Work Text:
Roman's garden is on fire.
Figuratively.
Virgil almost forgets how hot Roman's passion burns. The garden is full of ruby red roses, each one fully opened and perfect. Their petals are tender and soft, glowing from within, even during the daytime. He can feel the heat rippling off of them. Get too close, and Virgil would scorch his hands, and that would be so embarrassing.
"What happened to you?" people would ask. "How did you burn yourself?"
Oh, on Roman's roses.
Humiliating.
"Every flower has its rose and cons," Patton would say.
"You can't burn yourself on a metaphor," Logan would argue.
Yet, people have wept over a metaphor, Virgil is pretty sure, and words can scald skin deeper than a branding iron, but what does he know? He isn't Creativity. He's darkness and fear, a creature too big and too ugly to look at.
Sometimes, Roman's passion is so intense that the roses burst like fireworks. You would think they would smell like sulfur or even sweet earth, but they don't. They smell like cinnamon. Their scent hangs in the air long after they've exploded.
They are also glittery.
Virgil shakes sparkly pink dust out of his hair. Dreams, he thinks to himself, can be such a mess.
But Roman has so many of them. He wants Thomas to fall in love with another man, he wants to be center stage on Broadway, he wants to slay dragons, write stories, collect every star in the sky and rearrange them into his own constellations.
But Virgil prefers bubbles. Not small ones, but big ones. The kind of bubbles you can physically step into like at the Museum of Science and Industry. The ones that absorb you with jiggling pearlescent walls and blurs what's right in front of you.
"That is not how dream chasing works!" Roman says, time and time again. "We need to get out of our comfort zone!"
But chasing dreams is about taking risks, and risks are terrifying. You never know where you are going to end up. What if you fail? What if you burn yourself? Yes, better to keep away from the roses all together. Bubbles, in Virgil's opinion, are much safer.
Virgil is not one for metaphorical fire roses anyway. He enjoys autumn fires blooming in household hearths, as long as you examine the firebox for any cracks or gaps, as long as you make sure your fire extinguisher is working, and did you check the flute again? Is it closed? It could be closed, you better look, better make sure—
Stop.
Breathe.
Oh, it's Logan. His voice is soothing ice water winding through the haze in Virgil's head. Sometimes, that river snakes through Roman's garden, and Virgil hears the telltale sizzle of Roman's most fanciful roses puffing out. It is the cold rush of reality that puts out the blaze.
Flying, for one, is impossible. That Hogwarts letter is never coming, the likelihood of dating John Boyega is next to none, and it doesn't matter how much Roman daydreams about it, but Thomas is never going to live in a mansion behind a waterfall on the side of a mountain.
Admittedly, reason cannot always reign Virgil in. Sometimes, all he can feel is seething panic, and a world so dark, he can't even begin to imagine a future that isn't doomed.
On those days, Thomas doesn't want to go anywhere. His skin feels too tight for his bones and the dreams burn too brightly to look at. Pursuing them means he might catch on fire. No, it's better to binge Netflix and pizza all day. It's better to stay home. To be safe.
This crushes Roman's garden. The roses wilt underneath the weight of such big hopes and everything getting in the way of them. The petals begin to fold into themselves, one by one, until they are blackened and curled.
Virgil knows he is the one preventing the roses from growing. When the flames begin to shrink, he fears that maybe, eventually, the passion will smother out.
Virgil knows, if he carries on this way, the garden is going to die.
And so, he breathes in for four seconds. Holds it for seven seconds. Breathes out for eight seconds.
Steps back.
And lets the roses shine.