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The drive back into the city was, perhaps, one of the most overtly hellish experiences in Janus's life. The new sharpness of his expanded senses had been jarring enough in the woods, with all the confusing diversity of scents that the forest and the trees and the creatures that lived there all had to offer. Too much to even begin to try make sense of, truly, and his plans had not included hanging around long enough for it to matter. For the most part he had tried to ignore it, keeping himself focused on the task of dismantling their camp with the others, already more than eager to return home...
Unfortunately, once they left those woods and returned to the main roads, the smells of exhaust and gasoline, of asphalt and hot rubber had gradually become overwhelming. Though most of his earlier nausea had eased off after breakfast, in the car he had felt it beginning to return. Eventually it was all he could do not to hide his face in the crook of someone's shoulder just to block it all out...
Because there were two choices open to him in that regard, and each of them had their downsides.
When the time had come to leave, Janus had experienced an unexpected amount of difficulty forcing himself into the car in the first place. He had never been particularly prone to claustrophobia in the past, but something about the thought of stuffing himself inside the vehicle—of having to stay cooped up inside that small space for however long the car was in motion—had made him balk. Though it paled in comparison to his earlier discomposure, that narrow sliver of unease felt like it could easily bloom into actual panic given half a chance. In the end he had managed to fight it back, but his difficulty had not escaped his friends' notice. And Logan had suggested seating him in the middle, just in case his restlessness worsened during the drive. In case it grew severe enough that he might try to get out while the car was still moving.
Normally, Janus fought, and argued, and bargained, and blackmailed at all costs to make sure he had a seat with a window simply because he preferred the view, but as much as he hated it—hated the suggestion, hated that it was even a consideration for them to make—he hadn't been able to promise them or himself that it wouldn't happen. And he hated that even more.
Still, as unpleasant as the confines of the car were, he might have expected a seat in the middle to leave him feeling even more restrained. Instead, the pressure of his friends on either side of him was unexpectedly secure and comforting. Of course, the seemingly unspoken decision for Virgil and Remus to play the part of his bookends put him in an unfortunate predicament as far as the desire to hide from the smells and sounds of the road.
Janus already felt as if he had overstepped earlier with Virgil, though he was sure that Virgil had forgiven him in the moment. Still, even in his state of panic Janus had known he was trespassing over a boundary he was no longer welcomed to cross. Though he certainly couldn't have said with any honesty that he had been happy about it, when their relationship had ended neither of them had left any loose ends behind. It had ended. They had both done their best to move on. Janus knew better than to go around begging for hand-outs after the shop was closed.
No matter how much he might feel at times like he was starving.
His other option was Remus. Which, they had all learned to live with the state of the man's hygiene—honestly, the lack thereof—to varying degrees. There was only so much Remus was able to manage consistently on his own without help, and only so much help he was willing to accept. He did what he could, though, when given a reminder in good faith. And if the clothes he wore for the camping trip had probably been dug out of a pile that hadn't quite made it to the washer, he had at least had the courtesy to shower when Janus pointed out they would be sharing a tent. Though, of course, after a night filled with as much terror and running around as the one they had all just experienced, none of them could claim they were fresh as a rose.
(It was perhaps a sign that his senses had shifted as much as they had sharpened that the atmosphere inside the car wasn't far more offensive to him than it was.)
He had not yet caved to temptation by the time they pulled over for a pit stop. Logan needed a break from driving, and Patton was trying to convince him to trade off. Both of the twins needed a chance to stretch their legs, and they had all long learned the lesson of what happened when their needs were not obliged. Janus might have been tempted to do the same, but the gas station where they stopped was rife with noxious odors and noise, and he thought it was better not to chance it. So while the others went inside he hung back and tried to ride out the chaos as best he could.
Only Virgil stayed behind, no doubt just as eager to be out and interacting with people as he ever was—and even less doubt that he, that none of them really, was comfortable leaving Janus to wait on his own.
(And Janus thought he might have felt insulted if Virgil's quiet presence beside him wasn't so honestly reassuring.)
He couldn't let this go to his head. And god damn it, he needed to make sure Virgil knew he understood where those boundaries were.
"I feel like I should apologize," Janus said.
It was only when Virgil startled beside him that Janus realized it was the first time he had spoken beyond short replies since getting in the car. And the words, it seemed, had apparently left him baffled.
"For what?" Virgil asked, confused.
"For taking advantage, earlier," Janus said. "For...clinging onto you like a sad limpet. You didn't need that."
"It's fine," Virgil said quickly. "You needed it, obviously. I mean- You were having a panic attack, Jan. As long as it helped, you don't have to apologize. And it's not-"
Virgil brought himself up short, hesitating.
"And I- I don't mind. That."
"Surely-" Janus stopped himself. It wasn't his place to refute what Virgil was and wasn't alright with. "Well. So long as you don't think I've...mistaken anything. I haven't."
Virgil let out a soft snort.
"No, I get that," he said. "But you're acting like a hug requires boyfriend privileges."
Janus certainly didn't know what he was meant to say to that, but his uncomfortable silence was no doubt just as damning as it was embarrassing. It wasn't as if he had ever thought of it that way directly. And certainly not in those exact words. It had simply been his prevailing personal experience that...affection, like so many forms of intimacy, was typically presented as something meant to be found with a partner. Granted, it had never been so among his current circle of friends, but it was a difference Janus had been uncomfortable availing himself of at the start. And by the time he knew them all well enough to consider it welcome, they seemed to have already accepted that it was unwanted—a misunderstanding that had unfortunately long taken root, and which Janus had never managed to think of a way to try and correct.
(Virgil had known better, of course, but by the time it came to matter Virgil hadn't been in the particular frame of mind to be correcting it either.)
But what was far worse than being called out for that unconscious assumption, once it was left lying there out in the open Virgil didn't even have the decency to ignore it...
"Wait," Virgil said after the long, empty moment failed to end him mercifully. "Had you seriously not had a hug since we broke up?"
"I mean, there's Remus-"
"Yeah, no," Virgil interrupted, "his brand of full-body manhandling does not count. Come here..."
"I don't need-"
Charity, he might have said. Or perhaps pity. But neither word seemed willing to reach his lips.
"Tell me 'no' if you really don't want it," Virgil said, arm frozen halfway toward reaching.
And Janus tried, he honestly tried, but the lie died in his throat as it closed on a whine.
(One that sounded, at least to his own ears, mortifyingly canine.)
"That's what I thought," Virgil said softly, slinging an arm over his shoulder.
And, damn him, Janus couldn't stop himself from leaning into it.
They sat that way silently for a moment, idly watching the others get up to God alone knew what through the gas station windows. For whatever reason, the twins were in the middle of deciding...something through a game of rock-paper-scissors, while the other two looked on almost worriedly.
"If we're handing out apologies," Virgil said. "I think I owe you one. And a thanks, really."
"For what?" Janus asked, genuinely at a loss.
"You never told anyone why we broke up."
Oh God.
On top of everything else he had suffered, were they really about to have this conversation today? Forget all his whining about- No, he would take all the stupid, supernatural nonsense and curses the world decided to throw at him. He would accept them gladly. He would welcome them.
This. This was worse.
"I wasn't about to out you," Janus said, almost offended. Because what else could he say? "I'll acknowledge I can be petty when the occasion strikes, and even a bit of an asshole, but I like to think I'm above just...blabbering out confessions given in confidence."
"It would have made things a lot easier with the others."
Janus couldn't help the faint snort that left him.
"No it wouldn't have," Janus said. "Do you really think that if I did just...tell them, that they wouldn't have been just as angry later?"
Sure, in the short term it might have made things easier with the others. It was hard, after all, to forgive someone when you didn't know what you were meant to be forgiving in the first place. And it would have been nice for their friends to know that there had never, truly, been anything between them that had needed forgiveness at all. It might even have saved him some of the grief that had come later—the lesser but cutting cruelties they had all managed to commit that had needed to be forgiven. But if he had told them why his relationship with Virgil had fallen apart before Virgil was ready to tell it? That would have been something worth begging forgiveness for. Truly, if Janus were in Virgil's place, he doubted it was a betrayal he would have been willing to forgive easily.
(Or at all. He truly wasn't above being that petty.)
But more to the point, if he had chosen to reveal something that sensitive, that private, something that had caused Virgil so much pain? Their friends would have been fully justified in never trusting him again.
"Only you telling them would have done any good, Virgil," Janus said tiredly. "And...it's fine that you didn't."
"No it's not," Virgil said, just as wearily. "I- Maybe I wasn't obligated to explain everything, but...I could have made it more obvious that it was me that was the problem."
And even after all the time that had passed, all the hurt they had thrown each other's way, it stung to hear Virgil talk about himself like that.
"It wasn't a problem, Virgil," Janus said "You weren't a problem."
Janus took in a breath, letting it out as a sigh.
"I can't exactly argue that...drawing things out the way you did wasn't a mistake," he allowed. "We both know it was a mistake. But...I certainly don't blame you for being afraid to take that step in the first place. I honestly doubt I would have done much better in your shoes."
"Maybe not, but... I still hurt you."
"It was always going to hurt," Janus said. "But it had to end somehow. It was only going to get worse otherwise."
"It hurt more than it needed to."
And maybe that was true.
Still, there truly was no painless way to tell someone who was in love with you—someone you were in a relationship with—that you didn't feel the same. That you didn't love them back—that you couldn't love them back, not in the same way. And it was only made worse by the fact of just how hard Virgil had tried. Because Janus knew that he had. Before reaching his breaking point—the point of his confession—Virgil had tried so hard to do it right. Janus had walked out that night without a word, and he was grateful that he had. While it wasn't the best response, it had saved him from many that would have been far worse. And those wounds might have healed some by now, enough that he knew how unfair it was to both of them to think of it that way, but all he could hear in Virgil's confession that night was that someone who had wanted so badly to love him had finally given up.
(After all, which at the time had seemed more likely: that Virgil couldn't love, or that Janus was unlovable?)
"It's not like I can say I didn't hurt you needlessly in return, after," Janus said. "I was...I was cruel. More than was fair."
"You had every right to be angry, though," Virgil said, and Janus hardly got the chance to object before he continued. "No, I mean- About what happened after. They shouldn't have shut you out like that. And I... I didn't have to let that happen."
And that was something else that would probably never not hurt. But it was another wound he was, at last, finally allowing to mend.
"That wasn't why I was angry," Janus confessed quietly. "I- The others cutting me off... That...scared me, more than anything, if I'm honest. But that wasn't why I was angry."
Virgil turned to look at him, confusion plain on his face.
"Then why?"
"When you told me that you didn't feel the same..." Janus said. "It took me a long time to believe that you didn't do it to hurt me. That it wasn't a joke."
"What? Why would I-"
"You wouldn't," Janus clarified. "That's what I'm saying, Virgil. I wasn't angry at you. I was angry at what I thought you did. Because I'd known too many people before who would have played games like that. And it was hard at first to remember you weren't one of them."
And Janus had already told Virgil...pretty much everything he ever wanted to say about the relationships he had known in the past. It wasn't a topic that either of them was eager to revisit.
"Sometimes, I think we could have been pretty amazing," Virgil said quietly, "if I hadn't ruined it by trying to make it something it wasn't meant to be."
Sometimes Janus thought about that too. The chemistry that had struck up between them from the moment they first met may not have been what either of them thought or hoped that it was, but it had been there. It had been real. And despite only having known each other for such a short time, they used to be so close...
"I don't know if we ruined it," Janus said. "I mean, it's not always easy, but...here we are."
He shrugged the shoulder currently pinned under Virgil's arm prompting a faint smile.
"Yeah," Virgil agreed. "I guess we are."
Inside the store, some sort of argument was now taking place in the candy aisle. Whatever the disagreement was, Logan and Remus were visibly and firmly on opposite sides of it. Roman, for once, seemed set on not choosing a side, and poor Patton was looking increasingly distressed and very confused...
"What do you want to bet they're arguing about whether or not you can have chocolate?" Virgil said.
"Oh God...they are, aren't they?" Janus said. "I swear, if they try to deny me the simple joys in life I may decide to go back and live in the woods..."
It was probably a good sign he was learning to joke about this. He certainly wasn't going to survive it otherwise...
"You know," Janus said. "I'll never stop being grateful that you decided to introduce me to your pack of idiots."
He was hardly given the chance to second guess his choice of words when he heard Virgil let out a snort.
"Well, now they're our pack of idiots," Virgil said.
And Janus knew Virgil hadn't meant it...quite that way, but hearing the words—our pack—said out loud stirred something in the back of his brain that had him melting even more closely against his friend's side. It was oddly warm and bright, making his whole head tingle like a pleasingly soft shock of electricity. And whatever his outward reaction, it didn't go unnoticed, he didn't think. Virgil gave him an odd look of concern, though he chose not to comment. At least not directly.
"Hey, Jan?"
"Hm?"
"Do yourself a favor from now on and just...take advantage," Virgil said. "You know you just have to ask. Any of us. Especially since you're going to be staying with Patton."
Janus huffed a laugh.
"If I go around asking Patton for hugs," he said, "I might not get out of there with my ribs intact."
Virgil smiled, shaking his head.
"Seriously," he said, "how have you avoided hugs from Patton of all people-"
In truth, it had been both harder and easier than Virgil probably thought.
Of all their friends, Janus often felt like he knew Patton the least, though at the start of their acquaintance it had been much the opposite. Learning the others' personalities, picking up on their individual quirks and ticks, had made getting to know each of them a unique game of discovery. Patton, on the other hand, despite his childish and oftentimes naive personality, had managed to feel so...familiar. Because if there was one thing Janus was used to, it was people playing nice. He was an old hand at that game. Everyone putting on their best face at all times, smiling and maintaining the illusion of effortless affability and charm so that they could pretend to the world that they were bulletproof. A mask thrown up with the knowledge that the narrowest crack could be exploited. So ubiquitous in his experience that even simple harmlessness was rarely as genuine as it seemed. Coming from the world that he had, it had been impossible for Janus to believe that anyone could be truly guileless.
As a consequence, it had taken him a stupidly long time to realize that Patton truly wasn't playing at anything.
Even now, it was hard for him to remember at times. On the outside, it had looked so similar to what he was used to that even now it could be difficult for him to believe Patton's demeanor was entirely genuine. And even when Janus did manage to believe it, it was hard for him to feel like he knew exactly where he stood. Patton was...nice, but Patton was always nice. To everyone. Janus had a tendency to be cynical in a way that naturally clashed with Patton's easy optimism, and he knew that he had taken a jab at the man's soft emotional underbelly on more occasions than was fair. Yet even in their worst interactions the man had never failed at being, at minimum, scrupulously polite. Patton...tolerated him, clearly, and Janus thought that was about what he deserved.
And Patton was the sort to offer a hug to a stranger if it looked like they needed it. Janus had little doubt he would offer them to his enemies if he thought they deserved it, though it was almost impossible to imagine him ever having any. But back when he had been less trusting of what he saw in Patton's easy amiability, he had found the man's openness with physical affection off-putting, to say the least. And, at the start, Janus had done his best to avoid it. And by the time that had changed—by the time he had grown more trusting, more used to seeing that affection thrown around the group and reciprocated easily and naturally by almost everyone—most of the others, but especially Patton, seemed to have taken to heart that the contact wasn't wanted. Which was, of course, a reasonable misconception—Logan was rather vocal about his own preferences, and it wouldn't have strained belief that Janus might be the same. And over time the offers had simply stopped coming his way—something he hadn't anticipated missing until they were gone.
(Virgil had been the sole exception when they were together—and in the immediate fallout of their break up Janus had been haunted by how much he had taken that for granted.
And after...
Well, after, there was really only Remus, who had at first become the exception largely through his problem of being honestly forgetful of others' boundaries. And Janus often wished the others would give Remus far more credit than they did. Perhaps they might have noticed how little effort Janus put into reminding him of his own. Indeed, he hadn't rebuffed the man's particular brand of rowdy affection—had, in fact, in rare moments given back as good as he got—for quite some time.)
For better or worse, he wasn't given the chance to offer these insights to Virgil before the others began piling themselves back into the car. Remus slid into the seat beside him with a dangerously triumphant look on his face. Janus was set to be worried for a moment, particularly once he felt something being nudged subtly into his hands. But that was before he heard a crinkle of plastic, and caught the smell of...
"See, this is why I can never stay mad at you," Janus said, slipping the candy bar into his pocket. "And it's why you're my favorite. Who else would ever shoplift for me?"
"It's not stolen," Roman insisted from his seat with the others up front. "I mean... Patton went back to pay for it."
"Despite my strongly stated disapproval," Logan said with a displeased frown.
"Then he's my second favorite."
"Aww, thanks, Jan!"
"I hope you won't expect my sympathy if it makes you ill," Logan said, clearly still irritated at not having his warnings heeded.
"Well I'm not going to eat it in the car when I'm already struggling to keep breakfast down," Janus said. "But I promise if you have to take me to the hospital over a candy bar you're welcome to all the I-told-you-so's you would like."
"Do you mean the vet?" Remus asked with a snicker.
Janus shoved him with the sharpest part of his elbow, prompting an outburst of hooting laughter.
"Status revoked," he announced. "Patton's my new favorite now."
Patton's laugh at hearing this pronouncement was both shocked and surprisingly delighted, and so infectious that even Logan's stony facade cracked just a little—just enough to reveal the barest hint of a smile—and just for a moment Janus thought he understood what Logan saw in him.
Though the sight was stolen from him quickly. He was left laughing into Remus's chest as the other retaliated by trying to wrestle him off of the seat, despite his seat-belt making it impossible. Still, Janus spared a thought that perhaps he had let his doubts obscure answers that had been sitting right in front of him for far too long.
Perhaps this stay with Patton would be the perfect chance at last to learn how to really know him.