Chapter Text
Roman was so extra that Virgil could barely stand it. Everything about him just reeked of extra. His clothing? Extra. His room? Extra. His choice to belt show tunes at three am on a weeknight? Unbelievably extra.
Virgil had had it up to here with the extra. Seriously. He was very close to losing his shit.
Stupid Roman with his stupid floppy hair and his stupid princely body and his stupid kissable lips.
Wait a second.
Virgil froze as the realization hit him like a brick.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
He could feel his heartbeat increasing as the conclusion settled down and made itself at home in his head.
Him of all people? Really?
Correction: Virgil was currently losing his shit.
“How did I not notice this, Logan?” he was lamenting, head in his hands as he sat on the edge of Logan’s navy blue bedspread.
Logan barely looked up from his work. Virgil liked that about him most days, but right now it only added to his heightened anxiety. “Well, I suppose that you could be going through the five stages of grief. First, you were in denial, and now you do appear quite…” he gestured vaguely at Virgil’s form, “angry.”
Virgil made a sound like a dying cat, long and mournful. “I absolutely refuse to like that pompous asshole! You literally can’t make me!”
“I am well aware that I cannot literally alter your feelings towards Roman, Virgil,” Logan replied, rolling his eyes and straightening his glasses. “Your feelings are your business. I assure you, I want no part of them.”
“Thanks, Lo,” Virgil grumbled, frowning. Me neither, honestly.
If anger was only the second phase, it sure was taking its sweet time getting over with. Virgil was angry all the time. He was angry when he saw Roman, he was angry when Roman didn’t even bother to show up. He was angry when he heard Roman’s name in passing, and he was angry about the looks Logan kept giving him thanks to his stupid crush on
Roman.
And when the flowers came, he was just as angry about that.
Because the flowers were so, so very extra.
Of course they were extra. Roman himself was extra, so of course his flowers would be extra. Big, red roses. He was practically hacking up dozens of them within a day of their appearance. Virgil didn’t even get a warning either. There was no light coughing and couple of petals falling from his lips, he went straight to throwing up full blown flowers. Of fucking course he did, this was Roman he was talking about.
He skipped confusion over the red roses immediately, and went straight to irritation. How could he not? No one wanted to cough up flowers due to unrequited crushes. (Virgil refused to call it love because it sure as hell wasn’t. )
They were quite pretty, all other things considered. Once you got past the blood dripping from the stems and the slightly rumpled petals, the roses could even be considered beautiful. If Virgil was a little bit more self deprecating and just a tad more dedicated to his usual macabre aesthetic, he might have even kept some in a vase.
But that would have reminded him of Roman, and then he would be spiraling again.
Roman was so not his type, which is exactly why he clicked with him so well. Virgil had hated him from the moment he’d laid eyes on the other side, with his lavish clothing choice and extravagant gestures and generally over the top manner of speaking. Virgil hated it… and Virgil respected it.
It took a lot to put one hundred percent of yourself into anything you do, to string yourself out on that line or walk onto that shooting range with that target taped to your chest. ‘Knock me down,’ it practically begs, ‘tell me what’s wrong with my work.’ Roman did that every chance he got, and that was something that Virgil couldn’t help but respect. After all, he’d never do that himself, not in a million years. But Roman made it look effortless.
He worried at his bottom lip, the taste of copper flooding his mouth once more as he drew blood. There weren’t any bargains he would be able to possibly make to improve his situation, and that made him anxious, Then again, what didn’t?
The flowers hurt like hell. Their thorns tore at his throat and their petals clogged his airways. Why him? Why did he have to be fucked up enough that even his emotions wanted to kill him?
It wasn’t until he’d long since given up on feeling remotely human again that anything changed.
He’d been in the mindscape’s shared kitchen, doing his best to expel the flowers from his body. Virgil retched a final time, feeling the slightly sticky stems roll off his tongue, thorns nicking him one more time on the way out. He’d been hacking up flowers all morning, the unfortunate result of one too-long lingering look from the princely side.
He didn’t have it in himself to care anymore.
Virgil heaved out a rattling breath as he heard the flower hit the table, a slightly wet sound that filled him to the brim with hatred, or at least it would if he had felt much of anything right now. There wasn’t really a point to feeling bad about the flowers, it wouldn’t stop them.
Sure, he could shed tears over it and beat himself up over it now but that wouldn’t keep them inside of him next time he saw Roman flash that cocky half smile at him or watched as the princely figure out the finishing touches on a script, his entire face lighting up in that way that it only would when he thought something of his was really truly good. It wouldn’t stop him from wanting to be with the other side, to watch over him through his ups and downs and everything in between. It wouldn’t stop his useless pining and the denial thereove.
He was stagnant, no matter how bad the flowers were. So what was the point in feeling anything?
The sight of Roman’s face sparked that memory. The other side stood in one of the two kitchen doorways, eyes flicking between Virgil’s face and the flowers on the table, his soft features twisted with horror.
Roman.
Virgil’s mind went blank. For a good moment, neither of them moved.
Self consciously, he wiped the last of the blood from the corners of his lips, pulling his mouth down into his signature grumpy frown. “How long have you been standing there?” he asked the other side, not quite as defensive as he would have hoped to come off.
Roman’s chocolate eyes now flicked up to meet his own, flashing with the pain he so clearly shared for his friend. Virgil could feel his stomach tug as he looked into those eyes, and he forced himself to focus. “Long enough,” Roman responded.
There was another silence between the two of them. Roman looked helpless, helpless and horrified. If Virgil didn’t know better, he would have thought the other side wished to go to him, to comfort him. Roman’s eyes looked so sad, so scared, so confused. He banished those thoughts as soon as he had them. He couldn’t afford to be thinking like that, not with roses so close to choking him.
He decided to break that silence. “God, do you wanna be any more dramatic about it, Princey?” he growled out, his voice a little off in the way that only coughing up massive amounts of greenery can make it, hurriedly breaking his eye contact with Roman. It wouldn’t do him any good to look back, only forward. He just had to focus on making it through the day.
“Virgil…” Roman whispered, seemingly at a loss for words. Well that was a first.
“Whatever.” Virgil grabbed his fistful of roses off their cool marble counter, wincing at the blood splatter still there. Their thorns bit into his fingers. He didn’t care. “If you don’t have anything to say, I’m out of here. Didn’t mean to interrupt your afternoon.”
As he was leaving, Roman called out to him again, sounding broken and confused. “Virgil, you’re hurting.”
He just paused in the other doorway, cocking his head to the side as he thought it over. An unfeeling smile stretched across his face. He tasted copper. “Yeah, well what else is new,” he huffed in response, and kept going.
He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew that he couldn’t turn back, not if that meant having to look at Roman’s face again, clouded with hurt. Hurt that you caused, his own brain reminded him snidely.
He honestly hadn’t expected Roman to follow him after that. That was his mistake.
He’d been in his room, on his bed, staring at his cracked white ceiling. There had been water damage a couple of years ago, and he’d never had it in him to deal with it. It was a little bit messed up, just like him.
“You know, I could fix that for you.”
Virgil looked up, surprised. Roman stood in his doorway, the soft glow of the hall light barely illuminating his features. The golden accents on his shoulders glimmered slightly.
Roman ducked his head bashfully as Virgil looked at him. “The ceiling, I mean. I could fix it.”
Virgil shrugged, though not unkindly. “Why bother?” It’s already broken.
“Because I’m your friend, Virgil,” Roman said, with a strange expression on his face. Virgil couldn’t quite place it. “Even with as angsty as you are, I still consider us the closest of comrades-”
“Are we, though?” Virgil’s tone was a bit more biting than he had intended. Roman flinched slightly and he felt the guilt begin to trickle through him. “Are we really friends?”
“O-of course.” Roman didn’t seem sure. He bit his lip. “Virgil, I know I may have said some harsh words to you in the past, but I had hoped that we could move past that, hoped that we had moved past that.”
Virgil stared at him, now sitting up on his bed. He crossed his legs and propped himself up on his hands. Roman’s jaw was set, he was going to have this conversation, whether or not Virgil actually wanted to be a part of it. Fine, time to fight dirty. “How can we move past that if you never mean it when you tell me sorry?”
Roman’s concerned face turned irritated for a moment. Good, Virgil could deal with irritated. “How many times do I have to apologize to you before you get it through your head that I’m trying to change?” he snapped back.
You already have. Virgil couldn’t stop the small frown from forming on his face. His intention was to scare Roman away so he could continue to live in peaceful, ignorant bliss, not distress him. “Well, Princey” he drawled, pursing his lips, “have you ever considered that maybe the one who needs to change isn’t you, it’s me?”
Roman looked flabbergasted.
Virgil tutted, shaking his head back and forth. “Not everything is about you, Roman…”
“But this is,” Roman replied stubbornly.
“I can assure you-”
“And I’m sorry.”
Virgil paused. “Wait, why are you still sorry?” he asked, squinting at Roman from underneath his bangs. “I literally just told you that I was the problem. Me. Like I always am.”
Roman shook his head. “Not everything is about you, Virgil,” he replied, in a gentle mockery of the anxious side’s earlier words. “And I’m sorry that you don’t feel like you can talk to me when something is wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Virgil hesitated, and Roman raised an eyebrow at him, looking slightly amused. “No, nothing is wrong,” he restated, a bit more forcefully. “I could talk to you if I wanted to, but nothing is wrong.” It didn’t escape him how much he sounded like a petulant child .
“Well if you say so,” Roman replied. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry.”
“You can’t be sorry!” Virgil protested angrily. “You don’t get to be sorry! You didn’t do anything wrong! I just made that perfectly clear and you can’t even get that through your dumb, thick skull!”
“Well I apologize that you feel that way about me and my skull,” Roman replied, just as stubborn as before.
“What did I literally just say?” Virgil growled out at him. “You don’t need to apologize for any of that, you haven’t done anything.”
Roman shrugged at him. “Still sorry.”
Virgil might as well have been howling and tearing his hair out. “God, you are so irritating!” he hissed out, watching Roman cross his arms and send an amused expression his way. “You were so uppity and holier than thou when we met which just made it so very easy to hate you, but then you had to go and muddle everything up with your newfound charming and likable personality and willingness to change and accept people for who they are and now I fucking like you-” Roman smirked, but Virgil just kept going, “and you’re just the same as you were- stubborn and irritating! You don’t even listen to me! I don’t understand how you can be so cute and still piss me off so very much!”
Virgil was stopped by probably the only thing that could have shut him up at that moment; the feeling of Roman’s lips on his own.
“You’re adorable when you’re angry,” Roman whispered into his mouth, and Virgil just grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like a string of curse words and kissed him back, determined to wipe that smirk off of Roman’s face. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there.
“I hate you,” he muttered when the two of them parted, resting their foreheads together. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you-”
“Oh yeah that totally explains why you were holding onto me like I was your lifeline the entire time I was kissing you,” Roman said with a nod and another one of his infuriating smirks. “Right, that makes total sense.”
Virgil looked up at him, flushing unbearably. “Shut up or I’ll shut you up.”
“Oh?” Roman grinned cockily at him, biting his lip. “And how exactly would you-?”
Virgil shoved him off of the bed. Roman fell to the floor with a very undignified squeal, alarm crossing his features as the wind was knocked out of him. Virgil just smirked at him, blowing him a kiss. “Like that, Princey.”
Roman let out a huff of his own, despite the smile already creeping at the corners of his lips and the slightly pleased flush of his cheeks. “Then the feeling is mutual, Emo Nightmare. I hate you as well.”
“Right. Glad we’re on the same page.” Virgil nodded, looking down on Roman. After a beat of silence, he couldn’t help but let out a small snicker. His heart felt lighter than it had in a long while. “Here,” Virgil offered, holding out his hand to the other side.
Roman’s face lit up in response. “Why thank you, my good sir,” he replied, taking Virgil’s hand and tugging.
Instead of Roman using Virgil as leverage to get back up and onto the bed again, as he had intended, this motion sent Virgil crashing onto the floor as well, or more accurately, onto Roman’s chest.
“Shit!” Virgil gasped, just as Roman went, “Oof!” and the wind was knocked out of him for the second time that evening.
Virgil stared at Roman.
Roman stared at Virgil.
And then the two of them burst into laughter, the kind of laughter that made your sides hurt and your jaw ache.
“I can’t believe you thought you could actually pull me back up from the floor,” Roman wheezed out between giggles, wiping a tear from his eye.
“Shut up!” Virgil replied, but he was grinning just as widely as Roman, shoulders shaking with laughter. “You went along with it, you dork!”
“Well, I’m your dork now, so you’re stuck with me,” Roman shot right back at him, which only widened Virgil’s grin.
“I dunno, you’re pretty high maintenance,” he replied, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Seems like a lot of work…”
Roman pouted beneath him, letting out another one of his annoyed huffing noises, which, like everything else about him, was absolutely adorable.
“I just don’t see the benefits,” Virgil continued with a small shrug. “Meh.” And then he was being pulled into another one of Roman’s kisses, sweet and slow and filled with all of the passion and emotion that the other side could push into it. It was dizzying.
When the two of them broke apart, they were both flushed. “How’s that for a benefit?” Roman asked him, even after everything, still having the audacity to give Virgil another of his cocky smiles.
Virgil found himself at a bit of a loss for a snarky response to that. “Sure, yeah,” he replied numbly, nodding a little. “That works for me.”
“Good,” Roman replied with a happy hum, pulling him close to his chest and holding him there.
Virgil could hear Roman’s heartbeat from where he was, and he closed his eyes and listened to the rhythmic beating as they lapsed once more into silence. Usually, there was a tenseness to their silences, like the calm before a storm, but now, all that Virgil felt was happy.
“And Virgil?” Roman asked him quietly.
“Hmm?” he replied.
“Next time, just tell me that you’re so head over heels for me you can’t help but throw up flowers.”
Virgil let out an angry hum in response. “There isn’t going to be a next time,” he replied.
“You know,” Roman continued, “red roses are the universal symbol for love… Very romantic, Hot Topic.”
“Fuck you.”