Summary: Janus wanted a vacation. Virgil needed a vacation. So what are a mated pair of dragons who are sick and tired of idiot humans coming to their cave looking for a fight or treasure or both supposed to do? Answer: fly off to a remote island further south than their mountain home to take that vacation!
Crown Prince Roman has not had an easy eighteen years of life, albeit an admittedly privileged life, his self-esteem and self-worth teetering between his royal father's love and pride, and the saccharinely backstabbing condescension and disdain of the courtiers who look down on him for being born out of wedlock. Being taken from a treaty summit by pirates for ransom and the left to die on their sinking ship in the middle off a squall may turn out to be a blessing in disguise when it brings him into the care of pair of his country's most venerated beings.
Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragon Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Dragon Deceit | Janus Sanders, Dragons are Shapeshifters, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders is Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders's Parent (he's actually good at it), Protective Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Protective Deceit | Janus Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Has Self-Esteem Issues, Consensual Sex, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Has PTSD, Deceit | Janus Sanders Has PTSD, Description of Injury, Aftermath of Torture, Captivity Recovery, Shipwrecked Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Casual Nudity (they're dragons on a deserted island), Top Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Bottom Deceit | Janus Sanders, Switch Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Concussion, Questionably Accurate Medical Treatment Depiction, Discussions Of Dragons Eating Humans, Dragons Eating Dolphins
I've uploaded another zine, this one has a companion piece, Lack. Lack should be read first, as it comes first chronologically, but you don't need to read them both to enjoy them. I set them up so that they compliment each other. If you lay them out next to each other, you can see that the poetry inside follows each other line by line.
Summary: Saint Patrick's Day in the modern era is mostly an excuse to wear green, pinch people, and get drunk. Mostly. Some people remember the origins of the holiday, which Janus does not like at all.
Tags/Warnings: Mentions of drunkenness, holiday-sanctioned harrassment, Remus being Remus, Protective Virgil, Confused Patton, Hiding Janus
Challenge: @duckprintspress 's May Trope Mayhem 2026 Day 16: First Contact
Chapter Word Count: 5626
Summary: Patton Morales knew that his best friend of two years, Janus Serpens, was a bit... odd. Even for a supposed "illegal alien" who was living in the United States and going to his school in Texas without official immigration papers or parents. So when Janus meets him after school and circumspectly admits that he may have to run, Patton doesn't hesitate to help or offer to run with him. He wasn't expecting their trip to be literally out of this world, but that wasn't going to stop him!
Or, Patton participates voluntarily in his own alien abduction and finds a better family than he had on Earth.
Tags/Warnings: Alien Sides, Human Patton, Human Thomas, Humans are Space Orcs, Found Family, Human/Alien Relationship, Traumatic Backstories For Multiple Characters, Big Brother Anxiety | Virgil Sanders Agenda, Everyone Needs Hugs, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, United States Military Behaving Badly
Challenge: @duckprintspress 's May Trope Mayhem 2026 Day 14: Pirates!
Chapter Word Count: 4162
Chapter Summary: Patton and Janus are finally alone together with the time and space to have that private conversation. They have both more and less to talk about, especially with Re'Mac being a little shit, but their feelings for each other have never been in question.
Tags/Warnings: Space Aliens AU, Alien Medical Procedures, Alien Toilets, Remus Being Remus (in absentia), Humans Are Deathworlders (But They Aren't That Special), Bad Human Parenting, Alien/Human Makeouts
Challenge: @duckprintspress 's May Trope Mayhem 2026 Day 25: Dopplegangers!
Word Count: 10,114
Chapter Word Count: 3261
Summary: It started with reviewing the schedule for December and a miscommunication about keeping the nineteenth as low-stress as possible.
Then Patton got nostalgic, and Thomas got curious about his Sides' childhoods.
Chapter Summary: Virgil enters the chat, a couple of shared Dark Side secrets are brought to (heh) light, and as certain emotional wounds begin to properly heal, Thomas finally admits to something that he's danced around in the past but now can acknowledge the truth.
Tags/Warnings: Happy Birthday Virgil Sanders, Deceit | Janus Sanders Encourages Self-Care, Morality | Patton Sanders Loves His Family, Miscommunication, Big Brother Anxiety | Virgil Sanders Agenda, Nostalgia, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders and Deceit | Janus Sanders Have History, Deceit | Janus Sanders Uses Sarcasm To Lie, Shapeshifting, The Mechanics Of Side Formation, Show And Tell With Deceit | Janus Sanders, Animal Sides (Sanders Sides), Frog Morality | Patton Sanders, Snake Deceit | Janus Sanders, Spider Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders Was Awareness, Consensual Memory Modification
6. Campfire - There'll Be No Sleep In Here Tonight
Pairing: Gen
Word Count: 920
Summary: The smell of burning flesh was in Sam's nose, which did nothing to make the flame-charred lizard his brother was cooking seem any more appetizing.
Tags/Warnings: The Bad Place, Sam Winchester Has Food Issues, Past Trauma, Dean Winchester Is Doing His Best, Dead Lizard: Eat At Your Own Risk
Read On AO3
THE SMELL OF burning flesh was in Sam's nose and it was all he could do to keep his stomach where it belonged rather than forcefully evicting its contents out onto the ground in this strange, literally otherworldly forest. It was a scent that was all too familiar after years… over two decades of being a hunter, from basic salt and burns to disposing of the bodies of monsters once the fighting was done and injuries were hastily patched up enough to last until they reached whatever shitty motel could shelter them behind closed doors and salt lines. He was very used to the smell, but the associations he had with that smell were usually pain, fear, exhaustion, and the distinctly queasy feeling he tried not to let on about having killed something - someone - sentient, always watching dully as the bodies burned in front of him to make sure the fire didn't spread beyond the corpses in the hole.
He could not, for the life of him, understand how Dean was able to sit there on the other side of the fire in the center of their makeshift camp, using one of his knives to carve strips of meat off the weird… lizard… thing, and just eat it. He knew his brother didn't have the same aversion to charred meat, or to large animal meat in general, that Sam had developed after a few too many traumas stacked up, but this… this was a far cry from burgers and bacon.
"No, no, no," he said tightly, hunching in on himself in his jacket as Dean looked up and made to offer him the knife. "Don’t tell me it tastes like chicken."
"No, Sam," Dean huffed around his mouthful, rolling his eyes impatiently. "It’s a lizard. It tastes like a lizard."
The urge to ask his brother how the hell he knew what lizard tasted like to be sure that this thing really did taste like lizard reared its head. Sam throttled the urge sternly, knowing with that little brother intuition that he would not want to hear the answer to that. Instead, he glanced around the trees, unable to shake the instinct that this was not a safe place to be, that they shouldn't be here, should get out of here, find better cover, find a way out….
"You know we really gotta get moving, keep looking for that door," he found himself saying, hoping to forestall another attempt from Dean to make him eat… that.
"Yeah, if there is a door," his brother scoffed, shoving the rest of the strip of meat into his mouth.
"Well last time we opened one, it stayed open," Sam pointed out, trying to sound reasonable instead of desperate. They needed to leave here, and soon, because—
"Yeah, for a few hours," Dean shot back, gesturing around the wooded area with his knife. "We’ve been here for what, two days, in change?"
—because this was pretty much the worst case survival mode scenario for them, trapped in an unfamiliar woods with unknown animals and plants of questionable origins, with no gear and only basic weaponry besides the clothes on their backs. They'd been lucky to find water, though there had been no way to sterilize it and Sam really hoped it was just nerves and some kind of psychosomatic illusion that made him feel like his guts were roiling with whatever strange, multiversal bacteria was contaminating it. Moreover, Sam was out of the granola bars he habitually carried in his jacket and couldn't reliably identify most of the plants out here. He had barely managed to choke down the strange bird thing Dean had caught the night before, the one he had tried to say tasted just like chicken but didn't because it was too stringy and had a sharper, almost fishy taste to the meat that Sam hadn't been able to ignore. Neither of them were exactly unfamiliar with rationing food to avoid starving because they didn't have the money to buy more, but that just meant they were both all too aware of how long they couldn't go without food.
Something of Sam's anxious thoughts must have showed on his face, because Dean grimaced and sighed. "I mean, look, man, I hope you’re right, I really do, but if you’re not and we’re stuck here in this freaking monster land? I mean, nobody back home even knows where to start looking for us."
"So what are you saying?" Sam asked, hoping that somehow his big brother might actually have some kind of plan to get them out of here, even as he knew there was very little chance he had any ideas Sam hadn't already thought of and been forced to dismiss.
Sure enough, the next words out of Dean's mouth as he carved off another piece of lizard meat were, "I’m saying, eat up."
Sam felt his gut roll and clench with distaste and nausea, and made a face. He was about to suggest that maybe he should try foraging again - some of these trees had gouges in the trunks from something sharp like massive claws that showed a decent inner bark that might be edible - when the sound of something growling and stomping in the distance made them both go still.
"That sound closer to you?" Dean murmured, low and tense.
"Yeah," Sam muttered back, eyes straying to the lizard corpse on the fire before skittering away nervously. "What do you think it is?"
