#dmitri writes

"Roman?" Virgil slowly opens the door to Roman's dark room. He doesn't turn on the light and instead uses the light from his phone to navigate the room. He gets to the bed and sees a lump in the center, completely covered in a blanket. "Roman, are you awake?" The lump hums. "You haven't come out in a while, so I figured you're having a creative block or depressive episode." The lump whines and shakes a little. "It's fine, Roman, you just need to take a break and recharge. I brought pasta salad." The lump wiggles out of the covers. Roman grabs the bowl from Virgil and scarfs down his depression meal. Virgil takes the empty bowl and places it on the nightstand. Roman flops back down on his bed. Virgil grabs the laptop at the foot of the bed and opens youtube. He reads out all of the playlists until Roman hums at one, then puts it on. Virgil pulls Roman closer to him and plays with his hair. Eventually, the two fall asleep.

Virgil looks up as his door opens after a light knock and sees Logan shuffling towards his bed. His shoulders are slumped a bit and his eyes are half shut. Virgil recognizes the behavior and goes through a mental list of what to do. He grabs his jacket from the foot of the bed and hands it to Logan, who puts it on and flops on the bed, curling up. It's worse than Virgil thought. He rubs circles into Logan's back and a bit of the tension fades slowly. Logan sits up and Virgil sees the emptiness in his gaze, his shut mouth, and slightly tensed jaw. This confirms his suspicions that it's one of Logan's episodes where he just runs out of energy completely. He can't even speak like this. Virgil gets them too sometimes. They always go to each other for these. Logan grabs his hand and he rubs circles into the side of Logan's hand with his thumb. Always circles.

Logan lays down with his head in Virgil's lap, so he plays with his hair. Logan takes out his phone and Virgil watches his scroll through playlists for a bit. He settles on one and hits play. As the soft music fills the room, Virgil hums along. Logan opens apps on his phone, then closes them, then opens a different one, then closes that one too. Virgil picks one for him, a self-care app that they both have. They found it during one of Virgil's episodes. Logan goes through the exercises, breathing slow, even and deep and focusing on the positive messages, petting a cat, filling in letters in positive messages. Virgil smiles at the sweater paw Logan gets from his jacket.

Summer is Remy's second favorite season, after Fall, of course. The warm sun is perfect for mid-day naps, and the sound of crickets accompanied his sleepy music playlist well. Virgil took notice of this and enjoyed it very much. "You're like a cat," He told Remy, finding him half-asleep on the couch with the curtains open, sunlight from the big bay window heating his back. "Look, you're even curled up." Remy laughed lazily, "Says the one that hisses." Virgil shrugged and tapped Remy's leg, telling him to scoot over. He laid next to him and Remy curled into his side. Virgil played with his hair absent-mindedly, "You're a cute kitty." Remy hummed, eyes still closed, "You are too babe." Remy dozed off quickly and Virgil followed, saying goodbye to whatever sleep schedule they already had and hello to whatever back pain would follow. This happened often. So often that they got a bigger couch, Remy had accidentally pushed Virgil off a couple of times.

When Remy's birthday came around, Virgil knew exactly what to do. He made a simple meal, not wanting to fuck up and get them sick. He bought a hammock from amazon and dug an old blanket and a cute basket from the attic. He took the plain Christmas lights and strung them around the backyard, laying the blanket on the ground and putting the basket full of food on top of it. He got his old radio and picked out Remy's favorite music to play, laying it next to the blanket. When Remy came home from work, everything was perfect. The sun was close to setting, the lights were on, and soft songs danced out of the radio and into the air. Virgil brought Remy into the backyard and smiled at his awestruck expression. "Happy birthday." Remy jumped on Virgil, kissing him, "This is amazing, thank you so much, babe!"