we all have them
Patton wasn't popular.
It wasn't that he was alone -- far from it, actually. He had his boyfriend Roman, two parents, his neighbour Logan (he could have sworn that Logan was his other half; after all, they both had glasses), and two amazing cats, Emile and Remy. Patton was allergic to cats, so this wasn't necessarily a plus, but he appreciated them with his whole heart.
Patton was president of the environmental club, which was most likely why he wasn't popular. It definitely wasn't because he was a wee bit chubby and made friends with all the teachers, because who cared about that? Teachers didn't make much, and they deserved to be appreciated, even if nobody else saw that.
He woke up at exactly 7:34 a.m, his internal clock buzzing with excitement. The sunlight shone through where he had carefully placed his glasses the night before, projecting a small rainbow onto his bedroom wall. For a small moment, there was peace.
Then Patton heard the yelling from the kitchen, the sound of something shattering on the counter, and sighed. He was still Patton. This was still his life.
“Hey, Patt!!” His mom yelled. “Come clean this up!”
He scrambled out of bed, dancing around as he zipped up his onesie, trying to make it fit. He dashed down the hallway, nearly tripping over the cracked tiles, and skidded to a stop in the entryway.
“Mom, mother.” He nodded to the two women, a forced smile on his face. “What am I cleaning?”
“Alliyah,” Dienna said, crossing her arms, “decided that our wine bottle was better smashed than calmly opened with a cork.”
“It was impossible to open!” His mom protested, her arm up in self-defense. “Forgive me, but I do only have a right arm, and I'm left handed, so…”
“That sounds like a personal problem,” His mother retorted, a small smile gracing her features.
“A personal problem like me not loving you for the rest of the day?” Alliyah asked smugly.
Patton rolled his eyes, already knowing what would come next.
“Ay, come here,” Dienna sighed.
He turned away with wide eyes and grabbed the broom, ushering the glass into the dustpan and into the trash. He was just about to put away the broom when a shout startled him into dropping it.
“Patton!” Alliyah approached him, hand on her hips. “Why are you cleaning up my mess, eh? Lo will be here soon, you know how he likes to be precise.”
“Yes, mom.” He carefully placed the broom back into the closet and scuttled back to his room, hopping out of his onesie as he searched his bedroom floor for clothes.
A knock on the front door interrupted his tooth-brushing, and he nearly choked on the brush in surprise.
“I'll get it!” Dienna yelled, as she liked to do. Patton beat her to the door by a millisecond, his hair a mess and only half his teeth brushed. 7:46 a.m, perfect timing.
The front door opened on its own, and Patton's best friend stepped through, his hair perfectly parted and his matching glasses sparkling.
Patton pouted. “I was going to open the door for you.”
“You seem to forget that I possess a key leading directly to your living room,” Logan reminded him, adjusting his glasses for no reason at all. “If I were not responsible, you could have been robbed several times since we were thirteen.”
“That's why we trust you,” Alliyah shouted from the kitchen. “Patt, sweetie, you forgot to eat breakfast.”
“I'll eat it on the way!” He yelled back. “Lo is driving!”
Dienna gasped dramatically, her hand flying to her heart. “Lo… our sweet baby…”
“Yes, that will be all.” Logan bowed swiftly and steps out of the open door. “Patton, don't forget to wear that necklace Roman gave you for your anniversary. He will be upset if you don't.”
“Oh,” Patton remembered, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “Right, the charm -- I'll get that right away, wait in the car!”
He dashed back to his room, nearly slipping on the onesie in the entrance, and tore through his dresser to find the small box.
“It's blue,” he reminded himself. “Blue, blue -- oh!”
He rendered it triumphantly, smiling as it fit perfectly into the palm of his hand. He tossed the lid away and fumbled with the necklace, looking in the mirror for guidance as it finally fitted around his neck.
The necklace was beautiful, the chain a light silver and the charm a young green leaf. However, as Patton looked at his necklace in the mirror, it started to look less and less green and took on a red hue, as if it was dying.
The metal leaf shriveled up quickly, and as Patron backed away from the mirror, broken pieces floated in the air in front of him.
Finally, the leaf was gone.
He raised his voice. “Uh… Lo?”
“You better not call anyone,” the leaf warned him, “or I swear to god -”
Patton tried to run away, but his room was small and rather cluttered. The door wouldn't open no matter how much he tried, and as weird as it was to admit, he was stuck in his bedroom with a broken, talking, floating metal leaf.
“I don't understand you,” the leaf told him. “Why are you running? Why are you running?”
“You're a talking leaf,” Patton informed it, “that just broke off of my boyfriend's necklace.”
The leaf scoffed. “I'm pretty sure it's your necklace now, kiddo, seeing that he gave it to you.”
“That doesn't -” Patton shook his head. “Not what I'm concerned about, leaf.”
The leaf cursed in what Patton was pretty sure was Latin. “Kid, I'm not a fucking leaf. I'm a person. I mean, I'm not a person, I just -- look, I thought this would freak you out less.”
“You,” Patton told the leaf, “just crumpled off of my necklace and are floating above my bed. I am thoroughly freaked out.”
“Oh, whatever.” The leaf shook. “If you say so.”
He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting out of a leaf, but it certainly hadn't been for the parts to fuse together and elongate, measuring out to be a giant leaf the size of him looking like a failed tape project.
“So you can talk?” Patton ventured.
“Well, yeah I can talk,” the leaf buzzed. “I'm not the demon equivalent of Jared, 19.”
“He never learned how to read,” Patton remembered, quickly calming down.
“Speaking of not learning things, would you happen -” The leaf shook. “Do you know how to -”
“How to not be a leaf?” Patton offered.
“Yeah, that.” The leaf huffed. “God, I wish this came with a fucking button or something -”
The leaf shimmered and shrank a bit, giving Patton a bit more legroom. However, the leaf grew black horns and red eyes, which was creepy enough for a leaf. The monstrosity soon turned into a teenage boy wearing ripped black jeans and a My Chemical Romance hoodie -- which wasn't any less creepy, because he looked exactly like Patton, and he could've sworn that the MCR shirt was his.
He wasn't sure whether to be shocked or afraid, so he went for a combination of both, drawing his face into what he was sure was no better than the other boy's.
“Stop doing that, it’s weird,” the other boy complained, fiddling with his sleeves.
“That's definitely my shirt,” Patton told him, at a lack of anything else to say. “That's the stain that Roman put on it at Disneyland.”
“You're wearing it right now,” the other pointed out.
Patton looked down. “Oh.”
“Anyway, I'm Virgil.” The boy stood up and offered his hand, which Patton reluctantly accepted. “I'm you, but, like, a demon.”
The door swung open, both moms and Logan standing in the entrance. They all simultaneously gasped, Logan's glasses sliding off of his beet red face and falling to the floor.
“WHAT THE -”
taglist: @nonbinaryvirgilsanders
