a drive on the night of their first overnight date—which technically wasn’t classified as a date because Roman’s parents didn’t know they were dating, because he knew that if they knew, they wouldn’t have let Virgil come over.
It was maybe ten minutes into the drive that Virgil’s phone started ringing.
“Who is that?” Roman asked, begging for it to be a spam caller or a wrong number.
He sighed. “Janus. They have Life360 on me.” He picked up the call. “What do you want?” There was a brief pause, and then: “He’s taking me for a drive. I couldn’t sleep.” Another pause. “I won’t. I won’t, I promise. Okay. Good night.”
“What was that about?”
“They thought I was being kidnapped,” Virgil explained, “and then when I said I wasn’t, they told me not to let you ‘try anything’.”
Roman scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned over and laid his head on the taller man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it too much. Just keep driving.”
They drove for another hour or so in a really big circle, only stopping because they both had to use the restroom. So Roman pulled into the shadiest gas station he’d possibly ever seen and they walked in together, for numbers or whatever. The only employee they saw was a late-teens early-twenties girl who clearly couldn’t care enough to even acknowledge that they were there. Which was fair. By that point it was almost four in the morning.
After leaving the, surprisingly clean, bathroom, they each quickly chose a light snack for the drive back to the house. If they weren’t tired before they left, they certainly were now, so energy drinks were a good idea.
“Maybe it’ll help keep us awake if we talk,” Virgil suggested. “The quiet makes me drowsy.”
“Okay. Let’s talk, then.”
“Alright…” He paused. “What’s up with Patton and Logan? I thought they were best friends…or whatever?”
Weirdly enough, Roman didn’t realize he’d never told Virgil about the bet he’d had with Patton. Now was as good of a time as ever, he supposed. “Well, it’s kind of a long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
“You’re right. Okay. That day I first asked you out, right after the show? I only had the guts to do that because Patton promised me if I asked the guy I liked out, he’d do the same. At the time I didn’t know he meant Logan, and if I had, I wouldn’t have gone along with it because I knew it would end badly, but…I didn’t know that.”
“So Patton asked Logan out, and now things are awkward between them?”
“They wouldn’t have been. As far as I know, Logan would’ve let the whole thing go. Patton chose to distance himself.”
The car went quiet. Roman almost didn’t notice Virgil curling into a ball in his seat. Almost.
“So it’s kind of my fault when you think about it.”
“What? No. It’s not your fault I had a crush on you and was too stupid to act on it myself.”
“Well, I liked you too. I could’ve done something about it, but I didn’t, and now Pat—”
To cut him off, Roman grabbed Virgil’s hand and squeezed it tight, effectively shocking him into silence. “It’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it.”
For the millionth time that night, their conversation faded out for a while—until suddenly they were pulling onto Roman’s street and Virgil had everything to say. “I don’t want to go back yet.”
“But you said—”
“I’m tired, yeah, I know. I am. But I still don’t want to go back.” He bit the corner of his bottom lip. “It really, really grosses me out, but I kind of want to be alone with you.”
Roman grinned, his stupid flustered grin. “Okay. I’ll take us somewhere else, then.”
“Maybe, like, an empty parking lot? Anywhere people aren’t.”
“Geez. Are you trying to kill me or something?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
They drove to the pool, which wouldn’t be open for almost another month, and parked on the street in front of it. Something about the building—the emptiness, the dark surrounding it, and the fact that the public park was directly across the street—sent spiders crawling up Virgil’s back. But there was this other thing—Roman’s grip on his hand being ridiculously tight—that kept him grounded in reality.
With his free hand he checked the time. It was four fifty-seven. This was going to wreck their sleep schedules for sure. He tried to think of what to say, since this was his idea and therefore he should be the one talking. “What are you doing after school?”
“Like, what? On Monday?”
“No, stupid,” he replied. “After graduation.”
“Oh. I don’t know.” Roman sighed. “Community college, I guess, with Patton. And that’s close enough that I can just live at home, so I don’t have to really worry about it.”
“You’re going to sleep in the same bedroom as Remus for another few years?”
“Is that what you’re worried about?”
“It’s not the main thing, just the first.”
He clicked his tongue. “If you must know, yes. That’s the plan. I’ve done it for the last, what? Five years? What’s another few in the grand scheme of things?”
“Oh.”
“What about you? What are your plans?”
“Pick up more shifts at work. Try to save as much as I can so that, eventually, I can get out of here.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere. I don’t care. I just can’t stay here.”
That made sense. Roman knew just as well as almost anyone else that Virgil hated their town, and that he had every right to. But he didn’t want the conversation to spiral too quickly, so he tried to pick it up a little, “Just promise you’ll take me with you, okay? I’ll go wherever you are.”
“You’re so stupid.”
“Stupid with love,” was his response, right before he began humming the song of the same name from the Mean Girls musical.
“Shut up.” There was another pause, a gap Virgil felt the need to fill. “My mom is kicking me out.”
“What? Why? When?”
“She said that after I graduate, I have a week to find a place and leave.”
“Do you have somewhere to go?”
Truthfully, Roman would offer to let him stay with his family in a heartbeat. The only issue with that would be that there’d be three of them in one room, because there was absolutely no way that Henry would give up his office now, if the past five years were any indication.
“Janus is in the process of getting their own place, and they said if it works out I’m more than welcome to live there,” he said. “But I just don’t know if it’ll happen in time.”
“There’s only two weeks left before graduation, so that means you have three…”
“I should be fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Does Janus know when their situation will be settled? Any idea?”
“They said it should be any day now, but that the landlord has been slow at getting back to them every step of the way. So.”
“Well if you need a little more time, my side of the room is always open.”
“How generous of you.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Virgil rolled his eyes, before leaning over to leave a kiss on Roman’s cheek. “Let’s head back. I don’t want your parents to think we were doing anything wrong.”
“It’s not them you’d have to worry about. They think we’re friends. It’s Remus you gotta watch out for.”
“Regardless. Let’s go.”
“As you wish, master.”
“Go f*ck yourself.”
