Work Text:
The real trouble with nightmares was that they didn't always leave the minute you woke up. Sometimes they stuck around. Sometimes it was the memory of what you had dreamt, but other times it was just the feeling that was left with you—the shaky uncertainty that left the world of your late-night waking feeling just as hostile and surreal as whatever piece of unpleasantness you had just managed to escape from. Virgil could honestly say that he was sometimes fond of nightmares—mostly Thomas's nightmares, but occasionally he could even appreciate his own once he shook himself free from sleep. But...not that kind—the stubborn ones that liked to linger, leaving their trace like grubby, staining fingerprints that clung to every shadow.
Those were the nightmares whose unease stayed with him, often times well into the morning...because nine times out of ten, what those nightmares meant was that he was not going back to sleep.
Which wasn't to say he hadn't tried. Virgil had given it almost an hour before calling it quits and grabbing his phone. It had been another half hour of scrolling before he decided that the quiet of his room was...too much. It was the wrong kind—too close, too confined, too stifling. And besides that, there was a chance that he could settle down some if he gave in to the feeling of unease and let himself wander.
Just a short pass through the halls to prove to himself that all was well...and then back to bed.
(Yeah, right. Virgil believed in that promise enough that he wouldn't have been surprised to find Janus waiting outside his door to greet him—and it said something about the mood that had sunken its claws into him that he might almost not have been unwelcome if he had.)
It had long been a habit of his to roam the mindscape while everything else slept—even through parts of it that he hadn't yet been properly welcome—though usually it was on nights where he never slept at all. Usually, it was on the nights when his job became full time and Thomas's troubles demanded he keep a full vigil, overseeing his nightmares and making sure that his most important worries were at the forefront of his mind when he woke up in the morning so that he couldn't possibly forget. But on nights like these, when it was his own pent up energy keeping him from returning to sleep, then nighttime prowling was the only sure way to calm the part of him demanding a reaction to an unseen, unrealized danger-
It never did matter whether he even thought the threat was real or not, what mattered most was that he act on it.
Finally giving in, Virgil threw the blankets off and threw his hoodie on over his pajamas before stepping out into the hallway.
Because each of the sides' "rooms" were truly an entire living space to themselves, the hallways of the mindscape were sort of a liminal space used to get from one to another. Technically they could enter any place in the mindscape they weren't personally forbidden from through any other door—or just sink out directly to whatever place they wanted—but entering another side's personal space that way was beyond rude, and outside of emergencies only certain assholes—and Roman—ever did it. The hallway gave them a neutral space from which they could knock, a place to wait until their arrival was properly welcomed—a place to be invited inside from, or if necessary to be turned away.
But like any space that was left unoccupied for too long, it wasn't too unreasonable to worry that something might have slipped in there that didn't belong—or that something might have happened while someone was passing through. So the hallway was always the first place that he checked.
Virgil slipped out of his room and made his rounds, carefully checking every twist and every corner. He immersed himself in the overall feel of the mindscape, hoping to pick out any traces of discomfort or tension or any other signs of trouble that shouldn't have been there. Right now it was quiet—still in the way it only ever could be at night when Thomas and the rest of them slept, and the only unease in his awareness was that which Virgil had brought with him, and so he held himself back from the desire to give it a second look and moved on.
A door from the hallway took him to the commons...
This was another neutral space they liked to use for spending time together without risking the sway of another side's influence that came with entering their room. Usually, it took the form of Thomas's apartment. Though it was sometimes either cleaner than the reality or an even greater mess depending on which sides had chosen to gather there and what they were doing.
(Of course, it was neutral only in the sense that no one side's influence could ever truly overrule it...after all, most of the fights they had tended to take place there.)
Virgil had expected to find it unoccupied, and it seemed at first glance that it was. A less observant and attentive side probably would have continued on with their business. But Virgil happened to catch the faintest glint of blue screen light off of a pair of lenses from a shadow-shrouded figure sitting at the corner of the couch.
"Logan?"
And Logan wasn't an easy side to startle or alarm—though Virgil had certainly managed it once or twice. Virgil was an alarm when he needed to be, but he could also be very quiet—as much a creeping sort of dread as a jump-scare. He had also stepped out of the hallway from Thomas's closet, which wasn't the route any of them usually took into the commons on a normal day, and so Logan probably hadn't been expecting anyone to appear from that direction.
Virgil wouldn't have called the little noise of startlement Logan made a squeak exactly, but it was cute either way.
"Virgil. I-"
There was a very brief beat in which Logan regained his composure, setting his laptop aside.
Amusingly, Logan managed a confused "What are you doing up so late?" just as Virgil rushed out a quick "Why are you still awake?" and they were both left staring at each other once again.
And was that a hint of embarrassment that Virgil detected in Logan's question? Whatever he was doing, he hadn't expected he'd get caught doing it. In fact, Virgil hadn't even thought about it until just then, but this definitely wasn't the hour when he would usually catch Logan working. In fact, it was far later than Logan liked to see any of them awake...
"Had a nightmare and probably won't be sleeping again tonight," Virgil answered, hoping the admission would invite Logan to open up as well. "What's your excuse?"
And it seemed obvious enough that he had been working on something, but that didn't tell him why Logan was being so furtive about it. It wasn't like he never worked in the commons during the day, and it wasn't like he had never been caught working late, and if he didn't want to be caught there was always the privacy of his room.
In the light of the nearby laptop it seemed that Logan took take a moment to consider his answer.
"I'm...making adjustments to Thomas's schedule for the coming months," Logan said.
Virgil frowned, though it was probably lost in the dark.
"I thought you had that finished already," Virgil said, moving to join him on the couch.
Because Virgil was sure he remembered getting his copy when Logan had been handing them out earlier this week...
"I have," Logan confirmed, "but these are...additional adjustments. I'm...conducting an experiment of sorts regarding the effect that the location of my work might potentially have on the execution of my duties and the reception of my output by the others—and by Thomas, of course."
And Virgil was grateful for the darkness just then, because he couldn't help but wince.
He tried. Virgil always tried to keep Logan's schedules in mind. But sometimes there were just too many things that needed doing, and new things were constantly popping up that none of them had predicted, and Thomas wasn't always the greatest at keeping track of which things really needed doing and which were distractions and which had been made too complicated and-
And when they all had to be done, it always wound up with Virgil juggling an extra workload or two in the end.
He knew that Roman and Patton had a bad track record when it came to following to the schedule as well... Or...sometimes even remembering to look it over in the first place. They also tended to argue the loudest whenever achieving the goals that Logan had set for Thomas might interfere with time spent with his friends and family or prevent him from opening himself to spontaneous opportunities. And both of those things were also important, of course, but plans still needed to be made, and they could be adjusted when necessary, but adjustments were usually easier to make when everyone understood what the plan had been in the first place.
(And it was really only recently that Logan had even bothered to deliver his outlines to the other two, which...was whatever.)
"What kind of adjustments are you making?" Virgil asked, glancing at the laptop.
Logan hesitated a moment before picking up the laptop and turning it to show him.
"So far, I'm taking an opportunity to reassess the previous schedule," he said. "Specifically, I'm testing to see whether working on it outside of my room might make a difference. I thought that perhaps remaining in the commons might help me better envision how the demands I've laid out will be perceived by the others. I thought..."
Logan paused, his frown outlined starkly in the shadows cast by the laptop's light.
"I thought perhaps that by distancing myself from the central manifestation of my purpose, that the schedule might be better received," Logan finished. "At present, my hypothesis is that my previous suggestions tend to have a little bit too much of, well...myself in them to be found agreeable. So I've been taking the time to review my work here, in the hopes that it might give insight toward the necessary changes. Unfortunately, during the day it's too loud to get any reasonable amount of work done."
"Oh, screw that," Virgil said—blurted, really, before he had a chance to really think the words over.
At least Logan's moment of sudden, blank shock gave him the opportunity to think them over a second time, but Virgil didn't find that thinking about it changed his opinion very much.
"No, seriously, Logan, screw that kind of thinking," Virgil said. "I mean, trying to get out of your own head, or try another perspective on things, or see them from the other's point of view isn't a bad idea on its own, but it's not-"
Virgil struggled for a moment to bring the mess of thoughts in his head together, to turn them into the reassurance he thought Logan needed to hear.
"You're good at your job," Virgil said, because he felt it was true, and he knew he and the others didn't say it enough. "None of us are perfect at communicating with each other. I know we need to listen more—even when we don't agree, we still need to listen—but don't let that fool you into thinking you're not good at what you do. And I can promise that trying to be less you isn't going to make us any better."
And Virgil almost wanted to leave it at that—to pretend that there wasn't more behind this than just the schedule. A side was inseparable from the role they played in the mindscape. If Logan doubted that he was fulfilling his purpose then that wouldn't be the only thing that he was doubting. Virgil knew that better than any of them, he couldn't just leave it alone...
"And never think that removing yourself from the equation is an answer, okay?" Virgil said. "No matter how you're trying to do it. I mean, we all saw how well that worked for me, right? I don't want to deal with that kind of disaster from the other side—especially from you. Hell, I'm pretty sure this entire place would fall apart just in the first ten minutes..."
Even in the dark, Virgil saw the faint tic of a smile which made it to Logan's face.
"I suppose you're probably right," he said, sounding tired.
And he looked it, too, even when you allowed for the unflattering shadows.
"When was the last time you took a break?" Virgil asked.
"Perhaps too long," Logan admitted, reached up under his glasses to rub his eyes. "I've been avoiding taking one in order to get this work done. I won't get this kind of quiet in the commons once anyone else is awake, but I'm certain at this point that if I take a break I'll most likely lose all momentum."
Fighting the inevitable crash, then. Virgil understood that tactic well enough. And he knew from his own unfortunate body of experience that it was never as good an idea as it seemed at the time.
"Well, how about you take a break right now?" Virgil said. "Just a quick one."
"I think it's unlikely that if I stop right now that I'll even manage to stay awake," Logan said.
"Then take a nap," Virgil said, grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch and tossing it to him. "A short one. I've already decided I'm not going back to sleep tonight, so I can wake you up in a bit to get right back to it."
And usually Virgil liked to be as honest as possible to avoid...certain complications, but even as he said it, he wasn't actually sure that he was going to keep that promise either.
Logan seemed skeptical as well.
"And what if you do wind up falling asleep?" Logan asked as he slowly unfolded the blanket in his hands.
Virgil heard his hesitance, and—boldly—decided to play dirty. He reached out for a corner of the blanket and lifted it tucking himself up against Logan's side.
"Then you'd have helped me get some sleep, right?" Virgil said. "Doesn't that sound like a productive use of your time?"
He watched Logan unsuccessfully fight a smile before closing the lid of his laptop, setting it out of the way on the table. Logan removed his glasses as well and placed them carefully on the table beside it. In short order, Virgil felt Logan's weight and his warmth fall gently against him.
"I suppose you'd be right about that as well."
And maybe a few hours sleep wasn't going to magically fix anything—it wouldn't change the other's behavior, and it wouldn't banish Logan's doubts—but it was certainly an easy place to start.