Sitting on the counter was Virgil and Remus, covered in cookie crumbs from the cookies Dee had baked the other day. The cookie jar was in ruins on the floor along with random cookie crumbs and chocolate chips. They look up at him, Remus grinning brightly and Virgil looking like a deer in headlights.

“What on Earth did you two do!?” Dee asked, summoning a broom and dustpan, bending down onto the floor to sweep up the glass shards and cookie crumbs.

“We got cookies!” Remus chirped, shoving a massive chocolate chip in his face.

“Sorry Dee. We….kinda made a mess,” Virgil mumbled, ducking his head as he slowly ate a smaller crumb. “Don’t be mad.”

“I….I’m not mad,” he informed after a moment, waving away the mess. “But I want to know why you did this. You could of just asked me for help, you know that, right?”

“We wanted to do it ourselves!” Remus piped up, getting chocolate all over his face. 

Dee groaned, reaching out and plucking both of them up, cleaning up the counters. “ I need to stop asking questions. Come on, you both need a bath.”

“No way!” Remus whined, squirming and trying to get away, while Virgil sat calmly in Dee’s hand.

“Remus, calm down now,” Dee ordered, pushing the dark creativity down. “Just accept the bath and I’ll make more cookies afterwards, deal?”

Remus took a moment, a long, long moment, before grinning. “Deal! But they better be extra extra extra good!”

Dee chuckled, ruffling his hair. “Of course Remus, I’ll make them extra good for you.”

“No! They have to be extra extra extra good! Come on, super duper good!”

Roman stammered for a moment, looking taken aback. Of course, the jar itself wasn’t meant for him! It was meant for Remus and his Dark Side friends if they decided to make themselves more of a nuisance than they already were. Not to mention their constant want to make Thomas absolutely miserable was unbearable and completely unwarranted. Deceit and Anxiety were enough trouble as they were, they didn’t need Remus making it worse.

The jar was almost like a time-out place if he got frustrated enough. Then again, if Roman really knew his brother, he had a feeling that a jar wouldn’t really do much to hinder him. It didn’t exactly render him utterly helpless. Only helpless enough that he wouldn’t be able to get out on his own.

Noticing Remus had already turned his attention back down onto the creation he had been working on, Roman huffed. “That’s because it’s not meant for me, idiot, it’s meant for you.”

“Well that’s dumb,”‌ he said.

Though, his body language said that he wasn’t bothered much by the idea of it.

Which was infuriating!‌ Being stuck in a jar was supposed to be a punishment for being chaotic or creating mayhem where it wasn’t necessary.

“You’re not worried about being stuck in a jar?”

The tiny Side shrugged his shoulders, looking less concerned with his twin hovering over him. “I’ve been stuck in worse predicaments,”‌ he said casually, as if it was an everyday occurrence. Roman assumed that it probably was. “I‌ mean, there was this one time where I‌ got stuck in a place where I‌ had to bite my own arm off! And then there was the time where I‌ was almost crushed by a book that fell off of the bookshelf. Ooh, ooh!‌ And then there was the other time I was almost crushed underfoot! That was wild, I‌ thought for sure that my eyes would have popped clean out of my head!”

“Okay, okay!‌ I get it. You’re not worried.”‌ Roman drummed his fingers along the desk idly, simultaneously trying to get the images out of his head while also trying to get some sort of reaction out of Remus other than just plain nonchalance. Especially when it came to talking about things that could have really hurt him.

Well, “hurt” him. He already knew his brother did weird shit anyway, but still. There had to be something that would freak him out a little bit!

“What’s the idiot jar even for if you can’t fit in it?”

“Very funny,” Roman mused, ignoring the victorious grin Remus was giving back to him. However, as his eyes flickered over the jar in question and then back to the tiny Side currently in reach, he quickly realized that he didn’t really need a reason to put him in the jar. He could just do it. Just because. He could literally just do it because he wanted to and then make an excuse up about it afterward. “You’re a real comedian.”

“I’d call it a charm!” The little Side let his eyes rove over the masterpiece he had created before stepping back and admiring it in its full.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well that’s because your opinion is wrong and you’re stupid.”

“Mm-hmm.” Roman continued drumming his fingers along the tabletop, as if it were more of an afterthought than it actually was. “That’s big talk for such a little guy.”

That seemed to strike a cord and Remus turned to look over his shoulder. “That’s a low blow and you know it.”

“A low blow?” Roman snickered, “well then, by all means. Correct me if I’m wrong.”‌ It was kind of fun seeing him worked up like this. Especially since there was really no fear of Remus actually being able to do anything. Not at such a small stature, at least.

True, Remus had his morning-star, but it wouldn’t do much against him.

Roman was big, Remus was not.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that these odds were not in the little Creativity’s favour.

In one swift motion of Roman’s hand, the Dark Side had been scooped up—squalling and snarling and all—and had been deposited into the bottom of the jar.

Roman’s smug grin returned full force and beaming as Remus got his bearings. Dark eyes scanned his new prison before locking on the bigger nuisance he now had to deal with. The glare Roman was getting in response was almost adorable, if a bit pathetic.

Remus pressed his hands against the smooth glass, leaning forward to test its weight and see how much give it would take to actually get this thing to move. “What’s the big idea, jerk?” He spat, hitting the glass wall with the palm of his hand.

“I‌ told you,” Roman leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his middle as he cocked his head to the side innocently. “It’s the idiot jar. Idiots go in the jar.”

Remus sneered, dissatisfied with that reasoning. “Bullshit,” his eyes scanned all the way up to the top. He couldn’t physically get out, but he could try and physically manipulate the jar. “I wasn’t even doing anything to warrant this!”

“I‌ have to disagree with that. You see, you were being annoying just by being here,” Roman had said it so casually, he had missed the flash of something on his littler twin’s face. “So, you got put in the jar. Easy as that.”

“Fine.” Remus took a couple steps around his enclosure, looking it up and down again before seemingly considering something. “Guess I‌ might as well try and do…this!”

Before Roman could say anything to stop him, the smaller Side had launched himself against the side of the jar and caused it to rock back and forth.

With a jolt, he realized that Remus was attempting to throw the jar over the edge of the desk. Roman reacted quickly enough to keep that from happening. He swiftly grabbed the sides of the jar and settled it back down before anything else could happen. He had knocked Remus back to the bottom of the confinement by the force of his panicked instinct. As he let go of the glass, Roman made sure to hover his hands closer to the jar, prepared in case something like that happened again.

After he was able to calm his beating heart from the scare, he firmed his jaw in irritation. “Um, hello? What was that all about?”

“You take the fun out of everything!” Remus snarked back at him, looking almost distraught by the fact that he wasn’t allowed to shatter the glass he was currently sitting inside of. He crossed his arms, looking as if he was pouting about this.

“You could have gotten yourself hurt!”

However, that choice of sentence was what got Roman caught. The smug look had switched from his own features to the Dark Side’s sitting helplessly in the jar. “Oh? Awe Ro-Ro, you do care!”

Roman spluttered, taking his hands back to himself. “Well, I, uh—no! I‌ certainly do not care.”

“Then let me knock the jar over the edge and shatter the glass,” Remus said, “let me go splat on the floor.”

“That’s disgusting, no.”

“Oh come on! You really do suck the fun out of literally everything,” his twin groaned at him, “its just like all of your stupid stories with the princes getting rescued and shit. Why can’t they just get eaten by the dragon for once? Or fall into the lava moat or– or die by something grotesque, like a…like a, uh— Oh, like a werewolf or something! They could be mauled to death and have their bones ground to make bread and their limbs torn from their body like a—”

“That is not what we were talking about,”‌ Roman quickly cut off the gross imagery, not wanting to encourage him further. “We were talking about how I‌ wasn’t letting you throw yourself off the edge.”

“And why not?” Remus whined, “it would be fun! The glass would shatter and it would go everywhere! You’d probably cut yourself, and I would be able to wield a full piece of glass like a weapon!‌ You’d never be able to get your big, dumb, grabby hands on me again!”

Roman raised his brows, looking bored. His eyes flickered over towards the bookshelf on the other side of the room before back down to the jar currently in front of him. “Okay, I’m done listening to you.”

“What do you mean you’re done listening to me?” Oddly enough, there was no comfort in that statement and while Remus hated to admit it, he felt nervous. “I’m a whole lotta fun, but you’re just too stupid to understand how great my ideas are.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

The jar swayed as Roman lifted it up with an ease that was utterly astounding, and Remus, of course, was brought with it by association. The vertigo came and went and left him feeling uneasy. He watched as the table fell away beneath his hands and his attention turned to see where exactly Roman was taking him. He was welcomed with the sight of a bookshelf that towered over him.

It wasn’t like Remus was unused to that. If he were back with Deceit and Anxiety, the world wouldn’t be freakishly big around him. It would be normal and he wouldn’t be able to actually fit inside a jar and be carted around with whatever whim Roman was feeling at that moment.

He tried to scramble for some purchase on the slippery surface, but as the jar was moved and finally settled in a spot on the shelf, Remus twisted himself around to look at his twin head on. His nervousness kicked back in and he felt uncharacteristically worried.‌

What exactly did Roman have planned for him? Was he just going to leave him here on the shelf to waste away? Was this some sort of punishment?‌ A dumb-ass game of chicken? ‘Whoever broke first won and then had bragging rights over the other’ type deal?

“See, with you like this, you’re out of the way.” Roman crouched down a bit, to get more level with the contained Side. “Can’t do any damage and you have the whole jar to entertain yourself without causing mayhem and misery, isn’t that great?”

“I‌t isn’t—!”

The smaller voice was cut off by a louder one.

“Roman, I require your assistance on something.” Logan’s voice was so powerful and he didn’t even know he’d cut Remus’s sentence off. Hell, drowning him out completely.

“Sure thing, Pocket Protector.” Before long, Roman’s attention was back on the Dark Side staring up at him, eyeing him with mistrust.

Roman nearly got up, before deciding that leaving Remus in the jar without anything to keep the jar in place was not a good idea. By the way his brother had been talking earlier about pushing the jar over, one couldn’t be too safe. So, he found a few book weights and surrounded the base of the jar with them, keeping it securely in place with no fear of the little Side actually hurting himself.

After nodding to himself, proud of what he had accomplished, Roman pushed himself into a stand. “Consider this a timeout. I’ll be back for you once I’m done with Logan.”

“Hey, no!” Remus smacked his hands against the glass, creating an echoing sound that made his head ache. He winced, but repeated the motion a bit more desperately when Roman showed no signs of being phased. “This isn’t cool!‌ Come back here you giant pain-in-the-ass! Let me go! You can’t keep me in here, you can’t!”

However, as Roman disappeared around the corner, Remus realized he wouldn’t be moving for a while and he groaned. The weights around the bottom of the jar really would keep him in place and keep him from pushing anything off the shelf.

He sent a final angry smack against the glass, as if that would do something to make him feel better, and retreated to the back of the jar and slid down the wall. He leaned his head against the cool glass and crossed his arms.

This was fine. 

Besides, it was only a matter of time before Roman came back, or Deceit and Anxiety realized he was missing and came looking.

Whichever one came first, he supposed.