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Virgil’s fingers are wedged into the cramped spaces between stone bricks, and the wind is sharp in his ears. The sudden awareness makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, terror jagging through him like an electric shock. He’s above the ground, way too high for a safe landing, and dressed in leathers like an underequipped RPG avatar. He’s climbing a castle for some reason, not even wearing gravity suspenders so he might survive if he loses his grip like he inevitably will-
But as he climbs, because he is definitely going to keep climbing if the alternative is trying to scale his way backwards, the lack becomes less apparent. He knows things would be safer with better tech, obviously, but he doesn’t actually have to think about that better tech, because this him- or rather, the him who will eventually exist here, instead of the memory of the concept of fourteen-year-old Thomas’s favorite original character- won’t know there are better options. The thought is obscurely comforting; Virgil lets himself mull it over as he continues the task he was brought in to do, riding the gentle waves of idle writing while they last.
Thomas is spitballing, but it’s a lot smoother than Virgil remembers from all his scribbly notebooks and scratched-out sentences. He must be older now. More settled, maybe, so he doesn’t need a character who’s always hurt and scared and fighting that he can externalize his anxiety with. That would explain Virgil’s patchy memories of his backstory, where he might’ve been a Gryffindor or some kind of dystopian tech-slave or from the Village of Hidden Leaves. Not that Virgil doesn’t miss being somehow a ninja and also emo, now that he thinks about it, but it’s nice to have a lot of the angst fall away like shed skin. A lack of constantly being tormented by memories of his past is always a good thing, in his opinion. Nice and restful.
Besides, carrying a bunch of knives while he climbs a castle in total darkness makes him feel totally badass.
Virgil feels the narrative hold on his actions lightening, Thomas getting uncertain about where to go from here; he takes the opportunity to scramble to the side and onto a windowsill, noting with relief that the curtains on the inside are mostly closed.
There’s already noise inside. Virgil frowns- Thomas should not have made that scene that fast, Virgil didn’t even feel the story expand- and curls up on the windowsill, half-crouching, to try to peek through the crack between the curtains. A figure in white and red is pacing through the fanciest gold-plated bedroom Virgil has ever seen, decked in jewels and wearing them as casually as slap bracelets. Virgil’s eyes narrow.
Prince Bourgeoisie is arguing with a woman in a deep green dress, whose glittering crown and iron-rod spine means she has to be the queen. Virgil strains his ears, hoping for a hint of Princey getting reamed for, Virgil doesn’t know, using the wrong fork or something, and hears, “- not interested!”
“Oh, for gods’ sake, you’ve never even met the girl!” the queen snaps. “I understand being concerned about her lack of blood relations and that hideous insistence on dark magic, but you’ve rejected every other bride! Did you really think you could count on a perfectly respectable match forever, when you insist on humiliating every well-bred girl who crosses your path?”
“I- wha- I haven’t humiliated anyone!” the prince shrills. “Princess Amarantha tried to slip me a love potion, at least two others had already found their soulmates before they arrived, and the fourth one actively tried to kill me-”
“Because you insulted her parentage!”
“Because she called me a primping moron whose only redeemable feature was his jawline! She didn’t even mention my muscles or sparkling eyes!” Virgil has to fight a snicker at that. “Also, that does not give her an excuse to attempt to strangle me. Why would I trust this next option?”
“She has a good heart, Roman,” the queen says, tired, “and you must choose someone. Choose her or another, it doesn’t matter, but there are only so many options. The kingdom needs heirs, and if you won’t marry tomorrow, you won’t get any choice the next time.”
She leaves. Virgil blinks at the hint of plot, upgrading his estimation of Prince Guy from NPC to side character, and glances at the ground to make sure he hasn’t been made. Below, a couple of knights clink by, talking too low to hear; a bat flutters way too close, making Virgil duck and hiss, and one of them stops, mumbles cut short. Virgil freezes in his awkward crouch, like a gargoyle if the gargoyle was a scrawny moron who got scared by flying rodents, and the knights finally start moving again.
By the time he’s back to listening at the window of the guy he may or may not be trying to kill, the prince is slumped at his desk, quill limp in his hand. He glares at the parchment in front of him, then slams his pen down, jerks to his feet, and snarls, “I won’t!”
Virgil startles. That’s a familiar tone, one he hadn’t expected to hear just yet- “It doesn’t make sense. The dynamic doesn’t flow, she’s stale, she can’t be- you can’t make me! It’s nonsensical! It’s boring!”
Prince Roman takes up his sword and slashes it through the air in a sharp, pissed-off flick of his arm. Then he cuts through the stem of the rose at his desk, sending the bloom to the ground with a sad plumph, and stops, sudden and stiff, shuddering with effort. One aborted step toward the door, two separate attempts of his shoulders to relax- and then the prince shouts and slices clean through one of his bedposts.
The globe of wood rolls into the wall without a sound, and Prince Roman glares at it, betrayed. “This isn’t working,” he grits out. “It’s not my personality. It’s not my character. You’re trying to force a round peg into a square hole and you know it, you’re just letting cowardice block you!”
Letting a protagonist block him, more like. Virgil remembers fighting Thomas too, mostly telling him stuff like no way I’m doing that. I’ll die immediately, focus on your own worldbuilding , but this is something new. Virgil’s romantic prospects were always dim, since he was angsty and forever alone and shit; seeing a fairy tale prince throw a tantrum over getting married is so far from his wheelhouse that it might as well be in another country.
Now he gets why he’s here. Thomas doesn’t know what to do with this story. Virgil is someone he used to be in the habit of writing, a memory baked into his fingertips. He’s here as an exercise. Thomas wants to see what happens.
Virgil smirks and opens the window, Thomas’s curiosity letting him leave questions like why it wasn’t locked for the second draft.
Virgil can feel the scene drifting into a daydream, anyway, thoughts running ahead while the typing’s left behind; existence runs down the page like spilled syrup, drips past the written words and pools potential at the bottom. Reality just fell into flux.
He slips into the room as quietly as a moth, pausing and waiting to see if Prince Roman notices; then, inwardly snickering at how the prince is still glaring at his desk, he drawls, “So did your bed also try to kill you for insulting its parentage?”
Prince Roman shrieks and jumps around, sword at the ready. Virgil draws back and grips the hilt of a knife before conscious thought can stop him. “Who in Hells are you?”
“Your worst nightmare,” Virgil says. “I’m here to inform you that you aren’t, actually, the only person in the world.”
“Obviously not,” Roman- the protagonist- says, baffled. “There’s plenty of people in the world. Including you, apparently, you raven, knocking at my chamber door.”
“Window,” Virgil corrects.
“Chambers don’t have windows.”
“Medieval princes don’t make Edgar Allen Poe references.”
“Oh, and medieval assassins do?” Virgil glowers, because, well, point , and Princey continues, “Wait, how did you know that? Who are you? You’re not an author insert, are you, because I was under the impression that Thomas was a great deal more handsome and muscular-”
“I have muscles,” Virgil snaps. “I climbed up here, you need muscles for that-”
“And also didn’t think smearing eyeshadow under his eyes was the height of fashion.” Roman scowls at him, apparently most offended by that , and Virgil brightens. “Oh, don’t tell me that cheers you up.”
“Wasn’t sure that was still there,” Virgil says. “I literally got thrown in halfway through the story, you can’t blame me for getting a little frazzled.”
“You’re an assassin in my bedroom,” Prince Roman huffs. “You don’t get to be frazzled.”
“I could always try to murder you,” Virgil threatens, and Roman holds up his sword. His shoulders make a hell of a profile; Virgil admires them with the casual, suspiciously homosexual gaze that made Thomas attempt to give him a female love interest when he noticed it cropping up in 9th grade and adds, “I can probably still throw knives. Thomas used to make me a ninja.”
“Don’t you dare,” Roman says. “I’m not in the mood today. I meet my soulmate in the morning.”
Virgil wracks his brain for whatever the hell that means and comes up blank. “Am I supposed to understand that?”
“My true love,” Roman clarifies. “The other half of my soul, my romantic life partner, my eternal starshine of the saccharine mind-”
“What?”
“My soulmate!” Roman drops his sword and yanks up his shirt, making Virgil jump and bristle. There’s a pink and red crest tattooed on his flat stomach- whoops, there’s the gay again, right on schedule- with a stylized lily in its center. “This means her, and she’ll have something that represents me, and the plot will kick off when my evil, estranged brother returns on the eve of our wedding to attempt to steal the throne!”
Virgil snorts. “Jeez, talk about cliche.”
“I know!” Roman says, waving his arms. Virgil blinks- he thought the guy would love cliches, since he basically is one- and the prince crosses over to the decapitated blossom on the floor, cradling it in his palm like a sickly puppy. “And it’s not that I’m against love,” Roman says, softer, staring at the flower. “I quite enjoy being sentimental, and romantic, and all sorts of arguably very feminine things. I just don’t- with her. With any her, I don’t think.”
“But Thomas gave you a female soulmate,” Virgil says, uncomprehending. “You can’t be gay. He’s literally making the stars tell the reader you’re straight.”
Roman drops the blossom and flops down on his bed. Virgil eyes the slashed-up bedpost and wonders if the frame will even hold his weight. “I know ,” he groans. “And I need a love interest. Or to be murdered, so my erstwhile soulmate can revenge-quest along with my brother or something while having flashbacks to our life that could have been. That’s always a possibility, I suppose.”
“I do have this handy dandy dagger,” Virgil agrees, perching on the edge of the bed. Roman sighs, not even bothering to glance over to see if Virgil really is about to kill him; the unearned trust makes something clench in Virgil’s chest. “But the story isn’t set in stone, right?”
“Thomas doesn’t want to write something niche,” Roman says in disgust, “and he’s barely admitting to himself that he’s gay. He’s not about to do more for me.”
“Sure, but he also didn’t have dead parents and like twenty thousand scars when he wrote me the first time,” Virgil says. “Sometimes it’s easier to give a character your problems so you don’t have to deal with them yourself. A prince having a soulmate he’s not supposed to could track pretty well with whatever crisis he’s got going on, and I’m always for giving Thomas crises. When he was fourteen, writing me had him convinced he was a bad person for making me go through tough times.”
“That’s all well and good, I suppose,” Roman grumbles, “but it doesn’t actually solve my problem. Thomas has the plot worked out. I have to meet my soulmate tomorrow. Even if this is a daydream, what he actually writes won’t be. I’m as good as straight.” Virgil grimaces in sympathy. “In fact, the only alternative I can think of is- Stranger!”
Virgil shrieks and falls off the bed. Roman scrambles after him and pulls him to his feet, not even faltering when Virgil smacks him away.
“ What?”
“ You’re here!” Roman exults. “And suspiciously homosexual!”
“I’m suspiciously everything,” Virgil says. “And you are not saying what I think you are.”
“You can’t tell me it wouldn’t make sense,” Roman says, bouncing on his heels and diving for his quill. The motion is offensively cute. Virgil hates it on principle, and any blushing is purely coincidental.
Roman’s eyes really do sparkle, which is just the cherry on top of this whole stupid cake.
“Quick, tell me your general aesthetic,” Roman says, pulling out fresh parchment. “What represents your soul?”
“Darkness. Fog. A dead guy but like, aesthetic.”
Roman waves an exasperated hand. “Things I can draw , Midnight Dreary.”
“Stick figures.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Look, you can’t expect me to quantify my nonexistent soul with what’s basically a cutie mark,” Virgil says defensively. “All I can think of is, like, storm clouds.”
“Close enough!” Roman declares, and scribbles the drawing out. Then he whirls around, not bothering to actually show it to Virgil or anything, and blurts, “Are you really okay with this? It would make perfect sense, and Thomas already threw you in so he must want us together on some level, and it would make the fight with Remus so much more exciting-”
“Well, I’m always up for a fight,” Virgil says, dazed. Roman glows when he’s excited. Virgil thinks unwillingly of how else he could make the prince light up like that, like all his dreams had come true at once, and has to fight a blush. “Fifty percent of the time, if I have the advantage and a few escape routes. Actually I mostly run.”
“Nobody’s perfect, I suppose,” Roman sighs, then looks at him with the brightest, warmest eyes Virgil has ever seen. “But you’ll do it? You’ll push for it? If we have a strong enough dynamic, the momentum will pull us along, I’m sure of it. Even if we’re only soulmates in this daydream-”
It would plant the seed. Thomas would think of it, and change them up in drafts, and maybe make them soulmates for real. Roman would have a chance. Virgil would stay written here, where he didn’t have a whole nonsensical tragic backstory to grapple with.
Suddenly he wants that like breathing.
“I’ll do it,” Virgil says before he can lose his nerve, and Roman beams. “We’ll be soulmates. We are soulmates, even though you’re a prince I’m supposed to kill who’s getting married to someone else in the morning.”
The drama, spoken aloud, puts pressure on the scene, wraps a fist around Virgil’s heart and squeezes. The world crowds closer, Roman in his bedchamber and Virgil in his stolen clothes and the castle guards just outside the door, and Roman chokes back a gasp, staring at Virgil in wonder.
Virgil’s breastbone burns. He doesn’t bother to check what he’ll find there. Thomas will solidify the design when he writes it down, when Roman and Virgil meet properly and forget this whole conversation. The plot at the edge of their awareness will crash down on them with all the force of a tsunami, and they’ll be swept along by the wave. There’s no point in talking, not anymore.
Virgil doesn’t talk. He swoops in and kisses Roman, a proper kiss before they inevitably wait two hundred pages to do any more than touch hands, and Roman pulls him closer to kiss back. It tastes, implausibly, like vanilla and roses. Virgil would try to taste something uniquely Roman, too, but he’s too busy making out with his new soulmate to care.
Whatever, Thomas can add it in the first draft if he really wants to. This moment is for them alone, and if Virgil has any say in it, he's going to draw it out for all it’s worth.