#virgil-centric

Rather than some cold stone basement or a silver cage, he was in what appeared to be the living room of the cabin. As though to add to the surreal nature of it all, he had been laid out on a couch and swathed with warm fur blankets and hand-patched quilts. His hands weren’t even cuffed.

He stared down at his bare wrists, turning them over and inspecting them as though some binding rune would reveal itself if he squinted hard enough.

Maybe this was a dream. Some dragged-out hallucination the forest was granting him as a parting kindness, offering him warmth and calm in his last few moments before he bled out for real.

The idea wasn’t as reassuring as he wanted it to be. How would he know when it was time for the dream to end?

Feeling a few steps removed from his body, Virgil attempted to push himself fully upright, swing his legs to the side and stand, with some vague idea of exploring the rest of the cabin to see what his faltering mind had conjured up.

The moment he tried to sit up properly, however, a wave of dull pain crashed through him, stealing the breath from his lungs as every muscle in his torso tensed up in a harsh response.

He sucked in one shallow breath after another, all semblance of calm suddenly out of his reach. There was nothing fake about that pain, radiating from where the bear’s heaviest strike had landed. The edge of it had been blunted– medicine?-- but it would have jarred him from even the deepest dream regardless.

This was real. He was alive. The humans– the hunters had taken pains to make it so, when they could have just left him to his end and let his flesh return to the soil.

They’d seen him shift, they knew what he was, and they’d kept him alive.

A cold certainty settled into him, chasing the warmth from his bones. There was only one reason hunters kept monsters alive. These humans weren’t so different from the ones he’d known, after all. Not in the end. Not where it mattered.

Virgil shook his head once, sharply, ignoring the way it made his vision throb. There wasn’t time for the gut-wrenching betrayal churning within him. No space to mourn what he’d only ever imagined for himself in the first place.

He pushed himself free of the blankets, this time braced for the pain as he stumbled to his feet. His vision was swimming, his balance unsteady; they must have drugged him. It explained the lack of restraints well enough: they simply hadn’t expected him to be awake at this point. They couldn’t have anticipated that his body had already built up a resistance to most of the tranquilizers commonly used for shifters.

A resistance was far from an immunity, though, and going by the way he wavered with every step, he wasn’t going to be able to stay on his feet for long.

There were slow footsteps in the hall. Virgil scrambled the last few steps to the wall, the pain of injuries suddenly secondary to the rapid pulsing of his heartbeat urging him on. He held himself still, waiting as they drew closer and closer–

The moment Patton passed the corner into the room, he lunged, one hand clapped over the human’s mouth and the other arm shoved against his throat. The plan had been to pin him against the wall as quietly as possible and get answers on where the others were and how to avoid them.

The plan was immediately and thoroughly derailed by the wood-carved crutch that Patton had been leaning on, which slipped free and fell to the hardwood floor with a distinct, noisy clatter.

“Patton?” Roman’s voice called from a room away. “Are you alright?”

When there was no response– for Patton’s mouth was still covered and Virgil had wasted a long moment staring down at the fallen crutch blankly– another pair of footsteps hurried down the hall.

Virgil jolted back into action, spinning Patton around in front of him so that he was between Virgil and any other humans. He twisted one of his impromptu hostage’s arms behind his back and then wrapped an elbow around his throat to keep him still. Patton made a little choked noise, his free hand tapping politely at the arm around his throat, and Virgil hurriedly loosened his hold a bit.

Now that he thought about it, Patton was still injured, wasn’t he? He shifted back slightly so he was bearing most of the human’s weight, keeping him from putting too much pressure on his wounded leg. His bruised torso shrieked at the extra effort for a moment, but then faded into the background with the rest of the sharp aches he was ignoring.

Keeping track of his own strength was considerably harder in his current state, and he was focusing so hard on keeping his hold steady instead of strangling that he nearly missed the second pair of footsteps charging into the room.

He snapped his gaze up to where Roman had stopped short, wide brown eyes flickering between Patton and Virgil. His sword was sheathed and strapped to his belt, but the presence of it still made Virgil’s hair stand on end.

“What’s– What are you doing?” Roman finally asked. His voice was incredulous, as though he’d walked in to find something ridiculous instead of a monster threatening the life of his loved one.

A shiver worked its way down Virgil’s spine. It couldn’t have all been a lie. They cared about each other, he knew, he’d seen it– but Roman took another step forward like he wasn’t worried at all.

“Don’t come any closer,” Virgil snapped, baring his teeth in threat above Patton’s shoulder. “I’ll bite him. I’ll– I’ll turn him.”

Patton went a little tense under his grip and Roman froze immediately, his expression darkening like an approaching thunderstorm. Virgil felt oddly relieved at the sight of it.

“Let him go,” the hunter demanded, and his hand had yet to settle on the hilt of his sword, but it was only a matter of time. His voice went lower, quieter, an order and a plea all in one. “Don’t hurt him.”

There was a nausea building in him, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of the drugs or the situation. “Tell me– Tell me how to get out of here, and I– I won’t have to.”

“Kiddo,” Patton started, and Virgil growled deep in his throat before the human could get out another word in that sickeningly faux-worried tone. Roman twitched, his gaze still locked on Virgil’s bared teeth.

“No, no talking. None of– Just let me go.” It was supposed to come out as a demand, but somewhere along the way, the words became edged with a thin, high whine. It was a show of weakness he couldn’t afford.

Roman’s brow furrowed, but before he could speak, there was the long creak of old hinges. Virgil recognized the noise from months of stalking: it was the back door swinging open.

His way out.

He didn’t waste a second, hefting Patton up just slightly more before practically tossing him at Roman. The hunter dove to catch him, and Virgil took full advantage of the distraction to dart past him, down the hall and through the kitchen to where the noise had come from, and at the other end of the kitchen–

Wrapped up in a thick coat and his arms full of vision-obstructing firewood, Logan didn’t even realize Virgil was in the room with him until he was already clumsily ducking under his arm and through the open back door.

The outside air was cool against his face and smelled of damp earth.

A cacophony of overlapping voices rang out from the cabin as he fled, but he wasn’t listening, too busy focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and feeling a faint hope began to spark in his chest.

He’d made it out. He’d gotten free, all on his own.

Sure, he was exhausted, wounded, and burning through the last of his energy, but it didn’t matter. He just had to get past the edges of the clearing and he’d be back in his forest. It would hide him away while he slept off the rest of the drug and recovered, and then he could run or fight or call for help.

It was the forest’s utter lack of response that tipped him off.

There was no breeze dragging through his hair or leaves rustling in greeting as he drew closer to the treeline, only a muted silence that put him so on edge that he slowed down despite the blood rushing in his ears.

He reached out, and the air in front of him sparked. His heart sank heavily in his chest.

Looking down, he could see the lodestones set into the earth, engraved circular rocks placed in carefully even intervals along the border between the forest and the cabin’s clearing.

It was a ward. A strong one, no doubt placed by Logan.

He couldn’t get past it. He was still trapped. Far more than before, even.

His legs finally gave out, as though the knowledge had turned into a physical burden weighing him down, and he sat back in the grass and the mud, his eyes burning.

Knowing this could be the last time he spent outside, he felt the urge to sink into the comfort of his wolf form and savor the thousand little details that his human senses were too dull to pick up on. The temptation was strong, but he took a deep breath and forced it back, keeping his fingers dull and his face flat.

They wouldn’t get what they wanted from him. Not without a fight.

By the time soft, hurried footsteps approached him, he’d lost all of the desperate energy pushing him forward and was sinking back into the haze of the drugs in his system. Whatever tranq they’d used must have been seriously good quality, because it dulled the pain of his freshly-reopened injuries, too.

Whichever human had come to retrieve him seemed to have spotted the injuries as well, going by the sharp inhale that cut through the air.

“Hello? Are you conscious?” a familiar voice asked, and Virgil cracked an eye open to confirm that it was Logan now crouched next to him. He looked paler than normal. “Oh, thank the stars. Can you shift?”

The attempt was transparent enough to earn him a low snort from Virgil. They were going to have to try harder than that.

“Please, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You could suffer serious side effects,” Logan continued, his voice oddly strained. “I’m aware that shifters have more enhanced healing in their nonhuman forms. If you’re able to access your other form for even a short time, it would be in your best interest to shift.”

It was a weak threat; Virgil already knew that his ‘best interest’ would be to cooperate in hopes of a quicker death. He just didn’t care.

After a long, expectant pause, Logan seemed to grasp that Virgil wasn’t going to give in. He sighed shortly, and Virgil’s body turned rigid, waiting for a blow.

Instead, Logan said, “I am going to pick you up now, so we can return home. Please don’t be alarmed,” and wrapped one arm solidly around his back, the other curling under the crook of his legs.

Virgil snarled on instinct, more surprised than angry, but Logan didn’t even flinch as he lifted him up into the air. Virgil’s first thought was that he was about to be dropped as punishment, but Logan’s hold remained stable and steady around him.

“I know it must hurt, but please try to hold on,” he said gently, as though he really believed it was the pain that was behind the low growl rumbling in Virgil’s chest. “We’ll be back to the cabin soon.”

With that, he curled Virgil even closer against himself and set off.

Each jarring step caused little flare ups of pain from his injuries, but he could hardly focus on that, because his head was resting on Logan’s shoulder, mere inches away from the human’s jugular.

Logan kept his pace steady, as though he wasn’t holding a monster right next to the most vulnerable point of his body. As though Virgil couldn’t lunge forward and tear out his trachea in a heartbeat.

And he was right, wasn’t he? Because Virgil couldn’t. He should, he really should, even if it took harnessing all the spite and fear building within him, as a last act of defiance. Even if just to hurt them the way they were going to hurt him, to vent how unfair it was that he saved them and ended up captured.

He didn’t even have to kill him. He could close the gap between them and turn Logan with a single bite. See how he liked being a valuable monster in the grasp of hunters.

Maybe the others would just put him down instead, out of respect for their former bond. The thought was bitter and sickening, and it made something in Virgil recoil sharply.

He couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t worth it. It wouldn’t save him. It would only destroy the three of them, and despite everything, there was still a part of him that was attached, a part that had watched their care for each other with a desperate longing. He didn’t want to be the one responsible for tearing them apart, even if that was exactly what they were planning to do to him.

Virgil wondered if this convoluted tangle of hatred and loyalty was what it meant to have a pack, after all. If there was something intrinsically broken about him that always led to this.

He tore his eyes away from Logan’s neck, letting the vicious urge seep out of him along with the last of his energy. He wouldn’t give in, wouldn’t shift for them, but he wouldn’t hurt them either.

It was one day when his hand brushed up against Patton’s that Patton nearly jumped out of his skin and gasped that Virgil found out what he could do. “Patton?!” Virgil immediately yelped. “Are you okay?!”

Patton took a breath. “Yeah, kiddo, I’m okay. I just...that was weird. You know, when I touched you suddenly all of my thoughts got color.”

Virgil frowned. “What do you mean, ‘they got color’? Don’t they always have that?”

Patton shook his head. “Not really. Your thoughts have color to them?”

“...Yeah...?” Virgil said, but inflection made it sound like a question.

“Fascinating,” Logan said from where he was sitting and watching them. Virgil didn’t take the use of the word personally anymore, knowing that Logan genuinely meant he found it interesting, not that he was trying to imply anyone being examined under a microscope. “It appears that Patton saw how your thought process works when he touched you. May I try?”

“...Sure,” Virgil said, deciding that he may as well rise to whatever bait Logan was setting.

Logan took Virgil’s hand and his eyes widened slightly at the touch. He didn’t jerk his hand away, though. “Interesting,” Logan said, before startling at his own speech. “Virgil, I do believe that you have synesthesia.”

“Synes-what?” Virgil asked. “That’s...that’s the tasting colors and feeling music thing, right?”

“It appears in more ways than that, but yes,” Logan said. “You must have a milder form, associating colors to concepts in your mind’s eye. I can see what you see when I speak and it’s...disconcerting, but interesting.”

Virgil slowly took his hand back. “Sorry, I didn’t realize. It must be really overwhelming for you guys, I’ll stop touching you if that’s what you need--”

“What? No, Virgil,” Patton said. “That’s really cool! I wanna see what you see!”

Virgil shifted uncomfortably. “I just thought...I thought you all could do it? Is it really that weird?”

“Not weird, interesting,” Logan clarified. “There’s a difference.”

Roman strolled into the room and paused when he saw the three talking. “Are you having a meeting I wasn’t invited to?” he asked, sounding put out.

“Roman!” Patton exclaimed excitedly. “Did you know that Virgil has synesthesia?”

“No?” Roman said. “How does he have it when we don’t?”

“He has access to separate parts of Thomas’ brain than us,” Logan said. “Perhaps this is something he picked up from Thomas’ subconscious? Associations from there can be very strong and apparently meaningless. Virgil representing Anxiety, a base instinct, might have better access to those associations, and may have gathered that into his development.”

“No fair!” Roman said. “I want to be able to know what that’s like!”

“I could just tell you, you know?” Virgil asked.

Patton gasped. “Ooh, could you?” he squealed. “I want to know what it feels like!”

Virgil ran his tongue over his teeth as he thought, before starting to speak. “Patton, you’re the color of bubblegum pink. You feel like the softest fur on a kitten or a puppy, and like helium balloons set loose in the sky. You have some baby blue in you, too, but you’re mostly that soft, pastel pink.”

Logan arched his eyebrows in interest. “That’s fascinating,” he said. “If I may ask, what am I?”

Virgil grinned. “You’re rain lightly pattering on windows and a cool royal blue. You feel smooth like glass, or stones that have been glossed over in a river. I can get hints of yellow, sometimes, or maybe purple, but royal blue is definitely your strongest color.” He turned to Roman before he could even ask. “Princey, you’re bright orange, like you might find on one of those plastic pumpkins around Halloween. You feel like gold coins spilling over each other, and smooth velvet. Smooth, not the scratchy feeling it gets when it stands up on end.”

“What’s Thomas?” Patton asked.

“Thomas is...” Virgil paused. “Thomas is bright yellow, and the warmth of sun on your skin in the spring. He’s cool popsicles in the summer, and...” he shrugged as he trailed off. “He’s just...relief, I guess.”

“We feel like stuff to you?” Roman asked.

“Sort of?” Virgil asked. “I don’t like, feel it on my skin, but my brain sort of gets an image of my hand running along things like that. So it’s not like I feel it feel it, but I still get a sense for how you might feel. If you weren’t, you know, flesh and bone.”

Roman nodded. Then an idea stuck him, and Virgil felt a small bit of anticipation in the pit of his stomach. “Can you feel and see things with music, too?” he asked.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Virgil said. “Why?”

“Because it would be amazing to be able to paint what you see when you listen to your favorite songs!” Roman said. “And that could give me inspiration for later projects!”

“I’d love to be able to know how emotions feel for you, kiddo,” Patton said. “It might help me understand other people better.”

“I, for one, would love just talking to you about this further,” Logan said. “See it as bonding if you must, but I am fascinated by it.”

Patton had to leave for a minute to answer Logan’s calls for him, something about proving Roman wrong, and when he had come back, Virgil was asleep. He was sprawled across the pillows, snuggling the same stuffed animal, a little Eeyore, close to his face. Patton had to physically hold back a squeal as he picked up a stray blanket and covered Virgil with it.

About an hour later, Virgil had woken up, but when Patton went to speak with him, all he got was monosyllabic answers in the softest voice Patton had ever heard Virgil use.

More than a little lost, Patton had looked around until he spied a coloring book and some crayons, and passed them to Virgil, who seemed happy enough to take them and keep himself occupied.

The whole time Virgil was coloring, Patton tried to continue what he was reading before, but he kept sending glances over to the other aspect. He didn’t know what was going on, if something had happened, if Thomas was in danger and they didn’t know it and Virgil had just...shut down. Patton struggled to keep himself calm, and eventually Virgil had looked up, seemed to realize where he was, silently close the coloring book and put all the crayons back in their box, stashed them and the Eeyore in the blanket fort, mumbled a thanks to Patton, and left.

Virgil came in pretty frequently now, and Patton didn’t mind a bit. It could be a little secret, just between the two of them. If Virgil needed time to calm down somewhere besides his own room, Patton was willing to help.

Logan heard the approaching footsteps long before the door to his room opened and Virgil slunk in. Logan looked up at the aspect, and, finding his posture turned inward and his eyes downcast, concluded that he was in another state of regression. He put the notebook he was writing in down and said, “Hello, Virgil. Is there anything you’d like to do today?”

Sometimes Virgil had an idea he’d like to follow through with, sometimes he didn’t. Today seemed to be the latter, as Virgil shook his head and shrugged. “Hoped you’d have something. Couldn’t sleep.”

Logan nodded and wracked his brain for something to do to keep Virgil occupied, but would also be a learning experience. When Virgil regressed in his room he mostly would watch cartoons or other children’s shows, which rarely proved educational besides teaching the morality of right and wrong. Therefore, Logan saw it as his duty to improve Virgil’s knowledge during his periods of regression. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with the way Virgil’s eyes got wide whenever they did a science experiment. Nope. Nothing to do with that at all.

“I think I may have an idea,” Logan said with a smile. “Allow me to clear my desk.”

He moved the notebook and the few books currently occupying his desk away, and looked around, finding a beaker and a pipette. “We will need some salt, food coloring, and water from the kitchen, if you don’t mind coming with me?”

Virgil followed him out of the room somewhat nervously, but they didn’t run into Patton or Roman on the way too or back from the kitchen. For that, Logan was glad. He wasn’t sure if he could properly explain Virgil’s regression to the others, and he highly doubted that they knew.

Once back in Logan’s room, they set out the materials for their experiment: five glasses of water, some salt, food coloring, the pipette, and the beaker. “Ready?” Logan asked Virgil.

Virgil eagerly nodded. Together, they mixed different amounts of salt into the different glasses of water, and added food coloring to each of them. Purple to the glass with the most salt, blue to the next, green to the one after that, then yellow, then red.

“Allow me to do the next part,” Logan told Virgil, and Virgil nodded seriously, watching as Logan took the pipette and moved a small amount of water from the purple glass to the beaker. Then from the blue glass to the beaker. Virgil gasped as he realized that the blue water wasn’t mixing with the purple, and watched with awe as the green floated on the blue, and the yellow on the green, and the red on the yellow, until when Logan moved his desk lamp so the beaker cast a shadow on the wall, they had a rainbow of water.

Logan was pleased that Virgil liked his little experiment and sat on his bed, patting the mattress next to him for Virgil to join him. “Do you want to know how that is possible?” he asked.

Virgil nodded and Logan delved into his explanation, pleased to have the undivided attention of someone who wanted to learn. He always wanted to impart new knowledge.

When the door opened to Roman’s room and he was in the middle of singing the entirety of Disney songs that he had ever been able to find and burn onto CD, he was about to snap at whoever had entered that he was busy when he turned around and saw that it was Virgil, taking up as little room as possible but watching Roman with interest.

Roman turned off the CD, closing the door behind Virgil and turning to him. “Well, now, here we are again. Are you feeling all right?”

At Virgil’s nod, Roman let out a quiet but relieved sigh. He didn’t know what caused Virgil to get in this state, but he never wanted it to be because Virgil got hurt in one way or another, and always saw to it that his well-being was okay before delving into any activities.

“Well then, what brings you here today, Wednesday Addams?” Roman asked.

“I wanna hear a story,” Virgil said simply, plopping himself down promptly onto Roman’s bed.

“Then a story you shall hear!” Roman said, pleased. He always liked telling stories to someone who was willing to listen, he loved an audience, and Virgil in this state was the most attentive audience there was!

He started telling a tale of dragons and princesses, and the gallant prince who went out to save all the princesses, princes, and royalty in general he could from the evil dragons, who had formed a pact to steal all of the royalty from the world.

Virgil was enraptured with Roman’s movements around the room, swinging his arms whenever he needed to make a point. He gasped as Roman reached the climax of the story and it looked like all was lost, until the royal prince slayed the dragon and freed the last prince from his prison. Virgil grinned when the story ended, though predictably he didn’t ask for another. He rarely, if ever, requested a second story, and it was never immediately after the first.

Instead, Virgil looked through Roman’s CDs and Roman sat down on the bed next to him, looking at what Virgil was making his choice of performance tonight. Roman always made sure to keep the songs with the naughty words off his nightstand so that if Virgil came in, he didn’t select one of them and Roman wouldn’t have to cuss in front of someone who was essentially a child.

When Virgil settled on Mulan Roman almost did a dance. He loved to sing Mulan, and when Virgil was like this he generally sang too, though quietly. They could have a duet or two if they really tried, and Roman couldn’t wait to hear Virgil sing I’ll Make a Man Out of You. He was tempted to record it for posterity, but he didn’t want to chance the others getting a hold of it. After all, Virgil entrusted him with this secret and Roman wasn’t about to break that trust for anything in the world.

“Now, then, are you ready?” Roman asked, putting the CD into its player.

Virgil was sitting in his room one day, staring at the ceiling and sighing. He was going over everything he could do, should do today. He wondered what the point was. Everyone acknowledged that he had a point, he had a purpose. And that was great, that was progress. But when it came down to it, they only wanted the positive aspects of him; the way he made sure Thomas was safe, the way he kept them on their best behavior, and gave them work ethic. They didn't want the messy, worrying aspect that he was most of the time.

He couldn’t change himself, though. Even if he could, it was never a good idea to model yourself after what others wanted you to be. So he sat in his room, staring at the ceiling, wondering why everyone wanted the good parts of him but not the bad ones, when everyone else was allowed to have a bad side. Roman was prideful and more than a little antagonistic to Virgil. Logan was cold, to the point of showing virtually no empathy. Patton...Patton thought too much with his heart, and didn’t take responsibilities into account nearly enough. But no, Virgil was the bad guy because he would point these things out, or remind Thomas that he needed to do something at a “bad time”.

There was a knock at his door, and Virgil sighed. Was he needed to kick Thomas back into gear again? “I’m coming,” he grumbled, not wanting to expose any of the other aspects to his room after that first fiasco.

Patton was standing on the other side of his door, bouncing on his toes. “Hey, Virgil, I dunno if this is a bad time or not, but I thought that maybe we could talk a little?”

“Why would you want to talk to me now when I’ve been pretty much ignored for the past week?” Virgil asked, leaning against the doorframe.

Patton winced, and Virgil felt a little bad for being short with him, because, really, Patton made a point of trying to be friendlier to Virgil than the other two ever tried to be. “That’s kinda what I wanted to talk about,” Patton said. “Because, you see, I realized that I might not be appreciating you the way I really need to.”

Virgil frowned. What did Patton mean by that? “Hm?” he hummed.

“Well, uh...I’ve only been acknowledging you when you help Thomas, and less so at other times. And I was thinking about it, how Roman and Logan and I are always talking, even when an idea might not help Thomas or we’re not even needed, but none of us have done that to you. So you probably still felt a little left out, and that’s no good.”

Virgil blinked. Was Patton a mind reader or just scarily good at reading emotions? He was the heart of the whole operation, in a way...“Yeah, it kinda felt like that, but it’s not a big deal. I didn’t expect you all to be best buddies with me the second you realized I could help Thomas.”

“Well, yeah, but we’ll never get to be buddies if we don’t make the effort to get to know you! So I’m making the effort, if that’s, uh, okay with you. I don’t want to, like, crowd into your space.”

Stepping out of his room, Virgil closed the door behind him so hopefully Patton wouldn’t feel more anxiety radiating from it than he already had. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

Patton jumped up and down in his excitement, and dragged Virgil to the living room, fiddling with the TV. “Do you want to watch a movie? What’s your favorite?”

“Black Cauldron,” Virgil said with a shrug. “Second favorite is The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

“Ooh, both of those are...” Virgil inwardly cringed as Patton struggled to find words to describe the movies that wouldn’t offend him. “...Nice?”

“They’re not for everyone,” Virgil shrugged off. “You don’t have to say you like them.”

“I’m trying to be positive,” Patton reminded him.

“And you look like you might strain something if you try any harder,” Virgil said. “Look, it’s not a big deal, just knowing you want to make the effort is nice enough, we don’t have to--”

“Greetings, mortals!” Roman crowed, walking into the room. “I am in the mood for watching some more Disney movies, is anyone interested?”

Patton looked like he wanted to say yes, but then he glanced at Virgil and said, “Actually, Virgil and I were just talking about watching movies. If Virgil wants to watch Disney, then that sounds great, but I want to see what Virgil might be interested in right now.”

Virgil was blown away. He had never seen Patton turn down Roman’s offer of watching Disney before.

Roman was surprised too, apparently, because he sputtered, “But...but it’s Disney! How can you say no to that?”

Patton shrugged. “We’ll all be here later to watch it then, too. But right now I’m saying no because it’s Virgil’s turn.”

Roman grumbled and Anxiety felt himself sink into the couch cushions. He didn’t want to cause an argument over what he wanted, that sort of thing never ended well...

Patton sat down next to Virgil, not close enough that they were touching, but close enough to make it clear Patton was on his side and they were doing something together. He pulled up Netflix and looked Roman dead in the eye as he put a hand on Virgil’s shoulder. “We’re watching what Virgil wants to watch right now, in a little bit we can trade and it can be your turn, but it’s Virgil’s right now.”