Chapter Text
“Remus, please, stop shouting in my ear. You’ve been going on and on for about an hour now. It’s annoying.” Roman grunted, rubbing his hands over his ears as if in pain, despite the fact Remus was all the way at the other side of the room. “Your voice isn’t exactly pleasant to listen to, you know.” Roman sneered.
Remus put on an exaggerated pout and whined, “Aw, c’mon Ro, no need to be such a meanie.”
Roman scoffed. “ I’m the meanie here? At least I don’t knock people out and talk about murder for fun!”
Remus snickered. “Oh, come on , bro. You just have poor tastes in humour.”
Roman gasped in offense. “My taste in humour is great! Your humour is just lame and gross!”
“Not my fault you have such dull taste buds. Or maybe you don't have any at all. Did someone cut off the top layer of your tongue?”
Roman glared daggers at him. Oh, if only they were real daggers. Remus looked down at his chest and imagined several knives stuck, sticky with red as blood ran down his body from the punctures. Now, that would be pleasant, if it were actually real.
He looked back up at his brother, whose focus was back on the television set. One of the Disney movies was on, he didn’t really care which one. He sighed and sunk down, maybe Daddy would like some company!
He rose back up in Patton’s room and opened his mouth before Patton immediately clamped his mouth shut. “No, not right now, Remus. Please not right now.”
Remus cocked a brow and smirked. “You don’t even know what I was gonna talk about yet, sugar daddy.” He muffled around Patton’s hand and winked.
Patton sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know, Remus, I just… I’m really trying to be more open-minded about your presence, trust me. But it’s hard to go from hating you to... being ok with you all at once. I’m overwhelmed with so much , and I just can’t with you right at this second, ok? I’m really sorry, just shut up. Shut up and leave, right now, please.”
Remus hummed in consideration. He wanted to stay and annoy Patty for a little longer, because he was just that jerk, but decided he had better things to do with his time than being a jerk. Like jerking off.
Yeah, that was better.
He nodded at Patton and muffled an “ok!”, quickly licking his hand before sinking out.
Just a couple of days later, he found himself in the local nerd’s room, ranting about whatever came to the front of his mind. Logan himself was at his desk, scratching in dates and notes among an array of papers. Remus was never sure if Logan was even fully listening, but he never told him to go away, so there was that.
Remus was just in the middle of talking about the new octopus-dog-parrot creature he had recently started working on, when Logan turned around in his chair and looked at him dead in the eyes.
Remus stopped mid-sentence and just stared back. Oh yeah, he could do staring contests. He was the fucking king of staring contests, aside from maybe his boyfriend, Janus (curse his snake eyes), but he was still pretty damn good. One time, while versing Janus, he lasted 34 minutes.
The two stared at each other for only a few seconds before Logan spoke up, “Your voice.”
“What about it, my dorkalicious nerdy brat?”
Logan heaved out a sigh before continuing, “It’s different.”
Remus cocked a brow in confusion. “Yeah? What of it?”
“Well, we are all facets of Thomas’s personality, yes? While we all have unique ways of using our voices, yours is the most drastic. Your accent and all. What’s with that? Is it real? Are you faking the accent for more attention, perhaps?”
Remus thought for a moment. He doesn’t ever remember being able to speak without his accent. He just spoke, and that’s what came out. He never thought to question the way his voice worked before.
“I don’t think I’ve been faking it. I just speak, and it happens. Why does it matter?” He asked.
Logan hummed. “Well, it just seems a little… unnecessary, doesn’t it? You don’t need an accent, so why have it? Isn’t it a little dumb to have such a drastic accent as a facet of Thomas?”
Remus frowned. “Roman has a drastic accent.”
“Yes, I will admit his voice confuses me too, but not nearly as much as yours. Yours is far more… extra than Roman’s. I can understand Roman’s, I suppose. Yours, not so much.”
Remus was silent, for once. Was his accent really that dumb? Was he faking it? Why does he even have an accent? Does it sound bad?
He thought back to his last conversation with Roman.
“Your voice isn’t exactly pleasant to listen to, you know.”
Oh, oof.
Remus being self-aware? Well, this is certainly a new look on him, isn’t it? He really is full of surprises.
“Remus?” Logan’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Are you ok? You’ve been rather quiet, and your eyes look kind of vacant.”
Remus focused intensely on Logan’s questioning expression, grinning widely for show.
“You lost the staring contest a while ago, f-y-i.”
“Pardon?”
“Bye!” He sang, sinking out back into his room.
Ah, 4:00 AM, a lovely time to be awake.
It’s always so quiet and dark. Perfect conditions to just be .
Unfortunately, just being wasn’t always a good thing to be.
He had been obsessing over his voice lately. Not just his voice, his mouth, his throat, his chest, his lungs, the whole deal really.
Here in his quiet room, he could really understand just how loud he was.
Every shift over the covers sounded like an explosion going off, thousands of innocents screaming in pain and fear as they were torn apart.
Every breath, in and out of his chest sounded like a tornado, ripping trees from the ground and robbing houses from families.
He was so loud. How had he never realized? He had always just used to think everyone was just unnecessarily quiet, but no, he was just unnecessarily loud. He couldn’t move his leg without making too much noise. He couldn’t even breathe without it sounding like a screech.
No-one likes listening to him. He’s loud, he’s annoying, he’s gross, and stupid.
Hell, he doesn’t even like listening to him.
Perhaps he should’ve taken the hint sooner. He was shoved aside and silenced for nearly 30 years of his life now. Man, was he stupid and dense or what?
No wonder the only person who would ever set aside the time to really listen was Janus, but he was starting to doubt how much his own boyfriend genuinely liked listening to his dumb accent and loud screeching.
Janus’s voice was always so silky smooth, and nice to listen to. His voice was high and scratchy and squeaky.
Obviously, he needed to find a way to keep quiet. What are good ways to keep people quiet?
He could ask Janus to silence him 24/7, but then his arm would get sore -and turn purple and fall off- and Janus might get concerned and ask why. So, nah. What if instead of covering his mouth, he just stuck his whole fist in and- oh wait, now this was an idea .
He opened his closet and pulled out his gag. Now, this was a good way to shut people up.
Remus sat on his poor excuse for a bed, staring at the clock on his nightstand. The time now currently read 6:52 AM. It was almost time to wake up. Time sure flies when you're having a mental breakdown.
His clock didn't actually have an alarm. When he was a kid, Janus always set his and woke him up in person. He still does that sometimes, but now he's an adult, so he made it so that a goblin of sorts crashes in from the imagination and screams bloody murder until he wakes up.
One of the many reasons Janus doesn't like sleeping in his room. Other reasons being that his bed posts have rotted to the point of nothingness, his mattress is infested with tons of his little cockroach friends, the amazing smell that accompanied the rot and bug shit, his bathroom that's been out of service for about 3 years, and so on.
Yeah, he didn't know how he dealt with all of it either. Janus was right to not want to sleep here. Or even be here in general. The living room isn't nearly as bad but… still impossible to live in to normal human standards.
Ah, look, now his goblin is going off. How lovely. A bright 7 AM showed on his clock. Goblin was right on time. Such a trustworthy garbage dweller.
He manifested a dead rooster for his goblin, as a treat.
His goblin was appreciative.
He stood up from his bed, and his goblin scampered off in a hurry, growling as zey dragged the remains of zeir prey away.
He bit down on the gag in his mouth. It was a big gag, one that opened his mouth nice and wide. His jaw was sure to hurt by the end of the day. It already hurt after two and a half hours.
Breakfast was just around the bend. He hadn't really considered how he would be eating with his gag on. Maybe he wouldn't eat at all.
Janus only needed to eat every week. Perhaps he should take on the Janus diet. But longer than a week. Say, maybe, an eternity?
But Janus still attended breakfasts to be polite. Perhaps he'll join too, just for the sake of being polite.
He glanced at the clock.
It was 8:46 AM.
Oh, they'd be just about finishing up breakfast by now.
Maybe lunch, then.