What each ship would bring to Thomas' personality.
It's just something I came up with. I tried to keep a mix of good, bad, and neutral personality traits. Any other thoughts or additions to this would greatly be appreciated, just keep it respectful.
Does anyone want to give me their favorite Sanders sides fanfics?? And don't be modest if you wanna recommend me 30 fics or fics you wrote that's fine I'm just looking for stuff to read rn :3
Summary: The other heroes throw a surprise party for Virgil to show their appreciation.
Notes: Written for the Sleepy Bean Fanfic Cafe @tss-camp-and-coffee ! Just something short and sweet. Hope you enjoy!
Prompt:
@thatdesolatefander
Small 500-999 words
Mocha (Superpowers) with Heavy cream (Fluff) featuring Cranberry (Virgil).
Please include: Crushed animal cookies (Animal traits)
AO3 link
~*~
Another long day. A routine patrol, nothing out of the ordinary. A few lingering aliens from the last invasion, a few petty criminals. Virgil dealt with them without much issue. After returning to the tower, Logan suggested taking some time to freshen up before meeting the rest of the team in the main lounge. So Virgil did.
As soon as Virgil opened the door, the room exploded in color and light and sound. He shrieked, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears as he stumbled back.
"SURPRISE!" Multiple voices shouted, followed by party horns.
Surprise? What the hell? Just in case, Virgil let out a series of clicks and listened for the echo. Three people: one winged, one with frog legs, one with shiny robotic parts. His team. He took a breath and opened his eyes, stepping into the room and blinking a few times to adjust to the light. The room was covered in colorful streamers and banners. There was a large chocolate cake on the table, and three wrapped boxes. His teammates were beaming at him.
Well, everyone except Logan, who sighed. "I warned you that a celebration this bright and loud might startle him," he said to the team, then looked back at him. "Apologies, Virgil, and congratulations."
It still didn't make any sense. "For what?" Virgil asked.
"Today marks exactly one year since you joined our team," Logan explained, with what passed as a smile. "We believed it to be a momentous occasion."
"A full year of vanquishing villains by our side!" Roman proclaimed with a flourish, the tips of his phoenix wings briefly aflame for dramatic effect.
A year. He hadn't even meant to stay that long but now…
"We're so proud of you kiddo!" Patton gushed, hopping up and down on his frog legs. "Can I give you a hug?"
Still processing, Virgil shrugged and let him. Patton squealed and engulfed him in a hug. Virgil hugged back, letting his wings wrap around them both like a leathery blanket.
When it started feeling too constricting, Virgil gently extracted himself and looked back at the others. "So… why all this? Do you all celebrate your team-anniversaries too?" He didn't remember any other parties like this, unless they did it in private— which he wouldn't hold against them.
"Well, we all joined the same time, and we wouldn't want you to feel left out," Patton said. "We want you to feel apart of the team, of the family. We care about you."
"Your skills and powers are valuable," Logan added. "Your quick thinking and echolocation have saved our lives on multiple occasions. We would not have succeeded without you. In addition, I… enjoy your presence. It is nice to have someone who prefers quiet activities, someone who takes threats seriously and is willing to plan ahead."
"I admit I had my doubts, but time and again you have proven yourself a worthy ally," Roman said. "You are brave and strong, with a good heart beneath that shadowy facade. You work well with a team and truly, you make us…. better."
Virgil pulled his hood tighter, trying and failing to hide his blush. "Look, I appreciate you trying, and it's real sweet, but just… I don't need all this. Really."
"Too bad we're doing it!" Roman waved off his concern.
"Do ya want cake or presents first?" Patton asked.
Well. Looked like he wouldn't be able to back out now. "Uh… presents, I guess," Virgil said with a shrug. He wasn't sure if his stomach would appreciate the sweets just yet.
Logan handed him the box wrapped in space-themed paper. Inside there were two oddly shaped devices resembling speakers. "I enjoyed the challenge of creating headphones that would work better with your unique chiropteran ears. It may take further trial and error— please do let me know if they require any adjustments."
Virgil stared at the headphones. It must have taken hours, days, to design and build. He swallowed. "Wow… that's really cool. Thanks," he settled for with an awkward thumbs up. He lifted one to his ear, trying it on. Better than human style ones, for sure.
"My turn!" Roman announced, practically shoving the red and gold box into his arms.
"Jeez Princey, one at a time!" Virgil set the headphones aside and opened Roman's gift. A new uniform, sleek and sturdy, dark as night with a faint metallic sheen. There were openings for his wings and ears. Clearly tailored specially for him.
"Bulletproof, fireproof, and best of all stylish!" Roman boasted. "Flexible too, it won't get in the way of fight or flight. You're one of us, you deserve the best!"
"… Thank you. I'll, um, try it on later."
"Here you go, kiddo!" Patton said, passing over the last box, in sky blue paper.
There was a hand drawn card on top. "MVH - Most Valuable Hero! We love you Virgil!" A large yellow star and several smaller hearts, all drawn in crayon.
Under the card there was a huge fuzzy blanket, more than large enough to wrap around himself and his wings. Not nearly as complicated as the other two gifts, but just as heartfelt. "Thanks, Pat," he said around the lump in his throat.
Patton beamed at him. "So glad you like it!"
"I'll cut the cake!" Without waiting for a response, Roman used his sword to cut into the cake.
"I am not certain that's sanitary," Logan muttered.
Roman scoffed. "Oh don't worry, I sharpened and cleaned the sword earlier today."
Virgil stifled a laugh. This whole thing was ridiculous and overwhelming, but some small part of him warmed at their shows of affection, proof that they wanted him here and that he wasn't just a burden. It was nice.
Summary: At eleven years old, Virgil wins a game in a raffle.
At seventeen, he plays it again. He's never regretted anything more.
(AKA another DnD/Jumanji AU because I can't get enough of them)
Characters: Virgil, Logan, Roman, Patton
Warnings: missing family member, arguments, yelling
Chapters: 5/?
Words: 4210
They won it in a raffle. It had been donated to the school anonymously to be a prize at the summer faire. Technically, Patton had bought the tickets, so it was his prize by all accounts, but he’d given the ticket to Virgil so they could both get a turn.
And Virgil won some stupid board game that he wasn’t really interested in. Patton and Roman, on the other hand, went absolutely insane with excitement when they read what it was about.
It was some weird roleplay game. Like Dungeons and Dragons, Virgil was pretty sure, except with set characters and a set storyline. They each had to pick one, and then act out the storyline and roll the dice and build up levels and all of that stupid nerd stuff that Virgil only entertained to stop his twin from whining.
They had been playing it for the whole summer break when it happened. None of them really wanted to go to middle school — not with Logan moving to a private one for the really smart kids and Patton, Virgil and Roman getting split up in their classes. Instead of thinking about it, they played the game every day and night, Roman and Logan practically moving into the Sanders household for the entire three months.
“Can I make her dogs my friends?”
“They’re not dogs,” Virgil snapped. “They’re wolves. And they’re not hers. They’re mine.”
“Well, you have been mind-controlled,” Logan interrupted.
“Yeah! So they’re hers right now,” Patton exclaimed. He turned to Roman. “Can I?”
Roman grinned. “It isn’t against the rules. I think you’d have to roll for… animal handling?”
“Okay, yeah,” Virgil’s twin said gleefully, readying his dice.
“Wh— hang on! You can’t control my wolves!”
“Why?”
“They’re my wolves!” Virgil yelled.
Silence fell over the room. Virgil glared at his brother, panting for breath. This was so stupid. So, what, Virgil had to play the rubbish dark side character that all the NPCs hated, and then Patton was gonna come along and take the one good thing about the stupid character? Where was the fun in that? It wasn’t fair!
The others stared at him. Logan’s eyebrows were raised to his hairline as he regarded his friend, a sort of surprised worry on his face. Roman was glaring at Virgil, scowling as he glanced between the twins.
Virgil turned back to Patton.
“Fine,” the smaller boy whispered. “Have the dogs. Sorry. I didn’t realise it was that big a deal.”
“Now look at what you’ve done,” Roman snapped. “You went and upset Patty.”
“I’m not upset,” Patton protested, a pathetic attempt at a lie falling from between his trembling lips. “It’s fine. It was just an idea, instead of having to fight the poor things. It’s fine.”
A twist of shame flared in Virgil’s stomach when he realised Patton had tears in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Roman’s voice cut him off:
“You made him cry, you villain! See, this is why you had to be the rogue.”
“I didn’t have to be anything!” Virgil snapped, apology for Patton forgotten. “This is my game! I get to pick whatever character I want — and I picked the coolest one!”
“He sucks. He’s made every single step of this stupid quest like twenty thousand times harder because his charisma is so goddamn low everyone hates him automatically! It sucks! It’s a bad character!”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Patton interrupted weakly.
“It’s perfectly fair! You rolled the dice, and you won the wolves fair and square! He can’t throw a tantrum now just because his character is rubbish and the good bits are being redistributed.”
“I don’t even want the wolves anymore.”
“Well, too bad. They’re yours.” Roman snatched both Patton and Virgil’s character sheets and started writing on them, crossing out Virgil’s pencilled-in wolves and scribbling them into Patton’s.
“Roman, stop it,” Logan said tiredly. “You can’t write on other people’s sheets. This is an issue to be sorted between Patton and Virgil, as it’s their characters.”
“You know what? Whatever. This was a stupid game anyway, it was never all that fun. You can have everything my character’s got, I’m not playing anymore. Some of us have middle school to get ready for."
Patton made a soft sound in the back of his throat. “No! Virge, please, you can have the wolves back! Please, don’t stop playing.”
“Actually,” Logan said slowly, “I should… probably also be preparing for school. We start on Monday.”
“No, I know,” Patton said desperately, “but can we please just— please? I don’t wanna stop yet.
“Well, too bad,” Virgil snapped. “Nobody else wants to play your stupid game with you, either, Patton.” He stormed out of the room — without pausing to see how badly those words had hurt his twin — and up to his and Patton’s shared bedroom. The door slammed closed behind him.
A few minutes later, he heard Logan and Roman saying their goodbyes, and listened to the front door closing.
It was a stupid game. They weren’t kids anymore — they were going into middle school. They needed to stop playing games meant for babies and start… growing up, or whatever. If Patton and Roman wanted to keep playing dress up and make-believe and start their dumb little wolf-stealing empire, what did Virgil care? He didn’t, that’s what. Nothing at all.
He changed into his pyjamas and threw himself onto the bed. He and Patton had bunk beds, and Virgil had always forced Patton to go on the top bunk. It had the unintended bonus of allowing Virgil to flop dramatically onto the mattress whenever he was upset, though. Such as now.
Several hours passed before the door opened again.
“Vee? Are you asleep?” Patton whispered. His voice was rough and croaky, and Virgil bit down on his tongue to stop himself from responding.
“Virge?” Patton asked again.
Again, he was ignored. He let out a shaky sigh, and the bed shook as he climbed the ladder up to the top bunk.
They lay in relative silence, forgoing their usual whispered conversations and goodnight rituals in tension.
Eventually, Virgil fell asleep to the sounds of Patton snuffling weakly and muffling sobs into his pillow.
He didn’t know what time it was when he woke up. Another facet of having rickety old bunk beds is that whenever the ladder is used, the whole bed shakes. So, every time Patton had to get out of bed in the night, it always served to wake Virgil up.
And that was what happened now.
He blinked his eyes open just in time to see Patton slip through the door, closing it almost silently behind him.
Sighing, Virgil turned over to put his back to the room. Was now a good time to apologise? Probably. He knew he’d overreacted. It was just a game, and the wolves weren’t even real, and Patton probably would have given them back after he got over the mind control anyway. He didn’t have to go so insane.
Except, now that he realised how much he’d overreacted, his ears burned with embarrassment and he wanted to crawl into a hole and die of it.
Plus, he was really tired.
He’d do it in the morning.
Virgil started drifting back into unconsciousness with his new resolution planned. Suddenly, he jerked awake again to a scream. It echoed through the house, wordless and bone-chilling and so filled with terror that Virgil’s own heart started hammering in his rib cage.
He shot out of bed and ran for the door.
“Patton?” he yelled. Across the hall, his parents’ door flew open and they sprinted out.
“Patton!” their dad yelled, as he tore down the stairs in his boxers. Their mom came up beside Virgil and gripped his hand, holding him in place on the landing.
“Patton? Patton, where the fuck—” dad was yelling. “Pat! Talk to me, where are you?”
This went on for what felt like hours. His screams got louder with each empty room, until eventually dad ran out onto the street. This was when Virgil pulled away from his mom and followed him down the stairs.
“Patton?” he said softly, voice trembling as hard as his hands. He could still hear that scream, and it was making his lungs constrict, barbed wire tangling around his insides. “Pat, buddy— this isn’t funny.”
Mom was sobbing now, following dad outside and rattling their address off into the phone.
Virgil sat down on the sofa as his parents ran about in a panic. He stared at the coffee table and felt his stomach twist.
The game was still out. That stupid, stupid board game. The sheets were strewn about the table like Patton had been messing with them. Probably fixing what Virgil screwed up. A sob choked its way out of Virgil’s throat, and he pressed a fist into his mouth. His dad came back inside and sat next to him, wrapped his arm over Virgil’s shoulder and pressed a kiss to his hair.
Virgil pretended not to notice the tears dripping into his hair.
Screaming woke Virgil up.
He groaned, pressing his face into his pillow and smacking the shrieking alarm clock. It fell off the desk and onto the ground, snooze button woefully unpressed and speaker louder than ever.
The bedroom door opened, and he groaned again.
“Morning, love,” his mom said. Virgil groaned a third time. “Your dad and I have a press conference today, we need you out of the house a little early.”
“Make it stop yelling at me,” Virgil grumbled. She let out a soft laugh and bent down to pick the alarm clock back up. Silence filled the room for a moment before she pressed a kiss to the top of Virgil’s head.
“I thought your press thing was on Monday?”
“It was. They want us to do another. There’s a rumour about new evidence that they want to grill us on.”
“Is there new evidence?”
“None that I’ve been told about.”
Virgil sighed softly and turned his head back into the pillow. “Right. Course.”
“Hey. We’re gonna get him back, love.”
They always said that. Everyone always said that. They’d get him back, they’d find him, everything would be okay. For a while, Virgil believed it. But he was on the internet, and nothing quite goes viral like a kid disappearing from a locked house. He’d seen all of the theories and all of the accusations, from Patton running away to his mom and dad killing him off to an alien abduction.
“Right,” he said emptily. You stop believing the reassurances after seven years.
Seven years. Seven years had passed since Patton disappeared. Seven years since Virgil’s last words to his brother were piercing and cruel. Seven years later, and Virgil was two weeks away from graduation. Graduation, then college, then a career and a family and a life. All the things Patton and Virgil promised to do together — were excited to do together. They were supposed to stand next to each other at graduation, to stand beside each other as they graduated, to go to the same college, get a dorm together, then graduate college and buy a house somewhere, where they would live happily ever after.
But that just didn’t exist, did it?
Everything Virgil was meant to do with his best friend, he was going to do now. Alone.
He stared up at the ceiling. They’d had to get rid of the bunks when he was fifteen. He’d hit his growth spurt and didn’t fit on it anymore. When they started shopping for new bedclothes, he’d had a panic attack so bad they passed out.
A matching, unused twin bed sat unassumingly on the opposite side of the room, covered in years-old and untouched plushies.
“I’m gonna shower,” he grumbled, sitting up and scrubbing his eyes.
Half an hour later, Virgil was sitting at the kitchen table with a burned piece of toast in front of him. He took a bite and cringed, throwing it back down into the table. His dad walked past then, and ruffled his hair.
“Morning, kiddo. Feeling okay?”
“Yep. You?”
“Well as always.”
Virgil looked at him and smiled sympathetically. His dad had large, deep bags under his eyes, his smile drawn and tight.
“Yeah…”
Before either of them could speak again, there was a long, drawn-out honk of a car horn. Virgil groaned and thumped his head on the table.
“Bye, bud,” dad said, patting Virgil on the back. Virgil groaned again and stood up.
“See you. Good luck with the vultures.”
“Good luck with your own.”
They smiled at each other for a second, and then Virgil snorted. He yelled a goodbye to his mom as he ran out of the house and slammed the door behind him.
The driver window rolled down, and Roman’s gleaming teeth beamed at him.
“You wanna not wake all of my fucking neighbours, asshat?” he snapped. “They already hate us.”
Roman rolled his eyes and groaned. “Whatever. They deserve it. Anyway, good morning sleeping grouchy! How are we this fine day?”
“Shut up.” Virgil climbed into the passenger seat and closed his eyes tightly.
Roman’s voice softened when he spoke again. “Hey, c’mon. You okay?”
“Mom and dad have to do another press thing.”
“Didn’t they just do one Monday?”
Sighing, Virgil pulled in his seatbelt. “Yup.”
“I thought it was like… a biweekly thing?”
“It was. But there’s a rumour. Fucking internet gossip that they need my parents to try and defend themselves from again.”
Roman scoffed angrily. “Villains,” he spat.
“It’s whatever. They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again. Mom and dad are used to it.”
“They shouldn’t have to be. But fine. Come on, let’s get Lo.”
The way to Logan’s house was quiet, silence kept at bay by Roman’s music playing softly. Virgil closed his eyes again, tiredness pulling at him, and Roman didn’t interrupt his attempt at relaxing. When they pulled up on the curb, Virgil forced them open again.
“Oh, so Logan doesn’t get a honk?”
“Logan doesn’t make me sit out here for ages and require a honk, thank you. See, he’s already coming out. No need.”
Virgil snorted. “Unfair. Bullying.”
“Plus, Logan’s dad would kill me if I parked outside his house and held the horn down. Your dad is chill.”
Before Virgil could respond, the door was pulled open and Logan fell inside.
“Hey, L.”
“Good morning, Virgil. Roman.”
“Greetings,” Roman said dramatically. Logan settled himself into the backseat and clicked his seatbelt into place, before dragging a chemistry textbook out of his bag.
“Lo, bud, you do realise we’ve already sat finals, right?” Roman said teasingly. Logan glared at him through the mirror.
“Yes, but that isn’t an excuse to slack off. I need to upkeep my knowledge for use in college.”
“College!” Roman cried. “Two weeks until we graduate, and then there’s the summer and then we can all get far, far away from this stupid, awful town with their stupid awful people.”
Virgil swallowed thickly. College. He and Roman had, really, applied to pretty much all of the ones that were at least in the next state over, if not further. He did want to get out of this town — of course he did. He could drag his parents away with him and they could just put all this bullshit behind them. The press conferences and the accusations and the constant, ceaseless optimism that was never going to get them anywhere. Patton was gone — he knew that.
Of course he did. So why did leaving feel so much like Virgil was abandoning his brother?
“Hey,” Roman said softly, pulling Virgil from his thoughts. “Why don’t we do something tonight?”
“What?”
“Something… something like when we were kids, y’know? We should… I dunno, have a sleepover.”
Virgil snorted. “A sleepover? Why?”
“To remember Patton by!” Roman said, getting louder as he grew more excited. “We could play that game he adored, remember the one? The little role-playing thing? We never…” His voice caught, and Virgil turned to stare at his friend as he cleared his throat and carried on, voice much softer. “We never got to finish it. I think… I think he would’ve wanted us to finish it, right?”
“Uh…”
Virgil’s heart hammered in his chest. The last time he ever spoke to Patton was an argument over that stupid game. The last thing Patton ever did was mess with that game, not that Virgil ever checked to see what exactly he was doing. Sure, he would’ve wanted it to be finished. For the storyline to be played out and the characters to get a happy ending. But…
“It— Don’t worry,” Roman stammered, once Virgil’s panicked silence had dragged on for too long. “Sorry. Stupid idea, yeah. Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not stupid. I’m just trying to figure out if touching that thing is gonna make me have a breakdown.”
Roman flinched. “Yeah, no, of course. I get it. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise. It’s… you’re right. It’s a nice idea. I’d be down. Lo, you wanna join?”
“I will have to ask my parents, but I can imagine no reason why they would refuse. I agree that Patton would want the game to be played to completion.”
Roman looked between Virgil and — in the mirror — Logan, a grin growing on his face. “Really? You both wanna do this?”
“Really, Ro. It’ll be fun.”
“Why would I say that I did if it were not true?”
Finally, Roman beamed at them. He let out a delighted laugh, and then changed the subject, instead rambling about how much fun they were going to have over the summer.
Virgil focussed on his words. Roman and Patton had always been similar in that way — whenever they were excited, it was impossible for people in their vicinity to be anything else. So Virgil focussed on his words, and let all worries about his parents or his brother or college or whatever else was plaguing him at the moment fall away.
The rest of the day passed quickly and uneventfully. Logan got permission from his parents to go to the sleepover, and let Roman know, and at the end of the final period they all piled back into the car and started towards Logan’s house so he could grab his things.
Within a few minutes, they were back on Virgil’s driveway and clambering out of the car. The house was empty, his parents still at the press meeting. As soon as they got inside, they headed upstairs to try and find where he’d stashed the game all those years ago.
“Ro, check under my bed, maybe? Logan, try Pat’s. It’s more likely under there than under mine, since it was his. I’ll try the wardrobe.”
In the end, Logan found the dusty box and pulled it out with a self-satisfied hum.
“Yes, Logan!” Roman cried. “Well done. Come on, come on. Should we order a pizza or something?”
“Probably best. I can’t be bothered to cook and mom and dad won’t be home till late.”
“Amazing.”
Virgil shot a grin at his friend.
“I don’t understand why you both always pretend to debate whether we’ll get pizza. We get pizza every time we have a sleepover. We have done since we were eight,” Logan grumbled, placing the game on the ground and sitting cross-legged in front of it.
“But it’s always free,” Roman retorted smugly.
“That is patently false. Virgil’s father pays every single time.”
Shrugging, Roman sat to his friend’s left. “It’s free for me.”
“Are you guys even hungry yet?” Virgil asked. “I could wait before we order.”
“I am happy to wait as well.”
“Sure, sure. Sit down, Paramoron.”
Laughing, Virgil sat, completing the triangle. He couldn’t help but glance at the space where Patton always used to sit, but swallowed thickly and looked away. The whole point of doing this was to remember him happily . There was no point sitting crying over the fact that he was gone.
“Right!” Roman cried. “Do we remember our characters?”
“Not really, no,” murmured Virgil, pulling the box open and looking inside. He pulled out the sheets of paper. “Mine was a dick, right? Everyone hated him?”
“Wow, just like you!”
Virgil kicked out, hitting Roman’s knee, before flicking through the paper.
“Oh, here we go. We kept the character sheets. Uh… Finnickus Lornthrite?”
“That one was mine, I believe,” Logan said.
“Yeah, yeah. Wizard or whatever. Here you go. God, I forgot how stupid these names were. Prince…” He didn’t bother reading out the name this time, and handed the sheet to Roman.”
“Then we’ve got— Morgan Hall?”
“That was Patton’s,” Roman said softly.
“Oh. Right, yeah.”
Sniffing softly, Virgil placed the sheet in the empty space between Roman and Logan. They all stared at it for a moment, before roman cleared his throat.
“So! Virgil, who were you?”
“It’s… oh, fuck off,” he groaned.
“What?” Logan asked, voice a little bit tight.
“Garlax Montauk,” Virgil read out monotonously. “What a stupid fucking name. And Patton got Morgan?”
“Wasn’t Patton’s character just… a guy, though?”
“Yeah. A homeless kid, I think. Whatever. Garlax.”
His eyes skimmed over the character sheet. At the bottom, there was a little tear, the paper crumpled and the pencil smudged. It was as if somebody had rubbed too hard trying to erase the words. Squinting, Virgil brought it closer to his face to read the words that had been disrupted by the rip.
Wolves x6
His heart dropped into his stomach.
“Virgil? Are you okay?”
“I never actually looked at these again,” he choked. “It was— He rubbed out the wolves. Where I— Where I crossed out my wolves when he got them. He was rubbing it out. That’s— That’s why he was downstairs.”
“Virgil…” Logan started sadly.
“It wasn’t your fault. You know that, don’t you?” Roman carried on.
“I know. I do know that. I’m just… if he hadn’t gone to change this, what would’ve happened, y’know? We’ll never know, I get that. And I’m over blaming myself, therapy did enough for me there, but it’s… it’s weird now. I always knew he was messing around with it somehow, but… as far as I know now, the last thing he ever thought about was making me feel better because I was being a prick to him over imaginary pets.”
Roman reached over and squeezed Virgil’s knee, smiling sadly. “Of course it was. He was always going to wanna make sure you were okay. That was… sort of his whole thing, wasn’t it?”
Virgil mirrored the smile and cleared his throat. “Yeah. It was. Anyway, uh—” He coughed again. “So, the last thing we did was the wolves, right? If Patton didn’t, um… get them… they’re… still attacking, right?"
“Yes, yes. Hang on, I wrote it down. Is my notebook in there?”
Virgil rooted around the dice and pulled the notebook out of the box. He passed it to Roman, who flicked to the back.
“Okay, here. Right. The wolves… first go for Patton, but… Finnickus. You’re next. They attack. What do you do?”
Logan frowned, and read over his character sheet. “Can I cast a spell?”
“Be my guest!”
“Alright. I… summon a shield.”
“Nice, okay. Roll the dice, Lobells.”
Virgil handed him the dice, and he picked out two of the ones he needed. He shook his hand, and threw them.
They stopped.
“What the fuck?” Virgil asked.
The dice didn’t continue to fall. They floated above the board, completely still. Virgil looked at his friends, who were staring with similarly stupefied expressions.
“Logan, you’re not meant to cast an actual spell,” Roman whispered.
“What the fuck!” Virgil cried. “How is that— What the fuck?”
Slowly, the two dice began to spin around one another, one chasing the other in a circle. They rose, spinning faster and faster, higher and higher, rising until they were nearly against the ceiling and so fast they seemed to gather wind, blowing the teens’ hair and rustling the papers.
“Logan! What did you do?” Virgil yelled.
“Nothing, I— I didn’t do anything! I just rolled the dice!”
“Logan— Logan, your hands,” Roman cried.
Virgil looked down at his friend’s hands, and let out a strangled scream. Logan shot to his feet immediately, hands held in front of him and breaths fast.
“What’s happening?” he shrieked, voice shaking and terrified.
“Logan— Lo, it’s okay you’re okay.”
Up to his elbows, now, were transparent, a creeping clearness growing up his arms like a fungus.
“Make it stop!” Logan yelled.
“How the fuck are we meant to do that!” Virgil screamed.
“Oh— fuck, it’s got me,” Roman said hoarsely. Virgil spun to face him, and a sob tore its way out of his throat. Roman’s fingers were disappearing, fading away like some shitty parody of Back to the Future.
“It’s okay, it’s okay! Everything’s fine, you’re fine— please, please, stop, I can’t— I can’t lose you guys too, please.”
Before either of his friends could reply, the dice dropped to the ground like lead weights.
They impacted the board with a boom unbefitting of their tiny stature, and then the room was empty.
human au moxiety to “fine, great” by modern baseball
the angst of this pairing with both of them genuinely loving and caring about each other but virgil being constantly suspicious of patton’s over-the-top friendliness
i love a miscommunication trope if and only if it serves as a vehicle for characters to learn healthier communication styles and i truly feel that is the Moxiety Way (tm) bc there is so much fondness and respect between them yknow?
