#spicyanswer

Slipping on his cardigan, he ventured into the hall with his socks on. The cold was obviously Roman's doing, as was the sickly, desaturated tint of the subconscious' walls and carpet. Roman's door had turned full gray, covered in chains and padlocks with no keyhole.

Patton didn't even have time to tear up before movement from the other end of the hall caught his eye. He turned his head and found Janus shivering not six feet away from him, face as open and honest as a child's. It vanished in an instant, gates slamming down. He'd already had his arms pulled tight across his chest, body rigid, but he relaxed a little now and leaned against the wall. "Nice weather we're h-having," he said. "I-isn..." He shivered, words catching behind his teeth. "Nnh... Isn't it?"

"Oh, Janus." In the frigid air, Patton's heart still found a way to melt. "Are you cold?"

"Of course not; it's positively balmy in here." Janus glared at him. "What are you doing, sleepwalking?"

"No," Patton said,"just..."

Janus' expression softened just a little. "Trying not to lose your mind?"

"Yeah."

They fell silent for a moment until Janus shuddered, his eyes slipping shut for a moment. He tugged his capelet tighter over his shoulders, shrinking into himself.

"Come with me," Patton blurted, suprising himself.

"Trust you?" Janus said drily. Patton only looked at him, studying the sadness in his human eye, the red rim and glassy sheen. "Oh, very well. But if you try anything, Remus has more than just a morningstar."

"It's not a trick, Janus," Patton said, leading him down the hall. "I would never trick you."

Janus fell into step beside him. "You couldn't," he muttered, rubbing his arms.

"Because you're—"

"A mad genius, yes."

"Deceit."

Janus looked at him sideways from under the brim of his hat. "Whichever you like," he said, and sniffed.

"You're funny," Patton said contemplatively, nearly tripping over the coffee table when the living room loomed, abruptly ending the vast hallway they'd been traversing. "Whoops!"

Janus squinted at him, watching him regain his balance. "So are you."

"Touché, I guess," Patton said, motioning for Janus to sit down on the couch. "Let's see..." He got down on his knees in front of the coffee table, pawing through the wicker baskets resting beneath it. "We should have one for everybody... there!" He emerged holding two throw blankets: one yellow, one true blue. "Get cozy, okay?" He set them in Janus' lap.

Janus' brow furrow, irises darting as he searched the room. "What are you doing?"

"...Making sure you're warm?" Patton tilted his head like a confused dog. "I'm sorry, should I not have? You just looked so cold, and I thought..."

"No, it's—" Janus looked at the yellow blanket, turning it over in his gloved hands. On the far corner, Patton had imagined a snake, hand stitched, with two heads. Janus' logo rendered with all the love and care in Thomas' heart. He took a deep breath. "You are not what I thought you were, Patton."

"Is that good or bad?" Patton asked hesitantly. When Janus failed to answer, he bounced on his toes. "Anyway, I was gonna make some hot chocolate. How's that sound?"

Janus finally looked up at him again, finally relaxed and let himself smile. "Absolutely terrible."

Virgil was five minutes late and not sorry about it, padding through the library with a Red Bull soda sweating in his palm and his backpack hanging off one shoulder. He replayed the message over and over in his head as he passed tables full of students and high shelves laden with impossibly boring tomes.

Study room 4. 1:00 pm. Saturday.

Only one person occupied study room 4. Some guy who was always speaking up in lecture. Glasses, nice hair, scary smart. What was his name?

Virgil pushed the door open. "Come here often?" he said awkwardly, trying ans failing to be funny. Fuck.

The other guy— Larry or Landon or… Logan! Logan regarded him with a blank look. Not even a pity laugh. Tough crowd. "Yes."

Virgil sat down. Maybe his mechanical pencil was strong enough to penetrate his skull if he really jammed it in there. A lobotomy could only improve his social skills. "So where is everybody?" Three other people had been assigned to their little group in Philosophy of Religion, doomed to produce a slideshow on the Buddhist Eightfold Path.

"I don't know," Logan said. "I was hoping you might have heard something."

Virgil shook his head. "I'm Virgil, by the way." It was unlikely that someone as competent as Logan would have forgotten, but you never knew.

"I'm aware," Logan said, scanning him with an inscrutable gaze. "You sit in the back. You take the worst notes I've ever seen."

"Hey!"

To Virgil's surprise, Logan turned his face away in apparent shame. "I could help you, if you'd like— give you some pointers, I mean. If you want to take nicer notes."

What a roller coaster this conversation was becoming. Virgil hefted his textbook and let it flop onto the table. He really didn't care one way or the other what his stupid notes looked like, but Logan was cute and only annoying sometimes, which was more than Virgil could say for the other cute guys on campus. "That could be fun. Maybe you could come back to my dorm sometime." God, where was his pencil? Lobotomy time. Now.

"That…" Logan fidgeted with his own pencil, turning it over and over in his hand. "I would like that."

"Cool," said Virgil as his heart did a belly flop into his lower intestine. "But, uh, anyway. Buddha."

"Buddha," Logan agreed, cracking open his textbook.

The weather channels had been calling for a white Christmas for weeks now, but Janus had been stupid enough to hope anyway. Hope was for naïve suckers. Idiots. Gooey, nostalgic little puffballs who decorated their lawns with tacky inflatable snowmen and lined their eaves with gaudy multicolored lights.

He picked his way through the freezing, fluffy mounds covering his driveway, brow pulled down in a vicious scowl, to assess the damage.

The wind cut right through his black pea coat, melted snow dampening the toes of his socks. He paused where he thought the road was supposed to be, hands on his hips. It was impossible to tell. The snow covered everything, rendering it all uniform white. His flight was definitely canceled. So much for Puerto Vallarta.

Still… He scuffed the ground with the toe of his shoe, shivering. Maybe it wasn't that bad. A few more scrapes and he would see the asphalt, right? And someone with all-wheel drive and snow tires could drive him to the airport so he could get the hell out of dodge and not have to spend another Christmas cold and alone, with Patton's pity cookies growing stale on the kitchen counter.

There were few things Janus loathed more than his simpering do-gooder of a next door neighbor. Raking Janus' leaves in the fall with his muscular arms on display, mowing the lawn shirtless in the summer so Janus had no choice but to admire the pudge on his belly… Patton with his warm sweaters and puppy eyes, his constant attempts at manipulating Janus into friendship…

"Hey, Janus?" Oh, and speak of the angel.

"Not now." Janus tried to spin on his heel and only succeeded in carving a gash in the snow before his momentum halted and he stumbled. He cursed under his breath and drew his arms in, every breathless exhale exploding in a puff of white. Jesus, it was cold out here.

"Oh, sorry, are you on the phone?"

Janus rolled his eyes and sighed, turning around so he could face Patton. He wore a green bathrobe tied loosely around his waist, revealing rumpled sleep pants and a T-shirt stretched taut over his chest. "No."

"Did your flight get canceled?"

"No, I'm waiting for a taxi as we speak. I think a horse-drawn sleigh will do nicely."

For a moment, Patton's face lit up. Probably in anticipation of seeing horses. "Why don't you come inside? We can make hot chocolate and I can give you your present."

"It's Christmas Eve," Janus snapped to avoid having to answer. "You don't open presents until Christmas Day."

"Not in my house," Patton said. "You get your presents on Christmas Eve so you can play with them on Christmas Day."

"Well, I didn't get you anything." A gust of wind had them both shuddering, Janus pulling his elbows in toward his chest and ducking his head like making himself smaller would somehow help.

"That's okay! The invitation is still open."

Janus paused. He considered his cold, dark house. The espresso machine he didn't really know how to work. The philosophy and debate books he'd already read. The crime novels he'd sworn to Remus he was going to read and never had. "I— Fine, if you're going to nag."

Patton had the nerve to smile at this, his boyish face lighting up like the Christmas tree pressed up against his front window. "Oh, yay! Come on in." He shuffled aside to let Janus through the door, though Janus had a ways to go, marching awkwardly through snowdrifts in his impractical boots. "Merry Christmas, Janus."

December 2006. College student Logan Winter has a brain aneurysm on the third floor of the Lake Hawes Library. A book on astronomy lays open on the floor in front of him. The book stays on the floor for three days.

June 2010. An out-of-control vehicle crashes into the first floor of the Lake Hawes City Library, shattering one window and striking recent graduate Janus L'Ecole. Paramedics will declare him dead on the scene. He is buried with the library's copy of The Idiot.

The Lake Hawes City Library remains open.

–

Atlas of the Heavens lay open on the rough gray carpeting. Every now and then, pages turned with a sharp flick as though struck by a short-lived but severe breeze. A faint shape flickered in the breeze from the air conditioner, humanoid, lying on his belly. Logan pushed up his glasses and turned another page.

He grunted at a weight on his lower back, air leaving his lungs in a rush. He had long since given up trying to make sense of his current state (no he hadn't), unable to reconcile reality with understanding. He was dead. He was breathing. Life went on.

Well, he wasn't breathing at the moment. Mostly due to the influence of Janus' weight on his diaphragm. 

"You know," Janus drawled, spreading himself over Logan's back, "Rochester has been married the whole time."

Logan rolled his hips a little. "Can I help you with something, starshine?"

"I've heard the most shocking rumor." Janus rolled over, landing on the floor without a sound. He dipped through it for a moment before finding his orientation beside Logan.

Logan sighed and shut his book. "And what might that be?"

"You'll never believe it." Janus' spectral face was lit up in a grin; his brown eyes sparkled in the sunlight from the windows.

Logan had had plenty of time to practice keeping a straight face. He gave away nothing, the way they always played their little games. "Try me."

"Babe." Janus dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper. "They're saying the library is haunted."

Few things were enough to draw a smile out of Logan, let alone a laugh. But the corner of his mouth twitched, a fond light coming into his eyes. "If my calculations are correct, that rumor has been around since early 2007."

"Oh, yes," Janus said, as though Logan had confirmed a point he'd been making. "The kids downstairs said they saw the ghost of a young, devilishly handsome young man."

"Janus—"

"Oh, and some random nerd, too."

"A library full of books and you still feel the need to make up stories."

Janus flopped over onto his back, grin never abating. "Many have said I had a promising career as a writer in my day."

Logan adjusted his glasses again. "I thought you said you wanted to be a lawyer."

Janus sat up and stole a kiss, so quickly that Logan barely registered the fainted brush of lips on the tip of his nose. "Yes, but I could have been a writer. You know, sultry, sordid romances, dead husbands and sanguine ex-wives, that sort of thing."

"I don't doubt it." Logan raised an eyebrow. "Although I do have to ask: 'sanguine' as in 'hopeful' or 'sanguine' as in 'bloody?"

"Oh, pick your poison."