Chapter Text
Janus knew he should stop drinking, but he wasn’t quite seeing two yet, and to him, that was enough evidence to suggest otherwise.
He hadn’t been caught yet. ‘Caught’ as if it was a bad thing, and he'd actually be forced to stop if found. Whether or not the others were asleep at one o’clock in the morning - it was likely that Virgil or Roman were still up — no one had come downstairs to disturb him. He swirled the colourful drink in the glass, gazing down at the swirling dark galaxy. He distantly wondered what anyone else would do if they found him like this, but the other part of him couldn’t care less.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to defend himself, anyway. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth.
“Dee?”
Of fucking course.
Janus looked up, blearily watching Remus creep across the living room. Had Janus missed him walking down the entire stairway?
“Remus,” he greeted. “What are you doing up?” Janus wished his mind wasn’t so foggy; his words were slurring. That was annoying.
Reason One: Weights may as well be tied to your lips.
Remus’ eyes were round and green and Janus kind of wished he could see them clearer. “You’re drinking.”
Janus raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said, because he could. Remus didn’t giggle like he normally would. His lips didn’t even twitch. In fact, he frowned. Why did he frown? Why was he frowning?
“I didn’t know you did that,” he said slowly.
“On occasion.”
There was a rough scraping sound, and Janus realised it was Remus’ sleeves rubbing as he fidgeted with his hands. He tilted his head. Remus was never this quiet, was he? No, surely not. Something was wrong. If only Janus could work out what…
Reason Two: Dulls your focus.
Nothing had come up with Roman, lately. Thomas wasn’t outright ignoring a lot of Remus’ input — Janus was fairly certain he wrote a sad, and somewhat gruesome ending to one of his fleeting story ideas the other day. After all, didn’t Remus get louder and more rambunctious when he was being ignored?
Janus squinted at Remus. He was quivering, only just. Or that was Janus’ blurry vision. He couldn’t tell.
“Nightmare?” he guessed, and Remus jumped. He nodded quickly.
Janus hummed. He set down the glass and opened his arms. Remus clambered onto the couch and curled up practically on top of Janus. He didn’t exactly mind.
Reason Three: Makes you affectionate. Ew.
“Can I do anything?” Janus asked, pressing his nose to Remus’ hair. It was sweaty.
“You smell,” Remus said, wrinkling his nose against Janus’ shoulder.
“Alcohol does,” he agreed.
Remus shuddered, but instead of pulling away only pressed against Janus further. Janus didn’t know what to do other than tightened his arms around Remus’ back.
“How can I help?” he asked in a murmur. “Tell me what to do, Blood Drop. Let me help.”
“I don’t know.” Remus’ voice was muffled. “I d-don’t know.”
Janus hushed him, rubbing his hand up and down his back. “That’s alright. It’s okay not to know some things.”
“I’m stupid.”
“You most certainly are not,” snarled Janus, gripping the back of Remus’ head. “And if you ssssay something like that again, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
“I do that myself whenever I’m bored,” Remus pointed out.
“I bet I could come up with a few new tricks you haven’t thought of before.”
Reason Four: Fucks up your filter.
Remus didn’t disagree. He rubbed his face against Janus’ coat, and the deceitful side wasn’t sure if he cared or not. He didn’t think so. Remus was hardly ever this cuddly. The only time he ever really sought out physical closeness for comfort was when he was really shaken. When he’d tried every other tactic. He’d tried creating his feelings and then destroying them. He’d try killing something. On rare occasions, he tried to kill himself.
Physical comfort was a last resort.
The least Janus could do was recuperate.
He curled over Remus, nudging their heads together.
Normally, Janus would talk about Remus’ intelligence. (Which he was, by the way, in his own way. Remus was brilliant, in a way that no one wanted to admit for its brash, boldness and unapologetic and confronting nature.) Normally, he would do this subtly, through talking about Remus’ newest achievement, or an idea he would have recently mentioned.
Normally, Janus wasn’t drunk.
Normally, Janus was smarter than this.
So logically (Logan would be happy with his line of thinking, not that Janus gave two flying shits about him or his opinion) he couldn’t be blamed for simply saying,
“I’ll murder whoever told you that you’re stupid.”
Remus obviously wasn’t expecting it either. He wriggled, almost happily, in Janus grip.
“Really,” Janus insisted despite being faced with no disagreement. “I would. One hundred percent. Crack open their skull like a coconut. Shove their dick into a blender. Maybe feed them their eyeballs.”
Reason Five: Banishes your common sense.
Remus glanced up at him.
“You’re really drunk.”
Janus glared. “Don’t remind me.”
“Why are you drinking?” Remus asked, and his tone was that of a petulant child, but the look in his eyes was haunted, tortured.
Janus glanced over at the half-gone bottle on the coffee table. How many had he had prior? Couldn’t have been many, right?
“I don’t know.”
“Dee,” Remus complained. Janus hushed him, stroking his fingers through his hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his vision was blurrier. That couldn’t be right, he hadn’t been drinking since Remus had arrived. “I don’t know, I’m sorry.” His voice cracked. Oh.
Remus wiggled again, and this time Janus was almost convinced he was trying to bury himself into Janus. Janus pushed his face into Remus’ hair.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, and his voice was hoarse with tears.
Reason Six: Makes you emotional. Ew.
Remus pressed his nose to Janus’ neck. It was startlingly cold. Why was he so cold? They were both cold. It was so damn cold in the subconscious. Janus wanted another layer of clothes. A bigger cloak. A hoodie—
He wanted another drink.
His wrist was grabbed by Remus, though, when he reached for his glass.
“Stop.” The dark creativity’s voice was wavering. He didn’t cry like Janus: Janus covered it up. He hid it. It was subtle when he was emotional. If he didn’t want someone to know he was upset, they wouldn’t know
Remus wore his blackened, gooey heart on his sleeve. He said what he thought. He acted how he felt. He wasn’t guarded. He didn’t hold secrets. He wasn’t a liar.
This, in Janus’ opinion, made Remus the purest of them. He didn’t care for Thomas’ sense of Morality. Even he lied. Even he was a manipulator when he wanted to be.
That wasn’t Remus. Remus was simple and everything he was unapologetically and open and he deserved far more than this dark pit and this isolation and a cold, unfeeling snake who had never loved him the way he should.
Janus swallowed. God, he wanted to hit something, but the only hittable thing in reach was Remus, and Janus would die before he hurt the embodiment of a screaming opossum. (And he knew well enough that sides could not die.)
Janus grinded his teeth. He wished he could do something other than sit on his ass and cry into Remus. Remus, who needed his own support. Remus, who was hurting, far more than Janus, and instead of whining about it like a little bitch, had come to Janus for help. Janus, who was trying to drink his problems away.
What a joke.
He was almost willing to bet that Patton or Logan, or hell, even Roman would have been better candidates to help Remus than him. He didn’t commit, though, to that train of thought, because he knew that if he let himself admit to that kind of thinking then he probably wouldn’t be able to stop himself from marching over into their mindscape and dragging them into the depths of the subconscious to lock them up forever.
He couldn’t do that. That wasn’t his job. That wasn’t him. That was the alcohol talking, not him.
Reason Seven: What, does it have superhuman-causing properties? Stop trying to fight people.
“I miss him,” Remus croaked, and Janus hummed. Half of the time, Janus wanted to strangle Roman whenever he thought about him. He couldn’t care that the twins were young — innocent, impressionable, helpless children, really. Roman had always treated Remus like shit. Patton’s input on the ‘bad’ type of creativity, and the ‘right’ way to think certainly had not helped.
“You’re better off without him.”
Remus shook his head but didn’t speak his thoughts.
“Say what’s on your mind, Roadkill. I’m here.”
“I liked it when he was around.”
“It’s good that he’s gone,” Janus assured him, but Remus shook his head again.
“That’s not what you said yesterday.”
Janus frowned. When had they been talking about Roman yesterday? Or any time, recently, for that matter? The light creativity hardly ever crossed Janus’ mind; he wasn’t worth Janus’ time or thinking power.
That, and whenever Janus thought of Roman, he thought about harsh words and cutting glares and Remus’ tears and begging to be included while the little prince turned his back.
He wasn’t the biggest fan of the ‘good’ creativity, if that was in any way hard to guess.
“He’s a selfish, self-important ass,” Janus said flatly, and Remus reeled back, looking either horrified or shocked — or perhaps both, but his expression was a little hard to see between the dark environment, the residual tears in Janus’ eyes, and the effect of the alcohol taking over his senses.
“I know this is coming from me,” said Remus in a small voice, “but that was a little... graceless.”
“I’m drunk,” Janus said mildly. “I do hope that you don’t expect me to be particularly delicate when I’m so muddled that I can’t differentiate between my muddling thoughts and convoluted emotions.”
Reason Eight: Destroys your tact.
Remus broke eye contact. “Oh.” His voice was faint. Janus wasn’t sure he sounded convinced, or even mildly comforted. The pair of them were really out of sorts, weren’t they? A tactless Deceit and quiet Duke.
Janus huffed and sat up, slightly dislodging Remus. “Do you think you could go back to sleep?”
Remus looked up to search his face. Janus inwardly seethed that he couldn’t read the look in those dark, tormented eyes. He wondered if a sober him would be able to take one look at Remus and be able to pick apart every single sign of the trouble plaguing the creativity. Unfocused eyes — a rampaging mind. Tense shoulders - a bad night. Fidgeting hands — too much energy to sit still but not enough of that usual fire to be able to do anything with it. A hanging head — an utterly defeated, broken side who had nowhere else to turn.
But no. This Janus was halfway through his third bottle. This Janus was tactless and emotional and affectionate. This Janus was useless and pathetic, and no one wanted him so why did he keep turning back to being this kind of him.
“Yeah.” Remus stood up and shuffled back to the stairs without waiting or Janus, who followed after him.
Remus' room was as disturbingly quiet as he had been. No bugs scurrying across the floor. No abominations of a combination of animals stalking in the shadowy corners. Not even bubbling slime or coiling trails of questionable substances spilling through the carpet.
Remus flopped onto his bed, not bothering to curl under the covers.
Janus sat beside his legs, reaching to run his fingers through Remus’ hair. “I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep.”
There was something in Remus’ eyes that Janus couldn’t decipher. Remus didn’t verbally reply. Janus stayed with him until he fell asleep.
At some point, he must have gone back downstairs and resumed drinking, because he woke up a few hours later with a throbbing skull.
Reason Nine: The morning hangover brings a bitch of a headache.
Janus suppressed a groan, rubbing his face.
The wine bottle was empty in his hand. The glass limp on the ground. It’s dark, purple-ish stain that looked similar to the patches on Virgil’s new hoodie marked the beige carpet.
Janus dumped the glass in the sink and the bottle in the bin. He threw a wet towel on top of the patch of spilled wine and left it there, hoping for it to soak and cover up the colour.
He redressed and fixed his hat atop his head. He hadn’t realised that he hadn’t been wearing it during the night.
He started a coffee for himself. Cleaned up some dishes left on the drying rack. Checked up on Remus, who was spayed out on his bed, his snores rattling the bed frame. Uselessly meandered around the place, trying to find things to do to keep him occupied. Expertly avoided thinking about anything to do with purple.
When he crossed back into the living room, he found that he wasn’t able to avoid the dark-fabric jacket lying, almost discarded, over one of the chairs at the table.
He stared over at it, resisting the voice in his mind telling him to use it as an excuse to hunt down Virgil and talk to him, say anything, even if it was just that he shouldn’t leave his things lying around.
He knew that wasn’t a good idea.
So instead he sighed and with a wave of his hand, vanished the hoodie from his sight. He didn’t think too hard about the place he had sent it.
Reason Ten: You never stop remembering [what you wanted to forget] for long.