Remus can't sleep. Virgil can't make him sleep. But he can keep him company. And sometimes that's enough.
Characters: Brotherly Remus & Virgil
Words: 978
Warnings: mentions of dissociation/unreality
Notes: Have a fun little bit that doesn’t quite fit anymore in the episode with the change in POV but was too good not to share <3
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Remus blinked tired, heavy eyes, pinching the soft skin on the inside of his elbow. The sharp pain helped a little, but not by much. He was still exhausted.
His hands were a little shaky as he dug a finger into an exposed patch of dirt, sending a tiny spark of awareness into the soil. There wasn't much there, dead leaf matter, some uninteresting rocks, good, healthy soil. He sent a little more power out, and found something that sparked his interest.
A spore. Some kind of mushroom, from a species that Remus was unfamiliar with. Frowning a bit, he poked at it, focusing around it.
It wasn't dangerous, that much was certain, and it was not parasitic, so it wouldn't hurt the forest around it. It didn't seem to need anything to flourish in this environment. It was new, carried over from the mother colony by the wind or by animals. All it needed was time to grow.
Remus looked around. It probably wasn't the best idea to do this little trick with how tired he was, but now that the curiosity had sunk in, he found he really, really wanted to know what this strange little mushroom would grow into.
He held out his hand, summoning some of his power and forming it into a small, sheer bubble, glowing the same sickly green as the glow in the dark stars Thomas had once stuck to his ceiling. Carefully, he manipulated the bubble until it encased the spore.
“Whatcha doing?”
Remus bit back a yelp, whirling around and crushing his bubble in the process. “Virgil!” he hissed. “You fucking asshole, why would you sneak up on me like that?”
“I assumed you saw me,” Virgil said, looking confused. “You looked right at me, trash panda.”
Remus swallowed hard.
He didn't remember seeing Virgil just now.
Was Virgil even real? Or did he fall asleep accidentally, and start dreaming again?
“Rem?” Virgil said, suddenly much closer than before. When had he gotten closer? “You feeling okay, dude?”
“I’m fine,” Remus said quickly. He couldn’t just ask Virgil if he was real—if he wasn’t, wouldn’t he just lie?
And if he was real, he’d start asking why Remus didn't know that he was real.
“Uh huh. So it's like that, huh?” Virgil asked enigmatically. Remus gave him a side eye as he sat on the ground next to Remus.
“What were you doing?” he asked abruptly. When Remus looked confused, he twiddled his fingers, gesturing at the ground. “You were doing a trick, right?”
“Oh!” Remus looked back at the dirt. “Just a timelapse bubble.”
“Of what?”
“Mushroom. Didn't recognize it, wanted to see what it looked like.”
Virgil waited. “Well, go on,” he prompted. “Let’s see what it looks like.”
Remus blinked. “Since when do you care about fungus?”
“Just grow the damn mushroom, trash panda,” Virgil said, playfully exasperated, nudging Remus with his shoe.
Bewildered, Remus called another bubble, successfully capturing the spore within it without interruption. He concentrated, breathing out once before he began spinning his finger clockwise around the bubble.
At first, nothing happened for a few moments. Then the ground began to shift slightly, until the tip of a moonlight pale cap began to emerge from the dirt.
Remus felt Virgil move a little closer as he kept concentrating, kept spinning time inside the bubble. The mushroom was soon joined by a smaller cap, emerging from the same thin stalk. The two heads continued to grow, the stalks and caps becoming thicker and wider as they matured. The mushroom actually gave off a faint light, not enough to illuminate the area around it, but enough to draw both sides complete attention in the darkness.
“Pretty,” Virgil murmured. Remus frowned, turning his finger one last time.
His tenacity was rewarded, as the mushroom suddenly bloomed, sending out a cage-like skirt from the underside of their cap in a shocking shade of yellow, so bright it illuminated both sides faces as they gasped in surprise and delight.
Remus quickly ended the trick, eager to keep the mushroom from decaying. It was so pretty and bright.
“Okay, that was cool,” Virgil said, his voice hushed. Remus grinned at him. “Curiosity sated?”
“Yep,” Remus said, his jaw cracking on a giant yawn.
“You can go back to sleep if you want,” Virgil said. Remus shook his head, even though the motion made him a little dizzy.
“Don't wanna,” he said, only slightly slurred, closing his eyes for just a moment. Virgil sighed.
“Alright.” There was a slight rustle of movement, and then a soft, heavy weight fell over Remus’s shoulders. He wrenched his eyes open, staring down at the purple plaid fabric covering his arms. He looked back at Virgil, who suddenly looked a lot skinnier in just a long sleeved black shirt.
“Don't want you to get cold,” he said in response to Remus's unasked question. Remus shrugged, slipping his arms into the warm, warm sleeves, inhaling the scent of ozone and hot air that always clung around Virgil.
Logan said that it was unlikely that any of his waking dreams would affect all five of his senses—that if he checked, one of them would tell him if the thing he was experiencing was fake.
The thing that might be Virgil looked and sounded like him. It had given him it’s hoodie, and Remus ran his fingers along the cuffs. It certainly felt and smelled real.
He didn't think that he could get away with licking Virgil to make sure he tasted real. He was just going to have to go on faith.
Well, if this Virgil was a hallucination, at least it was being nice about it. He mentally shrugged, scooting over on the ground until he could bump against Virgil’s shoulder.
This maybe-hallucination felt safe. And that was really all Remus needed at the moment.
Here are some of the sources I used for the latest episode of the podcast, as well as some extra videos I mentioned. Please let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to add!
- Youtube: Ciro Nieli mentioning he travelled to Japan to create SRMTHFG (starting at 3:00)
- Anime New Network credits for The Answer Studio
- Anime News Network credits for Kazuyoshi Takeuchi
- Anime News Network credits for Fumio Maezono
- IMBD credits for Fumio Maezono
- AWN interview with founder of The Answer Studio
-”The Cat That Looked at a King” animated short featured on the Mary Poppins 40th Anniversary DVD
- “The Impact of Akira: The Film That Changed Everything”by Super Eyepatch Wolf (aka why it’s a big deal that Takeuchi worked on this film)
Additional info pulled from Instagram posts and podcast interviews with Ciro.
